> Why would you buy oil from a country or give access to your tech to them when they are using these resources to ramp up their military against you?

Does the US sanction China like it does Iran? The only difference is that China is a larger market than Iran and is close to power parity with the US.

These sanctions are ineffective and disproportionately punish your average Iranian citizen, while we ignore the elephant that is China, which is far more dangerous as an adversary [1] [2].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Year-Marathon-Strategy-Replac...

[2] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2020/09/04/w...

>The reason some geological maps are almost impossible to find is because they are treated as a national safety item. In some countries the law forbids companies from making these available. So an oil company that created the map can only use it and in a pretty controlled fashion.

/THE/ reason.

Also, this is why some believe the war in Afghanistan was even waged - was to get the "boots on ground*" == on-top of the $1T in mineral deposits.

While we kvetch constantly about stupid political distractions, there are, in fact, many government-corporate entities that are in the long-game.

https://www.livescience.com/47682-rare-earth-minerals-found-...

Look at even the completely obvious:

https://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Year-Marathon-Strategy-Replac...

and even as openly published ten years ago:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1036105/How-Chinas-t...

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The point is that we are already in the long war for resource control. And sadly, I would say that the US is not in the upper-hand at this time, aside from building up the military...