2025-12-11 Thu
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Apparently it can always get worse. The full version of the new U.S. National Security Strategy, aptly named “NSC-1488” by the wags, calls for actively pulling Poland, Austria, Hungary and Italy from the EU. And supporting far right.
US sides with Putin.
https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/12/10/fuller-version-of-trump-security-strategy-reportedly-calls-for-pulling-poland-away-from-eu/
It is now imperative to rein in Twitter and harden the EU against US covert influence operations. In all probability they will waging an information war against us just like Putin.
Other stuff
This is really a very good question and an important topic for many reasons. EU needs more secure sources of critical resources. Finland, and many other countries need investments and jobs. But it is essential to do this wisely - and cautiously. Do not let yourself to be rushed!
@fiia.fi on Bluesky Finnish Institute of International Affairs· December 11, 2025 @fiia.fi
💭How states, including Finland, can balance the expansion of mineral production with robust governance, anti-corruption safeguards, environmental needs, and resilience. Today’s event brought together leading experts to explore this challenge.
As always when big money is involved, there are very strong incentives and pressures to give in to those with money to spend, on you and on lobbyists arguing for their behalf. That would be a strategic mistake. For one, tightened supply situation is a good thing.
As long as raw materials and other resources remain plentiful and cheap, incentives to use them sparingly or develop substitutes are slim. And if supply increases and prices fall, more uses will be found. We will use everything we mine. It’s the Jevons Paradox in action.
There is a stubborn fallacy that could be called “fixed demand” or “lump of resource demand” fallacy after very similar “lump of labour fallacy.” That there is some fixed “lump” of demand for each resource, and that if supply is threatened, new mines or other resource sources have to be opened.
This is a very useful fallacy for those who represent the extractive interests. Because as long as policy-makers don’t question it, they are easy to scare into giving priority treatment for extractive businesses whenever supply seems threatened. But it really is not how market economies work.
Supply bottlenecks are real, and they can have undesirable economic, strategic or political effects. That much is true. But for many reasons, opening up new mines or other sources helps much less than many people seem to think. One reason is time lag. A new mine project can easily take a decade.
So scrapping regulation now and letting the mining companies loose wouldn’t likely produce much anything until about 2035. Of course, we are going to require mining and other extraction after 2035 too. But there is always an opportunity cost.
R&D & investment for using resources more efficiently (including CircularEconomy), and especially the R&D for and deployment of substitute technologies, processes and supply chains inevitably suffer, if the political message is “drill baby drill.” Yet those are the only true long-term solutions.
In the long run, we must transition to economies that run on renewable or truly abundant resources, with non-renewable scarce resources used sparingly, like spices in cooking. This is not an opinion or a preference. This is what will happen. Here’s a 1976 take.
And from the point of view of security policy and strategy, dependency from raw material suppliers is best tackled by reducing demand. Because no matter how many mines we open in the EU, they will run out. And due to aforementioned Jevons’s Paradox, increasing supply increases demand too.
So we should be extremely judicious and rather err to the side of caution before rushing to open new resource sources. This is really one of those areas where markets often work very well. (My PhD was about this issue, so I feel I can say that with some confidence.) jmkorhonen.net
jmkorhonen.net Necessity is the mother of inventors: my PhD lecture
(Also archived here.)
And in addition, there are so many other questions and problems that need to be considered carefully. Such as questions of justice, fairness, and environmental costs. We need mines in the future too. It would be unwise to be greedy now and undermine their social acceptance any more.
