In Spring of 1982, the Ministry of Machinery Industry of the People's Bank of China said, "The world's silver mine resources that have been identified are only enough to be mined for 16 to 42 years. The shortage of silver has become a persistent global problem."
This quote is now 42 years old.
The importance of silver to modern national defense is paramount. The most cutting-edge technologies today rely on silver because it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity and reflectivity of any metal.
The Hunan Geological Survey in 2023 is quoted calling silver a "indispensable" material.
In contrast, the US Department of Energy (DoE) published their Critical Materials Assessment in 2023 which completely omits mention of silver's high risk.
Some materials (such as aluminum, cobalt, graphite, germanium, lithium, magnesium, platinum, and silicon) are used in several applications, and their scores cover a wide range. Others are evaluated for their usage in only one or two technologies and receive a single score, such as dysprosium or uranium. In total, 23 materials were selected for further evaluation in the criticality assessment.
In the figure, all materials to the left of iron meet the threshold to be considered KEY MATERIALS, while the remainder are lower-risk materials.
In Figure 3.1 of the report (pictured below), they summarize the screening scores received by 37 candidate materials.
These findings echo concerns that the United States may be ignorantly unprepared for the escalating persistent silver shortages, or it may be that Uncle Sam is actually afraid of the cat getting out of the bag on this.
SilverWars will continue to investigate.
Sources:
