Do you have ANY evidence, besides conspiracy theorist conjecture, that anybody knew that large deposits of lithium existed in Afghanistan prior to 2010? You're the one who is saying people always knew and that there was just a big cover-up. The burden of proof is on you to show any evidence of prior knowledge of trillion-dollar lithium deposits. I don't know what the British mined, but the ore that the Russians took was not lithium; it was other mineral deposits. Many Bothans died to bring us this information?
My dear man, no one should ever have enough money to equip and train a proper military because there would be nothing to stop them using them. The Bear.