484: Tom Albanese—The Metals at the Bottom of the Ocean

Summary

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The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe

Episode 484: Tom Albanese—The Metals at the Bottom of the Ocean

Date: May 12, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Mike Rowe sits down with Tom Albanese—former CEO of Rio Tinto and current chairman of American Ocean Minerals—to discuss the urgent global demand for critical metals, the untapped resource of polymetallic nodules lying at the ocean’s depths, and what it all means for America’s future, industry, and independence. The conversation spans Tom's mining career, the geopolitics and supply chains of essential metals, environmental concerns about ocean mining, and the profound connection between resource extraction and technological progress.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Mining Life and Its Disconnect

• Mike recounts meeting Tom and reveals American Ocean Minerals as their joint venture to harvest polymetallic nodules from the seafloor for metals like copper, cobalt, nickel, and manganese—crucial for industry and technology.
• Mike reflects on the foundational role of agriculture and mining, noting modern society’s disconnect from its origins:

  “The more disconnected you are from your food and the metals that make the world you live in, the easier it is to lose your wonder and your appreciation for really damn near everything.” (02:23)

2. Tom Albanese's Journey: From New Jersey to Global Mining

• Tom shares his unlikely path from Boy Scout and Eagle Scout in New Jersey to his first mining job in Alaska at 17, emphasizing self-reliance and leadership learned in scouting (08:27–10:39).
• He’s worked in over 100 countries—“I think I’m working toward 110 now, but I’m only halfway through. Most of those were for working?” (08:01)

3. Foundations of Modern Life: Metals Everywhere

• Tom breaks down how almost everything—from iPhones to infrastructure—relies on metals pulled from the ground:

  “If you want these things (holding an iPhone)... about the only thing grown from a tree is probably this rubber casing. Everything else comes out of the ground. The average person would look at that and say, ‘well, no, it came from a store.’” (12:38)

• Copper, in particular, is fundamental due to its conductivity—future tech will need as much copper in the next 25 years as used in all prior human history:

  “As the world economy, we’ll have consumed as much copper as all of mankind’s history. The next 25 years, we’ll use as much copper as since before the pyramids.” (14:31)

4. Energy, Technology, and the Rise of Data Centers

• Data centers and AI are dramatically increasing the demand for electricity—and thus for metals:

  “We’re going to use as much copper... every year we’re coming up with new technologies... Data centers which are incredibly copper intensive... And we can’t afford to say, ‘well, we’re going to ration electricity.’ That’s not America.” (13:35–15:28)

• China’s rapid build-out of power infrastructure puts the U.S. at a competitive crossroads:

  “China has put in more electrical generation and more power transmission capacity in their country as we in America have done since Edison.” (17:05)

5. Material Independence: Energy and Metals

• The conversation parallels America’s focus on energy independence with a need for “metal independence,” especially regarding supply chains and critical rare earths currently dominated by China.
• Tom explains rare earths’ outsized role in magnets, batteries, and defense—“They make magnets more powerful, make sensors more effective. Even for your refrigerator.” (23:42–24:53)

6. The Consequences of Outsourcing Industry

• The U.S.’s offshoring of entire industries—textiles, furniture, and now even metals—was “the peril of affluence,” not political but cultural:

  “We didn’t shut the industry down because we didn’t need it. It was the peril of affluence. We thought we didn’t need the factories, didn’t need smokestacks, didn’t need blue-collar jobs... We were happy to outsource it.” (27:35–28:25)

• The risks of losing supply control are illustrated through anecdotes about timber, rare earths, and even toothpicks.

7. Batteries & the Need for Specialized Metals

• The EV revolution and grid storage demands are putting pressure on the supply of lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel, and others.

  “Every battery mineral is a metal. Not a single one grows on trees. They’re coming out of the ground.” (36:18–37:15)

• Tom suggests the U.S. must not only mine but design and manufacture batteries domestically to catch up with China.

8. What Are Polymetallic Nodules?

• Tom provides a primer: these are golf-ball-sized rocks, rich in metals, covering the abyssal plains of the ocean.

  “It’s a battery in a rock. It’s got 30 different elements... These are almost in unlimited supply on the seafloor.” (41:56–42:31)

• The first discovery was in the 1880s; the technology to harvest them is only now viable due to advances in robotics and deepwater systems.

9. Ocean Mining: Technology, Markets, Environmental Concerns

• Technology: The processes are more akin to vacuuming or “harvesting” than traditional mining—scooping nodules up from up to 20,000 feet/piles on ocean plains between LA and Portland:

  “It’s like taking golf balls out of a water trap... Vacuum cleaner-type effect.” (49:04–49:36)

• Markets: Demand is here, not coming—electrification guarantees it.
• Environmental Concerns: Studies (including from MIT) show plumes of sediment are far less than feared, and seafloor disturbance is much less than with terrestrial mining.

  “The environmental effect of nodule harvesting is like a thousandth of the equivalent effect to mining in a rainforest.” (51:09–52:22)

10. History, Geopolitics & Sovereign Wealth

• The CIA once used nodule exploration as a cover to recover a Soviet submarine (The Hughes Glomar Explorer, 1974).
• Island nations (like the Cook Islands) sit atop these resources. Learning from past “resource curses,” they aim for sovereign wealth funds rather than exploitation.

  “Norway’s affluence is driven off oil and gas, but what they have done is very proper—the bulk of the money set aside for future generations.” (63:32–64:38)

11. Jobs, American Industry, and Educational Need

• Mining nodules could reverse job loss, revitalize U.S. shipbuilding, and demand engineers, tradespeople, and scientists.
• American universities graduate shockingly few mining engineers per year. Tom calls rebuilding the talent pipeline “multi-generational work.” (83:36–84:40)

12. The Spirit of Work, Pride, and Purpose

• Both Mike and Tom tie a sense of pride and purpose to foundational work—mining, farming, engineering:

  “There’s just so many jobs today that don’t really benefit anyone except for the person doing the job... Your industry is so fundamental, so primal.” (77:05–77:29)

• Tom: “I love the outdoors. For me, that’s been driving me in my career—getting like-minded people pointed in the same direction, to clear objectives that make a difference to society.” (77:29–78:36)

13. The Train Is Leaving the Station: The Future of Ocean Mining

• Both men express excitement (and a sense of inevitability) about the coming age of deep-sea mineral harvesting.

  “The train is leaving the station. When I hear [others] talk about the inevitability of all of it, it’s exciting.” (86:33)

• Tom likens nodules to what fracking was 20 years ago—a technological supplement, not a replacement, but a game-changer for American competitiveness. (90:18–90:39)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Copper Demand:
  Tom Albanese (14:31):

  “The next 25 years we'll use as much copper as they've been using since before the pyramids.”

• On Outsourcing:
  Mike Rowe (28:25):

  “In the same way that, you know, there’s a hierarchy in energy, there’s a hierarchy in bad outsourcing decisions. …Furniture’s gone, textile’s gone...not catastrophic. But the further up you go, the more vital it becomes.”

• On Ocean Mining Technology:
  Tom Albanese (49:07):

  “You’re literally… it’s a vacuum cleaner type of effect where you’re basically bringing these collectors… and they have the equivalent of a vacuum cleaner that’s just sucking these up.”

• On Environmental Impact:
  Tom Albanese (52:22):

  “The consequential effect of nodule harvesting is like a thousandth of the equivalent effect to mining in a rainforest…”

• On National Purpose:
  Mike Rowe (81:41):

  “You know what’s better than that? Not letting China dictate terms… To be independent.”

• On Work and Pride:
  Tom Albanese (78:54):

  “Pride in the workplace.”

• On the Future of Metals:
  Tom Albanese (84:44):

  “It’s not going to mean less metals consumed. That’s pretty much guaranteed.”

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:14: Intro to Tom Albanese’s background
• 08:01: Tom’s global mining experience
• 12:24–13:06: The metals inside a smartphone—everything comes from the ground
• 14:31: Unprecedented global copper demand
• 17:05: China’s energy infrastructure surpasses America’s historic output
• 23:42: Rare earths explained—the magnets in everyday life
• 36:10: Metals required for batteries and EVs
• 41:54: Introduction to polymetallic nodules—“battery in a rock”
• 49:04: How ocean mining technology works
• 52:22: Environmental impact comparisons (sea vs. rainforest mining)
• 63:32–64:38: Sovereign wealth management for island nations
• 77:29: The deep connection between mining, nature, and purpose
• 86:33: The inevitability of ocean mining, American competitiveness
• 90:18: Nodules compared to early fracking—a transformative supplement

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Summary & Takeaways

The episode blends adventure, industry history, national ambition, and optimism for the future. Tom Albanese and Mike Rowe unpack why the coming demand for metals is an existential challenge and opportunity for America; why mining the ocean floor, though controversial, offers the prospect of supply chain independence, high-skilled jobs, and a gentler environmental impact than traditional mining; and why pride in essential work—whether in the mines or on the farm—is the bedrock of national strength and personal fulfillment.

Final Reflection (Mike Rowe):

“The grandest, most ambitious esoteric dream is anchored by the most fundamental—it’s mineral abundance.” (85:06)

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For those interested in the future of energy, technology, environmental science, and American industry, this is an essential listen—and a call to reconnect with the elemental resources and work that shape the modern world.

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Transcript

[A]

Hey guys. It's the way I heard it. I'm Mike Rowe. My guest today is a fella named Tom Albanese. I guess Chuck, I could say he's a miner. We're a miner's minor.

[B]

How are you spelling that?

[A]

Well, we deal with that quickly enough. M I N E R. He's also a citizen of the world and an American patriot and a partner of mine in a new venture. So there are a couple things I want to disclose before we jump into this conversation right in the middle of a sentence, as we often do, as we are prone to do. I met Tom about six, maybe eight months ago. He is the former CEO of, I think the second largest mine in the world, Rio Tinto. He also was way up the food chain at Vendetta Resources. He's lived and worked on every continent, I think, but for one, he's been 100 some countries. Yep. He along with some other big brained individuals who I've been lucky enough to conspire with over the last few months have formed a company called American Ocean Minerals. And the purpose of this company is to go to the bottom of the ocean and bring up billions of polymetallic nodules, these golf ball shaped little nuggets packed with metals the entire world is suddenly desperate to have, one might say precious metals. You could, although technically that's still, you know, that's your palladiums and your gold and your silvers and whatnot. This is more copper, cobalt, manganese, nickel, some rare earths, some iron. So there's so much to unpack here. If you want to do a little background research, if you're into that kind of thing, just Google polymetallic nodules and you'll get an understanding of where we're headed with the conversation. The reason I wanted to have Tom on though was really just to connect with one of the reasons Dirty Jobs happened. It was really a love letter to, you know, agriculture and mining above everything. And the older I get and the more I kick around the, the more positive I am that as foundational industries, those are the things that myself and so many other people eventually become disconnected from. And the more disconnected you are from your food and the metals that make the world you live in, the easier it is to lose your wonder and your appreciation for really damn near everything. So it's an opportunity for me to reconnect with a guy who has been there and done that and maybe share a few stories with you guys. Yeah.

[B]

And just to be clear, he is the chairman of American Ocean Minerals.

[A]

He's the, I guess the top dog.

[B]

Wouldn't he be?

[A]

Well, we're lucky to have him, that's for sure. It's a crazy core of overqualified adventurers. Miners, business guys. This is a giant industry folks, and if you haven't heard of it yet, you will in the coming year. It's consequential for the whole world. It matters an awful lot when we think about our, our relationship, you know, geopolitically with China. But more than anything, just this massive $10 trillion infrastructure build out that has to happen over the next six or seven years and the role these metals will play in making it happen. So all of that's in the offering and you'll learn some stuff from a guy who has truly, as I said, been there and done it. This is called the Metals at the Bottom of the Ocean. Cause that's where they are. And the gentleman you're about to meet is determined to go get em right after this. Do do do do do do do do do. Well people are still raving. Raving. I tell you about my mother's performance in the latest Pure Talk commercial and if you haven't seen it, I encourage you to give it a look on my Facebook page and read the comments. They're hysterical. In this commercial you'll not only see Peggy Rowe gently criticizing her oldest son for his long standing and well established commitment issues, you'll learn about the latest offer from PureTalk, which includes unlimited talk, text and data for just $34.99 a month. With no contracts and no commitments of any kind. You can see why I love these guys. If on the other hand, you have better things to do with your time than watch my mom and me be impossibly charming together, then allow me to remind you here, without all the cleverness and charm, that unlimited talk, text and data on a blazing fast for just $34.99 a month really is an unmitigated bargain from an American wireless company that keeps all their customer service in this country, supports our veterans in a meaningful way as well as the microworks foundation, and allows me to exploit my own mother in a national advertising campaign. Do what my mom did. Get yourself unlimited high speed Data for just $34.99 a month at PureTalk.com RO you can switch in as little as 10 [e-mail] Roo. You think you're an interesting guy, you know, who's lived a pretty full life and he's going about your business and then you have drinks With Tom Albanese and you go, oh, oh, been around the block. And then, you know, a couple weeks later you have dinner with Tom Albanese and then maybe there's some more drinks and more coffee.

[B]

Both times there's snowstorm in Washington.

[A]

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 if there's a miner walking around. And that's er, just to be clear. No, it's O R. It's minor, right? No, no, minor. M I N E R. Mine are er. Yeah, yeah. When's the last time you were an or Tom? No, it's been a while since you were a minor.

[B]

Well, both of us are gray hairs.

[A]

No kidding. Well, listen, 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, but if we're not growing it, we're pulling it out of the ground. And the pitch for me from a miner 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.

[B]

Everything converts it.

[A]

Yes. So here you are. What a career you've had we are still having. Honestly, I don't even know. I mean, 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.

[B]

Yes. Yes. Well, the 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 daughter, her husband and their two grandkids. What can you do but spend the weekend? West Palm Beach. On the beach with two grandkids?

[A]

How? I mean, at this point, like, does your wife always recognize you when you come back through the door because you're going for stretches?

[B]

I think she's sort of gotten used to it. Will have been married now 47 years and she hasn't kicked me out yet, so. It's okay.

[A]

You must be doing something right.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

If we were to start with your curriculum vite. I mean, how? Generally, I don't even remember our first conversation. I just remember knowing that between Alaska and Africa. Oh, here it is. How many countries have you been to?

[B]

I'm still counting, but I think I'm working toward 110 now, but there's still. I'm only halfway through. Is that right? And most of those were for working?

[A]

Yeah, yeah. So.

[B]

So I haven't done the playing part yet. Oh my.

[A]

It's just. So you're a difficult interview only because it's like trying to get to know the elephant, you know. Where do you want to start? The tusk, the tail?

[B]

Well, probably start from where I started because I would like. I grew up in New Jersey, the most sort of mining capital of America, non mining place in the world, as you can imagine. And I was into Boy Scouts, Eagle Scout, Outward Bound. I hiked the 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 and I. I had a bag of. A 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.

[A]

That's way up there, right? Brooks.

[B]

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.

[A]

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?

[B]

I was doing it in pieces with friends at different times. But probably I went up through New Hampshire, down to the end of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and then a bunch in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee.

[A]

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. And you know, most people don't realize what a treasure trove that is, just.

[B]

And there are worse things for teenagers to do. Guarantee it.

[A]

Do you think we'd be sitting here today without the Boy Scouts?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

I mean, what impact did that have on your.

[B]

A little bit of everything. A little bit self reliance, self confidence, leadership. I was a senior patrol leader, you know, just learning to organize stuff and get stuff done.

[A]

Yeah, for me, it was the first time anybody had ever asked me to like raise my hand and make a pledge, take an oath, you know, you still remember it.

[B]

I don't.

[A]

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.

[B]

There you go. Pretty good.

[A]

It gets a little wobbly toward the end there.

[B]

Certainly better than me.

[A]

Well, Anyway, so at 17, you go to Alaska to mine copper, go to

[B]

school, but in the summer months, you know, you get summer jobs up there and you do what you can do.

[A]

And what'd you do exactly? You were hauling rocks?

[B]

Yeah, we were doing exploration for copper.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And 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'd. 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 you to the top of the hill and you walk down, which is a lot easier.

[A]

I mean, I don't know how much more exciting it can get than sitting next to a bush pilot who did his time in Vietnam.

[B]

They were all Vietnam veterans. They were fearless. They knew how to take that equipment absolutely to the limit.

[A]

At that time, this guy flew me in to. What's the town all the way west? Bethel.

[B]

Bethel, yes. Been there.

[A]

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 two and a half feet thick and the mosquitoes the size of your thumb. And you're just not in Kansas anymore.

[B]

Yes, yes.

[A]

Crazy. Why do we need copper?

[B]

Well, we need. If you want electricity, if you want data centers, you want all the lights around here, I have to dig out. I love using this as a prop if you want these things.

[A]

He's holding an iPhone. For those of you not watching and

[B]

listening, 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 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 came from a store.

[A]

Well. And I would argue that technically that tree came out of the ground too. Yeah, you didn't have to dig for it. So of all the things, I mean, this is a stupid question. I mean, how many on the periodic chart now? How many minerals are we talking about? How many elements? There's like 110 more than the number

[B]

of countries I've been to.

[A]

But yeah, like 128, something like that.

[B]

Might be 140 now. They keep discovering new elements.

[A]

Where does copper rate?

[B]

Copper fits pretty well in there. But unless you're looking at gold and silver, which are much more expensive, copper is the best for both heat conductivity and 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 hear a lot of people say, well, if we just keep recycling, we don't need to mine anymore. At the rate of all our technology, every year we're coming up with new technologies. I mean, 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. We're going to use as the world, the economy. We're going to use as much copper between now and 2050. That's 25 years you and I will still be around. We'll probably have a cane or something at that point in time. That's the hope.

[A]

Copper cane.

[B]

We will, as the world economy will have consumed as much copper as all of Earth's history, all of mankind's history. So I like to start off things with a pyramid saying the next 25 years we'll use as much copper as they've been using since before the pyramids.

[A]

And is it going to stay so? Is it exponentially? It's just going to keep going. You think, like, how much of technology yet to be invented is going to be reliant on copper?

[B]

What's the future technology down the road? Have you ever watched a science fiction movie?

[A]

Sure.

[B]

That doesn't have a lot of metal in it?

[A]

Oh, no. Blade Runner?

[B]

No, they got a lot of metal. Even the dystopian ones, they got a lot of metal in them. Yeah.

[A]

So metals, the past metal's the future.

[B]

As long as we're embracing technology.

[A]

Right. And why wouldn't we embrace technology?

[B]

Good question. I think technology is a good thing, so we'll keep embracing it.

[A]

Are you nervous about data centers? Do you worry about AI?

[B]

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 50 years ago. We said no more nuclear and that's put us way behind the curb. Now we got to get back up on nuclear. We're going to need it all. If someone comes up with a brilliant suggestion for figuring how to make fusion work, we're going to need that too. But if we're on that curve that we're just beginning to see for data centers and we all. Just this morning I'm using my phone to ask questions that I would have spent 15 minutes sorting through things that I could just now do it on Google and I get the answer. And I'm not sort of a 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 going to 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 not America. America is about actually bringing the power up. Now In China, since 2000, China has put in more generating and transmission capacity than we in America have since the beginning of the 20th century.

[A]

Say that again.

[B]

China has put in more electrical generation and more power transmission capacity in their country, as we in America have done since the days of Thomas Edison.

[A]

My God.

[B]

And they know that everything we're doing is going to be electricity intensive. That's something we shouldn't fall behind on. So when you think about that's competition.

[A]

I mean, 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.

[B]

They both go hand in hand, right?

[A]

Do do do do do do do do do do you sick of it yet? Are you sick of AI hogging up all the headlines and sucking up all the bandwidth? You find yourself wishing we lived in a simpler time. Do you? Do you miss the rotary phone? Well, get over it. The genie is out of the bottle, the poop is out of the goose. I'm afraid AI is here to stay and every business in the country is asking themselves the same question. How do we make it work for us? Well, the answer to that question varies, but you'll find it in a free guide that you can get right [e-mail] Mike. It's called demystifying AI. It's totally free. It's essential reading for anybody trying to make sense of a future that appears to have arrived yesterday. NetSuite, of course, is the number one AI enterprise resource planning software out there, trusted by over 43,000 businesses. With NetSuite, you can use the AI of your choice, Grok or Claude or ChatGPT, whatever else is out there, to connect to your actual business data, all of it, and automate all of those tiresome time sucking, soul deadening manual processes. This is AI built into the system that's currently running your business. Learn [e-mail] Mike and while you're there, pick up their free business guide, Demystifying AI. It's filled with super useful information. And again, it's [e-mail] Mike that's netsuite.com. NetSuite. I said NetSuite.com. you said NetSuite.com/Mike

[B]

how do you think

[A]

about the hierarchy of energy? Like when you look at the world and you look at wood is being burned, dung is being burned, there's 3 million people, those are their primary sources.

[B]

Even still today, I lived in India for four years and, and you're spending time in Africa, 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.

[A]

Right, but if we look at our own evolution through those forms, up to natural gas and beyond, to maybe fission or what's the difference between fission and fusion? Fission and fusion, is it the same basic thing?

[B]

No, they're different. You got the wrong person on this podcast to give you that good answer on that one. But it's one basically uses up electricity, one makes electricity, so fusion will basically self generate and create a surplus.

[A]

It's all a march toward nuclear. It seems like we're going toward this place where if we could just have a little reactor in Our town, every town has a little reactor, then we've got to this.

[B]

I think we need a little of everything because 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. Baseload power is really important, so you need something. Nuclear is a good base load power, so is coal, so is natural gas. So baseload power 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.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You need have to have something that will peak with that. So I think it's a mix of everything.

[A]

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. But what was the hurricane that just blew through Florida? What is it like six or seven months in Tampa? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

There Two years of nasty hurricanes there. Yeah, yes.

[A]

And so there was a real. I mean, fossil fuels saved the day. And I think a lot of people got an up close, like maybe a reminder that, you know, it's a heck of a thing to grow, to resent the thing you depend upon so much.

[B]

We need it all. I agree. We need it all in some places. I mean, natural gas is, it's available, it's abundant. I was just in Oklahoma City on Monday this week talking about natural gas and oil and our huge surplus that we've created. I mean, this is American ingenuity. Fracking and everything else has been. And it's been a huge godsend for the American economy and American competitiveness right now with unfortunately what's going on in Iran. Natural gas prices in Europe and Asia have gone like this. They've actually gone down 20% in the US since then. So we have a surplus of natural gas and we should not be embarrassed by that. We should recognize that that is a competitive strength.

[A]

Do you think from a branding standpoint? 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 how important is it going to be to this country moving forward to have a reliable supply chain and to have access to the raw materials.

[B]

I think a couple years ago, people would have said, we'll always find the metals. But if you think about what happened last year with the tariff and trade fights between the US And China, sort of the number three item on the agenda, the relationship between the US And China was rare earths. And the fact is that 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 ceded that to the Chinese back in the 1990s.

[A]

Can you explain, just like in a primer sort of way, what rare earth is and isn't?

[B]

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 long words. They got lots of. Yeah, they got lots of vowels and lots of consonants. They're generally the rare earths. 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 defense equipment, if you want to have the best magnet, including for your refrigerator. Because 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 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 using a lot of them, but you need to have just enough to get the right blend in. It depends on what it is. It could be a glass tube, it could be a magnet. All sorts of things. Need different types of rare earths for that. It improves their competitiveness.

[A]

How did and when did magnets become important and a big deal? And who discovered that stuff?

[B]

I think it was back to Thomas Edison days, actually. Yeah, but we kept making them smaller. You look at a speaker. I remember I was at a conference once talking about copper and substitution and thrifting back when we were growing up. The speakers were this big, and I was sitting on a podium, this is in New York, and there was a bunch of speakers behind. And then we were talking about thrifting and substitution. With copper price going up, you use a little bit less of it. And I Said, well, there's a speaker in here. 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.

[A]

Right. Because that magnets were made smaller magnets. So rare earths are.

[B]

So if you like a good speaker in your phone, you've got to be a fan of rare earths.

[A]

Now is that why sometimes like my credit card will, where my hotel key will lose its power if I put it next to my phone or if

[B]

you put it next to my iPad, which has a battery, a magnet in it, which I do sometime the time you have to go back down to the lobby and get a new.

[A]

So this 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 you, how do you make a magnet?

[B]

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 earths 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.

[A]

An electromagnet.

[B]

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.

[A]

So is part of the rare earth supply chain drama linked specifically to the supply of magnets?

[B]

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.

[A]

And we'll need to get back.

[B]

And that's part of the task we have as Americans to bring those industries back.

[A]

I just, I mean, do you think that will go down in history as one of the greatest unforced errors? I mean, we didn't shut the industry down because we didn't need it.

[B]

It wasn't really an unforced error. It was the peril of affluence. I think, you know, we just, 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 smokestacks, we didn't need the blue collar jobs.

[A]

We needed their output. I mean, we needed their results and

[B]

we were happy to outsource it offshore. Remember back in 20, 30 years ago, offshoring was all the buzz.

[A]

I know this is not political.

[B]

This was not a Democratic versus Republican. It's just we as affluent society chose, consciously chose to say, look, we don't need all this stuff. We're moving to a higher plane.

[A]

You know, maybe there's a difference between going clothing, textiles. I mean that was a big industry. That's a bad example, furniture. Actually, you know what? There are no good examples. I was trying to.

[B]

This is all got outsourced.

[A]

Well, right, but in the same way that, you know, there's a hierarchy in energy, there's a hierarchy in bad outsourcing decisions. We started with stuff. It was like, big deal. It's tchotchkes. It's just stuff. And 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 catastrophic.

[B]

We started bringing in outside wood and now on my property, all the ash trees are dying because you had. Basically you're importing timber, you're importing wood from other areas and they have bugs and stuff in them that basically non

[A]

indigenous species we bring in.

[B]

There's no resistance to the trees.

[A]

Well, the other. There's a guy called Mike Albrecht who runs the National Timber Council, I think, or something like that. Is that what it is?

[B]

The lumber? Yeah. National Lumber Association, I think. Let me look it up.

[A]

He. He sat right there about a year ago and you know, his argument, it's so adjacent to everything that you and I have talked about. We. There's more timber in California than anywhere in the country. California is the leading importer of timber. There's something like, I mean, now you're

[B]

the leading source of fires.

[A]

Coincidence?

[B]

No, no coincidence. Probably not completely linked. He's the president of the National American Loggers Council.

[A]

Right. And he ultimately, I mean, he's got a constituency and he's got an agenda. But the underlying argument 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 so crime.

[B]

I lived in Vancouver, Washington back in the 90s and that was a spotted owl controversy. They were basically shutting down the timber, timber in Oregon and Northern California and Washington, all those towns they sort of went into not a slow decay, but a fast decay because all of a sudden they just got locked out. And of course in Canada they were more than happy to continue to forest. In British Columbia they had the same kind of woods, same kind of trees. And you saw the demise of that Pacific Northwestern industry which was such an important part of Douglas fir, pines and the other things that are needed, whether it's for building, construction, whether it's for chopsticks, anything that we use. And we chose to say, well, we got to protect the spotted owl. There might be spotted owls in those other places too. But that's not our problem. That's their problem.

[A]

Right. There's a great book you would love. 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 through New England and how the factories that, you know, toothpick, we made all the toothpicks and thousands and thousands of jobs and that was one of the first things to go. And anyway, if there's a parallel, or at least my question, there's a connection. It's just if we can't make a toothpick, Tom, in this country, what real hope does Detroit have? And what real hope do we have in the mining world of clawing back some of this stuff, which is why you're here. In which we're.

[B]

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 re industrializing our rare earth magnet industry. No offense to the people in the wood services industry, but we have so much to do over the next 20 years to re industrialize, bring the jobs, bring the skills back, get more engineers out of school. In addition to trades and everything else, there's a lot of work that's involved generation. It's been multi generational effort.

[A]

Not a week goes by where I don't become more convinced that everything we know about modern public education is going to change in my lifetime. It has to. The entire premise of one teacher standing in front of 40 kids, all of whom learn at different rates and then teaching them all the same thing at the same speed. That's not working. And the national test scores prove it. But if you don't want to wait for the system to change, give your kid an advantage. Now with K12's career and college prep program, this is tuition free online public Education that prepares students for lucrative careers in all sorts of industries. Construction, healthcare, cybersecurity, and a lot of other fields that are expanding every day. K12's career in college prep prepares students for the industry certifications they need and allows them to earn college credits along the way. Whether they want to head to a university or jump straight into a high demand trade, K12's career in college prep gives them something a diploma can no longer guarantee. An actual head start. It's practical, it's smart, it is long overdue, and it's here. Don't gamble with your kid's future or wait for public education to change. Give your student the opportunity to explore the right fit for them right now with K12's career and college prep. Go to K12.comRoe to learn more. That's the letter K, the number 12.comRoe the letter K, the number 12. Yeah. And I think it's a fair point to make. There's a difference between the finished product of work and the work itself. And I just had this conversation with the guy who started John Paul Mitchell Schools Cosmetology. We started offering scholarships to cosmetologists. And it's not something I ever thought I would do, but 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 living cutting hair is extraordinary. And so the number of people who

[B]

made their living, the AI won't be able to take care of that one.

[A]

That's right. Well, not yet. Oculus is coming, they say. What did Elon say? There were going to be more Oculus surgeons in three years than human surgeons. We'll see.

[B]

But there might be some, like a hairdresser type thing. Put down your head and then push a button and you like a bowl, like my mom used a bowl.

[A]

Yeah, but I'm pretty sure Oculus is made of metal. I'm pretty sure there's no robot industry, there's no Tesla, there's no SpaceX, no anything.

[B]

That's robotics. And by the way, batteries. You mentioned batteries before. I mean, I think that a real positive takeoff from the EV revolution and renewables has been the fact that really, for the first time in about 100 years, that we started working on R and D for batteries. So every year there are tremendous performance improvements in batteries. Now, unfortunately, the Chinese are ahead of that. We've got to catch up, and we've got to get back on the pace for batteries and battery minerals. And I'm involved with that. And we can talk about battery minerals. But if we want to electrify, if we want to have more EV vehicles, if we want to have 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 get the science back into this. Let's get in the forefront of battery technology. And it's growing at such leaps and bounds. We should be right there to say, well, if we can do one of those leaps ahead of the competition, we'll be back in first place.

[A]

So in terms of essential metals in a battery, what are we really talking about? In no particular order, what do we need?

[B]

Well, we need anything that will store the energy and will buffer the energy so the battery doesn't blow up or burn. So we need basically the lithium, we need nickel, we need manganese, we need sodium, may need sodium, that's the next generation. We need potassium, we need iron, we need a lot of cobalt, we need a lot of different types of minerals. And different types of battery formulations, have different suites, but they're all metal. Not a single one of those materials 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, we will move down that EV path at America's pace as the technology goes. But we should have backup battery storage, we should have electrification of everything. It's going to take a lot of battery minerals and they might be a different formulation, different cookbook in five years than they are now, but they're all going to require roughly the same types of metals.

[A]

And how many different mining operations have you worked on that were in pursuit of the aforementioned metals? And like Rio Tinto, you.

[B]

Yeah, I think we focused on and Rio Tinto and I was CEO of a big company in India, Vedanta. We were focusing on the bulk commodities. So these were like iron, aluminum, copper, these are the ones that are recognizable metals. But I think over the past 10 years we've seen as batteries have resurge, the battery minerals have gone from sort of also rans or not. If a big company like Oreo had them on their balance sheet. It's a rounding error. Now it's changing so that like Rio Tinto for employer, they have now a big lithium project and lithium. Lithium. So they're moving into lithium, which is A good thing. And you see 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 sized companies than the majors right now. But that's going to change ultimately.

[A]

Again, sorry to bounce around. I want people to understand the impact because most people listening probably haven't heard of Rio Tinto. What exactly is it? What is its impact?

[B]

Which is really interesting because if you go to Australia, Canada, anywhere in Africa, Asia, it's a household name. Everyone knows who it is in the United States. Who are they? What do they do, what do they make? It's 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. It's the second biggest mining company in the world. Very proud of what they've done, what they continue to achieve. And they're in all sorts of weird and exotic places. But they've been focusing on the biggest deposits in the world. Those that are multigenerational deposits.

[A]

Of what exactly?

[B]

Copper. I mean I worked for, at Kennecott, Utah Copper in Salt Lake for. For a number of years. I ran the smelter for a while there. That mine was started like in the open pit. Started in 1905. And the underground started maybe in the 1880s, something like that. And during the World War II, I think the allied war effort. I think over half of the copper going to Allied war effort came from that mine. And it's still running today.

[A]

Yeah. Amazing.

[B]

They're not running out of copper.

[A]

What's the other? Franco Nevada.

[B]

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. Yeah.

[A]

Did you ever think you would live to see gold at $5,000 an ounce?

[B]

I think there was a time when we said we don't know if we would like what the world would look like at $5,000 an ounce. When it was $1,000, it felt like that was sort of out of the ordinary. But what we've seen progressively 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 money supply just got ratcheted up so big. And ultimately 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 as we put more money into the system, we actually diluted the value of that money. So gold price goes up.

[A]

I guess it's a supply and demand thing too. But copper is gold from a practical level, never mind its economic value. But intrinsically, how important is gold as an element or a metal into the infrastructure that we rely on for industry?

[B]

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 ground in a vault.

[A]

I know that gold is finite, but how much do you figure we've mined already?

[B]

I think it's like a. It's like a block that's 50 by 50 by 50ft. It's something like a small office building.

[A]

How much do you figure is left?

[B]

A lot more than that. A lot more than that.

[A]

Okay, so we're. You're not worried from a mining perspective

[B]

for none of these metals? I'm not worried. We're not. Just go deeper. Just dig deeper.

[A]

Well, there you go.

[B]

And that goes back into. Look for new terrains too. And so we were talking about batteries and it's getting hard to find all of these things. And there is one place that we really haven't touched. And you're holding it right there.

[A]

That's it. That's a.

[B]

And this is the nodule.

[A]

It's a battery in a rock.

[B]

It's a battery in a rock. It's got, I think 30 different elements in it. Some of them aren't that much valuable now, but who knows, in 20 years they might be. Others are very valuable. The manganese, the cobalt, the nickel, the copper, etc. I think there's good bit of titanium in here. And if you want to make jet aircraft, you need titanium. These are almost in unlimited supply in the sea floor, 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.

[A]

And again, for those of you.

[B]

So we're not going to run out

[A]

listening, Tom is holding a golf ball shaped rock. They could be small.

[B]

Truffle.

[A]

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 polymetallic nodules. They are at depth all over the oceans. Some more highly concentrated than others, I suppose. I mean, it's not a surprise. We've known they've been down there since what, 1880 something?

[B]

18, what was it two years ago was the 150th anniversary? So it was in the 1880s. Yeah.

[A]

And that was a British ship.

[B]

British ship Challenger.

[A]

The Challenger. So they like what had a two or three mile chain and they dragged a bucket across and they brought these things down.

[B]

I hope it wasn't a heavy chain.

[A]

Can you imagine?

[B]

It was a rope. Yes, a lot of rope. So that would have been probably three miles, maybe two miles of rope where they got that. But that's a lot of rope.

[A]

Chuck, can you find that video I was telling you about? You know the one Tom we used in D.C. that has. It's just the.

[B]

Oh, the nodules flow.

[A]

Yeah, the background, it's on the seafloor. Is. Is it on the AOM site, you think?

[B]

I think so, yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Check out aomc.com see if you can find it so people can see these things. You know, again, it's so like my introduction to this has been pretty intense over the last six months and virtually everyone I've talked to just out in the real world, when I talk about polymetallic nodules, they just, you know, they look at me like a golden retriever.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like a cow looking at a new gate. You know, it was baffled. But 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. 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.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

What was the impact of that?

[B]

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 people were looking at nodules. We were studying these in university back in the 70s and 80s, so 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 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 see if they could find more. And sure enough, the oil industry found lots of copper in South America. So 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 in terms of the mechanics, the robotics, et cetera, but also environmental research, terms of ensuring that these can be extracted and not leave undue environmental harm. 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 still, it was slowly, slowly, slowly. But what we've seen with the benefit of a lot of the people that are doing exploration in this particular space has been a lot of good scientific work, both in terms of the technology, also the environmental monitoring and the environmental performance. 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 challenges of supply chains have sort of been an additional catalyst that now capital is beginning to say, well, we better keep our eyes on this because we're coming to that pivot point. I do believe we passed that pivot point. Now.

[A]

My guest today, Tom Albanese, is an American giant and I'll tell you why. Tom understands on a fundamental level that the business of mining is a non negotiable prerequisite of our civilization and our economic independence. Just like the business of making things. American giant knows this, which is why they committed themselves 16 years ago to make all their excellent clothing right here in this country. It wasn't easy, but they did it. They sourced locally grown cotton and they built factories in towns across the nation where they could hire hardworking locals who cared about making a quality product. And then they went about the business of gently reminding people that when you buy a piece of clothing from American Giant, you're not just buying a high quality sweatshirt or T shirt or another pair of jeans. You're investing in a local supply chain. You're supporting communities from the Carolinas to California. And you're getting a piece of clothing that won't just survive the wash. You're getting a garment that'll get better with age. Check out their high quality staples, hoodies, tees, denim, built to be worn year after [e-mail] Mike. It's quality you can feel and a true American success story that you can be proud to support. Use code Mike. Get 20% off your order at american-giant.com Mike. American Giant. American made. American Giant, American made. So, I mean, just so people understand the scale, there are hundreds of billions of these things.

[B]

I think you could probably find abyssal plains where you go from equivalent of going from LA to Portland, Oregon, and it would look like that on the screen.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

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. I can't find the video on this. That's pretty good. That picture's pretty good.

[A]

That's not bad. Yeah, yeah. No, the video is super cool, though, because it just loops and runs.

[B]

Is it on YouTube or.

[A]

It might be because I can't find polymetallic.

[B]

I've got it on my phone. If you want to use a little bit copper to get it. It's in my phone too.

[A]

Okay, let's see if you can find. It's got to be out there, but it's a. It's not really mining.

[B]

And I think I'd call it harvesting. It's like taking golf balls out of a water trap in a golf course

[A]

or just the green. I mean, you're not digging holes. You're right.

[B]

You're literally. It's a vacuum cleaner type of effect where you're basically bringing these collectors. They're about this 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.

[A]

So where's the real challenge? Is it getting them 20,000ft up to the surface, or is it smelting them and crushing them into what, powder, and then turning them into liquid and separating and whatever you do.

[B]

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 vacuum cleaner. Part of it is getting it up on the boat, parting it from the boat, getting it and turning it into all the constituent metals. But we're really good at technology. And 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 technology I think has made a lot of progress and we're there on the technology side. The second part is the markets. Is there enough of a market for all these nodules? If you believe in industrialization, if you believe in electrification, yes, the market. Five years ago we said the market is coming. Now I think we could actually say with more confidence the market is here. 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? I think that's why we've had to focus so much on the science, the environmental work. I have a lot of respect. There are a lot of NGOs 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 a plume under the water? Is it mixing of waters? Is it biodiversity?

[A]

You're talking about a process whereby the nodules are getting scooped up and the scooping creates dust. Dust. And that dust takes the form of a plume and that plume rises and gets into currents and, and it turns out fishery maybe or something.

[B]

MIT did some work last a couple years ago. It turns out the, the plume is like a hundredth of what had been feared. So it's good to actually address where could things go wrong and then bring science in there, look at that. And basically peer reviewed studies get the right science out there. And there's been a lot of good work that's been reviewed and published because you have people that are actually looking at, considering whether this is a commercial opportunity that's driving the capital to do that science. 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 actually properly addressing each of the components. Again because I've been a terrestrial miner, I know what a terrestrial mine can do. I'm not saying there's no environmental effect from this, but the consequential effect of nodule harvesting is like a thousandth of the equivalent effect to mining in a rainforest or mining in let jungle or anywhere else.

[A]

A terrestrial mine in, I don't know what, the Congo, the Amazon, Bolivia or the United States. Okay, what does it take practically? And people don't want to hear this. I know, but what has the impact been on the rainforest of getting these exact metals out of the ground?

[B]

Probably about, in terms of biodiversity, in terms of carbon effects about several hundred to 1,000 times more. 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, to basically mitigate the effects of that. And we're really good. How do you get reclamation going? I mean, when you clear a rainforest, well, it doesn't stay cleared. I've been to very many places around the world where you'll go into. I remember one place in South Africa, Richards Bay, where we were bringing some university people through there. We were bringing them through a forest and they were saying, oh, my gosh, you want to destroy this forest? And there's a sign there, replanted in 1994. So this stuff does actually grow back. And reclamation is at a high degree of work. You start with grasses that actually can pick up seeds that are windblown and things like that, and that turns into bigger trees. So reclamation in the terrestrial mining industry is actually now, if you're digging a hole, you're digging a hole, you're creating a hole that won't be filled in. So there are going to be effects of that, but you can mitigate the effects of that. And again, what it's doing is delivering the metals that we need here.

[A]

How old is this thing and how did it form?

[B]

Well, that's a very interesting question, because I joke about this sometimes. Some of these would take maybe 5 million years, 10 million, some maybe 25, 30 million years. And 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, 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 geologic processes, they aggregate.

[A]

What does precipitate mean underwater?

[B]

It will basically cling, almost like it's magnetic. Yeah, you have one nodule here, 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 that cross section of this, it's almost like tree rings. Yeah. And so basically what you have, every time that the ocean has gone through a shift in its chemistry, like an ice age, different minerals will basically agglomerate on the outside of this. And basically it's sort of cycle. You know, Earth cools earthworms. The natural cycles of the Earth and the oceans over periods of millions of years lead to basically different cycles of minerals that are deposited.

[A]

So it forms almost like a pearl.

[B]

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 the time you'll see, like, a shark's tooth.

[A]

I got one like a Megalodon.

[B]

Yeah, Megalodon tooth. From the dinosaur days.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And basically they have these. The nodule encrusted around them. So basically, if a fish is swimming at the surface of the ocean, all fish eventually die. They basically, the bones, the calcium. The calcium basically sort of slowly settles the bottom of the seafloor. And that hard surface is what the minerals will cling to over time.

[A]

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?

[B]

They probably do, which is why in the environmental science we're doing, we do recognize that certain types of, maybe microfauna, the real, like critters, bacteria, smaller critters, maybe some sponges, need something hard on the seafloor to basically latch onto as part of the regeneration of those areas for rebuilding the biodiversity. So I think in the work we're doing, what we're trying to do 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, it's much denser than other areas, you can actually leave more behind because there's 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 onto the boat, and those represent the starting points for regeneration over time.

[A]

So you're thinking of these science way you would think of a new forest. Like, are you thinking about reasoning it

[B]

will take a longer amount of time? But certainly the work. 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 at that time, they didn't care. So the tracks were big, they were grooved, and it made a bit much more of a mess than you would see with modern technology. But even there, what you see is that 60, 70 years later, you see the starting points of plant life, animal life regaining to its position. So what that tells me is it's going to take longer to regenerate than it has for a land based mining, we have to take that into account. And we probably don't want to clear out entire area with nothing around. We 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 biodiversity 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 help pick up that biodiversity and help it regrow.

[A]

So I want to understand it's going

[B]

to take time though.

[A]

But of course, but again just so people understand the scope, talk about the CCZ and how big that is. And also you mentioned the early 70s. 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

[B]

or another treaty, we can thank Nixon, Kissinger for that. Back in the day there was a Soviet sub that had a catastrophic accident. And you know, the sub was one thing, but it had latest suite of Soviet nuclear weapons on it. So back in the mid-70s, that wasn't

[A]

the Kursk was it? Or something like that?

[B]

No, it was, it was older. It was not that, it was not that disaster. It was a much older disaster than that and it was in international waters. So the US couldn't just go mount a visible campaign that would be seen as quite a negative thing in terms of global warming.

[A]

Yeah, we're diving on a Russian side.

[B]

Exactly, exactly. So they basically, they helped construct. And this. Was Lockheed 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 could drop, you know, cranes can drop things in. And basically they advertise it as an expedition to look for these nodules. And there were some people in the ship that were working on the nodules and there were other people in the ship that were working on lifting the submarine. The submarine up.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it was actually, 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.

[A]

Somebody should. So back then we knew they were there, we knew that they had metals, we just didn't need them anywhere near the degree.

[B]

Well we didn't have the technology at that time. I mean now they have modern cables, they're made of different synthetic ropes, they're Lighter. Then they had big steel cables that, you know, it was very hard to build a ship that could hold that kind of steel in place. The avionics were different, the robotics were different. That was back in the day when the Apollo spacecraft had 24kb computer. 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 technology's there. I think we're also much more metals intensive as a society. 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. So we have this secular shift going on. It's still underway where two and a half billion people in the world actually want to live just like you and me. And who are we to hold their ambitions back?

[A]

They want their industrial revolution, they want theirs.

[B]

So that will also be metals intensive. So now we're at that place where we're actually needing more of this stuff than we did need back in the 1970s.

[A]

So what happened to retard the recovery and the exploitation of these things?

[B]

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 probably the, the best middle class 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.

[A]

Well what do you reckon these could do for an island nation like the Cooks or American Samoa or what was the ones. Was it Nehru or. There's an island that. It was the phosphate island.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, phosphate.

[A]

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.

[B]

It was actually when we, our prior generation wanted fertilizer.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

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.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And whereas the bird shit on islands in the middle of the ocean because all the birds land on that island and they basically sit there for a while and they leave a little bit behind, but not a little.

[A]

I mean this island was just, well

[B]

you give it a couple, you know, tens of thousands of years and it's covered. Yeah.

[A]

So I guess the point I'm trying to make is all of a sudden this poor island nation covered in bird shit suddenly has something that everybody wants, but they didn't prosper from their own resource.

[B]

It was really the Dutch disease. Yeah.

[A]

Yes, it was taken.

[B]

Resource curse.

[A]

Right. So from what I've read, you know, and people are a little freaked out, like the NGOs are looking at this and 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. It's just kind of.

[B]

I think a lot's happened with countries, you know, the cultures have been in the extractive business. No, we don't.

[A]

No, we're still looking for that video.

[B]

It's ridiculous.

[A]

Still looking for that video. Well, see, now it's personal. Now we have to find it.

[B]

So I think that 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 extractive's curse. So Norway led the way. I mean, Norway's seen as the most progressive nation in the world, if not in Europe and probably in the world. But 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. And now the countries that are considering the Pacific island countries, including the Cook Islands, that are considering, 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.

[A]

Where are we with.

[B]

And I think with Pacific minerals, which is different than the fertilizer in the islands, is that the extraction is taken. It's out of view, shed. The harvesting vessels will be. You won't be able to see them from the islands. There's going to be at least a 50 nautical mile limit away from these islands. So it will not be on the islands themselves. The islands aren't very big. That's the only land that they have to work with. It's going to be in 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 their citizens, a large dyspora in other parts of the world, because they're chasing jobs. 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. They already are working on the ships 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 I think that lessons from the past can be used successfully going forward.

[A]

Well, look, that's how I got sucked into this. It was jobs, and it wasn't in the Cook Islands.

[B]

It's a job creator.

[A]

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 got to be tens of thousands.

[B]

It's a combination of both the processing, as you say, it'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 shipbuilding industry. And that's part of it's going to be for the Navy, but a big part of it's going to be for commercial. We pretty much have also walked away from shipbuilding 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 catalysts for other industries that can be brought back into America.

[A]

There's the. That's the CC we were talking about. No. Oh, that. That lower left hand corner.

[B]

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to play right now. I have no idea why that's not working.

[A]

That's what you want to play.

[B]

There you go.

[A]

It.

[B]

Look, it just goes really fast all

[A]

the way to the end. No, that's not it.

[B]

But you see that yellow oval?

[A]

Huh?

[B]

You got Mexico to the right. You got Hawaii to the left.

[A]

See, it just played the whole video

[B]

in just a split second. I have no idea what's going on.

[A]

So that zone.

[B]

I like that pyramid, though, by the way.

[A]

No, that is cool.

[B]

There's got to be something below those Pyramids. But we'll save that for another call. There you go. Now it's working.

[A]

You know that?

[B]

There you go.

[A]

There it is.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Something that's close. It just gives you a sense. So we're talking 22, 23, 24,000ft.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, about that. I mean, that's pretty deep.

[A]

It's deep.

[B]

You won't have any divers down there. It's all robotics. It's all AI. It's actually, it's this kind of stuff that future engineers should be excited to be working with.

[A]

Look, I mean, I came to it part of it.

[B]

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.

[A]

No, but an industry like this that's this nascent, it occurs to me, you need engineers, you need geologists, you need

[B]

environmentalists, you need marine surveyors. You need people that can run ships safely run ships and manage robotics and everything that go on them.

[A]

You need adventurers. You need. I mean, I came. My old friend Greg Stem, I used to narrate documentaries he made for the Discovery Channel. He's diving on wrecks. And I remember him saying to me, you know, we've brought up millions of dollars of silver and gold, and around us the whole time, the treasure's just lying.

[B]

Yeah. I first ran into Greg over 20 years ago, and he was working with my brother, who's a rare coin guy, and Greg was beginning to see how to market all the rare coins. He's been sort of coming up from the ocean. He was also beginning to think about pivoting over to deep sea minerals. So he asked my brother, do you know any mining guys? And.

[A]

And that's how it happened.

[B]

That's how it happened. So I connected with him. But I have to say, when I first, I was sort of a rising star, Rio Tinto at the time, and I was a bit arrogant. I was a bit younger, too. I flipped them off. I said, this is not going to happen in my lifetime, but let's stay in touch. But when I was chief executive of rio Tinto in 2010, I actually called him up. I called Greg up again and I said, you know, I was wrong. This is happening. I hadn't appreciated that. Basically, what's happening, to see the deep sea costs, they're going down quite a bit because the oil industry was pioneering. They were doing all the R and 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. It was going to happen in a couple years, but. Sorry, Greg, right now I have a day job, but let's stay in touch.

[A]

Did you just misread the need or was just. I'm going back to the treaties because it seems like some acronyms were in place. Maybe it was noaa, maybe it was boem. 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. But I don't think we. I don't think we signed that. No.

[B]

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.

[A]

Unclose, was it?

[B]

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 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 still trying to figure out how to regulate this area. They're still trying to figure out how to regulate. It's a United Nations. United Nations. They don't agree on a lot.

[A]

No, they don't.

[B]

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 is not going to happen in anyone's lifetime with that type of paralysis that's taken place, the US look back at its own existing regulations that they had put in place back in the 1980s, and basically, let's work around existing regulations in place. And we have agencies within the US government that are world renowned for their oceanographic research. Let's put them to work and see if we can make this work.

[A]

So you were wrong. Then I fessed up and then you start sniffing around again.

[B]

And to give Greg credit, he put together the band that led to the formation of cic and Mark, just Greg and I, basically, we went out there early part of 2018 to the Cook Islands and, you know, been working pretty hard on that ever since, man. I mean, and to give great credit, he's always been an explorer, whether it's for shipwrecks, for these nodules, and he always will be an explorer. Now we're moving to a point where it's basically, it's the engineers, it's time to do. You gotta get them time to do the environmental science and do the Engineering work and all the next steps, I think.

[A]

When did, when did Drake hit oil? Like 1858, 59.

[B]

Pennsylvania. Yeah.

[A]

Titusville.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, I think about this the first time this was explained to me, it just reminded me of that because

[B]

I thought and you know, if they hadn't discovered oil then and figured out how to use it, we wouldn't have any whales left.

[A]

Right. That's what hit me. It's like, you know, wait a second.

[B]

Yes, we were happily killing all the whales off for the whale oil.

[A]

There was like a dozen sperm whales left or right whales we called them then because they were the right whales to kill and boy did we kill them. So yeah, maybe there's a parallel there. I mean maybe the best hope for some of the most pristine. You know, it's unfortunate that the copper we need is in such abundance under the rainforest, but boy, wouldn't it be something if polymetallic nodules saved the rainforest in the same way we're going to need them both.

[B]

I don't subscribe to the notion as one or the other because it's you and my. Consumption times X billion number people that are basically just using more and more of the stuff. Again. Living in India, you can see it where families that were in absolute poverty. Unfortunately, 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 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 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.

[A]

To what degree do you believe this resource is going to become dominant or consequential? Truly consequential in the future of all this?

[B]

I think it will be 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 going to be growing, but they're not going to be growing at the pace that we as consumers, and not just us relatively affid consumers, but every single person in the world as we consume, we're going to need more than the terrestrial minds can deliver. And this will help fill that gap.

[A]

That's what I'm asking the nodules themselves.

[B]

It's not mutually exclusive. It's not one or the other.

[A]

I get it. In the same way that it's not natural gas or nuclear or coal.

[B]

You need it all. You need it all. Yeah, right.

[A]

But flash ahead 10 years. Do you imagine processing five years, three years if this is for real, if that EO has teeth. And obviously it does. It's not just our merry band of, you know, pranksters going out there to.

[B]

Yeah, you know, I think it's important for us. We. We have to do the foundation work. It's like building a building. Carpenters and electricians, everything else. Before you build the building, 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 with surveys, we got to do the baseline monitoring, all the stuff that we're doing as we speak today. And now as more capital is coming in, we're able to speed that kind of work up and get more scientists involved with that. That foundation allows us then to start putting up. How important? Two by fours. 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.

[A]

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 and they're incredible people.

[B]

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 we've just rolled out two weeks ago, aom, 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 Foundation, Tom, I'm going to

[A]

have him on here as soon as he can come up here.

[B]

We've had people that have been working on sort of classified programs in the deep sea. So you have an incredible talent because there, the enthusiasm, it just, you just feel the enthusiasm when you're in a room with them. That's just. They're excited. Oh yeah. And they're passionate and they're also creative, they're smart, they're hard working. These guys work and gals work 20 hours a day, easy.

[A]

Well, so do you as we start to land the plane here. I just want to try and make it a little more personal because we talk a lot on this show about the nature of work and how purpose and consequential work I guess really is right, you know, because you just think about there's just so many jobs today. There's whole categories of jobs exist that don't really benefit anyone except for the person doing the job, which is fine. But your industry is so fundamental, it's so primal. Is that what attracted you to it or is it what kept you in it?

[B]

I love the outdoors. I love the outdoors. I still do live on a farm now. I mean it was basically, it's a connection with the outdoors. And it also means that I'm equally sensitive to environmental conservation, protection of lands, parks, everything else. Affluent society also wants to have places they can walk. China's found this out. 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. 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 of the windmills. They were trying to get back to what their forebears would have said. 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 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 just keep them pointed the same direction to clear objectives. And those are clear objectives that actually make a difference to society. That gives me a lot of. It keeps me going in the morning.

[A]

Is it addictive, that feeling?

[B]

It could be. And it's contagious too. If you get the right people, it's very contagious. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

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 can't speak for pride in the workplace.

[B]

Pride in the workplace.

[A]

Boy, that, that's, that's it. Yeah, it's that simple pride.

[B]

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.

[A]

Well, my only reaction to that is I can't like, I can't point to pride. It's like the blockchain, you know, it's like the cloud. I know they're there. 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. You know how you're doing.

[B]

You get it? Yes.

[A]

You know.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so, you know, for you, Tom, I mean you're a miner who lives on a farm or are you a farmer who lives in a mine?

[B]

I think it would be probably better called a gentleman's farm.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And where is it?

[B]

It's in New Jersey.

[A]

You're still in Jersey.

[B]

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 stayed there. I was the only wanderer in the group. But it was really interesting going back to where you grew up 40 years later and see some of it's roughly the same, you know how it is. Some is roughly the same and some is different. You know, some more buildings here, there that whatever you sort of feel like you're coming home. It was, it felt good.

[A]

Thomas Wolfe was, you know, right and wrong, you know, you can go home again. It's just kind of weird sometimes, you

[B]

know, I enjoyed coming home. Yeah.

[A]

So our company, American Ocean Minerals.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Formed around several other entities that have been at this a long time. And you're bringing like minded people that

[B]

all were pointed in the same direction. They'll have the right consciousness of what? Doing it correctly, of meeting needs for 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. We're going to need more of these.

[A]

We're going to need or whatever's next,

[B]

Whatever it is, whatever it is, we're going to consume the stuff. And so it's about finding the best way of doing it. Finding 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 you got to earn and relearn that license to operate and work around people that you love to work with what's not better than that?

[A]

You know what's better than that? Not letting China dictate terms to be independent.

[B]

I was talking. There's a certain thing about competition. I'm a huge advocate of space exploration. And when it was the US And Soviet Union, we put the first landers on Mars. We got Voyagers that are way out 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. Are we fearful of that? Well, yes, 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 Artemis program. I think, as Americans, we should be proud of what we have achieved by going back to the moon. And that will be followed with robotics that'll be landing and setting up robotic bases that will be supplementing humans there. There's helium there. There's water there. Elon wants to go to Mars. I'm all for that. That's great stuff.

[A]

How did you feel when you saw the Artemis pride?

[B]

Pride. Pride. Yeah, we're back.

[A]

Because they couldn't have done it without metal.

[B]

Yeah, Yeah.

[A]

I love it. All right. Well, to sum up, it's a polymetallic 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. Probably some water in there.

[B]

There's some water in there, and there's a lot of titanium. We got the metallurgist got to figure out how to get the titanium out. But that's the one that's got me excited.

[A]

So there's metallurgy involved, too?

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

This touches on it.

[B]

This is science. Science and engineering.

[A]

It's already been fun. I can't wait to see what the future holds. And for what it's worth, my foundation will do everything we can to help reinvigorate the trades through this door, too. It's just one more industry, Tom, that's going to need.

[B]

We need the supply chains. We need the metal coming into the U.S. ideally, it's mines in the U.S. we have to get through some of these permitting complete obstacles that we have now. And I think that's being worked on. It's not solved yet, but 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 only a Few hundred mining engineers are being graduated from US universities a year now. That's disgraceful. That's absolutely disgraceful. It's not the university's fault, it's just that. And it's not the individual's fault. It's 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 multi generations. But we need the supply chain in order to actually be successful with re industrialization. Bring back the trades jobs, bring back pride to the trade jobs and then we can move on with all the next technologies because robotics will be one, fusion will be one. When they start mixing AI and quantum

[A]

mechanics and fusion, out of my league. I don't even know what to say.

[B]

It's going to be an interesting world. Then it's not going to mean less metals consumed. That's pretty much guaranteed.

[A]

Right. And that's what makes sense to my brain, is that 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

[B]

and more power to him for those dreams, more power.

[A]

But the answer is down there at the bottom of the ocean. The grandest, most ambitious esoteric dream anchored by the most fundamental it's mineral abundance.

[B]

And again, 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 proper sensitivity to what can be done there and what can be done to minimize. Not eliminate, I recognize that, but minimize and mitigate the environmental impacts.

[A]

You know, and in the spirit of competition. I think if people are listening to this and genuinely curious about the industry, which is moving quickly in the same way America and China are being America and China. We're not the only player out there. I think of the metals company who Gerard Baron has been telling this story really well for like 10 years.

[B]

And they've been doing some great scientific work.

[A]

Yeah. And so I think it's a big tent. And when I hear him talk about the inevitability of all of it, you know, it's exciting. I'm psyched for you and us. We're the only American platform company that's going to touch all of this with

[B]

the breadth of skill set, the capital that we have. 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.

[A]

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 when the Agent Smith has Neo in a headlock and 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?

[B]

That's the sound of inevitability.

[A]

Yeah, that's what I meant about Titusville and Drake. Yeah, whatever. That strike left.

[B]

And fracking and horizontal drilling. Because. Horizontal drilling. Fracking. You know, I'm involved with Continental on a joint venture. They're wonderful guys. Yeah, I was just there on Monday and they're wonderful guys.

[A]

That's why you were in Oklahoma City.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

He's become a friend of mine.

[B]

He's a pioneer. He's a pioneer in what they've done.

[A]

He changed.

[B]

And what they're doing now, even now, every two or three years, visiting or visiting a well pad, you see the advances that they're putting in there, the scientific advances, the engineering advances. To take a piece of drill steel like that, just solid drill like you'd see in the back of a truck, and have it bend like that two and a half 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 property boundary. Now, they could do U turn. They can make a U turn and go back again. So this is technology that, as a minor. It boggles my mind.

[A]

Well, it's a miracle, you know, and for me, I don't have any of the skills that you have or. Or Harold, or bruises or bruises. I got a couple of those. But what I've got is an appreciation for words and how, like the idea that fracking literally became the F word in all of environmental. I mean, it's like. I think you could go back to that movie Gasland, remember?

[B]

Yep.

[A]

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, but it was so powerful. And from a PR standpoint, just from a positioning standpoint, it just created a massive uphill lift.

[B]

And that was shallow ground. It was early technology. Yeah, that was 20 plus years ago. And you know what has evolved with proper sensitivity to the environmental effects? They're not putting down chemicals now. Basically, it's water and sand that they're using to basically extract. And they're doing it cleanly. They're giving the farmers in the area good royalties. Basically, it supplements the farming business. It helps those economies. And by the way, when the Europeans are dealing with 6 to 7 to $9 per Mcf gas prices at their burner, we've got a dollar sixty.

[A]

I just for the life of me, you know, if this table were the oil patch 40 years ago, it would be covered with rigs like every half acre, if that. I mean, they were right next to each other. Today there's one, yeah.

[B]

And if you go into Permian now, West Texas, you fly over that and you see nothing but drill wells all over the place. They're very densely packed. And every once in a while you see in the middle of it one modern rig that's basically covering all the ground of hundred rigs back in the day.

[A]

I know we're out of time, but people need to understand that, man. One hole goes down 2,000ft and then that's a miracle.

[B]

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. They compare nodules and something that does require technology. Not anything new technology, just proper innovations and some basically good engineering. This is the equivalent of fracking 20 years ago.

[A]

That's perfect.

[B]

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. Things we need to do to re industrialize.

[A]

What a pleasure, man. You have an enormous brand.

[B]

Great to see you again.

[A]

It's a great resume.

[B]

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.

[A]

So thanks for coming out.

[B]

Great to see you again.

[A]

My regards to the Mrs. And you

[B]

will love her book.

[A]

Okay. What's it called again?

[B]

It's about her in Alaska when she was my age.

[A]

I can't wait. This is Tom's wife talking about. Yes. Gonna read her book. All right, I'll see you on the other side. I'll see you folks next week. If you leave some stars, could you make it five? And before you go, could you please subscribe? If you leave some stars, could you make it five and before you go could you please subscribe? If you leave some stars could you make it five and before you. Before you go. Could you please subscribe

[B]

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[C]

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