Everyone has known about this for a quarter century and has expected that this would be the first lever China would pull in the event of war. Sure, nobody was expecting the US to start that war out of nowhere, but such an obvious opening move has certainly had a prepared counter in place for decades.

Australia has rare earth minerals as well. But I’m sure Trump will do something to piss them off too.

https://www.csiro.au/en/news/All/Articles/2024/October/Rare-earths-explainer

You know, this wouldn’t be as big of a problem if Africa was developed enough to actually fund their own expeditions. Maybe there is merit in creating stable nations in Africa that don’t just rely on France, China and USA.