Victor Vescovo

And by the way, there are no rare earth metals in seafloor nodules.

There are only trace amounts.

And that's another dirty, people say that there are, because I think it helps support the national security angle, but look at any academic paper.

There are no economic quantities of rare earth metals in seafloor nodules.

There just aren't.

I think Australia is the real key.

We also have a deep military partnership now with Australia.

I can't think of a better partnership than we supply them nuclear submarines and they supply us nickel, cobalt, and all these other raw ores that we would then process in the U.S.

Again, if we're willing to make the massive economic and environmental investments

sacrifices to process metal in the U.S.

They could, but they're also a Western liberal democracy.

But they are in the far Western desert, so it might be simpler for them to do it.

It's possible.

That gets into geopolitical negotiations.

But

basically replicating China's strategy, but for Australia, but also other countries.

For manganese, South Africa, for nickel, you could also go to New Caledonia, all these other countries.

There's a method to do it, but it's disconnected to needing to go to the seafloor.

Very interesting.

Everybody loves to talk about Titanic.