The future of Silicon Valley may lie in the mountains of Afghanistan --- The future of Silicon Valley may lie in the mountains of Afghanistan -- The future of Silicon Valley’s technological prowess may well lie in the war-scarred mountains and salt flats of Western Afghanistan. --- United States Geological Survey teams discovered one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of lithium there six years ago. The USGS was scouting the volatile country at the behest of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Task Force for Business and Stability Operations. Lithium is a soft metal used to make the lithium-ion and lithium-polymer batteries essential for powering desktop computers, laptops, smartphones, and tablets. And increasingly, electric cars like Tesla’s. -- The vast discovery could very well propel Afghanistan — a war-ravaged land with a population of 31 million largely uneducated Pashtuns and Tajiks, and whose primary exports today are opium, hashish, and marijuana — into becoming the world’s next “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” according to an internal Pentagon memo cited by the New York Times. -- That was the conclusion of a USGS survey report on Afghanistan that detailed the findings. In addition to lithium, the survey also found huge deposits of iron ore, gold, cobalt, copper, and potash, among many other valuable minerals.-- “The mineral wealth there is astonishing,” said professor Michel Chossudovsky of the Montreal-based Center for Research and Globalization, who has written extensively on Afghanistan. -- A conservative estimate of the riches is $1 trillion. In some circles, it’s as high as $5 trillion. --- In Silicon Valley and beyond, tech companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, Sony, and Tesla rely on continual, and uninterrupted, access to lithium, as lithium-based batteries are the primary power storage devices in their mobile hardware. -- Without these batteries, MacBooks, iPads, iPhones, Kindles, Nooks, Galaxy IIIs, Chromebooks, and, yes, Tesla Model S cars would be largely worthless. If forced to use older, nonlithium batteries, their battery lives would certainly be much shorter. -- The world’s current lithium heavyweight is Bolivia, the biggest exporter of the element. There, in the swamps and marshlands of the southern region of the country near where the borders of Chile and Argentina meet, are the biggest deposits. -- Canada, China, Australia, and Serbia also have varying amounts of lithium, but not as much as Bolivia. Or apparently, Afghanistan. - More, Venturebeat.com - at: http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/20/lithium-afghanistan/