Day 1077ish

Rare earth and other things

Feb 04, 2025

Reason tells us that political decision-making would be more effective if it treated governance more like a spine-stretching warm up and less like a strip mining joint venture.

Trump Urges Trading Ukraine’s Rare Earth Minerals for More U.S. Aid. Ukraine has already emphasized that by supporting its war effort, the U.S. could get access to the country’s wealth of critical minerals like lithium and uranium (The New York Times, February 4, 2025)

“We’re putting in hundreds of billions of dollars. …They have great rare earth. And I want security of the rare earth, and they’re willing to do it, with their rare earth and other things.” — Donald (White House, February 3, 2025)

What are the other things?

Reminds me of former Armed Forces of Ukraine Commander-in-Chief Viktor Muzhenko in December blurting out that Russia already occupies areas in eastern Ukraine, Zaporizha and Kherson regions containing half of the country’s rare earths.

Donald wants the other half?

Michael J. Ellis, Donald’s Deputy CIA director appointee (Photo c/o NYT)

Mike, currently general counsel at the video streaming site Rumble, who was a visiting fellow for law and technology at the Heritage Foundation, where he had a hand in producing the intelligence chapter of Project 2025, the policy playbook created by the pro-Trump think tank, has been tagged to become CIA deputy director. As second in charge, it will be his job to invent the rare earths guarantee Donald says he wants.