The minerals that rule our world
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We believe it's possible to extract enormous amounts of critical minerals and rare earths, which you know we need for technology and high technology in the process.
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Hello, friends. Ready for a new adventure? Today, we're going to learn everything about minerals.
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My name is Ernest Scheider. I'm a journalist at Reuters where I write about critical minerals. I'm also the author of a book called The War Below, Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives.
All right, Ernest, we promised the people we'd explain what is going on with the president and his fixation on critical minerals. Go ahead.
Well, I think there's a realization by President Trump and those in his orbit that the United States produces relatively few of these critical minerals within its own borders. And that countries like China and others have large reserves and produce and process a lot of them. And so as our world becomes increasingly electrified, we're going to need a lot more of these critical minerals, not just in the United States, but globally. And so there's definitely a realization that we need to have more of these, not just for things like laptops and cell phones and electric vehicles. but also for key pieces of equipment used by the military, you know, fighter jets, submarines, laser guided missiles, et cetera. They're all made with critical minerals, some of them very niche and specific critical minerals. But the United States produces and processes very few of these today.
So that's part of the reason why you're seeing the administration in Washington and especially President Trump make a big push for new, fresh supplies.
All right. So President Trump, as he sometimes does, has become obsessed with something. But it's something, as you're telling us, it's something quite important. What are critical minerals exactly?
So when we think, Noelle, about the periodic table of the elements and stay with me here, you don't don't fall asleep.
Sure.
There's a whole host of items on that periodic table of the elements. And so copper might be the one that people might know the most about. It's used in wiring, it's used in motors and many other electronics. Lithium is used in lithium ion batteries, as the name of course implies. But the lithium ion battery really started to take off in the 1990s and early 2000s.
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