Some US-based companies have long been flirting with the possibility of extracting metallic nodules from the deep sea in order to fill the gap in rare earths. The nodules form when metals precipitate out of cold ocean water and have high-purity concentrations of valuable minerals. They grow extremely slowly, at an estimated rate of a few millimeters every million years. Their role in ocean ecology is poorly understood, but they’re thought to provide habitats for the animals that live there, playing an indirect role in carbon sequestration in marine sediment.

Up until now, the fact that they’re two to four miles below the surface and in international waters has kept them safe, but Trump is now rumored to be drafting an executive order to encourage their extraction and stockpiling.

There is no environmentally friendly way to extract the nodules; it’s enormously destructive. The nodules have been forming pretty much since the dawn of multicelleular life. It would take so long for them to form again that it might as well be never. The fact that these minerals would form a stockpile so the US can continue to build weapons when it inevitably starts a war to enrich a handful of decaying industrialists is just the shit cherry on top.