Interesting and still going through the article but I thought a lot of the metals would come from Africa. Somewhere like the Congo. I read a few articles a few years ago about how the conflict there was being fed by the multinationals that want access to the rare-earth metals that the area is famous for. Specifically, the allegation was pointed at telecom and smartphone manufacturers.
Learning about the conflict that has been going on for quite a while, makes me believe that something is fueling that fire. Didn't expect to see Spain as step 1.
I wondered the same thing and apparently China, India, Brazil and Turkey outrank Spain in exportation of quartz, it was just the authors decision to go with Spain (probably because it was an example of a direct line from quarry to furnace?) but yeah, this is obviously not the only route that makes chips.
The massive supply chain for transistors / chips is something I chew on as one of the big unsolved problems of localization of supply chains, something I think most communities (and nations) should be taking very seriously in the face of geopolitical and environmental destabilization. Plus it's better for your economy or whatever, I don't know, it just seems crazy to me that entire economies can collapse if one country decides to close its mines or another country decides to blockade the country where all the chips are made.
There's always guys like this: https://simplifier.neocities.org/ whipping up stuff in their backyard, but so far as I know there's no serious alternatives for general computing that I could, with serious organization with, say, my entire city and the surrounding countryside (which includes some mines), use in case of global destabilization to start building our own computers.
Tinfoil hat guy maybe but I think we should have that kind of backup plan ready. Just in case!
11 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 30.4 ms ] threadLearning about the conflict that has been going on for quite a while, makes me believe that something is fueling that fire. Didn't expect to see Spain as step 1.
Great visualisation from Branch Education: https://youtu.be/B2482h_TNwg
There's always guys like this: https://simplifier.neocities.org/ whipping up stuff in their backyard, but so far as I know there's no serious alternatives for general computing that I could, with serious organization with, say, my entire city and the surrounding countryside (which includes some mines), use in case of global destabilization to start building our own computers.
Tinfoil hat guy maybe but I think we should have that kind of backup plan ready. Just in case!
The article keeps mentioning of silicon metal, but wasn't silicon a metalloid at best?