There&#x27;s a clear consensus that America hollowed out its critical minerals base. How to rebuild it is less settled. Alex Grant of Magrathea Metals and Wes Spurlock of Principal Mineral join Jonathan to discuss the processing technology, labor force, and how government can catalyze private capital investment in the sector rather than replace it.

Rebuilding America's Critical Minerals Base

Cogs of War

Welcome to the Cogs of War podcast. I'm Ryan Evans, Executive Editor of the Cogs of War Vertical, brought to you by War on the Rocks and Booz Allen Hamilton. Today, I am joined by Alex Grant, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Magrithia Metals, a U.S.-based startup producing magnesium from seawater and brines using a new electrolytic process, and Wes Burlock, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Principal Mineral, a startup that acquires and relaunches midstream manufacturing firms such as the Solar Group, a maker of printed circuit board materials.

Gentlemen, thank you for joining Cogs of War. Thanks for having us. It's awesome to be here. Hey, good afternoon. To set the stage for our listeners, critical minerals are elements the U.S. government deems essential to economic and national security. There are about 60 of these, ranging from rare earth elements to copper and lead. The supply chain in simple form runs from exploration to extraction to processing and refining to midstream manufacturing, which is turning refined material into metals, alloys, magnets, and so on, and finally to end-use products. So let's start with the big picture.

What does our vulnerability look like, and what has the government been doing? I've been working in this space from the government perspective for the last 20 years in the Air Force. We retired out of the Office of Strategic Capital and Half Works, and what we found as part of the biggest issue with a lot of this was we have a lot of government support with regards to how we buy capabilities.

Rebuilding America's Critical Minerals Base

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.

Rebuilding America's Critical Minerals Base

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast, not the earnings call.

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.