Technology

Rare Earth Mania: When China Squeezed the World's Tech Supply

Your phone has rare earths in it. Your laptop has them. If you drive a hybrid or electric car, it is full of them. Wind turbines need them. Flat screens need them. Pretty much every piece of modern technology needs a tiny bit of these 17 metals that most people have never heard of. Chapter 39 of Torsten Dennin’s “From Tulips to Bitcoins” (ISBN: 978-1-63299-227-7) tells the story of what happened when one country controlled almost all of the supply and decided to squeeze.

Rare Earth Mania: When China Squeezed the World's Tech Supply

Your phone has rare earths in it. Your laptop has them. If you drive a hybrid or electric car, it is full of them. Wind turbines need them. Flat screens need them. Pretty much every piece of modern technology needs a tiny bit of these 17 metals that most people have never heard of. Chapter 39 of Torsten Dennin’s “From Tulips to Bitcoins” (ISBN: 978-1-63299-227-7) tells the story of what happened when one country controlled almost all of the supply and decided to squeeze.

A Singaporean's UNDP Story

What happens when you take someone from Singapore’s private tech sector and put them in charge of technology for one of the UN’s biggest development organizations? You get cloud computing in disaster zones, facial recognition for police in Guatemala, and SMS voting guides for 120 million Pakistanis.