Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - July 10th, 2026

Summary

Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend – July 10, 2026

Hosts: Carol Massar (Tim Stenovec off this week)
Air Date: July 10, 2026

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Episode Overview

This weekend edition of Bloomberg Businessweek explores timely and high-stakes topics at the intersection of global business, technology, and policy. Key themes include:

• The evolving AI investment landscape and its real-world payoffs
• U.S. efforts to decouple critical defense supply chains—especially rare earths—from China
• The intensifying economic and social tolls of climate change, focusing on infrastructure and insurance challenges Expert guests include investor Rudina Ceseri (Glasswing Ventures), Lippy Sternheim (Reallos), and climate journalists Eric Rostin and Mark Gongloff.

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1. Changing Narratives and ROI in AI Investment

Guest: Rudina Ceseri, Founder and Managing Partner, Glasswing Ventures
With: Ed Ludlow (Bloomberg Tech), Emily Griffeo (Bloomberg News)
Timestamps: [04:06]–[14:07]

Key Points & Insights

• Investment Shifts & Vertical Integration
  • Demand for AI infrastructure remains robust, but the market is correcting for previously overestimated scarcity (e.g., NVIDIA chips vs. software hyperscalers).
  • "We're seeing the market move toward vertically integrated players from the chip layer all the way to the foundation models rather than just the capex spend." — Rudina Ceseri [04:39]
• Measuring AI ROI
  • For next-gen application-layer AI companies, revenue is appearing fast—scale from zero to hundreds of millions in months, not years.
  • However, key questions persist: Is this revenue sustainable, or just a “leaky bucket” from enterprise-wide experimentation? And will AI adoption become core to business models or remain an add-on? [06:11]
• Startup Moats vs. Hyperscaler Competition
  • Startups’ competitive edge lies in highly specialized verticals and proprietary data, not always in the models themselves.
  • "Is there value in highly, highly specialized? My view is that there is, and the value doesn’t necessarily lie in the models. It actually lies in the highly specific, albeit not as broad data sets." — Rudina Ceseri [08:06]
• Founder-Led Frontier Tech & Valuations
  • For bleeding-edge “frontier” AI (e.g., Recursive AI, Liquid AI), investors bet on teams solving tangible problems—even if monetization comes later.
  • Early-stage firms now sometimes raise hundreds of millions at high valuations based almost purely on team reputation and intellectual capital. Glasswing gets access via “access checks” of $1–2M into big rounds to maintain exposure. [11:44]
• Discussion on X.AI and Market Dynamics
  • X.AI (Elon Musk) is gaining momentum, especially after the Cursor acquisition, and performance is improving:
    • "In circles leveraging the most cutting-edge models, X AI is starting to become a real contender. Definitely coming from behind though..." — Rudina Ceseri [12:38]
  • Fragmentation is rapid—new “flavor of the month” tools quickly get replaced.
• Questions of Platform Control
  • Issues around locked-in models (e.g., will users of Cursor still be able to swap in their preferred LLM after X.AI acquisition?) are top-of-mind for the ecosystem. [13:57]

Notable Quotes

• “We are seeing acceleration. The scale from zero to hundreds of millions is a matter of months rather than a matter of years.” — Rudina Ceseri [06:11]
• “If Microsoft or Anthropic or OpenAI are going to that level of specificity, we have something to worry about... My view is there is value in data. Not as broad, but highly specific datasets.” — Rudina Ceseri [08:06]
• “There is a whole paradigm of new labs and researchers bypassing the current incumbents.” — Rudina Ceseri [09:55]

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2. Decoupling Defense Supply Chains from China: Rare Earths & Advanced Manufacturing

Guest: Lippy Sternheim, President & CEO, Reallos
Timestamps: [17:18]–[28:38]

Key Points & Insights

• Policy Momentum and G7 Targets
  • G7 aims for no single country to supply more than 60% of their rare earths by 2030 (even reducing to 50% after 2030), underscoring urgency to move away from Chinese reliance. [17:18]
  • U.S. DoD is leasing land for critical minerals plants on Army bases—fast-tracking infrastructure with fewer bureaucratic hurdles.
• Public-Private Partnerships on Army Bases
  • Reallos is building facilities on Army bases (e.g., Tooele, Utah) under a new public-private structure, expediting timelines:
    • “The Army can move things fast... Nobody in the government moves at the speed of light. The Army is its own entity and they move fast. Army is the best we have.” — Lippy Sternheim [21:46]
• Innovation in Environmentally Safer Processing
  • Reallos is pioneering hydrofluoric acid–free rare earth processing, currently in Saskatchewan (Canada) but aiming to expand in the U.S.—especially for heavy rare earths needed in defense:
    • “Everything in our way of life… the humanoid robots of the future, the computers, the AI, the GPU, everything, it's all rare. This is the new oil.” — Lippy Sternheim [27:11]
• U.S. Government Support & Non-Chinese Nexus
  • The U.S. government, more than any previous administration, is streamlining support and regulation for allied rare earth supply chains:
    • “This administration has done more for this sector than anybody else. I couldn't imagine anybody doing more." — Lippy Sternheim [24:25]
  • Reallos positions itself as the only heavy rare earth processor with a fully non-Chinese nexus—a critical winning factor as the U.S. bans Chinese sources after January 1, 2027.
• Downstream Impact
  • From missile systems to AI chips (e.g., “Every GPU has 13 grams of dysprosium…”), securing rare earths is existential for defense and technology.

Notable Quotes

• “Every missile that goes out a little more rare earth was depleted. Every AI system, every GPU, all of that needs heavy rare earths.” — Lippy Sternheim [26:02]
• "With the Army, we’re building our facilities on army bases... It's a public-private partnership, which is new to have it on army bases, but it tells you how strategically important it is." — Lippy Sternheim [20:20]
• "This is the new oil. I said it to you last time." — Lippy Sternheim [27:11]

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3. Climate Change: From Scientific Projections to Everyday Crisis

Guests: Eric Rostin (Bloomberg News Sustainability Editor), Mark Gongloff (Bloomberg Opinion)
Timestamps: [32:07]–[43:38]

Key Points & Insights

• Acceleration and Surprise
  • While global warming projections are decades-old, the “era of surprise” comes from rapidly changing, unpredictable short-term and local outcomes—drought, heatwaves, and rain bursts all at once.
  • "Surprise is the new normal." — Eric Rostin [35:13]
• Private Sector Wake-up Call
  • The response focus has shifted from academic models to practical impacts on banking, insurance, and supply chains.
    • "Now I write about insurance and banks because the conversation has moved firmly to the private sector, public health, and property owners." — Eric Rostin [34:14]
    • Insurance availability and costs are rapidly worsening, with "parts of the country going to become increasingly uninsurable."
• Scientific Model Limitations & New Worries
  • Climate models are reliable at planetary scales over decades but fail at “granularity”—their predictive power breaks down for short-term, regional volatility.
    • “The climate is an ornery beast and if you poke it a little bit, you're going to get an outsized reaction.” — Wallace Broecker (quoted by Eric Rostin) [37:46]
  • New research raises concerns about feedback loops: melting polar ice and diminishing cloud cover make the planet reflect less sunlight, worsening warming beyond predictions. [36:33]
• Case Study: New Jersey's "Hell Week" (June 2026)
  • A convergence of heat waves, storms, flooding, and infrastructure failure paralyzed New Jersey—offering a microcosm of compound disasters nationwide:
    • “You go from extreme heat, loss of power, loss of transport, to extreme flooding, all in the span of like less than a week. ... We're not ready for it to be changing.” — Mark Gongloff [41:59]
  • Infrastructure and insurance systems are overwhelmed by these compounding extreme events.
  • Similar patterns seen in Texas, Florida, California—compound events are now "everywhere," not just headline hurricanes.
    • "Insurance rates are rising... for convective storms, hail wrecking roofs in Minnesota. These storms have been the biggest source of insured losses in this country." — Mark Gongloff [43:14]

Notable Quotes

• “Now that conversation is, how am I going to get everything out of my basement?” — Eric Rostin [34:14]
• “It just kind of felt like a microcosm of what we can expect, partly not only because the climate is changing, but because we're not ready for it to be changing.” — Mark Gongloff [41:59]

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Important Segments and Timestamps

| Segment | Time | |---------------------------------------------------------------|-----------| | AI Investing & Hyperscaler Analysis (Rudina Ceseri et al.) | 04:06–14:07 | | Decoupling US Rare Earth Supply Chains (Lippy Sternheim) | 17:18–28:38 | | Climate Change Economic & Social Impact (Eric Rostin, Gongloff)| 32:07–43:38 |

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Memorable Moments

• On the AI froth and rapid pace:
  “What became… sustainable versus what is the flavor du jour. We shall see, you know.” — Rudina Ceseri [13:24]
• On public-private urgency for rare earths:
  “The Army is looking for a big push to get this to the finish line and to make America in its strategic rare earths... all in house, on the shore.” — Lippy Sternheim [19:29]
• On compound climate failures becoming routine:
  “It’s not just a New Jersey problem. These kinds of compound events are already happening... and driving up insurance rates across the midwest.” — Mark Gongloff [42:11]
• On scientific humility:
  “The climate is an ornery beast and if you poke it a little bit, you're going to get an outsized reaction.” — (Wallace Broecker, quoted by Eric Rostin) [37:46]

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Tone and Style

• Language: Conversational, analytical, and deeply informed
• Mood: Urgent, occasionally sobering, with optimism about business and policy innovation

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Summary

This episode candidly examines the business realignment forced by three seismic shifts: AI’s maturing hype cycle, Washington’s all-hands drive to break China’s rare earth monopoly, and climate change’s mounting costs. Listeners are offered strategic context, glimpses into boardroom and policy maneuvering, and real-world stories connecting macro trends to daily life—all packaged in Bloomberg's incisive, accessible style.

Transcript

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[Carol Massar]

Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio National News this is

[Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast Host]

Bloomberg businessweek Daily reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus global business, finance and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Radio hi everyone.

[Carol Massar]

Welcome to the Bloomberg businessweek Week Weekend podcast. Tim is off this week now. It was a volatile week for global markets that included an escalation of tensions again between the United States and Iran that sent oil prices higher and their peace deal once again in doubt. We also had a focus on global relations, including the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia, thanks to the NATO summit in Turkey. And then we also had investors parsing the latest Fed minutes for clues on the direction of U.S. interest rates. All of this as the tech trade churns as strategists talk up a rotation out of high flying chip stocks to the more subdued hyperscalers which have way, way underperformed the overall market. This is all against a backdrop of investors increasingly questioning the momentum against the massive and pricey cost of that AI buildout.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

All right, it was a lot.

[Carol Massar]

Again with that in mind this week, the ever changing AI narrative. Plus navigating the high stakes world of advanced manufacturing and industrial supply chain with Lippi Sternheim, CEO of RealLoy, and the rush to decouple crit defense supply chains from China from the US Defense industrial base. He covered it all. Also a sobering look at the accelerating human and economic costs of climate change and why extreme heat isn't the only impact shocking scientists. Courtesy of our Bloomberg Green team. All of that to come. We begin with the AI build and the evolving conversations around the activity and its return on investment, especially as Wall street focuses on the big tech hyperscalers. On that we caught up with longtime investor Rudina Ceceri, founder and managing partner at glasswing Ventures. She invests in companies where artificial intelligence is the core architectural foundation. She joined me alongside Bloomberg Tech host Ed Ludlow and Bloomberg News credit reporter Emily Griffeo, who was in for Tim this week.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

We want to get into though what we feel like is the evolving AI story. Ed is here with us in studio. And then we want to bring in longtime investor Rudina Cesare. She's founder and managing partner at glassweek Ventures. She invests in companies where AI is the core architectural foundation and so she's been thinking about the next generation of winners. She joined, joins us from Boston. Hey, great to have you here Rudina with Emily and of course with Ed. I'm curious about, you know, how this conversation around AI continues to evolve. We are now talking so much about the memory names.

[Carol Massar]

How do you see it?

[Rudina Ceceri]

Well, hello Carolyn, Good to see everyone. I think fundamentally we are seeing the overall demand for AI related infrastructure and all the way up to the application layer continue to be strong. And in my view the shifts that we are seeing in the market sort of reflect the scarcity or overestimation of scarcity along the value chain. So on the point around Nvidia and others are we seeing the correction because we expected more scarcity while on the hyperscalers are the valuations coming back because it's becoming a lot easier to track the sources of revenue that displays will have. And by the way, we think of the hyperscalers as that sort of fundamental layer at the software infrastructure layer, but each of them are much more vertically integrated with their own chips. So in many ways we're seeing the market move toward vertically integrated players from the chip layer all the way to the foundation models rather than just the capex spend. I don't know that we're out of the capex demand. I think that's a multi, multi cycle, multi year level of demand. I do think that perhaps we're correcting a bit for the overestimation of scarcity.

[Emily Griffeo]

You mentioned revenue and I'm curious Rudina, if you can talk a little bit more about just how critical it is for investors like you to be able to pinpoint whether the spending on AI is actually translating into tangible revenue and whether we've seen that yet.

[Rudina Ceceri]

Thank you Emily. I think it's interesting because I'm a very early stage investor, so I often say I back to brilliant researchers out of the lab and we build out a monetization plan. If anything I would bifurcate between the next gen application layer AI companies where not only are we seeing revenue but the scale from zero to multimillion hundreds of million millions is a matter of months rather than a matter of years. So if anything we are seeing acceleration. Now beneath that two fundamental questions. Why is it because especially on the enterprise side and even consumers, we are all experimenting and trying a lot of things. Thus is the revenue sustainable or is it a leaky bucke? Second question though is really pertaining to the adoption of AI more systematically. So having moved beyond the I'm going to experiment with this in house build tool or with the, you know, chat function of Claude or ChatGPT to something more serious. In that case, we're seeing AI demand for AI products to become much more of a important component, not just to the tech stack of enterprises but to their actual business models and go to markets.

[Ed Ludlow]

You know Ridina, what's interesting, interesting about what you and the team at glasswing are looking at, it's so timely for today with this Morgan Stanley hyperscaler story. So you are looking at AI native SaaS, various layers of the software stack. Every time I speak to one of the CEOs at the hyperscalers, I always ask them, you seem to be pitching and working on the same kinds of technologies that your customers already do. So how do you respond to that? The idea that the hyperscalers, the cloud computing companies, let's call them what they actually are, are going to want to offer the same tools that you might back at that early stage.

[Rudina Ceceri]

So the under. Thank you Ed. The underlying question is where is the moat for the startups relative to the Incumbents and I think the moat depends. Some of it has to do with you know, vertical plays. You know I, I recently backed a company called Modern Industrials. They are developing an end to end demand planning for distributors of lumber and building materials. Very, very specific, tens of billions type of opportunity a year in terms of the revenue that can generate. But if Microsoft or Anthropic or OpenAI are going to that level of specificity, we have something to worry about. By the same token, who will be their customer? So they have to draw a line to your very astute question around where am I going to stop competing with my customers? And oh by the way, is there value in highly, highly specialized. My view is that there is and the value doesn't necessarily lie in the models. It actually lies in the highly specific, albeit not as broad data sets which then you know, deliver much, you know, superior outputs.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

I would say if I'm, I'm pharmaceutical maker or like in the medical field. Right. And like I would say that I want a data set that I'm going to play with and that's very related to my field. I don't need to know about the rest of the stuff that some of the large language models are doing.

[Ed Ludlow]

Yeah, or they 100% or Redina they. You know something you said a moment ago is really interesting. You are backing not companies necessarily. We'll work out the business plan later. You're backing the researchers out of the lab and like that, that applies at the late stage as well. Right. The founder led thesis. But those people also have specialisms. Right. Does it matter to you if they have a core team of not just computer scientists but in biology, biochemistry, et cetera?

[Rudina Ceceri]

Yeah. So let me parse what I intended with what I shared. In the case of the modern industrial, I'm very much going in with a very clear understanding of how it's monetized. What's the ROI for the customer. So in many ways that's extremely tangible and very clear around the TAM pricing, competitive dynamics. My earlier comment related more to what I would call frontier tech. So we have already achieved what we have achieved with the large language models. What comes next? You know, we backed a company called Recursive AI. It's about the models correcting themselves to get around the next set of issues like hallucination and other problems that the large language models have. There is a whole paradigm of neolabs and new researchers that are bypassing in many ways the capabilities of the current incumbents. Think about liquid AI, multi, multi, multibillion dollar company, they're actually doing all the processing at the edge is actually a who different sort of way to bypass the need that we currently have on compute. So in those cases you solve one of the compute problems or the energy problem or the sort of the performance of the models and then you worry about monetization. So it's not pie in the sky. I'll beg the smart people and someday they will deliver something. It has a purpose. But you might not know the pricing. Kind of like how many of us would have guessed that pure consumption pricing was going to be the model. Does that make sense?

[Ed Ludlow]

One contemporary difference though is that that group of three or four people can raise a billion dollars out of the gate or several hundred million dollar seed round at crazy valuation based on the value of their own intellectual capital. How does glasswing even participate in early stage valuations like that?

[Rudina Ceceri]

Very good question. So our core product is actually the more typical precede seed stage rounds. We have a capital and a product called access checks where we write small 1 to 2 million dollars access checks in these gigantic rounds to have a seat at the table, to have a seat to the ecosystem, to support the founders and participate with those that actually make it big. So while our core checks are focused on building the companies from the ground up in the more typical fashion that you think of early stage venture, we absolutely get access to the big guys and it's important there are benefits for both.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

Hey, speaking of the big guys, I just got time for maybe one or two more last questions. I'm thinking Space X which does go into the NASDAQ 100 XAI. Like what's your thought about that company? Which seems to be to some extent coming from behind, but it's got certainly deep, deep pockets.

[Rudina Ceceri]

It's emerging more and more I think, you know, in many ways I think of Elon's companies as all being intertwined with one holding and the holding being Elon himself. I think it'll be interesting to do to see what he does with XAI vis a vis SpaceX and maybe even what happens with Tesla eventually they are catching up. I think performance has improved and to be perfectly honest, in the circles that sort of are leveraging the most cutting edge models, X AI is starting to become a real contender. Definitely coming from behind though are people

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

are talking more about xai?

[Ed Ludlow]

Yeah than before increasingly because of cursor. Right. Like the cursor acquisition moving so quickly, people pay close attention because it's such a widely used tool.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

All right.

[Rudina Ceceri]

Even with cursor now, you know the next generation saying we've bypassed Cursor. So things are moving so very fast. What became I go back to what becomes sustainable versus what is the flavor du jour. We shall see, you know.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

And it's fascinating too. Rudina, thank you so much. Rudina Ceceri, Founder and Managing Partner, Glasswing Ventures we always appreciate your your view. I have to, I have to say more and more conversations I have with folks where companies are using a lot of different LLMs. They're saying they're starting to get more discretionary in terms of who's got access to what because there is a cost.

[Ed Ludlow]

Well, real quick, the reason people loved Cursor is you could swap in anthropic open AI Gemini model and change it. Now Elon owns it. They're going to be allowed to do that. It's a big question.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

It is a big question. Hey listen, I'm so glad you're here this week. We're going to reach out to you a of bunch of course. Our Ed Ludlow Catch him on Bloomberg Tech 11am on Bloomberg Television

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[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

Hey, you might recall last month we talked about this, I believe the G7 meeting of global leaders. The group agreed that that no single country should supply more than 60% of their imports of rare earths by 2030. It's all an effort, Tim, to reduce the reliance on China.

[Lippy Sternheim]

Yeah. The G7 leaders will aim for further reduction in their dependencies with a view to limiting exposure to 50% as soon as possible beyond 2030. Meantime, US US Pentagon allowing critical minerals plants to build on US army bases, leasing land to companies that will build and operate critical mineral processing plants. I think a lot of people are wondering how long that takes and sort of like what the timeline is for

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

that and what's the structure between the government and really public private sector.

[Lippy Sternheim]

But it's a way to get around the environmental review.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

That's a good point.

[Lippy Sternheim]

Yeah.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly a contributor or reporter)]

Yeah.

[Vital Proteins Advertiser]

All right.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

So there's a lot going on in this space. We've got a great voice on this. Lippy Sternheim is president and CEO of the US based mine to magnet rare earth company Reallos. It's about a $923 million market cap company stocks up about 86% year to date, rallying nearly 6% in the past two days. Still down more than 20% though since late June stock was added to the

[Carol Massar]

Russell 33000 Tim just on Monday.

[Lippy Sternheim]

The company also appointing a new CEO last week. Lippy joins us from Boca Raton, Florida. Lippy, good to have you on the program. You last joined us back in mid May. How has your world changed since then?

So far so good. Thanks for having me on again Last week as you know we announced that we partnered with the army which is very exciting. We raised 100 million in equity. Also exciting. You mentioned the new CEO, but it's actually a CFO. Craig Cunningham just joined us with a very good background in this business business and he joins us now. And as we shuffle around and get ready for the next push in what we're doing in the rare earths, you mentioned the army and you asked a question about how long I mentioned to you guys last time it's not an overnight, you know, business to get 40 years of Chinese dependency off the table. But we're, we're working really hard to make the 2027 January 1st deforest deadline and help revitalize the government organic industrial base by partnering with them and building our facilities on army bases.

Are there certain army bases that you've already identified where you will be building your facilities?

So right now we're talking about tool Utah, which is us and another company, I believe they're in the boron business that the army is putting in that army base. But there's a few army bases and it's continuous talks of which is the best locations for the manpower, the power. One of the big issues as you mentioned is environmental when it comes to these things. So wherever it's most best and most convenient to do so. The army is looking for a big push to get this to the finish line and to make America in its strategic rare earths and its stockpiles and all of that in house and on the shore.

[Carol Massar]

How does all this work?

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

The funding, the ownership rights, the time to build? Like who's in charge if you're building on army bases.

[Lippy Sternheim]

So obviously it's a, it's an at least with the army it's a new, it's public private partnership which this is new to have it on the army basis. But it tells you about how strategically important it is for the government and the army, the military to actually have the supply under their purview in their hands as we go along here. I think in the next few weeks, in the next few months we'll give updates obviously. Exactly. Specifics and things like that. Right now it's about where their best capabilities are and where their best buildings are and in kind they get to access for them and all their industrial based customers the final products.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

But who owns it? Like do you? Yeah. Are you going to spend money to build it all?

[Lippy Sternheim]

Yes, we will. Like I said, that's why we did a fresh. We have 100 million funding. We're pretty well funded for this. It's, it's, it's, it's a public private partnership with the army's benefits of the land. Like I said, environmental as mentioned. It's, it's not, not, it's not that you can just shoot through because it's the army bases. You still have to go through things but you're dealing with the army and you're dealing with government sites. It's obviously a lot more efficient and easier and the people behind it want it done. So hopefully that'll help. Especially in our case, as you know, we're doing it in a way that's helpful and better for the environment in the first place. As I mentioned last time I was on.

But contrast that with how long it typically would take if you weren't doing this on an army base and you did have to work with, with different stakeholders within a municipality or within a local government.

It would take much longer. Nobody in the government moves at the speed of light. The army on the other hand is its own, I would guess it's its own entity in some way shape or form and they can move things and they move fast. Army is the, you know, the best we have.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

You talked about the environment and you know, we were talking with our own Joe Doe who like follows all this space and one of the questions that came to mind is if you guys plan to metalize yourself and this is, is where you strip away the oxygen, you convert the raw rare earths right in the mined earths into you know, metallic elements. But you guys have been working I think on a process that is better for the environment. So what can you share with us on that?

[Lippy Sternheim]

So we've come up with a way of hydrofluoric acid free processing. As you know, I mentioned last time on the show. The processing currently that we do is in the, in Saskatchewan as I mentioned, rare earth. We're mainly focused on heavy rare earths. I believe with the, is one of the, the only one that's specifically focused on the Military defense industrial base, which is what they need. It's the heavy rare earth and most of those have uranium and thorium radioactive materials. Saskatchewan is permanent for that. That's where it's easy to do the metallization that you mentioned, which is taking it once it's in powder form to turn it into metals and then from there into magnets. That's definite that it's on, you know, going to be here in the US the processing for the moment is still in, in the North America, but still in Canada at the moment. And we'll see how that goes in as far as bringing it here.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

But you will be doing it. And I'm just curious, if you do, how do you work alongside in conjunction with companies like Vulcan usa, Rare Earth and Energy Fuels.

[Lippy Sternheim]

So some of the companies you mentioned under magnet business, some of them are in the mining business. We work with some of the ones you mentioned and we, some of the ones are just irrelevant to us. But for the most part this is not. I've always said that realloways was not a company, you know, with a mind and trying to make a business at the end. We're more of a consortium of all the right partners and now with the army the best partner of all and that brings the government as well and all their capabilities, etc. To make this a mind to magnet story. So all of the above with all of the companies that can help us or be, you know, like I said, some of them are magnet makers. We're in touch with them, qualifying materials with them and things like that. So it's not, it's not a, you know, a non competitive thing where you have your own thing and you can't talk to anybody else.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

One thing I want to ask you, and if you go back six, eight months, I feel like Tim and I were nonstop talking about this in terms of rare earths and the government. Government just so in talking about it a lot too, is the US Government for this area and beefing up production here in the United States, is the support the same? Is it more or is it a little bit less?

[Lippy Sternheim]

The support from the government is from all different sides and all different factions of the government. It's all there. They're happy to help, they're eager to help. And this again with this deal with the army, it's them helping behind the scenes. And anything that can help us with the partnership is things that they're offering. Again. It'll take time, but I think you'll see more from us on that later. But the U.S. government under this administration has done, has created this business where it's a viable business. You know, the, the, the G7 and the caps that they put on with the 60%. That helps the, you know, the China dumping, which I was asked about that previously. It helps them on the light side, definitely in our case, there's a law of defaults on January 1st. Anything and everything that the government can do to make sure that in the next few years, this is a North American business. This is an Alloy Western alloy business they're doing. There's no question this administration has done more for this sector than anybody else. I couldn't imagine anybody doing more.

So that's what I wanted to talk about. And I want to try to get specifics about your expectations from how the US Government is going to help. And certainly we have the army basis element of this. But I mean, I mean, does it get to the point where members of the US Armed forces are actually doing work for you?

I think that's still to be ironed out. So don't want to speak ahead of myself, but the answer, I think is yes, they'll be involved. They want to know the processes they can follow. I mean, it's on their base ultimately, so they can see how, what, when and where it works. I think it's in the best hands when it's there. But it's still a private company, private operation as a partnership. It's a public, private partner.

What are you waiting to hear still from the government about commitments?

At the moment, we're just seeing all that it's going to take. And as I said, first step one is figure out where the best place is, what's there, what the capabilities are, what they can help with, on whether it's the environmental side or other sides. And then we're always talking to them about funding to scale up in a bigger and bigger way. They want as much as possible in their purview, and they want as much as possible in America, obviously. So anything they can do, and it comes down to funding as well from various departments, they're eager to help. And we're in talks to try to get done on, on the scale that we want to get done in the time frame that we want to get done. You know, the production that we'll do this year and the production we'll be doing in the beginning of next year is a start. But there is still quite a. There's quite a defense space with all the wars going on, with everything that's going on. You know, every Missile that goes out a little more rare earth was depleted. Yeah. Every AI system, every GPU, all of that needs heavy rare earths. Every GPU has 13 grams of dysprosium in it. So all of these things need rare earth. And there's a bit, there's a, there's a lot of it. So.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

Yeah.

[Lippy Sternheim]

Hey, every, every time I ask how to help, how to cook something for dinner, Carol, I'm using a rare earth, I guess. Sorry, sorry about that.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

Every time you pick up your phone,

[Lippy Sternheim]

hey, literally the vibrator in your phone is made from that, that vibration that the, the shutter on the cell phone. All of that is rare earth. Everything in our way of life. And this is why it's so important for the country. Everything in our way of life, not just militarily to fight war. Everything you touch, the humanoid robots of the future, the computers, the AI, the gp, everything, it's all rare. This is the new, this is the new oil. I said it to you last time.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

Libby, Just about a minute left here, the US ban on Chinese sourced rare earths. We kicked off this segment talking about kind of the G7 and what they are looking to do to limit, you know, the reliance, if you will, on China without these, would your business be viable?

[Lippy Sternheim]

So again, in our business, we're mostly focused on heavies. So the law in January 1st is you can't buy with a Chinese nexus and we have a non Chinese nexus. I think we're the only ones today that have a non Chinese nexus completely that's already in operation. So it's, it's. But there's, there's the, the other companies, as you mentioned, some of them that are in the light business, the G7 is helping that with their, you know, caps and curbs and other things that they're doing. I think ultimately what you'll see is in the next, let's call it three years, I think you'll see that this, this, this is not a Chinese American thing anymore. It's. Western allies have their business. Yeah. China can help themselves to all that they want, but they're doing everything in their power and they continuously meet and try to figure out new ways to do this. But we're, we're in reality's case.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

Got it.

[Lippy Sternheim]

We're good. The law is in our favor.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

All right, well, we've said this before and we'll say it again. Stay in touch. Love to hear what you guys are, are up to. Libby Sternheim, he is President CEO of REALLO's joining us.

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[Cal Penn]

Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, LLC. SEC registered advisor complete disclosures [e-mail] disclosures hey everyone, it's Kal Penn, host of Irsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast I'm sitting down with Lily Chu, the author of the Audible original romantic comedy Just Kiss Already. It's a story about a forensic anthropologist who secretly writes mystery novels, an actress who adapts his book into a film, and what happens when a meme and a media tour collide with a slow burn romance. It's performed by Simu Lu and Philippa Hsu, and it is an absolute blast.

[Mark Gongloff]

When you actually hear the performance, you realize that other people are taking your words and what you thought was kind of a straightforward sentence like the cat in the corner is black. In my head it's the cat in the corner is black. Not the dog, not the gerbil. But someone else might say it the cat is black. The corner is black. That's always fascinating to me how they just bring in all these different nuances and really make it fun and interesting and distinctive.

[Cal Penn]

Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast Host]

This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at 2pm Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say Alexa play Bloomberg 11:30 Global

[Carol Massar]

warming is getting faster and its effects, from heat waves to rain bursts to rising seas to polar ice melt, are becoming more severe. Learning to adapt to a world of extremes won't be easy. So writes a member of our Bloomberg Green team this past week who is tracking all of this degree by degree and reporting on why the extre heat many in this world are experiencing isn't the only climate impact shocking scientists. For more, Emily Graffeo and I caught up with Bloomberg News Sustainability editor Eric Rostin.

[Eric Rostin]

It's funny if you ask the simple question, is anybody surprised by global warming? No, not really. And the reason for that is because on a global level and on a global long term level, the projections have been the same for decades. But what's always been harder to do is to project what's going to happen like decade to decade or country to country. And because that's always been so hard to do, we're getting surprises all over the place and temperatures and rainfall and drought. And that's what our story focuses on is this kind of new era of surprise.

[Rudina Ceceri]

Yeah, right.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

Like we've been talking about this for a long time. You guys have been reporting on it too. Like it is the severity of things that keep coming out stories. And I do wonder, you know, what is the macro response to all of this? That as even scientists who understand this are getting surprised, does it mean folks are taking it more seriously? I mean you and I, we've all are. We've sat around this table and just talked about the political pressure on talking about climate change. Like it's I feel like we're not talking about as much. We are still reporting, but I feel

[Carol Massar]

like some of our conversations, we may

[Eric Rostin]

be talking about it less, but more people are talking about it. And I mean one almost glib way of thinking about it is like 20 years ago, a generation ago, scientists would talk about, you know, extreme heat, extreme precipitation. In terms of our models project, there will be more of this, right? Like now that conversation is how am I going to get everything I of my Basement.

[Ed Ludlow]

Right.

[Eric Rostin]

Like that's how the conversation has changed. In my own reporting, I used to talk to scientists like exclusively and go inside their models and see what they thought was going to happen. Now I write about insurance and banks because the conversation has moved firmly to the private sector, has moved firmly to public health and property owners. And that's where the macroeconomic picture comes in. You saw, you see like talk top US Fed officials more recently than you would expect saying that these, if these trends continue, and we don't have any reason to believe they won't, you know, parts of the country are going to become increasingly uninsurable.

[Emily Griffeo]

I want to get to the economic impact. But just first, can you explain how can we have both unprecedented rainfall and also record dryness and record heats in the summer and then, you know, the coldest winter in New York City since 2014.

[Eric Rostin]

Okay, that's. It's a lot of questions or just the two extremes? You know, I think I did a. This was, this was. Stories come from weird places. And this is one of the weirdest places a story has come from recently is, I think it was in April. I remember I had to turn on my heat on a Sunday day, northern New Jersey. On Tuesday I turned on the air conditioning and then on Thursday I had to turn the heat back on. Yeah, and that kind of whiplash thing, we're seeing it just about every level. Like, we're seeing it like the household and community level, we're seeing at the seasonal level. You know, the western US earlier this year came off it just like it incredibly weird heat wave after, you know, the previous year it was, it was quite cold. And so because there's, it's almost like there's just increasing metastasizing lack of stability in systems that we've relied on for a long time. And so crazy things are happening back to back. In some cases it's normal. In other cases they don't understand why it's happening. In other cases they know. But yeah, surprise is the new normal.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

I think there's like, there's so much in this story and I highly recommend everybody read it. I just want to read something. The extra energy trapped in the system seems to be the result of the planet reflecting less sunlight back to space. That's partly the result of bright white ice turning into darker heat absorbing seawater. But the bigger concern is that reflective low lying clouds may be going missing.

[Emily Griffeo]

I mean, I highlighted that part too, FYI. We did not coordinate that.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly a contributor or reporter)]

No, we did not actually.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

And so this imbalance, like we've talked about climate change. It's not just getting warmer, although we are, but it's also these extremes in the volatility. But there are things that seem to be happening in our environment, Eric, that are making it more difficult for scientists. Their models aren't kind of working.

[Eric Rostin]

There's a quote we got in the story, like, science has been around for so long and it's changed so little. Unlike the global scales, we include a, a quotation from the late Wallace Brooker, who was a Columbia scientist. He's the guy who in 1975 came up with the phrase global warming.

[Unidentified Guest (possibly a contributor or reporter)]

Yeah.

[Eric Rostin]

20 years later.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

75.

[Eric Rostin]

75.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

Just to, you know.

[Eric Rostin]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

Kind of like the first bicentennial or whatever.

[Eric Rostin]

Right.

[Lippy Sternheim]

You're right.

[Eric Rostin]

Exactly. Perfect. We got, we got one every 50 years.

[Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast Host]

The.

[Eric Rostin]

Then in the mid-90s, he said, look, the climate is an ornery beast and if you poke it a little bit, you're going to get an outsized reaction. So that's what we're seeing again at every scale is, you know, the models that ran for decades, like successfully on the planetary level, on, on when you go look at less amount of time and a smaller footprint of space, they can't, they don't have that granularity. And so the hits just keep on coming.

[Emily Griffeo]

Unfortunately, you mentioned a lot of your reporting now is talking to bankers and insurance firms. What are you asking them right now?

[Eric Rostin]

A lot of it has to do with physical risk and how we can best understand the physical risks for, you know, wherever you live or whatever kind of the term of investment. We're talking a lot about supply chains. Bloomberg Intelligence has some amazing research in terms of like the week to week, month to month financial implications of, of bad weather. So that, and just like the energy revolution is here, you know, colleagues have done a ton of phenomenal reporting in the last few months about how the war in Iran and the subsequent energy price volatility has just like convinced country after country and company after company they don't want this fossil fuel volatility anymore and they're finding clean energy.

[Carol Massar]

That was Eric Rostin, Bloomberg News Sustainability editor. Now, as we just heard from Eric, it's not just an abstract scientific warning. The economic and physical breaking points are already hitting close to home. Earlier this month, a brutal combination of extreme heat, torrential downpours and aging infrastructure collided to paralyze everyday life in my own home state of New Jersey. It's how Bloomberg opinion columnist Mark Gongloff, who covers climate change and writes about it, described it as, as New Jersey's hell Week and how it's a warning for everyone. Mark joined us for more.

[Mark Gongloff]

Yeah, so it started out obviously with the big heat dome that affected a lot of people. Half the country. New Jersey, many state towns here, Newark, Atlantic City, set record highs for the day. That went on for a couple of days. And then we started getting big storms. Massive thunderstorm came through just sort of out of the blue. I mean, there were warnings about the possibility of thunderstorms, but we all got these alerts at like 8 o'. Clock. People were at dinner and everybody was getting these, these scary alerts that said there were going to be 80 mile an hour winds, flying debris, seek shelter immediately. And sure enough, that's exactly what we got. And a lot of people lost power that night. Hundreds of thousands of people across the state lost power. Another storm came the next day. And we had these, this series of storms left people without power. And so a lot of people were suffering through one of the worst heat waves we've ever had without air conditioning. Then you get to the weekend. So you've got, you've got that, you've got the power, you've got the storms, the power outages were still being fixed when all of this, the heat, the storms, the power outages were all affecting New Jersey transit. This the third largest passenger rail system in the country, move 62 million people a year, wasn't moving anybody late in the week because the catenary wires sag when it gets hot and the tracks warp and, you know, an engine caught on fire in Hoboken and Penn Station lost power. Penn Station lost air conditioning.

Yeah.

And so it was just a nightmare. And then all the trees fell on the lines and the tracks after the storm. So again, it was still a mess getting in and out of the city on New Jersey transit. So. And then to top it all off, finally we started getting these massive rainstorms. And so places like Asbury park were flooded. There were water rescues that had to be conducted down at the shore. So, so you go from extreme heat, loss of power, loss of transport, to extreme flooding, all in the span of like less than a week. And to me, I wanted to write about it because it just kind of felt like a microcosm of what we can expect, partly not only because the climate is changing, but because we're not ready for it to be changing.

[Emily Griffeo]

Right. Why is it a warning sign to everyone? Why is it not just a specific New Jersey hell week and, and something that, you know, where's the evidence that this is going to spread more broadly

[Mark Gongloff]

across the U.S. well, the issue is that it is already kind of there. I could have written this about Texas at various points. You know, we had the flooding in Texas Hill Country. We've got places like Houston, which goes through drought and then massive hurricanes. And there was that hurricane a couple of years ago where they had a big hurricane, then they had a heat wave and then they lost power. So again, you had a whole bunch of people without power during a heat wave. So these kind of compound events, these compound disasters are things that are already happening. And they're happening not just in Texas, Florida, California, places where you might think, but they're happening in places like New Jersey, which maybe if you're not really paying that much attention to it, you might think New Jersey. How bad could it be? It can get pretty bad. And it's not just like the Hurricane Sandy that occasionally comes through. It's kind of everywhere now because because rain is getting heavier, storms are getting more extreme, which is helping to drive up insurance rates across the middle swath of the country because it's, you know,

[Podcast Host (possibly Carol Massar or co-host)]

or people can't even be insured at this point. Right?

[Mark Gongloff]

Can't be insured. And insurance rates are rising in places like Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma because they're getting these severe convective storms that are driving hail, hail is wrecking roofs in Minnesota. For the past few years running, these storms have been the biggest source of insured losses in this country. And you're just talking about big thunderstorms, dropping hail, blowing limbs around that can be really destructive even if they're not as headline grabbing.

[Carol Massar]

That was Mark Gongloff, Bloomberg opinion columnist who covers climate change. And that wraps up our weekend edition of Bloomberg businessweek from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us. Be sure to tune in to Bloomberg Business Week daily Monday through Friday starting at 2pm Wall street time on Bloomberg Radio, Bloomberg TV and on Sirius XM channel 121. You can also watch our daily broadcast on YouTube. Just search Bloomberg podcasts. We're simulcast on Bloomberg originals, available on bloomberg.com originals and streaming platforms including Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung TV plus and more. And one programming note earlier this week on Bloomberg Businessweek Daily, we spoke to Wayfair CFO Kate Gulliver. She's leading the home goods retailers efforts to achieve profitable growth during a challenging period for the housing market. Kate and the company are the subjects of the latest episode of Chief Future Officer, which you can watch and catch on Bloomberg Television on bloomberg.com and on YouTube. I'm Carol Massar have a good and safe weekend everyone. Stay cool. Stay safe.

[Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast Host]

This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast available on Apple, Spotify and anywhere else you get. Your podcasts listen live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5pm Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio, Apple TuneIn and the Bloomberg Business App. You can also watch us live Every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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[Cal Penn]

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