So Citizens United is fine, but TikTok is not?

[Voltaire2]

74. Did you mean Cobalt?

China is not a major source of lithium- Australia and Chile are.

A lot of batteries are made with both lithium and cobalt, and most of the cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The DRC (not the PRC) is a mess. It has a barely functional central government and an ongoing civil war. The cobalt mining operations in the DRC, like similar operations across Africa and other peripheral regions are hugely exploitive and environmentally destructive.

Chinese companies gained financial control of about 80% of the cobalt mining operations in the DRC in the early 00’s, basically before western companies realized they were a critical resource. The Chinese control the output, the mined cobalt, they don’t generally operate the mines. This is indistinguishable from the way western enterprises manage their relationships with dubious operations around the globe.