I feel like in 10 years we will be reading panicky articles asking why the important production of PFAS and other synthetic organofluorines was offshored to an increasingly belligerent China.
No my argument is that just like America decided that rare earths mining was gross and messy, therefore offshoring all of these strategic material production to their geopolitical foe, the same thing is liable to happen to other components and chemicals. Note that PFAS has a lot of military applications.
Out of sight, out of mind right? Until you really need it.
"No my argument is that just like America decided that rare earths mining was gross and messy"
By saying "just like that" you are implying the decision was sudden and without reason. That's false.
You also are basically saying "I'll be sorry" because the military needs them but are there alternatives and is it essential?
Finally you used "gross" and "messy" as a manipulation technique. Messy is also used to describe anything from clothes left on the floor to in toys left out. Similar with "gross". You are trying to lump pollution with other benign activities to imply it isn't important.
And china can put them on products and send them to the USA anyways and mis-label them because almost nothing that is imported is actually checked for toxic chemicals/paints/etc.
