I could see it as a minor supplement to the global supply. Hopefully lithium becomes less and less needed as sodium ion batteries start getting more popular. One way it could be done economically is to bundle all seawater extraction projects in one plant.
When you desalination seawater, you already have to pump millions of tons of seawater inland and filter it, producing a concentrated brine. Instead of dumping this brine straight back into the oceans, you use this concentrated brine to extract uranium, bromine, gold, lithium, sodium, potassium, magnesium and whatever valuable minerals or elements that you need. This would save cost, since you're already pumping so much water inland, might as well do something with the brine before dumping it into the ocean, not to mention that you're already filtering the water for bio-fouling and as concentrated brine, it should be easier to extract whatever minerals or elements you need since the concentration should be much higher than seawater.
Of course in practice I have no idea if all this extraction processes will play nice with each other, seeing as some of them will need chemical treatment that may interfere with each other. I only know that lithium extraction needs an active electrochemical process and that uranium extraction involves fibermats that can absorb uranium passively. But it could save a lot of cost, if you're getting fresh water and a few other important industrial elements/compound out of your brine rather than just lithium.
If they do it this way, they could piggyback off China's growing desalination capacity and plants.
Speaking of which, once such technology becomes commonplace, China would need longer coastlines than what she is having right now. I guess Taiwan rises even further in importance, without being overtly obvious.
Though, when the time comes, I think we can expect Washington DC to scream "Chyna is a national security threat! Look how they are conquering and exploiting seawater! Sanction Chyna NOOWWW!!"
America also doesn't realize that you don't need a 100 kilowatt hour tesla with 900km range for daily life, most chinese are happy with a small mini-car with a 20 kilowatt hour battery that can go 200km on a single charge, which suits LFP and sodim ion perfectly. Their shock at the wuling mini EV popularity was amazing to see.
This is coming from Americans' obsession with huge objects. Big cars, big trucks, big houses, big lawns, big food, big supermarkets, big expressways, big expressways - You name it.
In fact, I found this recently-made video from Not Just Bikes on SUVs:
His focal point is this - Americans are so obsessed with "large vehicles = safer" and the "big is better and cooler" mantras - Such that "oversized" SUVs and pickup trucks become the most popular vehicles in the US car market compared to normal-sized compacts and sedans; how bad they are for road and urban environments; and how improper & unsafe they are for other road-users and pedestrians, etc.
I believe this translates pretty well to explaning why Americans are shocked at how popular and how common smaller, compact cars and minicars (i.e. Kei-cars in Japanese) are found on the streets and roads in not just China, but also Japan, Europe, India and elsewhere, for instance.
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