[big-and-small]

It's have nothing to do with "figuring it out". Both mining and processing been figured out decades ago. But rare earth mining is disaster for ecology and western countries just don't want to pay the tall and deal with political consequences. Countries like China and Russia have advantage the they can do whatever they want without caring about protests or long term effects on population of regions where mining occurs.

There quite few talks on the topic, but you can check this one by Dr. Julie Klinger of University of Delaware:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGQeXrkCqM0