00:00:00
okay so uh i wanted to introduce
00:00:01
somebody uh this is uh
00:00:05
an incredible story of a turnaround
00:00:08
of a business that impacts a lot of us
00:00:11
in america if you care about climate
00:00:12
change etc uh his name is jim lutinski
00:00:15
and uh
00:00:17
here's a guy who had all the success in
00:00:19
the world
00:00:20
running a hedge fund successfully
00:00:23
a business called mollycorp goes into
00:00:25
bankruptcy
00:00:26
he basically puts his entire fund in it
00:00:29
brings it out of bankruptcy
00:00:31
manages to build one of the first mines
00:00:34
that was completely cleared you heard
00:00:35
what elon said about california in
00:00:37
california
00:00:39
that mines some of these rare earths and
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critical metals that we need to make
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permanent magnets that we use in
00:00:43
electric motors
00:00:45
um
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on the front lines of climate change
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building factories now
00:00:50
in south carolina with gm et cetera et
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cetera so jim's just going to walk you
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through a few things and we're going to
00:00:54
talk about some climate change stuff
00:00:59
[Music]
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and they've just gone crazy
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[Music]
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hey everyone so i'm jim uh i used to run
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a hedge fund
00:01:18
and uh i'm now i'm an accidental
00:01:19
industrialist
00:01:21
um so i want to take you through that
00:01:22
journey
00:01:24
um and then while i do that uh it'll you
00:01:26
know we'll
00:01:28
go through the problem that i'd like to
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solve just to provide some context so i
00:01:31
think um if if we think about a lot of
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the things that just came up with
00:01:35
respect to the economy um it's been
00:01:38
about a decade plus since the global
00:01:41
financial price uh crisis
00:01:43
and in that decade plus we've been in
00:01:45
this environment where there's been
00:01:47
essentially
00:01:48
a full-on boom a lot of money printing
00:01:50
and essentially a
00:01:52
a very low or negative cost of capital
00:01:55
in growth in technology right and and
00:01:58
what we've seen now i guess we're we're
00:01:59
on the uh the beginning stages of of the
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aftermath of experiencing that economic
00:02:04
enema as was just discussed but
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um we we have just been through this
00:02:10
period of of over a decade where there's
00:02:11
been you know all this money that has
00:02:13
gone gone to growth
00:02:15
and what has happened during that time
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simultaneously is the real economy has
00:02:20
been starved
00:02:22
you haven't seen i doubt many of you
00:02:24
have friends that are investing in new
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steel mills or aluminum mills or nickel
00:02:27
mines maybe nickel mines now right
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but
00:02:31
while the real economy has been starved
00:02:33
actually interestingly
00:02:35
we haven't noticed it so much one
00:02:36
because we're just starting to scale
00:02:39
into electrification
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but china's made investments
00:02:44
so
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pretty much all of the incremental steel
00:02:48
and aluminum and commodities capacity in
00:02:50
the world over the last decade has come
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online uh because you know china has led
00:02:55
the way and you know as an aside
00:02:57
um interestingly about 80 percent
00:03:00
of the aluminum and 80 percent of the
00:03:03
steel production in china has done with
00:03:04
coal so not only has this been
00:03:06
um
00:03:07
you know not only have they sort of
00:03:09
taken over the real stuff
00:03:11
and this isn't about uh you know
00:03:14
where wherever you are on the on the
00:03:15
spectrum of is you know are they just a
00:03:18
really tough competitor or is this you
00:03:20
know some kind of economic world war
00:03:22
three it doesn't matter
00:03:23
what matters is is that the incremental
00:03:25
stuff in the real world has really the
00:03:28
the way has been led by china
00:03:30
and
00:03:31
uh and and so
00:03:33
when we think about what's now happening
00:03:34
in the world as we electrify
00:03:36
uh
00:03:37
i wanna
00:03:38
move on to the next one here
00:03:41
um i think one good thing about going
00:03:43
after elon is i don't have to really
00:03:45
explain this chart
00:03:48
we are electrifying
00:03:49
and um as we electrify what a lot of
00:03:53
people might not fully understand
00:03:55
is that while all this real stuff has
00:03:57
come online
00:03:59
the chinese have actually moved
00:04:00
downstream
00:04:01
very intelligently and so when we think
00:04:03
about a lot of people may have heard of
00:04:05
china 2025
00:04:06
but a lot of people probably haven't
00:04:08
heard of
00:04:09
china 2035 which is the current mo which
00:04:12
is to move downstream into
00:04:14
standardization and so actually when we
00:04:16
look around the world today
00:04:18
four
00:04:19
of the top 10
00:04:20
oems
00:04:22
are chinese by global battery electric
00:04:25
share
00:04:27
and so when we think about the single
00:04:29
largest private employer in the country
00:04:31
the auto industry we think about all
00:04:33
these industries
00:04:34
um that are mineral intensive
00:04:37
the chinese are actually have moved
00:04:38
downstream
00:04:40
and these are these are very mineral
00:04:42
intensive industries so what this slide
00:04:43
shows
00:04:44
is
00:04:45
as we go from a fossil fuel world
00:04:48
to an electrification world which
00:04:51
you know we all i think everyone in this
00:04:52
room believes is is fake complete
00:04:55
um and this actually excludes steel and
00:04:58
aluminum
00:04:59
uh just in the the content of copper
00:05:04
nickel lithium and then what i focus on
00:05:06
rare earths
00:05:07
and some of these other things
00:05:09
there's seven times as much content
00:05:11
and so when we think about the
00:05:13
the past of the fossil fuel driving
00:05:17
geopolitical
00:05:18
uh gamesmanship and power in the world
00:05:21
the future is about minerals and
00:05:25
what i focus on are rare earths and
00:05:28
so
00:05:28
um we and i'm going to get to to my
00:05:31
journey as an accidental uh
00:05:33
industrialism in it but but what you can
00:05:35
see here is rare earth's um they're kind
00:05:38
of the way to think about it is sort of
00:05:39
like a
00:05:40
a young cousin of semiconductors
00:05:42
uh to to the eevee business so
00:05:46
regardless of of how electrification
00:05:48
happens regardless of battery chemistry
00:05:51
how that
00:05:52
energy gets to a motor that motor moves
00:05:54
via magnets and so this industry is
00:05:57
expected to explode
00:06:00
and it's not just
00:06:02
it's not just evs
00:06:03
it's you know wind turbines drones
00:06:05
robots can anyone actually guess
00:06:07
where this robot is from
00:06:09
this is uh it's actually from short
00:06:10
circuit johnny number five but i'm
00:06:12
hoping elon will uh get us a better
00:06:15
robot of the future but when we think
00:06:16
about all these industries magnetics um
00:06:19
it's it's really powerful
00:06:21
so
00:06:22
um
00:06:23
that's where i'm focused and and this is
00:06:24
just an example of the commodity needs
00:06:27
as we electrify if we take uh those
00:06:29
projections
00:06:30
of what's going to happen in
00:06:31
electrification just in my space so this
00:06:34
is ndpr this is the the stuff that we
00:06:36
make the input into magnetics
00:06:38
um
00:06:39
you can see there's a huge deficit uh
00:06:41
that is looming
00:06:43
and here's moving on
00:06:45
look at my space here's the challenge so
00:06:48
outside of us this entire supply chain
00:06:51
is essentially domiciled in china
00:06:54
and
00:06:55
it doesn't even have to be nefarious but
00:06:57
what happens when
00:06:59
the largest manufacturers in the world
00:07:00
are all competing for what i showed you
00:07:02
on that prior slide
00:07:04
uh a shortage of supply and we've seen
00:07:06
lots of headlines whether it's the
00:07:07
semiconductor issue
00:07:08
um or you know just today there was a
00:07:11
headline that rivien is fighting with
00:07:13
the supplier over seat costs you know
00:07:14
all these things where we're seeing the
00:07:16
shortages in the supply chain that are
00:07:18
that are flowing through
00:07:20
um
00:07:21
if there's an allocation of materials
00:07:24
and the materials are controlled
00:07:28
by china or another geopolitical rival
00:07:31
which downstream businesses do we think
00:07:33
are going to get those materials and
00:07:34
this is actually now an existential
00:07:36
issue for all of us
00:07:38
um
00:07:39
so back to my story um so this is
00:07:42
mountain pass this is the mine chamoth
00:07:44
mentioned that um
00:07:46
we bought this at a bankruptcy in my
00:07:48
fund so uh going back about five years
00:07:50
ago
00:07:51
this
00:07:52
site went bankrupt
00:07:54
uh it was a public company it sort of it
00:07:56
rose and then it fell
00:07:58
and nobody believed that we could
00:07:59
compete against china and in fact i had
00:08:02
to we we showed up i showed up in the
00:08:04
delaware courthouse steps
00:08:06
um
00:08:06
i mean it was literally like out of a
00:08:08
movie there were other creditors pushing
00:08:09
to send this thing into bankruptcy and
00:08:11
you know you look at this thing you're
00:08:12
like wait this is the
00:08:14
one of the most valuable rarest
00:08:16
materials mines in the world
00:08:18
and
00:08:19
um and this is the future this is a
00:08:21
material for electrification and no one
00:08:23
wants it not only does no one want it
00:08:25
but people think that actually we can't
00:08:27
even produce here economically because
00:08:29
the chinese have taken over the industry
00:08:31
and so we actually kicked in a couple
00:08:33
million dollars just to keep it in care
00:08:35
maintenance just to keep the eight
00:08:36
employees on site going so that this
00:08:39
thing could actually keep its permit
00:08:40
through the bankruptcy because otherwise
00:08:42
they were just going to raise it to the
00:08:43
ground
00:08:44
so
00:08:44
we
00:08:45
we uh went through that journey
00:08:48
and uh we ended up buying it and so
00:08:49
these assets this is about 2 billion of
00:08:51
replacement cost not to mention the fact
00:08:54
that um you know this is one of the
00:08:56
marquee sites in the world and and um
00:08:58
you know it's in a stable jurisdiction
00:09:00
all these assets up over here to the
00:09:02
left these are what make it
00:09:04
environmentally friendly so we don't put
00:09:06
anything back into the water supply
00:09:08
we have dry tailings which essentially
00:09:10
means that um
00:09:12
for sure we're the cleanest rare
00:09:13
operation in the world if you go onto
00:09:15
youtube you can kind of see how
00:09:16
historically some of that mining and
00:09:18
processing is done but no one wanted it
00:09:20
um and everyone thought that that this
00:09:23
couldn't be done but we we bought it out
00:09:24
of bankruptcy we we took on it was sort
00:09:26
of a a distressed turnaround uh uh and
00:09:30
startup at the same time we had we had
00:09:32
no accounting software um we literally
00:09:34
had eight people in a mine and i show up
00:09:36
i'm a hedge fund manager
00:09:37
um and uh you know people thought i was
00:09:40
pretty insane
00:09:41
um and probably if i knew what i was
00:09:44
getting into
00:09:45
like i said it was an accident no but i
00:09:47
couldn't believe that no one else wanted
00:09:48
to do this and i frankly i felt as an
00:09:50
american
00:09:51
somebody had to do this and you know
00:09:53
there i was on the courthouse steps and
00:09:55
so i went for it um
00:09:57
and you know fast forward to today and
00:10:00
we're now you know we're now public we
00:10:02
went as jamal mentioned we went public a
00:10:03
couple years ago or six and a half
00:10:05
billion dollar market cap
00:10:06
um it's been you know obviously a
00:10:08
massive thank you
00:10:11
um
00:10:12
so this has been a massive home run for
00:10:15
for myself and my investors but more
00:10:16
importantly i i
00:10:18
um and i don't belittle that ultimately
00:10:20
we're capitalists here we want to do a
00:10:21
great job for our for our clients and
00:10:22
ourselves um but i hope that we can kind
00:10:25
of contextualize this for what needs to
00:10:27
happen throughout our economy because i
00:10:30
do think that um as painful as the
00:10:32
adjustment may be that we're now in this
00:10:34
period that we're about to be in
00:10:36
um
00:10:37
with with what you know some of the the
00:10:40
as the capital comes out of the growth
00:10:41
space there is going to be a big
00:10:44
beautiful bull market in real stuff
00:10:48
and it is just beginning and i can i'll
00:10:50
give some statistics with the besties i
00:10:52
don't want to ruin my besties time so
00:10:53
i'm going to finish up real quick but
00:10:55
there there's a lot of stuff that needs
00:10:57
to get built and this supply chain stuff
00:10:59
is existential and so what we're doing
00:11:00
at mp you can see our stage one we're
00:11:02
doing we just reported our quarter a
00:11:05
couple weeks ago we're now from a site
00:11:07
four years ago that i had to beg on the
00:11:09
courthouse steps just to keep it alive
00:11:11
we're now doing
00:11:13
approximately 450 million of run rate
00:11:15
ebitda today
00:11:17
um
00:11:18
so
00:11:19
you know this and then
00:11:20
uh we announced the deal we announced
00:11:23
the deal with gm where after actually
00:11:24
have already broken ground in a magnetic
00:11:26
facility in fort worth texas and this is
00:11:28
a scale deal it's not exclusive we
00:11:30
expect to bring in other oems
00:11:32
where we'll be making magnets so we'll
00:11:34
be shipping material that will be
00:11:36
environmentally produced from mountain
00:11:38
pass california over to our site in fort
00:11:40
worth and make magnetics and our goal is
00:11:41
to build a western magnetics champion
00:11:44
um and so i guess with all that i would
00:11:46
say
00:11:47
um hopefully this kind of thing can
00:11:49
inspire you we need the the good news is
00:11:52
there needs to be a lot more stuff like
00:11:53
this so maybe i'll share some stats on
00:11:55
you know some of the other space because
00:11:56
i don't want to make this just about
00:11:57
rare earth but when we think about all
00:11:59
the materials that we need
00:12:01
for this electrification boom uh and the
00:12:03
supply chain that needs to be built
00:12:06
this is like this is the era of it's as
00:12:09
if it's you know the 19s and ford is
00:12:12
just out i mean there is an entire
00:12:14
supply chain and it's not just evs it's
00:12:16
wind turbines it's drones it's robots
00:12:18
and it needs to be a bunch of real stuff
00:12:20
that we all create and so
00:12:22
um i don't think some percentage of us
00:12:26
don't need to necessarily debate whether
00:12:28
crypto is going to go up or down you
00:12:30
know now is a time to pivot i think
00:12:32
because this is something that we need
00:12:33
to do
00:12:34
um to to get uh competitive again so i
00:12:37
guess with that i'll
00:12:38
i'll flip the mic and uh feel the fire
00:12:41
from the besties thank you
00:12:42
[Applause]
00:12:48
tesla in their quarterly earnings said
00:12:50
something to the effect of um you know
00:12:52
we're going to consider becoming a
00:12:54
mining company as well
00:12:56
right and then i think elon said
00:12:57
something on the earnings call which i
00:12:58
thought was really interesting he's like
00:12:59
i encourage every entrepreneur out there
00:13:02
to get into lithium please you know
00:13:04
become a lithium miner right
00:13:08
so maybe if you can just quantify for us
00:13:10
and i you showed the
00:13:12
the the gap for your
00:13:15
for ndpr
00:13:16
but broadly speaking lithium and all the
00:13:18
other things that we need to actually
00:13:20
electrify and get to a reasonable place
00:13:22
in climate change
00:13:24
how behind the curve are we really so
00:13:26
it's a great question and the data is
00:13:29
tough because a lot of it is reliant on
00:13:30
battery chemistry and so we don't know
00:13:33
exactly how much nickel it'll be how
00:13:35
much you know but we do know certainly
00:13:37
lithium nickel copper all of these
00:13:39
things it's multiples we need here's
00:13:42
actually maybe this is a great stat
00:13:44
uh some some good source that i utilize
00:13:47
estimated that
00:13:48
we probably need on the order of
00:13:50
40 to 50
00:13:52
copper and nickel projects over the next
00:13:55
couple decades so call it roughly 200
00:13:57
billion dollars of capex
00:14:00
to satisfy the demand for
00:14:01
electrification that we have over the
00:14:02
next couple decades and what's so
00:14:04
interesting you mentioned and obviously
00:14:06
i assume elon sees this is if you look
00:14:10
at the multiples you know just think
00:14:12
about it from a strict investor point of
00:14:13
view from a financial arbitrage
00:14:15
standpoint look at the multiples of
00:14:16
where auto auto oems trade right or you
00:14:20
know certainly tesla and then look at
00:14:21
what's happening in the mining industry
00:14:23
today so so actually the nickel industry
00:14:24
is dominated by essentially glencorn
00:14:26
valley
00:14:28
those two businesses and i'm not you
00:14:29
know i'm not pitching stocks but as an
00:14:30
investor you know we'll see what the
00:14:32
next penalty those two businesses right
00:14:34
now at today's uh uh commodities prices
00:14:37
are essentially going to free cash flow
00:14:38
themselves out in three years time to
00:14:40
buy and they're buying back stock right
00:14:42
and so this is how how stark the
00:14:44
arbitrage is that in the real economy
00:14:46
mining and materials companies steel
00:14:47
companies are trading at double-digit
00:14:49
free cash flow yields they're buying
00:14:51
back stock they have no leverage in
00:14:52
their businesses and then downstream
00:14:54
everyone's reliant on them and upstream
00:14:56
these guys they don't want to spend to
00:14:58
build out new capacity because the cost
00:15:00
of capital is too high so what's going
00:15:01
to happen is i think you're going to see
00:15:04
maybe an aol time warner moment and i
00:15:05
don't mean it the negative way but i
00:15:07
think you could see a tesla or someone
00:15:08
like that buy upstream into these
00:15:10
industries because ultimately downstream
00:15:12
wow they all realize that the real stuff
00:15:15
is in shortage and you can't have the
00:15:17
enterprise value downstream because it's
00:15:19
like musical chairs how much of your
00:15:21
night
00:15:22
when you're sleeping do you think
00:15:23
there's an x percent chance i'm gonna
00:15:26
have some huge
00:15:27
environmental catastrophe like part of i
00:15:29
think why a lot of folks
00:15:31
you know folks like this who could
00:15:32
probably go into that business
00:15:35
don't is in the back of their mind they
00:15:37
think man this is like this is a lot of
00:15:40
gnarly stuff if something goes wrong how
00:15:42
do you
00:15:43
manage that risk and how and how big is
00:15:45
that risk if we try to do this in
00:15:46
america so the single most important
00:15:48
thing we do at mp
00:15:49
is safety
00:15:50
and we actually on our last service call
00:15:52
said you know last two years we've had
00:15:53
two years without a lost time injury and
00:15:55
we gave everybody every single employee
00:15:57
in the company a cash bonus to celebrate
00:16:00
that milestone which is really critical
00:16:03
the reality is this isn't software right
00:16:05
it's real stuff all we can do is our
00:16:07
best i just think i think frankly as as
00:16:09
a human being as an american i would
00:16:11
rather have
00:16:12
mines being done in america
00:16:14
in the state of california over
00:16:16
elsewhere in the world where i certainly
00:16:18
know that i assure you that nickel
00:16:20
mining in russia is not as
00:16:21
environmentally friendly as it is in
00:16:23
canada well i think most people may or
00:16:24
may not know this but for example all of
00:16:26
the you know cobalt that goes into a lot
00:16:29
of these evs a lot of it comes from drc
00:16:32
and if you go and see the state of
00:16:35
governance in drc women's rights and drc
00:16:37
child rights in drc they're not existent
00:16:40
and so it is a very very complicated
00:16:43
um dirty supply chain that feeds the
00:16:46
beast and even though you may think
00:16:48
you're doing the right thing by you know
00:16:50
driving this plug-in hybrid or you know
00:16:51
your toyota prius if you trace that
00:16:53
stuff back it's a really complicated
00:16:56
place
00:16:57
i think we've all gotten a big education
00:16:59
um on supply chain over the last two
00:17:02
years with kovid and the value may be
00:17:06
of redundancy and what happens if you
00:17:08
give a dictator a little too much power
00:17:10
the germans are learning a hard lesson
00:17:12
about what happens when you shut down
00:17:13
nuclear reactors and decide hey let's
00:17:15
buy our let's buy our energy from putin
00:17:17
yeah uh well that's a great point you
00:17:19
raised about the germans because i think
00:17:21
it's a fair analogy to say that germany
00:17:24
is to not gas as we are to china supply
00:17:27
chain
00:17:27
and so we see we see this coming right
00:17:30
we see and again this is this speaks to
00:17:33
geopolitical leverage yes this is a
00:17:34
national security it's a national
00:17:36
security issue is it not it's a national
00:17:37
security is it is it it's it's a
00:17:39
democracy it's a it's a democracy issue
00:17:41
is it a war issue is it something that
00:17:44
gets to the point where we would have to
00:17:46
go to war if for example we didn't get
00:17:49
the natural resources and critical
00:17:50
elements we need not that you said that
00:17:52
it could not it would happen but could
00:17:53
it happen where it's so important that
00:17:56
all these other countries can electrify
00:17:57
and and well how about this i'll make a
00:18:00
prediction i'll bet that in the next
00:18:02
five years we will see
00:18:04
a major household name oem
00:18:07
fail or need a bailout due to not you
00:18:09
know prices went up on them but lack of
00:18:11
access to
00:18:12
a material some kind of critical
00:18:14
material like you're talking a gm a ford
00:18:16
assembly somebody probably not gm i mean
00:18:18
think about it do we if you think about
00:18:20
it
00:18:21
do we need to even predict this we went
00:18:23
to a number of wars in the middle east
00:18:25
over oil
00:18:27
so if this is the new oil and that is
00:18:29
the analogy
00:18:30
it's clearly gonna cause you know uh
00:18:33
conflicts and the question is
00:18:35
you know are we gonna build a strategic
00:18:37
reserve of these materials do we have a
00:18:39
strategic reserve we talked about the
00:18:41
food supply problem and freeburg
00:18:43
educated us on hey we've got like 30
00:18:45
days of food this country has 90 days of
00:18:47
food do we need to have a strategic
00:18:49
reserve of these rare earth minerals in
00:18:51
the united states jason i just don't
00:18:53
think there'll be enough because when
00:18:54
you think about this is we're talking
00:18:55
about a multi trillions of dollars a
00:18:58
year to electrify across so great the
00:19:00
demand is so great we're talking about
00:19:02
build up supply we can't build up supply
00:19:04
or if we can't we need to put the
00:19:05
capital in and right now and that's why
00:19:08
you know again we'll let the the
00:19:10
investor panel maybe they can can bleed
00:19:12
into this but that's why i think the
00:19:13
whole spaces are screaming by
00:19:15
because if you look across all these
00:19:18
companies the cost of capital is just so
00:19:20
high and so one of two things has to
00:19:21
happen or both which is prices just have
00:19:23
to go vertical
00:19:24
or someone starts taking them out or
00:19:26
we're just not going to have the stuff
00:19:27
to electrify i i
00:19:30
understand
00:19:31
that there's now been demonstrated
00:19:33
significantly more lithium tell me if
00:19:35
i'm off on this in the oceans than there
00:19:37
is in the crust
00:19:38
and there may be systems for extracting
00:19:41
lithium from the oceans that are
00:19:43
electrochemical in nature
00:19:46
that would allow us to kind of access
00:19:47
that resource and will you know
00:19:49
obviously if you can get a system that
00:19:50
can scale you can get it all out very
00:19:52
quickly so i mean have you looked into
00:19:54
these systems you have a sense for the
00:19:55
opportunity let me step back and then
00:19:57
step down to that so investment styles
00:20:00
are cyclical just like industries you
00:20:01
know i believe in cycles right price the
00:20:04
cure for high prices is high prices
00:20:06
there's no question in my mind whether
00:20:08
it's that or there will be someone or
00:20:09
frankly maybe someone in this audience
00:20:11
will have some breakthrough right and so
00:20:13
we will solve this problem
00:20:15
but the challenge is is that i don't
00:20:16
even think that we've ignited
00:20:19
the proper focus and resources to
00:20:21
actually solve this problem and so there
00:20:22
may be that may be an example of a
00:20:24
solution but that'll take five to ten
00:20:26
years but in the meantime there's
00:20:28
you know there's a lot of resources that
00:20:30
need to be applied to adam jonas who is
00:20:31
the
00:20:34
auto analyst at morgan stanley calls
00:20:37
this the
00:20:38
mother of all cat-back cycles i think
00:20:40
right and i think his estimate was like
00:20:42
you know something like three trillion
00:20:44
dollars of capex needs to get spent over
00:20:46
the next decade even to have a fighting
00:20:48
chance on all of this stuff
00:20:51
and so if you're looking at new areas so
00:20:54
take your ndpr mp materials hat off
00:20:58
but if you're in the same position you
00:21:00
were
00:21:02
back then now
00:21:03
not not really you don't need to go to
00:21:04
the courthouse steps but
00:21:06
where would you be looking
00:21:08
you know would you look at lithium would
00:21:10
you look at nickel would you look at
00:21:12
trying to do what you know china's doing
00:21:14
and create better and simpler and
00:21:16
cheaper chemistries for batteries like
00:21:18
where would you spend your time right
00:21:20
now if you weren't doing mp so
00:21:22
i i think you actually said it perfectly
00:21:24
well in the lead in which is just
00:21:25
anything that is real stuff and so yeah
00:21:29
all of it lithium copper
00:21:32
nickel steel aluminum all these areas
00:21:35
that have been starved the cost of
00:21:36
capital is just so high
00:21:39
across the board that if you can come up
00:21:41
with solutions to deliver the shortages
00:21:43
and again i'm not saying the next three
00:21:44
months maybe we could have a brutal
00:21:46
recession for six months but we see the
00:21:48
long-term five ten-year trend i think
00:21:50
anywhere you look in this space you're
00:21:52
looking in the right direction it's a
00:21:53
it's it's a wind at your back as opposed
00:21:55
to and again i'm not you know taking a
00:21:57
view but to come up with a new
00:21:58
cryptocurrency right now it's it's it's
00:22:00
a huge wind at your back relative to
00:22:02
can you could you get your
00:22:05
mind
00:22:06
operational in today's political
00:22:08
environment
00:22:09
do you think like if you had to start
00:22:10
from scratch or if you found
00:22:12
a new thing in nevada or
00:22:15
you know wherever it is
00:22:16
that's a great question and that's the
00:22:17
challenges that
00:22:19
it takes to to get any of these things
00:22:20
it takes a decade right it takes if you
00:22:22
have all the capital in place all the
00:22:24
human capital all that just the you know
00:22:27
going through that process to build it
00:22:28
the materials cost and so
00:22:31
uh
00:22:32
could i do it i think the world needs it
00:22:33
and i think that what we do
00:22:35
environmentally is so unique that i
00:22:37
think we could get it done but
00:22:39
this is a big challenge and i think
00:22:40
frankly it's a it's a
00:22:42
you know you guys were talking in the
00:22:43
last session about
00:22:44
um we need to come together this is a
00:22:46
big time area where we need to come
00:22:47
together there should be a grand bargain
00:22:49
right there should be the
00:22:51
environmentalists should say
00:22:52
okay i accept that we need this stuff i
00:22:55
accept that we don't want it to be only
00:22:57
made in russia and china
00:22:59
and they should loosen up on some of the
00:23:01
permitting stuff and i think the people
00:23:03
who are just like you know drill drill
00:23:05
mind mind mind don't care need to accept
00:23:07
that we need to have really tough
00:23:08
standards um and i think we should have
00:23:10
some kind of grand bargain and it could
00:23:12
be you know tax policy focused on it but
00:23:14
there needs to be some kind of
00:23:16
coming together in our country to
00:23:18
recognize that we need this stuff i mean
00:23:20
let's be intellectually honest people
00:23:23
are hypocrites the the people in the eu
00:23:25
people the united states they want the
00:23:28
energy they want to cheat they're
00:23:29
complaining about the expense of you
00:23:32
know even a modest increase in energy
00:23:34
across 10 20
00:23:36
which they could withstand they will
00:23:38
complain about it and they they will not
00:23:40
allow fracking in their country but
00:23:42
they're more than willing to let russia
00:23:44
frack for it they don't want the cobalt
00:23:46
coming out of the ground in california
00:23:48
they're more than willing to let 15 year
00:23:50
olds dig it out of the ground without a
00:23:52
mess eight-year-olds
00:23:54
as horrific as it is and there is
00:23:56
intellectually dishonest it's hypocrisy
00:23:58
and i think we have to own the fact that
00:24:00
we want to live in large houses and we
00:24:02
want to blow the air conditioner on
00:24:05
some ridiculous setting america's homes
00:24:07
are three times bigger than other homes
00:24:09
so to build on this two two very quick
00:24:11
stories there's a massive deposit of
00:24:13
lithium in nevada which would be enough
00:24:15
to basically feed tesla and another oem
00:24:19
okay so this would get probably
00:24:21
somewhere between one and one and a half
00:24:23
million cars pure uh electric on the
00:24:26
road by 2030
00:24:27
and they're they were completely
00:24:30
permitted
00:24:31
by the blm the bureau of land management
00:24:34
and there was a lawsuit that was filed
00:24:36
and it's still wrangling its way through
00:24:38
the federal court system and what it is
00:24:40
is a claim that
00:24:42
the there is an upper wood grouse
00:24:44
that could be endangered um
00:24:47
through this mining they have yet to
00:24:49
find an actual upper wood grouse in the
00:24:51
area right
00:24:53
but nothing can happen theoretically and
00:24:54
so the problem is that we've now delayed
00:24:56
two years you know it could get resolved
00:24:58
this year but it could be another two or
00:25:00
three years which means the lithium
00:25:01
isn't actually available until 20.
00:25:04
global warming continues to happen
00:25:05
that's one story second story is that
00:25:07
just yesterday the california
00:25:10
uh the city of costa mesa
00:25:12
rejected a bid to build an electrolysis
00:25:14
facility
00:25:16
to create a hundred million liters of
00:25:18
clean water every single day
00:25:21
um
00:25:22
just a desal plant the d cell plant
00:25:24
because they didn't want it
00:25:27
because they're going to lose some
00:25:27
jellyfish or something no they just
00:25:29
didn't want it they thought ah it's
00:25:31
unsightly i don't want this in costa
00:25:32
mesa meanwhile
00:25:34
you know pretty it's a coaster it's a
00:25:35
mesa so you know
00:25:37
uh
00:25:38
and and so to your point when the rubber
00:25:40
meets the road these unfortunate
00:25:41
decisions get made and there's no way to
00:25:44
you know sort of come together these
00:25:46
people want to take 30-minute showers i
00:25:48
mean that's the hypocrisy of it if
00:25:49
americans really want to talk about
00:25:51
conservation first of all 30 minutes
00:25:52
there's nothing wrong with a 30-minute
00:25:53
shower listen
00:25:55
i wasn't calling you out specifically
00:25:56
but since you uncloaked yourself it's
00:25:58
it's gratuitous in fact it's completely
00:26:00
christian
00:26:01
and it's such a great point and my my
00:26:03
entire argument is that we're gonna we
00:26:05
will answer this question as a country
00:26:07
either now or later and the point about
00:26:10
four of the ten largest auto oems in the
00:26:12
world are now chinese companies and so
00:26:14
this is now
00:26:15
a competitive issue and so we can we can
00:26:17
keep kicking the can or we'll face the
00:26:19
crisis are you are you well lost by the
00:26:21
government are you beloved by like can
00:26:22
you kind of like be line and just cut
00:26:24
through the nonsense because of nevada
00:26:26
government looks like you well i think i
00:26:28
i think that it's fair to say that the
00:26:30
the local officials are very happy with
00:26:32
what we've done with what we've achieved
00:26:34
in south carolina right uh the in fort
00:26:36
worth texas the the magnetic facility
00:26:38
you know the we we have some
00:26:40
partnerships with dod the president
00:26:41
announced that the gm facility uh the gm
00:26:43
things in texas in texas and texas um so
00:26:46
i think that there is frankly support
00:26:48
from both sides of the aisle for what
00:26:50
we're doing uh you know there were
00:26:51
executive orders on the rare earth
00:26:52
magnetic industry specifically both in
00:26:54
the trump administration and in the
00:26:56
biden administration so i think what
00:26:58
we're doing is hopefully
00:26:59
nonpartisan um and and frankly i think
00:27:02
all this should be and that that's you
00:27:04
know the point about the grand bargain
00:27:05
but even
00:27:06
you raised a great point about just all
00:27:08
this stuff
00:27:09
it's
00:27:11
you know there's so much pushback and we
00:27:12
need to we need to figure out a way to
00:27:14
get past that because this stuff has to
00:27:15
has to get made i think it's incredible
00:27:17
i mean i'm a huge fan disclaimer i was
00:27:19
also an investor
00:27:20
wow i am not an investment company but
00:27:22
uh we do appreciate you giving us the
00:27:24
education and and we do need to be
00:27:26
independent from communist countries uh
00:27:29
and
00:27:30
really have the supply chain situation
00:27:32
dialed in so we appreciate the hard work
00:27:34
for america and for freedom and i'm a
00:27:35
huge fan of you guys so thank you thank
00:27:37
you
00:27:39
we're all done
00:27:41
we'll let your winners ride
00:27:44
rain man david sacks
00:27:49
[Music]
00:28:24
we need to get
00:28:26
back
00:28:29
[Music]
00:28:34
i'm going on
00:28:36
[Music]
