Hurricane Helene tore through North Carolina over the weekend, causing widespread devastation. Spruce Pine was hit with over 2 feet of rain between Tuesday and Saturday, The Associated Press said. The two firms play a huge role in the global supply chain that ultimately ends in smartphones and powering cutting-edge AI systems. "The quartz in Spruce Pine formed deep in the Earth without a lot of water carrying in other impurities," Yinan Wang, a geologist, said. That's because the Spruce Pine mines are singular in their scale, he said.

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