The Dirty Truth About Rare Earth Minerals | Tom Albanese #484 | The Way I Heard It

So, we're talking 22, 23, 24,000 ft. That's pretty deep. It's deep. You won't have any divers down there. It's all robotics. It's all AI. Actually, it's the kind of stuff that future engineers should be excited to be working with. Only a few hundred mining engineers are being graduated from US universities a year now. That's disgraceful. That's absolutely disgraceful. Yeah, we want to bring skilled trades back. We also need to bring the engineering sectors back to America, too.

But the answer is down there at the bottom of the ocean. D. So you think you're an interesting guy, you know, who's lived a pretty full life and just going about your business and then you have drinks with Tom Albanese and you go, "Oh, oh, he's been around the block." And then a couple weeks later, you have dinner with Tom Albanese and then maybe there's some more drinks and more. Both times there's a snowstorm in Washington.

Yes. So I'll paint the scene for you, gentle listener. We're in our nation's capital. It's snowing like crazy. We're hunkered down into some little shadowy watering hole sipping some better than average bourbon. And you are reminding me really of why dirty jobs happened. Um, if there's a minor walking around and that's er, just to be clear. No, it's o r. It's minor, right? No, minor. M I N E R. I'm R. E. Yeah. When's the last time you were in O R, Tom? It's been a while since you were a minor. Both of us are gray hairs. No kidding.

Well, listen. Just just talking about the adventures and the misadventures and pulling the stuff out of the ground that we need. And our relationship as bipeds to everything underground. And I know it's a trope, you know, but if we're not growing it, we're pulling it out of the ground. And the pitch for me from a minor I met years ago was, look, there are only two industries in the world. It's mining and agriculture. Everything else is just a job. Everything converts it. Yes.

So, here you are. Um, what a career you've had. Um, we are uh still having I think you're honestly when I said where did you come from? You just hit me with four cities before you showed up here. And I assume all were mining related somehow. Yes. Yes. Well, no. Family. My mom had her 90th birthday party last Thursday. So, I had to get down there and then I was with my wife, my my daughter, her her and her her husband and their two grandkids. What can you do but spend the weekend West Palm Beach with on the beach with two grandkids.

Does your wife always recognize you when you come back through the door? Cuz you're going for stretch. I think she's sort of gotten used to it. Will been married now 47 years and she hasn't kicked me out yet. So, that's okay. You must be doing something right. How many countries have you been to? Um, I'm still counting, but it's I think I'm working toward 110 now. I'm only halfway through. And most of those were for working. Yeah. Yeah. So, I haven't done the playing part yet.

You're a difficult interview only because it's that it's like trying to get to know the elephant. You know, where do you want to start? The tusk, the tail. probably start from where I started because I would like I I grew up in New Jersey the most you know sort of non mining place non-mining place in the world as you can imagine and I was into boy scouts eagle scout loved outward bound I hiked a core of the Appalachian Trail when I was in high school my mom fortunately let me do all that stuff and at 17 I went up to Alaska duffel bag of climbing gear and I had a suitcase and I went to school up there and I did my undergraduate there and I was working actually 50 years ago Actually this year, actually next month, I had my first job working as absolute grunt carrying rocks for geologists up in the Brooks range for an oil company looking for copper. That's way up there, right? The Brooks. That's way up there. And at that time, this is interesting. This is part of a policy issue in America that we got to fix because I was involved with staking claims on a discovery up there. It's one of the biggest copper deposits undeveloped in the United States, very rich. It's still not permitted yet. 50 years ago. It's still not permitted.

Well, before we get to this dysfunctional relationship that most humans have with the business of your business, what part of the Appalachian Trail did you do? I I was doing in pieces with friends at different times, but probably went up through New Hampshire down to uh the end of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and then a bunch in in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. I wish everybody could do it, you know, because you get such a different appreciation for the country. I've been down through Georgia and up all the way into Maine, Baxter State Park, basically where it ends. Most people don't realize what a uh what a treasure trove that is just and there are worse things for teenagers to do. I mean, guarantee you. Do you think we'd be sitting here today without the Boy Scouts? Yeah. Yeah. What impact did that have on your on your a little bit of self-reliance, self-confidence, leadership? I was a senior patrol leader. You just learning to organize stuff and get stuff done. Um, yeah, for me it was it was the first time anybody had ever asked me to like raise my hand and make a pledge, take an oath. Do you still remember it? I don't. On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God in my country, to obey the scout law, to help other people at all times, to keep myself uh There you go. Pretty good. It It gets a little wobbly toward the end there. Certainly better than me.

At 17, you go to Alaska to mine copper or to school, but in the summer months, you know, you get summer jobs up there and you do what you can do. And what' you do exactly? You were hauling rocks. Yeah. We were doing exploration for copper. Yeah. And basically you had it was it was these were four geologists, four field assistants and a tent and a cook stove. And then once a week they would fly in with a bush plane or something like that. Your provisions for the next week where you then the ladder then the next year you graduate because I went on to a crew that actually had a helicopter and helicopter pilot. So instead of having to climb up the hill, you actually the helicopter took the top of the hill and you walked down which is a lot easier. I I don't know how much more exciting it can get than sitting next to a bush pilot who um did his time in Vietnam. They were all Vietnam veterans. They were fearless. They they knew how to take that equipment absolutely to the limit at that time. This guy flew me in to um what's the town all the way west? Bethl. Bethl. Yes. Been there. Yeah, of course. Yeah. So, it was like the tundra and we were doing some job with geese, tracking Canada geese coming in and migratory patterns and so forth. But I'll never forget landing on that beach and jumping out into mud that was 2 and 1/2 ft thick and the mosquitoes the size of your thumb and you're just not in Kansas anymore. Yes. Yes. Crazy.

Why do we need copper? Well, we need if you want electricity, if you want data centers, you want all the lights around here. I I have to dig out. I love using this as a prop. If you want these things, um, he's holding an iPhone for those of you not watching and listening. Yeah. Or any kind of phone. It's going to have copper in it. It's going to have, in this particular case, it's going to have a little bit of silicon for the glass, a little bit boron for the glass, a little bit aluminum, a little bit of titanium, tin to solder all the pieces together, a little bit of gold and silver in it. About the only thing that's grown from a tree is probably this rubber, you know, the rubber casing on it. Everything else comes out of the ground. And the average person would look at that and say, "Well, no, it cames from a store." Well, and I would argue that technically that tree came out of the ground, too. You just didn't have to dig for it. Yeah. Yeah.

How many on the periodic chart now? How many minerals are we talking about? How many elements? There's like 120 more than the number of countries I've been to, but Yeah. Like 128 something like that. Yeah. Like might be 140 now. They keep discovering new elements. Where does copper rate? Copper fits pretty well in there, but it it unless you're looking at gold and silver, which are much more expensive, copper is the best for both heat conductivity and electric electrical conductivity. So, if you want to heat something up, if you want to cool something down, if you want to move electrons from point A to point B, if you want to power up your house, if you want to have a power generation here and then your town over here, you need copper for all bits of it. And the interesting thing about it because I I hear a lot of people say well if we just keep if we just keep recycling we don't need to mine anymore at the rate of all our technology because you know we are every year we're we're we're coming up with new technologies. I mean you know two years ago no one thought about data centers and now it's data centers data centers data centers which are incredibly copper intensive. By the way as the world the economy we're going to use as much copper between now and 2050 as 25 years you and I will still be around. We'll probably have a cane or something at that point in time. That's that's the hope. Copper cane, we will have consumed as much copper as all of Earth's history, all of mankind's history. I like to start off things with a pyramid saying, you know, we the next 25 years we'll use as much copper as they've been using since before the pyramids. And is it going to amount?

So, is it exponentially? It's just going to keep going, you think? Like like how much of technology yet to be invented is going to be reliant on copper? What's the future technology down the road? Have you ever watched a science fiction movie? Sure. That doesn't have a lot of metal in it. Oh, no. Bladeunner. No, they got a lot of metal. Even the dystopian ones, they got a lot of metal in them. Yeah. Metal's the past. Metal's the future. As long as we're embracing technology, right? And why wouldn't we embrace technology? Good question. I think I think technology is a good thing. So, we'll keep embracing it.

Are you nervous about data centers? Do you worry about AI? I I think that we're going to be putting pressure on electricity, the electricity grid. As Americans, we're going to have to recognize we need more generating stations. We need a lot more renewables. We need more solar. We need more wind, but we also need coal. We need natural gas. We need to stop this mantra that has been, you know, 50 years ago, we said no more nuclear, and that's put us way behind the curve. Now, we got to get back up on nuclear. We're going to need it all. if someone comes up with, you know, brilliant suggestion for figuring how to make fusion work, we're going to need that, too. But but if if we're on that curve that we're just beginning to see for data centers, I just this morning I'm I'm using my phone to ask questions that I would have spent 15 minutes sort of sorting through things that I could just now do it on Google and it's it's I get the answer and I I'm not I'm not an AI sort of genius about that. When I was in my 20s, I was good with all that stuff, but now I'm following the herd. But just the things I can do without necessarily being a genius at it and I'm taking it for granted means that five years from now we're going to take even more of it for granted. But as Americans, we're gonna have to work on the electrical grid. We have to get more power. We have to get more electricity. We can't afford to say, "Well, we're going to let electricity prices go up and then we're going to ration it." That's that's not that's not America. America's about actually bringing the power up. China has has put in more electrical generation and more power transmission capacity in their country as in we in America have have done since the days of Thomas Edison. My god. And and and they know that everything we're doing is going to be electricity intensive. That's something we shouldn't fall behind on.

Energy is under all of this, right? I mean, you can't really talk about mining without energy and you can't talk about energy without they're both cohinand. How do you think about the hierarchy of of energy? Like when you look at the world, wood is being burned, dung is being burned. The three million people, those are their primary sources. Even still today, I lived in India for four years and you know and and if you're spending time in Africa, you you see people carrying around bags of charcoal. That's not the right source of energy for efficiency, human health, respiratory disease, and certainly not for carbon. Right? But if if if we look at our own evolution through those forms up to natural gas and beyond to maybe fishing or what's the difference between fishing and fusion? One one basically uses up electricity, one makes electricity. So fusion will basically self-generate and create a surplus.

It seems like it seems like we're going toward this place where if we could just have a little reactor, you know, in our town, every town has a little reactor, then then we've got to this We need a little of everything because I think I think that renewables make a lot of sense because in some parts like we're here in California right now, you know, it's sunny most of the time. Makes a lot of sense to put as much solar as you can in, but it's not sunny at night. So, you have to have something, you know, you have to have something in between. Base load power is is really important. So, you need something nuclear is a good base load power. So is coal. So is natural gas. Um, so base load power is is really good. But the practical reality is that in places like California or in the summer in New Jersey, everyone turns their air conditioner on in the middle of the day and they turn it down at night. So, so you have power swings, power peaks in the day, you need have to have something that will peak with that. So, I think it's a mix of everything.

That's why I think it seems like batteries are so important, you know, especially if you're talking about alternative forms. You need to be able to store whatever you have. What What was the hurricane that just blew through Florida? What is it like six or seven months ago? One in Tampa and Yeah. Yeah. There two years of nasty hurricanes there. Yeah. I mean, fossil fuels saved the day. And I think a lot of people got a an uplose like may maybe a reminder that, you know, it's it's a heck of a thing to grow to resent the thing you depend upon so much. We we need it all. I agree. We need it all in some places. I mean, natural gas is it's it's available. It's abundant. I was just in Oklahoma City on Monday this week. You talking about natural gas and oil and you know our our huge surplus that we've created. I mean this is American ingenuity fracking and everything else has been it's been a huge godsend for the American economy and American competitiveness when you right now with unfortunately what's going on in Iran. You know natural gas prices in Europe and Asia have gone like this. They've actually gone down 20% in the US since then. So yeah, we have a surplus of of natural gas and we should not be embarrassed by that. Yeah, we should recognize that that is a competitive strength.

I think most people understand the benefits in general of energy independence. Some might not crave it to the same extent others do. But do you think metal independence, you know, has been somewhat neglected and and and how important is it going to be to this country moving forward to have a a reliable supply chain and to have access? At the Microworks Foundation, we've helped thousands of people land an AI proof six figure job that doesn't require a 4-year degree. And this year, with a little help from Wells Fargo, we're going to help a lot more. These are essential jobs in demand like never before. And my foundation has set aside millions of dollars to help you get the training you'll need to master a skill that's in demand. Skip the debt, learn a trade, apply today for a work ethic scholarship at microworks.org.

I think a couple years ago, people would have said, "Ah, we'll always find the medals." But if you think about what happened last year with the uh the tariff and trade fights between the US and China, the sort of the number three item on the agenda, the relationship between the US and China was rare earths used to be the biggest rare earth mine and processing and rare earth magnets was all in the United States. We willingly sort of stepped out of that business and seeded that to the Chinese back in the 1990s.

Can you explain just like in a primmer sort of way what rare earth is and isn't? So, we started by talking about the periodic table. You know, there's a whole bunch of things at the bottom of the periodic table. I can barely pronounce them. They're they're long they're long words. They got lots of Yeah, they got lots of vowels and lots of consonants in them. They're generally the rare earths and and and they basically, you know, some of them will make magnets more powerful. Some will make sensors more effective. They have the ability with relatively small quantities to increase the productivity of most things to increase its efficiency. So if you want to have the very best avionics in a plane or in a in in defense equipment if you want to have the best magnet including for your refrigerator because most most rares for magnet you know for for magnets actually go into consumer goods. They don't go into military. They're they're basically the things you and I use every day that we don't we we take for granted. If you want an electric vehicle that's going to be as efficient as possible, you need these rare earth metals. And you're not you're not using a lot of them, but you need to have just enough to get the right blend. Depends on what it is. It could be a glass tube. It could be a a a magnet. All sorts of things need different types of rare earths for that.

When did magnets become important and a big deal? And who discovered that stuff? I think it was back to Thomas Edison days actually. But we kept making them smaller. You know, you look at a speaker. I remember I was at a conference once talking about, you know, copper and substitution and thrifting. You know, back back when we were growing up, the the speakers were this big. Yeah. You know, they were mount and I was sitting I was sitting on a podium. This was in New York. And there was a bunch of speakers behind and they were talking about thrifting and and and substitution with with copper price going up, you use a little bit less of it. And I I I said, "Well, you know, there's a speaker in here and this has it's a more effective speaker than the ones on the wall behind me that were the ones we were used to, the ones that stood a couple feet tall, right? Because the magnets were made magnets." So rare earths are So if you like a good speaker in your phone, you got to be a fan of rare earths. Now, is that why sometimes like my credit card will or my my hotel key will lose its its power if I put it next to my phone when it's or if you put it next to my iPad which has a batter a magnet in it which I do some time to time. You have to go back down to the lobby and get a new get this is sounds so stupid but where do magnets come from? Like do you mind for magnets? Do you create them? Do you like how do you how do how do you make a magnet? You you basically start with iron, the most boring thing there is. And you basically add alloys to it that creates its magnetic properties and then the rare earth on it sort of improve it. And there's some magnets that you need to have power going through them to be effective. Some they don't need that power. An electromagnet. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Some magnets they get more powerful when you heat them up. Some magnets get less powerful when you heat them up. So you have to actually have the right alloys for different applications.

So, is part of the rare earth supply chain drama uh linked specifically to the supply of magnets? No, it's the supply of rare earths and then the ability to take those rare earths and put them in the magnet manufacturing process. Again, in the US, we used to have the biggest rare earth magnet operations in the world in the United States.

Why don't we? and they progressively just shut down as we basically shut down the rest of industry in America. We'll need to get back and and that's part of the task we have as Americans to bring those industries back. Do you think that will go down in history as one of the greatest unforced errors? It wasn't really an unforced error. It was the peril of affluence. I think we thought we sort of outgrew that stuff. We thought we were moving on to a better place. We didn't need the factories. We didn't need the smoke stacks. We didn't need the blue collar jobs. We needed their output. I mean, we needed their results and we were happy to outsource it, offshore it. Remember back in 20, 30 years ago, offshoring was all the all the buzz. I know this is not political. This was not a Democratic versus Republican. It was just we as affluent society chose consciously chose to say, look, we don't need all this stuff. We're we're we're moving to a higher plane.

Maybe there's a difference between going clothing, textiles. I mean, that was a big industry. That's a bad examp actually. You know what? There are no good examples. I was trying to because it all got outsourced. Well, right. But but in the same way that you know there's a hierarchy in in energy, there's a hierarchy in bad outsourcing decisions. We started with stuff that was like big deal. It's chachkis. It's it's it's just stuff. You can see the benefit of the bargain, but you work your way up and now your textile industry is gone and your furniture industry is largely gone. still not good but not furniture. We started bringing in outside wood and now in all in my property all the ash trees are dying because you had basically you're you're importing timber you're importing wood from other areas and they have bugs and stuff in them that basically non-indigenous species we bring in there's no resistance to the trees. Yeah. There's a guy called Mike Alrech who runs the National Timber Council I think or something like that. Is that what it is? The lumber Yeah. National Lumber Association I think. Let me look it up. He sat right there about a year ago. His argument is it it it it's so adjacent to everything that you and I have talked about. There's more timber in California than anywhere in the country. California is the leading importer of timber. Now you're the leading source of fires. Coincidence? No. No coincidence? Probably not. Completely linked. He's the president of the National American Loggers Council, right? and and he ultimately I mean he's got a constituency and he's got an agenda, but the underlying argument is is so similar to why wouldn't we want to be timber independent? Why wouldn't we want to be energy independent? Why don't we want to be metal independent? If we need the rare earths, why would we let China be in control of that? It's different to outsource a thing that is not a matter of life and death than it is something. I I lived in Vancouver, Washington back in the 90s and and that was the spotted owl controversy and they were basically shutting down the timber timber in in Oregon and Northern California and Washington. All those towns, you know, they just sort of went into not a slow decay but a fast decay because all of a sudden they they just got locked out. And of course in Canada they were more than happy to to keep continue to forest in British Columbia. the same kind of woods, same kind of trees and and you saw the demise of that that that Pacific Northwestern industry which was such an important part of Douglas fur pines and the other things that are needed whether it's for building construction, whether it's for chopsticks, anything that that we use and that we we chose to say, well, you know, we got to protect the spotted owl. Um there might be spotted owls in those other places, too, but that's not our problem. That's their problem.

There's a great book you would love. It's called um it's called the humble toothpick and it really tells the story of how the toothpick came into existence but also how it was birch up up through New England and how the factories that you know toothpick we made all the toothpicks and it there were thousands and thousands of jobs and that was one of the first things to go if we can't make a toothpick Tom in this country you know what what real hope does Detroit have and what real hope do we have in the mining world of of clawing back some of this stuff which is why you're here in which we're yeah I think you were talking before about priorities and I would say that reindustrializing our toothpick industry is probably not at the same place as reindustrializing our rare earth magnet industry no offense to the to the people in the in the wood wood services industry we have so much to do over the next 20 years to reindustrialize to bring the you know bring the jobs, bring the skills back, get more engineers out of school, and in addition to trades and everything else. Um, there's a lot of work that's involved generation. It's been multigenerational effort. Yeah.

And I and I think it's a it's a fair point to make. There's a difference between the the finished product of work and the work itself. And I just had this conversation with a guy who started Paul Mitchell Schools cosmetology. We started offering scholarships to cosmetologists. And it's not something I ever thought I would do because to your point of all the problems in the country, bad haircuts are not at the top of the list. But the number of people who made their make their living cutting hair is extraordinary. And so the number of people who made their living and AI won't be able to take care of that one. That's right. Well, not yet. Oculus is coming. They say, what did Elon say? There were there were going to be more Oculus surgeons in three years than human surgeons. We'll see. There might be some you like a hairdresser type thing put down your head and then push a button and you like a bowl like my mom used to bowl. Yeah. But I'm pretty sure Oculus is made of metal and I'm I'm I'm pretty sure there's no robot industry. There's no Tesla. There's no SpaceX. No. No. Anything that's robotics.

And by the way, batteries, you mentioned batteries before. I mean a real positive takeoff from the EV revolution and and and renewables has been the fact that really for the first time in about a hundred years that we started working on R&D for batteries. Yeah. So, you know, every year they're they're there tremendous performance improvements in batteries. Now, unfortunately, the Chinese are ahead of that. we got to catch up and we've got to get back back on the pace for batteries and the battery minerals and I'm involved with that and we could talk about battery minerals but but we we actually if if we want to electrify if we want to have more EV vehicles if we want to have uh backup for you know battery backups for solar grids we're going to need these batteries and we should be actually not only making them in the United States but we should make them to US designs not to Chinese designs it's up to us as technologists put the get the science back into this and let's let's get in the forefront of battery technology and it's growing at such leaps and bounds. You know, it should we should be right there to say, well, if we can do one of those leaps ahead of the competition, we'll be we'll be back in first place.

In terms of essential metals in a battery. What are we really talking about? In no particular order, what do we need? Well, we need anything that will store the energy and we'll buffer the energy so the battery doesn't blow up or burn. So we need basically the lithium, we need nickel, we need manganese, uh we need sodium, may need sodium, that's the next generation, we need potassium, we need iron, we need a lot of cobalt, uh we we we need a lot of different types of minerals and different types of battery formulations have different suites, but they're all metal. Yeah. Not a single one of those materials is is non-metallic, and none of them grow on trees. They're basically coming out of the ground. And so if we want to electrify and I'm a big fan of electrification, you know, we will move that down that EV path at our at America's pace, you know, as as the technology goes. But we should have backup, you know, battery storage. We should have electrification of everything. It's going to take a lot of battery minerals. And they might be a different different formulation, different cookbook in five years than they are now, but they're all going to require roughly the same types of metals.

How many different mining operations have you worked on that were in pursuit of the aforementioned metals in Riotinto and I was CEO of a big company in in India Vanta we were focusing on the bulk commodities so the these were like iron aluminum copper you know these are the ones that are that that are recognizable metals but but I think over the past 10 years we've seen as batteries have resurged the battery minerals have gone from sort of also ran or not. If if a big company like a Rio had them on their on their on their balance sheet, it's a rounding error. Now it's changing so that like Riotinto former former former employer, they have now big lithium project and lithium activities. So they're moving into lithium, which is a good thing. And you see other other other big miners are moving into the space. But I would say at this point the midsize miners are actually probably ahead of that because the size of those industries make a bigger difference to mid-size companies than the majors right now. But that's going to change ultimately.

I want people to understand the the impact because most people listening probably haven't heard of Riointo. You know what exactly is it? What is it? It's really interesting because if you go to Australia, Canada, anywhere in Africa, Asia, it's it's a household name. Everyone knows who it is. In the United States, who are they? What do they what do they do? What do they make? It's it's just one one additional sign of the fact that mining is so removed from the psyche in America. But you go to those places where mining is a big part of their economy. They know who they are, but it's it's the second biggest uh mining company in the world. I'm really proud of what they've done, what they continued to achieve, and they're in all sorts of weird and exotic places, but they've been focusing on the the biggest um deposits in the world, those that are multigenerational. Deposits of what exactly? Copper. I mean, I I worked for at at Kennott Utah copper in Salt Lake for for a number of years. I I ran the smelter for a while there. The open pit started in in 1905 and the underground started maybe in the 1880s, something like that. Um, and during the World War II, I think the Allied War effort, over half of the copper going to the Allied war effort came from that mine, and it's still running today. Amazing. They're not running out of copper.

What is uh what's the other Franco Nevada? Yeah, I'm I'm on the board of Franco Nevada and I'll be the chairman in about two weeks time. Yeah. And that's that's a gold company. Did you ever think you would live to see gold at $5,000 an ounce? I think there was a time when we said we don't know if we we would like what the world would look like at $5,000 an ounce. you know, when it was $1,000, it it felt like that was sort of out of the ordinary. But what we've seen progressively over that over that period of time and a big part of it was with the fiscal stimulus both in the global financial crisis, but also the fiscal and monetary stimulus during the COVID crisis that that that money supply just got ratcheted up so big. And you know ultimately if you if you make more money each of those bits of money are worth a little bit less compared to a standard and that standard has always been gold. So you know as as we as we put more money into the system we actually diluted the value of that money so gold price goes up. I mean is gold from a practical level never mind its economic you know value but intrinsically the how important is gold as an element or a metal into the infrastructure that we rely on for industry little bit and it's really helpful for it but it's not so critical but if you think it's worthwhile to have some standard to measure money on then it's got a lot of value which is why most of it's used it's dug out of the ground and put back in the around a vault.

I know that gold is finite, but how much do you figure we've mined already? I think it's like a It's like a a block that's 50 by 50 by 50 ft. Mhm. It's something like a small office building. How much do you figure is left? A lot more than that. A lot more than that. Okay. So, we're You're not worried from a mining perspective for none of these metals. I'm not worried. We're not. Just go deeper. Just dig deeper. Well Well, there you go. And and that goes back into look for new terrains too. And so you know we were talking about batteries and you know it's getting hard to find all of these things and and there is one place that we really haven't touched and you're holding it right there. That's it. That's a and this is this is a nodule. It's a battery in a rock. It's got I think 30 different elements in it. You know some of them aren't that much valuable now but who knows in 20 years they might be. Others are very valuable. The manganesees, the cobalt, the nickel, the copper, etc. There's a good bit of titanium in here and if you want to make jet aircraft you need titanium. So the these are almost in unlimited supply in the seafloor just within project that we've been working on. There's more of cobalt in these things than entirely in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

And again for those of you not watching but listening, Tom is holding a golf ballshaped uh rock. They could be small. Looks like a truffle. Yeah, it looks like a truffle. Although I've seen them as big as softballs and I've seen some of them not quite as round as that one. But these are poly metallic nodules. They are at depth all over the oceans. Some more highly concentrated than others, I suppose. Um, but the uh I mean it's not a surprise. We've known they've been down there since what 1880 something. 18 what was it? Two years ago was 150th anniversary. So it's in the 1880s. Yeah. And that was a British ship. British ship. Challenger. The Challenger. So they like what? Had a had a two or three mile chain and they dragged a bucket across and they brought these. I hope it wasn't a heavy chain. I suspect it was a rope. Yes. A lot of rope. So that that would have been probably three miles of maybe two miles of rope where they got that. But that's a lot of rope.

You know, again, it's it's it's so like my introduction to this has been pretty intense over the last six months. Virtually everyone I've talked to just out in the real world when I talk about poly metallic nodules, they just, you know, they look at me like a golden retriever. Yeah. Like a cow looking at a new gate. You know, it's baffled for somebody in your industry. I mean, again, this is this is not a secret. It's not a surprise. They've been there for millennia. Um, but you know, as I think about it, wasn't it April 24th, a year ago? like in real time. It was this week, a year ago, that the president signed an EO executive order. Yes. What was the impact of that? It's been a real positive impact because I think it's attracted capital to the sector and I think it's important to recognize that that people were looking at nodules. We were studying these in university back in the 70s and 80s. So they they've been known for a long time, but the technology wasn't known to be around at that point in time. And then when when people were worried about the supply of copper in 1974, for example, they had a report called the club of Rome report which said the world was going to run out of copper. And so that's why I was working for an oil company looking for copper because all the oil companies were pivoting over to mining at that point in time to to see if they could find more. And sure enough, the oil industry found lots of copper in South America. So that that sort of plugged that gap for a period of time. But as those mines in South America have been maturing as you would expect they would over a couple decades we need to look for new places and meanwhile a lot of good research both technical research on in terms of the mechanics the robotics etc but also environmental research terms of ensuring that these can be extracted and not leave undue environmental harm that that work has been going on and that really has picked up a lot over the past five years. I've been involved with this since about 2017 and in the early days it was it was it was slowly slowly slowly but what we've seen with the benefit of a lot of lot of the people that are doing exploration in this in this particular space has been a lot of good scientific work both in terms of the technology but al also the environmental monitoring and the environmental performance and and now for the first time and I think the executive order helped this but also I think the rare earth debate with China the the challenges of supply chains have sort of been an additional catalyst that now capital is beginning to say, well, we better get keep our eyes on this because we're coming to that pivot point. And I I do believe we pass that pivot point. Now.

Just so people understand the the scale, you're there hundreds of billions of these things. I think you could probably find abyssal planes where you go from equivalent of going from LA to Portland, Oregon, and it would look like that on the screen. Yeah. So, you're just you're driving an interstate from LA to Portland, Oregon, and all you would be seeing is that type of nodule field. These are huge huge expanses of minerals that are basically needed for batteries.

It's not really mining. I think I'd call it harvesting. Um, it is because you're you're not it's like it's like taking golf balls out of a water trap in a golf course. It's it's you're not digging holes. You're not digging holes. You're you're literally it's a vacuum cleaner type effect where you're basically bringing these collectors. They're about a little bit bigger than this room. And they have the equivalent of a vacuum cleaner that's just sucking these up, brings them up, and then you have different ways of taking them from down there, which is maybe 4,000, 5,000 meters deep, or they say three miles plus or minus deep, and bringing them up on a ship. And then from on the ship, it basically then takes that once the ship's full, it takes it to a shore and then process just like a normal mineral product would be.

Where's the real challenge? Is it getting them 20,000 feet up to the surface or is it smelting them and and crushing them into what powder and then turning them into liquid and separating and whatever you do? I think there are really three challenges to something like this. I mean I think the first is technology and part of it is that that vacuum cleaner part of it is getting it up on the boat parting of it from the boat getting it and turning it into all the constituent metals. We're really good at technology and the these are none of these components have never been done before. These are all existing technologies just haven't been put together in the same order. So so technology I think has made a lot of progress and we're we're there on the technology side. The second part is the markets are is there enough of a market for all these nodules. If you believe in industrialization, if you believe in electrification, yes, but five years ago we said the market is coming. Now I think we could actually say with with more confidence the market is here. And and the third which is actually always the most difficult because it's more qualitative than quantitative is society license to operate.

Does society buy in to the need of these nodules? And I think that's why we've had to focus so much on the science the environmental work. Um I have a lot of respect. There are a lot of NOS's that have raised a lot of fears and everything else and I think the science actually said okay let's look at that fear is it is it is it a plume under under the water is it mixing of waters you're talking about a a process whereby the nodules are getting scooped up and the scooping creates dust and that dust takes the form of a plume and that plume rises and it gets into currents and and it turns out fishery maybe or something MIT did some work last a couple years ago Oh, it turns out the plume is is like a hundth of what had been feared. So, it's good to actually address where where could things go wrong and then bring science in there. Look at that and peer-reviewed studies. Get the right science out there. And there's been a lot of good work that's been that been reviewed and published because you have people that are actually looking at look considering whether this is a commercial opportunity that's driving the capital to do that science. It would it it wouldn't be done otherwise. We'd wait 30 years from now. we'd say, "Well, we still need to do the science." Well, the science is being done today. We're

We're we're actually properly addressing each of the components. And again, because I've been a terrestrial miner, I know what a terrestrial mind can do. I'm not saying there's no environmental effect from this, but the consequential effect of of nodule harvesting is like a thousandth of the equivalent effect to to to mining in a rainforest or mining in >> jungle. Let's understand that.

I would like a terrestrial mine in I don't know what the Congo, the Amazon, Bolivia, what what >> the United States. >> Okay. All right. What What does it take practically? And people don't want to hear this, I know, but the what has the impact been on the rainforest of getting these exact metals out of the ground? >> In terms of biodiversity, in terms of carbon effects, about, you know, several hundred to a thousand times more than nodules. But but that doesn't say that the terrestrial mining is irresponsible. That is just a cost of extracting those metals. And there's been a lot of good work by the terrestrial miners. I am one of them. >> Sure. >> To basically mitigate the effects of that. And we're really good. We you know, how do how do you get reclamation going? I mean, when you clear a rainforest, well, it doesn't stay cleared. Um I've been to very many many places around the world where you'll go into I remember one place in South Africa Richers Bay where uh we were bringing a um bringing some university people through there and we were bringing them through a forest and they were saying oh my gosh and you want to you want to destroy this forest and there's a sign there replanted in 1994. So so this stuff does actually grow back and and and reclamation is is at a high degree of work. They start with grasses that actually can pick up seeds that are windb blown and things like that and that turns into bigger trees. So so so reclamation in the in the terrestrial mining industry is actually quite advanced. Now if you're digging a hole, you're that that you're digging a hole. You're creating a hole that won't won't be filled in. So you know there are going to be effects of that, but you can mitigate the the effects of that. And again, what it's doing is it's delivering the metals that we need here.

>> How old is this thing and how did it form? Well, that's a great interesting question because I I I joke about this sometimes because, you know, some of these would take maybe five million years, 10 million, some maybe 25, 30 million years and they grow. They basically slowly grow by the minerals that originally were dissolved in the seawater over long periods of time. As the chemistry of the oceans change, you know, ice ages, pH goes up, pH goes down, different metals sort of come out and precipitate out of the seawater and through a variety of geological processes, they aggregate.

>> What does precipitate mean underwater? >> It will basically cling >> almost like it's magnetic. >> Yeah. I you have a you have one nodule here that one and a half. Yeah. There we are. >> I don't know if you could see this on the camera, but if you look at a if you look at that cross-section of this, it's almost like tree rings. Yeah. And so basically what you have every time that there the ocean has gone through a shift in its chemistry like an ice age different minerals will basically elomerate on the outside of this and at and and basically it's it's sort of cycles you know earth cools earth warms. It's natural the natural cycles of the earth and the oceans over periods of millions of years lead to basically different different cycles of minerals that are deposited.

>> So it forms almost like a pearl. It forms like a pearl, but not a pearl would be an organic growing. This would be an inorganic growing. But it's interesting because in the middle of these half t half the time you'll see like a a shark's tooth. >> I got oneon megalodon megalodon. >> Yeah. Megalon tooth from the dinosaur days. Yeah. And and basically they have these the nodule encrusted around them. So basically if a fish is swimming at the surface of the ocean, it all fish eventually die. They basically the the the bones the the calcium the calcium basically sort of slowly settles the bottom of the seafloor and basic and that that hard surface is what the minerals will cling to over time.

>> Is there something we're missing? Is there a possibility that these things are playing some role in the ecosystem that we don't understand? >> They probably do. Which is why in in the environmental science we're doing, we do recognize that certain types of um maybe micro fauna, the real like like critters, you know, bacteria, smaller critters, maybe some sponges need something hard on the on the on the seafloor to basically latch onto. Yes. As part of the regeneration of those areas for for uh you know, for rebuilding the biodiversity. So I think in in in in the work we're doing what we're trying to do is is determine how can we harvest enough of the nodules but leave enough behind. And in some areas like the Cook Islands for example where it's very dense you it's much denser than other areas you can you can actually leave more behind because there just >> it's just more than enough to go around. >> So let's just say you you leave 20% of the nodules on the ground after you've harvested it. could be because the smaller ones you have some type of screen so the small ones stay behind the big ones go up up onto the boat and those represent the starting points for regeneration over time. So you're think >> the same way you would think of a a new forest like like are you thinking about reason >> it will take a longer amount of time um but you know certainly the work bas you know there were tests that were done where tractors were running down in the sea bottom back in the 1970s 1980s so they have tracks that are 60 70 years old down there and and at that time they didn't care so the tracks were big they were grooved and they they you know it made made a bit much more of a mess than you would see with modern technology. What you see is that, you know, 60 70 years later, you see the the starting points of plant life, animal life regaining to, you know, its its position. So, what that tells me is it's going to take longer to regenerate than it has for land-based mining. We have to take that into account. And we probably don't want to sort of clear out an entire area with nothing around. You probably want to have furrows where you just like farming where you keep furrows in between where it's untouched and those actually create the uh the biodiversity that can that can spread over to the areas that had been disturbed and then you leave enough of these on the ground before that so they can actually begin to pick help pick up that that that biodiversity and help it regrow. So I want to understand >> it's going to take time though. But it >> of course and also you mentioned the early 70s. I I read like the CIA had a hand in this like looking for a missing submarine and we had like we knew they were there and then somehow or another treat. We can thank Nixon and Kissinger for that. Back in the day, um, there was a Soviet sub that had had had a catastrophic accident and um, you know, the sub was one thing but it had latest suite of of Soviet nuclear weapons on it. So back in the mid70s >> that was the curse, was it or something like that? >> No, it was it was an older it was not that it was not that disaster. It was it was a it was a much older disaster than that and it was in international waters. Um, so you know, the US couldn't just sort of mount a visible campaign. That would be seen as quite quite a negative thing in terms of global global. >> Yeah, we're diving on a on a Russian side. Exactly. Exactly. They helped construct and this was Loheed involved with that. Hughes Corporation was involved with this and they constructed the largest sort of recovery ship in the world. It had a big moon bay in the middle of a hole in the middle where you can drop, you know, cranes can drop things in. And and basically they had advertised it as an expedition to look for these nodules. >> And there were some people on the ship that were working on the nodules. And there were other people on the ship that were working on lifting >> of the submarine up. I think even even now it's probably one of the largest CIA operations that ever had. >> They did write a book about it. I don't know if they made a movie of it yet, but they did write a book about it. >> We knew they were there. We knew that they had metals. We just didn't need them anywhere near the degree. >> Well, we didn't have the technology at that time. I mean, now they have modern cables. They're made of uh they're made of different synthetic ropes. They're lighter. Then they had big steel cables that you know, very it was very hard to build a ship that could hold that kind of steel in place. Um, the the avionics were different. The the robotics were different. That was back in the day when Apollo spacecraft >> had, you know, 24 KB computer, but that was the state-of-the-art. So, they weren't really in a place like we are now with the technology. So, now the technologies there. I think we're also much more metals intensive as a society. At back then, it was only a few European countries in the US that was actually heavy consumers of metals. Now, the entire globe would be heavy consumers of metals. So, we have this secular shift going on. is still underway where two and a half billion people in the world actually want to live just like you and me. >> Who are we to hold their ambitions back? They want their industrial revolution. They want theirs. So that will also be metals intensive. So now we're at that place where we're actually needing more of the stuff that we did need back in the 1970s.

>> What happened to the recovery and the exploitation of these things? We know >> it was economics. It was just economics. We found more copper on land that was easier to get to with the technology of the day. It was cheaper. That was that's why you saw Chile become such an important mining country. Chile went from being an absolute basket case back in those days to be be probably the um the the best middle-ass country in South America >> on copper. Indonesia had great copper discoveries. Many countries that weren't seen to be or copper producers have had a big part of their economy boosted by copper. What do you reckon these could do for an island nation like the Cooks or American Samoa or what was the ones? Was it Nou or There's an island that it was the phosphate. >> Yeah. Yeah. Phosphate. Yeah. Yeah. >> But I mean what a terrible story that was. That was like didn't the Belgiums or somebody like went they took all their phosphate. It's where the birds stopped and the birds covered the island. >> It was actually when our prior generation wanted fertilizer. >> Yes. So there was a market demand created by the fact that humanity was eating food and they needed fertilizer. And so what was the easiest kind of fertilizer to get? Well, old bird >> Yeah. >> And where is the bird on on islands in the middle of the ocean? So all the birds land on that island and they basically sit there for a while and they leave a little bit behind. >> But but not a little. I mean, this island was just covered. >> You give it a couple couple, you know, tens of thousands of years and it it's covered. Yeah. I guess the point I'm trying to make is all of a sudden this poor island nation covered in birdshit suddenly has something that everybody wants but they didn't prosper from their own resource. It was really >> that was the Dutch disease. Yeah. >> Yes. It was taken from >> resource curse, >> right? from what I've read, you know, and and people are a little freaked out of like the NOS's are looking at this and I I kind of feel like their strategy is we have to stop this before it starts even though the impact on the environment is such a lighter touch than what's currently being done.

>> There's been a lot of experiences since then and I think any country that's developing its own mineral industry, they think long and hard about that Dutch disease, the extractives curse. So you you know Norway led the way. I mean, Norway is seen as the most progressive nation in the world. Their entire affluence is driven off of oil and gas. >> People don't want to hear that, but their affluence is oil and gas. But what they have done was very proper. They basically said, "We're not going to spend it all right now. We're going to put most of it aside for a rainy day." And they created a sovereign wealth fund. the Pacific island countries including the Cook Islands that are considering um you know if you know once they go through all the due process is the clean extraction of these minerals they're also talking about sovereign wealth funds because they recognize that lessons of the past shouldn't be repeated there should be the bulk of the money should be set aside for future generations with Pacific bits which is different than the than the than the fertilizer in the islands the extraction is taken it's out of viewshed you know the the harvesting vessels will be you won't be able to see them from the islands. >> You there there's going to be at least a 50 nautical mile limit um you know away from these islands. So it's it will not be on the islands themselves. The islands aren't very big. That's that's the only land that they have to work with. It's going to be their waters and so they're very concerned about those waters, but it's not going to be affecting the land itself. It's going to be providing jobs though because many of these island nations have been seeing for generations an exodus of of their citizens a large dispora in other parts of the world because they're chasing jobs. So this is this provides an opportunity to create apprenticeship programs provides an opportunity to create some skills that are based on the islands. Young Cook Islanders for example will be working on the ships that already are working on the ships in in terms of the exploration programs that are now underway. So it is a way of uplifting that next generation. Hopefully in some cases bring some people back that want to return back to the island. They couldn't because they didn't have the jobs for it. So you know I I think that lessons from the past um can be can be used successfully going forward.

>> Look, that's how I got sucked into this. It was jobs and and and it wasn't in the Cook Islands. >> It's a job creator. Yeah. Well, I mean, how many do you think we're talking about? The business of getting that thing off the bottom of the ocean into a processing facility yet to be built. I mean, it's it's got to be tens of thousands. >> It's a combination of both the processing as you say, and that's going to be that's going to be thousands of jobs there, tens of thousands of jobs there, but also as we in America, everyone recognizes now in America, we need to rebuild that ship building industry. Um, and that's, you know, part of it's going to be for the Navy, but a big part of it's going to be for commercial. >> Yeah. >> We pretty much have also walked away from ship building here. We need to bring those skills back to America. And if we start looking at these harvesting fleets being actually built in American shipyards, another several tens of thousands of jobs can be created from that. And they're catalyst for other industries that can to be brought back into America.

>> There's the uh that's the CC we were talking about. So, we're talking 22, 23, 24,000 ft. >> Yeah. Yeah. About that. That's pretty deep. >> It's deep. >> You won't have any divers down there. It's all robotics. It's all AI. It's uh it actually it's the kind of stuff that future engineers should be excited to be working with. Yeah. We want to bring skilled trades back. We also need to bring the engineering sectors back to America, too. We're not training up enough engineers. >> No. But an industry like this that's this naent, you know, it occurs to me you need you need engineers. You need geologists. You >> need environmentalists. You need marine surveyors. You need people that can run ships safe safely run ships and manage robotics and everything that go on them. >> You need adventurers. You need I mean, I came my old friend uh Greg Stem I used to narrate documentaries he made for the Discovery Channel. He's diving on Rex and I remember him saying to me, you know, we we've brought up millions of dollars of silver and gold the whole time. The treasures just just lying. >> I first ran into Greg over 20 years ago and he was working with my brother who's a rare coin guy >> and and and as Greg was beginning to how to market all the rare coins he's been sort of coming up from the ocean, uh he he was be also beginning to think about pivoting over to deep sea minerals. So he asked my brother, you know, do you know any mining guys? And that's how it happened. That's how it happened. So I connected with him. But I have to say when I first I was I was sort of a rising star in Riotinto at the time. And I was a bit arrogant. I was a bit younger too. Um, and I I flipped them off. I I said this is not going to happen in my lifetime, but let's let's stay in touch. But when I was chief executive of Rio Tinto in 2010, I actually called him up. I called Greg Upis again and I said, you know, I was wrong. This is happening. I hadn't appreciated that basically what's happening the deep sea costs they're going down quite a bit because the oil industry was pioneering they were doing all the R&D for us >> whereas terrestrial mining costs back in 2010 and still today they just keep going up they're only going one direction that's up and there's going to be a crossover point and it was going to happen in a couple years but I said but sorry Greg right now I have a day job so but let's let's stay in touch >> so did you just mis read the need some acronyms were in place maybe it was Noah maybe it was Bowen maybe you know it just seems like a lot of people have skin in this game and a lot of countries signed various treaties the seabed association and so forth I don't think we signed that I don't >> no I think the international seabed authority was created with the law of the sea convention back you know back when we were in our 20s and 30s >> un unclose was it >> yes yes that basically was not signed up by the US and has not been signed up ever since notwithstanding the Republican or the Democratic didn't matter or who was in power. It just was something the US wasn't interested in signing up on. And back in when 20 years ago, they were they were still trying to figure out how to regulate this area. They're still trying to figure out how to regulate this. It's a United Nations. United Nations, they don't agree on a lot. >> No, they don't. >> They they talk a lot. They have great conversations, but they don't agree on much. So, it's basically been in paralysis. And I think from the US recognition that this was not going to happen in anyone's lifetime with that type of paralysis that's taken place the the US look back at its own existing regulations that they had put in place back in the 1980s. Yeah. >> And and basically let's let's work around existing regulations in place and we have we have agencies within the US government that are worldrenown for for their oceanographic research. Let's put them to work and and and see if we can make this work. >> So you were wrong. I then I fessed up. >> Uhhuh. And then you start sniffing around again. >> And to give Greg credit, he he he put together the band uh that led to the formation of CIC. And uh Mark just Greg and I we we basically we went out there early part of 2018 to the Cook Islands and you know been working pretty hard on that ever since. And to give Greg, he's a he's like he's he's always been an explorer whether it's for shipwrecks or for these nodules. Yeah. And he always will be an explorer. Now we're moving to a point where it's basically it's it's the engineers. >> It's time to do >> you gota get them time time to do the environmental science and do the engineering work and all the next steps.

>> When did Drake hit oil? Like 1858 59. Yeah. Titusville. >> Yeah. And you know if if they hadn't discovered oil then and figured out how to use it, >> we wouldn't have any whales left. >> That's what hit me. It's like you know wait a second. >> Yes. You were happily killing all the whales off for the whale oil whale. >> There was like a dozen >> sperm whales left. >> Yeah. >> Or right whales we called them then >> cuz they were the the right whales to kill. And boy did we kill them. So yeah, maybe there's a parallel there. It's unfortunate that the copper we need is in such abundance under the rainforests. Wouldn't it be something if poly metallic nodules saved the rainforest in the same way? >> We're gonna we're gonna need them both. I I I I don't subscribe to the notion it's one or the other >> because it's you and my consumption times x billion number people. Yeah. >> That are basically just using more and more of the stuff and you know again living in India you can see it where families that were in absolute poverty and a lot of unfortunately there's there's too many billions of people living in absolute poverty around the world. They get to the point where they can put a light bulb in their house and someone's wired up and some put some power in there. Then they get to a point of putting a refrigerator and then they get to a point of getting a motor scooter and then they get to a point of getting a car. These are huge steps in that family's personal development and the p family's well-being and then you multiply that by a couple billion people. It's going to take a lot of this stuff to fill that need. To what degree do you believe this resource is going to become dominant or or consequential truly consequential in the future of all this? >> I think it will be important important part of the supply chain. I don't think it's going to be dominant because I think you have so many deposit mineral existing mineral deposits with so many skilled capabilities and so much technology which also aren't running out of material. They're going to continue running. They're they're they're going they're going to be growing but they're not going to be growing at the pace that we as consumers and not just us relatively consumers but every single person in the world as we consume. We're going to need more than the than the terrestrial minds can deliver. And that's we're and we and this will help fill that gap. >> That's what I'm asking. The nodules themselves. >> It's not mutually exclusive. It's not one or the other. >> I get it. I get it. And I in the same way that it's not natural gas or nuclear or coal. >> You need it all. You need it all. Yeah. >> Right. But flash ahead 10 years, five years, three years, you know? I mean, if if this is for real, if that EO has teeth, and obviously it does, I it's not just our merry band of, you know, pranksters going out there to >> Well, I think it's important for us. We we have to do the foundation work from just it's like building a building, carpenters and electricians, everything else. Before you build a building, you got to you got to you got to put the foundation in. You've got to make sure that your building is going to stand on solid footing. So, that's why we got to do the environmental work. We got to do the surveys. We got to we got to do the baseline monitoring, all the stuff that we're doing as we speak today. And now as more capital's coming in, we're able to speed that kind of work up and get more scientists involved with that. And and that that foundation allows us then to start putting up the 2x4s and then we can start putting up the sheetrock and then we can start putting up everything else. And that could happen in a couple years.

>> How important was it to you to be in an entity that had a bench like CIC? Like when you look at some of the scientists on there, >> they're they're incredible people. I mean, these the the team at CIC and the team at Odyssey and the team at OML, the teams that have been part of the whole this new organization that's we've just we just we just rolled out two weeks ago a AOM uh that they are scientists. Many of them were cutting their teeth back in the 70s. So these are they're oceanographers, they're environmental scientists, they're engineers. We have one that was working on the Titanic early foundation. Tom Deweiler found >> I'm going to have him on here as soon as he can come up here. >> We've had we've had people that have been working on sort of classified programs in in the deep in the deep sea. So you have an incredible talent base there. You just feel the enthusiasm when you're in a room with them that just they're excited. >> Oh yeah. >> And and they're passionate and they're also creative. They're smart. They're hardworking. And they you guys work and gals work 20 hours a day. Easy. Easy. We talk a lot on this show about about the nature of work and and and how purpose and consequential work. There's just so many jobs today. There's the whole categories of jobs exist that don't really benefit anyone except for the person doing the job, which is fine. Your industry is so fundamental. It's so it's so it's so primal. Is that what attracted you to it or is it what kept you in it? >> I love the outdoors. I love the outdoors. I still do. Um, live on a farm now. I I mean, it was basically it's a connection with the outdoors. And it also means that I'm I'm equally sensitive to environmental conservation, protection of of of lands, parks, everything else. It, you know, affluent society also wants to have places they can walk. China's found this out. They they became affluent very quickly, but all of a sudden they started looking around and they said, "Oh, I don't want to breathe this air anymore." Yeah. >> So, they've had to make a very quick shift. That's why they're making most of the electric vehicles and most of the solar panels and most the wind mills. They're they're trying to get back to what their forebears would have said, you know, I can I can walk outside without getting lung cancer. That connection with the outdoors and finding a lot of like-minded people. I think that for me, that's what all that's been driving me in my career. getting like-minded people that are all pointed in the same direction and keeping them pointed and it's not always easy to keep them pointed in the same direction, but it keep them pointed the same direction. Two clear objectives that and and and those are clear objectives that actually make a difference to society. It keep it keeps me going in the morning. >> Is it addictive that feeling? >> It could be. And it's contagious too if you get the right people. It's very contagious. Yeah. >> People ask me all the time, you know, what did all all those people on dirty jobs, you know, what what did they know that the rest of us have forgotten? And I I can't I can't speak for >> pride in the workplace. >> Pride in the workplace. >> Boy, that that that's Yeah, it's that simple. Pride. >> And that's what you're doing. I have I mean, you've been doing this for 20 years. It's not just been something that's popular now and or fashionable now. You've been doing this when it's long been unfashionable. >> My only reaction to that is I can't um like I can't point to pride. It it's it's like it's like the blockchain, you know? It's like the cloud. I I know they're there, but it's it's it's more like it's it's it's like the tangible undeniable reality of constant feedback. You like when you're mining, you don't need somebody to tell you how you're doing. Like you can you know how you're doing. >> You you you get it. Yes. >> You know, and so, you know, for you, Tom, I mean, you're you're a minor who lives on a farm or are you a farmer who lives in a mine? >> Look, I think it would be it'd be probably better to call it a gentleman's farm. Yes. Yes. >> And where is it? Yeah, >> it's in New Jersey. Yeah, >> you're still in Jersey. >> I'm I left New Jersey at the age of 17. I returned to New Jersey at the age of 60 because my mom and my brothers and sisters and my family, they all they all stayed there. I was the only I was the only wanderer in in the group. But it was really interesting going back to where you grew up 40 years later. Some of it's roughly the same. You know how it is. You r some's roughly the same and some is different. You know, some more buildings here, there that whatever. But it's you sort of feel like you're coming home. It was it was it felt good. >> Thomas Wolf was, you know, right and wrong. You know, you you you can go home again. This is kind of weird sometimes.

>> American Ocean Minerals. >> Yes. >> Formed around several other entities that have been at this a long time. And you're bringing >> like-minded people that all were pointed in the same direction. They'll have the the right consciousness of what doing it correctly of meeting needs for future future society, meeting the material needs of future society. They all love the ocean. >> They're not there to mess up the ocean. They're there to basically understand the ocean even more. They're there to basically have the minerals that they're in the ocean. Well, let's figure out a way to bring them in to help the rest of society because we will be needing those metals and we're going to need more of these >> or whatever's next >> or whatever it is. Whatever it is, we're going to we're going we're going to consume the stuff. And so, it's about finding the the best way of doing it. uh find a way that's doing it environmentally properly, doing it way which is respectful for society because remember it's technology, it's markets and it's also the you got to earn and relearn that license to operate and and and and work around people that you love to work with. What's not better than that? >> You know what's better than that? Not letting China dictate terms. >> Look, I I was told this the other day there there's certain thing about competition. I I'm I'm a huge advocate of space exploration and when it was the US and Soviet Union, we went to the moon. We put the first landers on Mars. We got vess Voyagers that are way out in the past the solar system now. That was a period of intense rivalry, superpower rivalry, and we're right in the middle of another one of those. Now, we should be conscious about that. We shouldn't be complacent about that. We shouldn't be fearful either, but we should be ready to be competitive. That's why we've had the Arteimis program. You know, I think as Americans, we should be proud of what we've achieved going back to the moon and that will be followed with robotics that'll be that'll be landing and setting up robotic bases that'll be supplementing humans there. There's helium there. There's water there. Um Elon wants to go to Mars. I'm all for that. You know, that's that's great stuff. >> How did you feel when you saw the Artemis thing? >> Pride. Pride. Pride. We're back. >> Because they couldn't have done it without metal. >> Yeah.

>> To sum up, it's a poly metallic nodule. There are many billions of them on the bottom of the ocean. They're filled with nickel, cobalt, copper, manganese, some rare earths, some iron. >> Yes, >> probably some water in there. >> There's some water in there. And there's there's there's be a lot of titanium. We got the metalists got to figure out how to get tit titanium out. But that's the one that's got me excited. >> So, there's metallurgy involved, too. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> This touches on it. It's >> science and engineering. It's already been fun, but I I can't wait to see what the future holds. And um, you know, for what it's worth, my foundation will do everything we can to help reinvigorate the trades through this door, too, because it's it's just one more industry, Tom, that's going to need >> we we need the supply chains. We need the metal coming into the US. Ideally, it's mines in the US. We have to get through some of these permitting complete obstacles that we have now. And and and I think that's that's being worked on. It's not it's not solved yet, but we we need to continue to develop our own mineral resources. Most importantly, we need to continue to develop our own geologists and mining engineers. I think it's maybe like a only a few hundred mining engineers are are being graduated from US universities a year now. That's disgraceful. That's absolutely disgraceful. It's not it's it's not the university's fault. It's just that and it's not the individual's fault. is that we have collectively sort of let that drift and we're happy to bring people from overseas in it. But we have to actually rebuild these industries. It's not going to happen two or three years. It's going to take it's going to take multigenerations, but we need the supply chain in order to do to to to actually be successful with re-industrialization. bring back the trades jobs, bring back pride in the trades jobs and then we can move on with all the next technologies because you know robotics will be one, fusion will be one quant when when they start mixing AI and quantum mechanics and fusion >> out of my league. I don't even know. >> It's going to be it's going to be a interesting world then it's it's but it's going to be it's not going to mean less metals consumed, >> right? And that's what what makes sense to my brain is that, you know, as we talk about space and whatever frontier is out there and whatever tech it's going to take to make Elon's craziest dreams come true. >> And more power to him for those dreams, >> more power. But the answer is down there at the bottom of the ocean. and the grandest most ambitious esoteric dream anchored by like the most fundamental you know >> it's it's mineral abundance and again if this was if we had the technology 100 years ago to do this we would have done it 100 years ago probably not in the same standard of care from an environmental perspective >> now what we have is we have both the technology we have the markets and we have basically the the the proper sensit ensitivity to what what what can be done there? what can be done to minimize not eliminate I recognize that but minimize and and mitigate the environmental impacts >> you know and in the spirit of competition I think it you know if people are listening to this and genuinely curious about the industry which is moving quickly you know in the same way America and China are are being America and China you know we're not the only player out there you know I think of the metals company who uh you know Gerard Baron has been telling this story really Well, I mean, for like 10 years >> and they've been doing some great scientific work. >> Yeah. And so, you know, I I think it's a big tent. And when I hear him talk about um the inevitability of all of it, you know, it's exciting >> with with the the ra the the breadth of skill set, the capital that we have. um the train is leaving the station and at the same time what we want to do is we work with all the stakeholders that could help us make that a better delivery from the train as it's leaving the train station.

>> That's such a funny metaphor. I said this when we were in DC to the crowd we were talking to, but I had seen the Matrix the night before and that scene on the tracks, right, when uh Agent Smith has Neo in a headlock and they're they're fighting and they're on the subway tracks and the train is coming and he says, >> "Do you hear that sound, Mr. Anderson? That's the sound of >> That's what I meant about Titusville and Drake." >> Yeah. whatever that strike left >> and and fracking and and horizontal drilling because horizontal drilling, fracking, you know, I'm involved with Continental on a joint venture. They're they're wonderful guys. Yeah. They're I was just there on Monday and they're wonderful guys. >> You that's why you were in Oklahoma City. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> He's become a friend of mine, you know, and and he's a he's a pioneer in what he done what they've done. >> He changed >> and what they're doing now. Even now, I mean, every, you know, every two or three years visiting or visiting a well pad, you see the the advances that they're they're putting in there, the scientific advances, the engineering advances to take a take a a drill, a piece of drill steel like that, just solid drill like you'd see in the back of a truck and have it to bend at a bend like that and miles down then two and a half miles down and then go out four, five, six miles and just literally follow the exact topography of the formation. Then get to a property boundary. Now, they could do U-turn. they they make a U-turn and go back again. So, this is this is technology that as a minor it boggles my mind. >> Well, it's a miracle, you know, and for me, I I don't have any of the skills that you have or or Harold, but >> or bruises >> or bruises. I got a couple of those, but what I've got is an appreciation for words and how the idea that fracking literally became the f-word. You could go back to that movie Gas Land, remember? >> Yep. >> Where the guy lights like the gas is coming out of a faucet and they light it up. That image, which was not in fact representative of precisely what happened, it was so powerful. And from a PR standpoint, just from a positioning standpoint, it it just created a massive uphill >> uh lift. >> And and that was shallow ground. It was early technology. Yeah. But I mean, that's that was 20 plus years ago. And you know what has evolved it with with proper sensitivity to the environmental effects. They're not putting down chemicals now. It basically it's it's water and sand that they're using to to basically extract. And they're doing it cleanly. They're they they're giving the farmers in the area, you know, good good royalties, good good, you know, it basically it supplements the farming business. It helps those economies. Yeah. And by the way, um, when the Europeans are dealing with 6 to7 to $9 per MCF gas prices at their burner, we've got a $160. I just for the life of me, you know, if this if this table were the oil patch 40 years ago, it would be covered with with rigs like like every half acre, if that. I mean, they were right next to each other. Today, there's one. >> Yeah. And if you go into Perian now in West Texas, you fly over that and you see nothing but drill wells all over the place. They're very densely packed. Yeah. >> And every once in a while you see in the middle of it one modern rig that basically covering all the ground up of hundreds of rigs back in the day. >> Yeah. I mean I I just I know we I know we're out of time, but people need to understand that. One hole goes down 2,000 ft and then out it goes. That's a that's a miracle. >> Many of my friends have always compared this. Robbie Diamond's a good one. It's safe. I'm going to see him next week. uh they compare nodules and and something that does require technology, not anything new technology, just proper innovations and some some basically good engineering. This is the equivalent of fracking 20 years ago. >> That's >> it will it won't replace conventional oil and gas. This won't replace conventional mining, but it's going to be an important supplement that particularly if it's in America, it will give America a competitive advantage outweigh some of the other things we need to do to re-industrialize.

>> What a pleasure, man. You have an enormous brain. It's a great resume. >> And by the way, if there's anyone that is more fun to spend a couple snowstorms in Washington at a bar, it's you. >> And how about what what did we eat? It was that Italian wedding soup over at Hamilton. >> And uh if you're ever there, folks, get it. It it is so good. And the bourbon's pretty good, too. And the company was fantastic. >> And the place was packed until we were the only ones left in it. >> Yeah, that that will happen. Thanks for coming out. >> Great to see you again. >> My regards to the MS. And uh >> and you will love her book. >> Okay. What's it called again? >> It's about her in Alaska when she was my age. >> I can't wait. >> So, >> this is Tom's wife talking about. Yeah, I'm going to read her book. All right. I'll see you on the other side. I'll see you folks next week. If you like what you heard and even if you don't you pretty please subscribe. >> Well, I hate to beg and I hate to plead, but please pretty freaking please sub. Please subscribe.