Gallium might be a problem. "China accounted for 99% of worldwide primary low-purity gallium production. The remaining primary low-purity gallium producers outside of China included Japan and Russia. Germany, Hungary, and Kazakhstan ceased primary production in 2016, 2015, and 2013, respectively. Ukraine most likely ceased primary production in 2022. Several new gallium production projects were announced including those in Australia, Canada, Greece, Kazakhstan, and the Republic of Korea."[1]
The price of gallium has increased by a factor of 10 in the last 10 years. It's doubled since last year.[2] A huge new demand for gallium is going to be a problem.
[1] https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2026/mcs2026-gallium.pd...
Yes mostly. The West outsourced this market due to heavy environmental and financial costs of extracting it. It’s sort of the same story as for a lot of the rare earth elements.
https://www.riotinto.com/en/news/releases/2026/rio-tinto-adv...
The problem with outsourcing all your manufacturing so you can mildly increase profits and destroy any organized labor is that whoever you outsourced it to holds you hostage.
Any talk of this is just propaganda to sell weapons and increase the "defense" budget.
So gallium is a byproduct of bauxite mining but requires some sophistication. China produces 60% of the world's aluminum. India is the second largest producer but doesn't have the infrastructure to extract gallium. That will probably change. But it is a sophisticated process so you need an entire supply chain for that too. China has that. India does not (currently).
But India would avoid the geopolitical issues of being dependent on China or Russia.
Hilariously not any organized labor, just the local group. The largest organized labor group in the history of the world is alive and well, and is headquartered in Beijing.
This was basically just a case of kicking the can down the road really hard. The can is still there, waiting for you, and you are now completely dependent on it (oh and it has nuclear weapons).
This is almost the exact same argument that was used to justify economic cooperation with Russia, they’d never start a war in Europe because their economy would collapse!
Ooos.
Also we read the warning as "don't buy from them, rather buy from us".
And it was extensivly debated in general.
The EU kept at it with plans to expand until the war started for the second time and “someone” took it upon themselves to violently sever that link.
Now at latest by 2014 that should have changed indeed. But even then different approaches would have been possible then cutting all ties and hope this will work out better.
I'm no fan of Donald Trump but this was one of his rare Ws. At a NATO summit in 2018, he warned Europe about the dangers of dependency on Russian energy and basically bullied Germany into building an LNG plant, something that was critical to Europe after Russia invaded Ukraine 4 years later [1].
Biden as Vice President to Obama warned Europe of the same thing in 2016 [2] regarding Nord Stream 2.
So American administrations have consistently and repeatedly warned Europe about the dangers over 6+ years. So how can anyone argue that "[Russia would] never start a war in Europe" when the US said basically that?
[2]: https://www.dw.com/en/biden-warns-europe-against-dependency-...
I imagine this is like 20 years away from hitting consumer design, but I bet it'll be used for some cool stuff.
Can someone who is an expert on the topic comment about if the statement regarding AI is true and if so then by how much (and how big/small of a problem it is), or if the Company is suggesting it out of pure hype of AI mania.
> Market research firm Omdia projects that the micro LED display market revenue will grow from $10.54 million this year to approximately $6.8 billion by 2032, particularly in applications for smart glasses and ultra-small displays.
> The WICOP technology involves directly mounting LED chips onto substrates without separate wires or packaging. Seoul Semiconductor and Seoul Biosys have been developing ultraviolet (UV), blue, green, red, and infrared (IR) micro LEDs based on this technology, and have now expanded its application to include white light.
Fascinating results nonetheless even discounting AI use. Having half the price is insane, also 10.54 million seems incredibly small and 6.8 Billion is a little insane. Kinda wild to see such massive growth expected in such short amount of time.
> if the Company is suggesting it out of pure hype of AI mania.
IMHO, this is pretty transparently r&d for better? data transmission attached to the trend of the day that does a lot of data transmission. Where better is higher bandwidth, lower cost, etc.
AI is the current trendy thing, but better data transmission will always have applications.
One of the pitches was for a fairly good nonprofit service. I thought it was a good idea. Sort of a "help people that help people" thing. I can dig that.
At the very end of the pitch, the last thing the young lady said, was "And we're looking at implementing blockchain technology in our service."
I don't remember exactly what the service was, but it clearly had no applications for distributed-key tech.
I think it probably cost her the backing. No one was fooled. I think someone told her that she had to mention blockchain, somewhere.
Looks like the innovation here is the multi-wavelength LED, some kind of multiple-quantum-well thing maybe?