One angle I haven't seen mentioned very much is that China controls so much of the precious metals. The companies involved are bound to have plenty of shady deals and shadow influence. I've also been wondering about Royal Dutch Shell, previous anon did a good job showing that.

Here's excerpt from a '12 Forbes article - China presently produces more than 95% of all rare earth materials that are vital in the creation of a big variety of electronic technologies including lithium car batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, flat-screen television, compact fluorescent light bulbs, petroleum-to-gasoline catalytic cracking, and military defense components such as missile guidance systems. It also dominates abilities to process them. This enables it to attract product manufactures to operate there as a condition of doing business, ration exports to maximize prices, and punish nations that don’t go along with its policy interests through supply embargoes.

https:// www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/04/15/chinas-rare-earth-metals-monopoly-neednt-put-an-electronics-stranglehold-on-america/#38c693a32d6d