However, the race is still on to find more rare earths and defeat China's dominance as the biggest source of supply. The question is whether the latest "discovery" is much more than the first blow in a propaganda battle. An independent think-tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, has cast doubt on the use of the discovery to Bloomberg News, while Keith Delaney of the Rare Earth Industry and Technology Association says that while the find was "intriguing" it is too early to know whether extraction is viable. Gareth Hatch, of the rare earth research house Technology Metals Research, told CNBC: "I'm not getting excited about it. Theoretically there would be some price in the future above which these would be economical, but, I'm tracking about 380 rare earth projects on land, and our needs for the indefinite future will be more than taken care of through the exploitation of those projects, before we need to worry about projects on the sea floor."