Victor Vescovo

I've served in our military.

I want us to be a dominant metal supplier.

I want us to have strategic capabilities.

But the issue is there are hard, realistic facts in the world

We do not have huge deposits of nickel and cobalt in the US.

We do have copper.

And copper, we're opening up a great new mine in Arizona that'll supply a lot of copper to the United States.

Those are great investments.

I love what the administration has done with a direct investment into a rare earth metal mining company in the US.

I think that's a great move.

I think that we should work much more closely with Australia, the Philippines, and New Caledonia, which have terrestrial sources of ore.

that if we choose to make the multi-billion dollar investments in processing in the US, we could do that.

That's what China did.

They went to Indonesia and locked up Indonesia in this partnership to produce a lot of strategic metals.

We could do the same, but they don't have to come from the sea floor.

In fact, I just think it's not going to be economically valuable to do it.

Use the tried and true technology and mine it in Australia or some of these other mines with our allies.

That would be the way to counter their strategy.

I think it's just, it's a very expensive way to get metal.

And there are only a couple of them that you need.