#231 Gerard Barron - CIA Project Azorian & Deep Sea Mining That Could Change the World

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Jared Baron, welcome to the show, man.

Such a privilege to be here.

Thank you.

It's a privilege for me.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming.

You first popped up on my radar from mutual friend Cole Fackler from GBRS.

And so we started looking at India.

And I've been interviewing a couple of different guys that have been mining different areas of the universe, I guess.

And

so haven't talked to anybody doing it under the sea.

So I thought this would be, I'm just fascinated by innovators and what you guys are doing.

So I really appreciate you coming.

Well, appreciate the chance to talk to on your platform to a new audience.

Perfect.

Well, everybody starts with an introduction.

Here we go.

Jared Baron.

Entrepreneur hailing from a Queensland, Australia dairy farm.

Built global companies across media, technology, battery manufacturing, and resource development.

Chairman and CEO of the Metals Company, leading the charge in deep sea mining.

A first principles thinker committed to resource extraction with minimal impact on people and nature.

A global traveler, splitting time between London, California, and Tonga.

Where the fuck is Tonga?

Well,

I should correct that a tiny bit.

It's more,

you know, Tongaru is a beautiful Pacific Island country, but I should mention Tonga and Nauru, which is also an even smaller country,

little island in the Pacific.

But look, it's a pretty,

I'm a pretty frequent traveler, that's for sure.

And I'm Australian, of course, as you said.

But over the last 14 years, I've been working with Pacific Island countries.

And I mean, they are amazing people.

I mean Tongaru is beautiful.

Nauru is really special.

It's where the birds used to stop when they headed south.

No kidding.

And so it was discovered about you know 80 years ago that it was rich in phosphate and so the Germans and the English and Australians and Kiwis came and took it all.

And you know it was discovered back when good old James Cook was sailing in the world after he discovered Australia and he called it Pleasant Island.

and then everyone came and took all of their beautiful phosphate which was used to feed the world and

and so now you have 80% of the island that's uninhabitable.

Then they handed the country back to the people of Nauru.

Said, how would you like independence now that we've taken everything that you've got?

Yeah.

Right.

I mean, what where's the favorite place?

Where is your favorite place that you've been?

Oh, that's easy.

Australia.

Australia?

I'm a very proud Australian.

Very proud Australian.

Although,

Erica, my partner, said, why don't we get our 23andMe done?

You know, our DNA.

And

I was like, yeah, I'd be interested in that.

Came back 100% Irish.

No kidding.

100%.

Yeah, yeah.

Right on, man.

Yeah.

Right on.

So my ancestors were well-behaved, kept it in the family anyway.

Perfect.

Many generations in Australia.

Perfect.

Well, we've got a couple things to get through before we get into the interview.

And so one thing, first thing is I got a Patreon account.

And Patreon is a community we built.

They've been here with us since the beginning.

And

when I started this damn thing in my attic, and now we're, what, this is our third studio, hopefully our final, but they've been with us.

through the whole journey.

Yeah.

And they're the reason I get to be here with you today.

So one of the things we do is we offer them them the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question.

So this is from Eric Alger.

Jared, most people see you today as the front man for deep sea mining.

But before the metals company, you were behind Nautilus Minerals, which collapsed under controversy.

What did that failure teach you about?

How much of this battle is really technology and environment, and how much of it is winning the story the world believes?

Well, I don't think it's about winning the story, but maybe

great question so I can set the record straight.

Because in 2001, a friend of mine went to work for Nautilus.

He was the second employee there.

And he was telling me about it.

And I said, man, that sounds amazing.

He said, yeah, and we've got no money.

Can you put some money?

And it's like, I mean, I was building my own company at the time, but I was like, yeah, yeah, of course, of course.

Well, because I thought it was such an obvious idea, and they were focused on a different type of metals.

They were focused on seafloor massive sulfides, which is where the chimneys pop up between the tectonic plates.

Anyway, so I agreed to fund the first one and a half million dollars.

And it,

despite it almost sending me broke at the time, because I was building another company as well.

at the same time, which needed money.

It ended up being a great success.

And we floated the company in 2006 and i sold out in 2007 8 pretty well the same time my friend left the company and but i never worked for it

and i

but i was very helpful in attracting other capital and then the big guys came in we raised four or five hundred million dollars and then of course uh after i sold out papua new guinea the the country in 2012 maybe decided they wanted to invest as well because they were focused on a project up in Papua New Guinea and by law the government has the right to invest so they said we want to invest so they did

and then what happened I'm winding the clock forward now keep in mind I sold out in 2007 in 2018 the owners

there were two main people funding the company even though it was public and they said look

we're the only two people that appear to be happy to keep funding it.

Why don't we put the assets up for sale?

So it was really called an administration, a reorganization.

No one came forward, so they bought it and privatized it.

And so

2018, you know, I sold out in 2007 and I made some money, some good money out of it, to be honest.

But it was a very different time.

Firstly, it was operating in the territorial waters of Papua New New Guinea.

It was a small resource by comparison because they only ever found millions, single-digit millions of tons of this stuff.

Very high-grade, rich in copper and gold.

Whereas

we've got 2 billion tons of these rocks, like the one in my hands, defined resource of 1.6 billion, but we think about another 400 to 500 million tons of these rocks on our resource.

So very different scale

and also a different time.

You know, the geopolitics weren't as lively back then as they are now.

But I think, you know, that project will get into production.

The people that privatized it are continuing to push forward.

And I think it will be a success.

And,

you know, but these projects are tough.

You know, getting a new industry started is tough.

You know, and we started this company in 2011.

So my biggest gift from Nautilus was made some good money out of it, but it taught me about polymetallic nodules.

And

so in 2011, we started this one.

And here we are, 2025.

And, you know, we're what I believe to be the final stretch before the industry becomes big and commercial.

So that's a very long answer to Eric's question, but yeah.

It's a good answer.

One more thing.

Everybody gets a gift.

Thank you.

I've seen people chewing away at these.

How many packets did

our friend Palmer Lucky eat of these?

Because he seemed to be chewing a lot that day.

He loves them.

Yeah.

He loves them.

Yeah.

I can't remember how many bags, but it was a handful.

So, yeah, he was all hopped up on gummy berries.

Well, thank you.

Well, I bought you a gift today as well.

Oh, I love gifts.

Yeah.

Well, this is a very precious polymetallic nodule.

And we had them

made about five million years old, this one.

We had them made by an artist in Detroit.

And this one is particularly oxidized, turned into gold.

And it's the same as the one that sits on the Resolute Desk.

We prepared one for President Trump when he signed the executive order on April 24

and got the American flag and the coordinates of where we found it.

Oh, man, that is cool.

Oh, man, that's beautiful.

Look at that.

It's going to look amazing on one of these shelves.

Yeah, it's going to go right over there.

Yeah, good, good.

Man, thank you.

This is really cool.

Thank you.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure no one else will give you one of those.

I'm pretty sure they won't either.

Fuck.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I've got to give a shout out to my buddy Andre,

who's my...

you know, one of my partners on this project.

He would love this room.

He would love this room.

Everything about it.

Well,

maybe I'll show him one day.

Yeah, yeah.

I got to give a shout out to Eric Bethel, too.

Oh, yeah, totally.

He told me when I first met him, we had dinner at a place here, and he was telling me about some of the investments that his VC had made.

And the first one that he had brought up is your company.

Actually, he told me about that before we ever even met.

Right.

And told me about what you guys were doing.

And it sounds awesome.

I can't wait to dive into it.

But, you know, and like I said, it's interesting.

I've had, you know,

had people come on, talk about mining the moon, talk about mining asteroids, enriching uranium.

And now you're here.

We're doing it under the sea.

So

it's going to be fascinating.

And, and, but what, what got you interested in, in, in metals, in nodules?

Well.

You know, I'm a

grew up in a dairy farm, went to university, had four jobs in my first year, realized there was no time for a fifth, started the company, and that company worked out pretty well.

And I've been building companies my entire life.

So I'm kind of naturally drawn to things that are,

you know, a little bit unique.

And,

you know, I've been lucky to build some great companies and grow them globally.

And then, as I mentioned, I invested in 2001 in another project, Nautilus.

And then we started this company in 2011.

And originally, I was just going to be a financial backer.

I only decided to step into the ring, you know, and

formally I took over in 2017 and became chairman and CEO.

Before that, we'd hired someone out of one of the big mining companies, and it wasn't working out so well.

And I thought, what do I know about running a mining company, a resource company?

You know, you'd go to BHP or

Freeport to go and find one of them.

But actually,

when I started to dive into,

you know, the data behind this resource and how big it was and how impactful it could be and

to global supply, you know, and of course, a number of things then came along to help as well, like

geopolitics.

has now made this a really hot topic.

You know, critical minerals are on everyone's mind.

And, you know, if we take a step back and apply some of that first principle thinking, 70% of our planet is ocean, yet we don't get metals out of the ocean.

You know, we get a few diamonds, but

they're slowly being replaced by lab-grown diamonds, but we don't get our nickel or copper or cobalt or manganese out of the oceans.

Yet in this one little deposit where we are focused, 70% of the known reserves of nickel and cobalt and manganese sit in the form of these polymetallic nodules.

And they literally just sit on the sea floor like the one in my hand.

And

so it's only a matter of time

that we got around to it.

And there was a false start back in the 70s

when,

and that's another story, right?

Because the CIA were very involved in getting this whole industry started.

Really?

Why so?

Well.

I've got some ideas.

I got a feeling it doesn't have anything to do with mining.

It has nothing to do with mining, but it was a great cover story.

Yeah.

And

the Russian submarine, which had nuclear warheads on it, the K-129,

sank in the Pacific.

It had set sail from a Russian port.

And The Americans were, this is dating back to 1968.

The Americans had already implanted listening devices on the seafloor around the Pacific

so they could detect nuclear explosion and other activities.

And so

when

they were tracking this submarine, and all of a sudden they heard an explosion, and

the Russians didn't have this same technology installed in the oceans.

And so the Americans quickly clocked onto it and the CIA got involved.

But they had to have a reason to be out there because the Russians were looking for their lost submarine and they had no idea where it was.

They could just say, well, it left this port this time and we last heard at this date in this location.

So

the CIA

went ahead and started to plan how they could recover this.

First, they needed to establish were the warheads in place, were they worth recovering?

And when they decided, yes, they were, they said, well, actually, we can't just go and pick them up because the Russians, it'll become an international incident.

We might have World War III on our hands.

And so they said, we need to, there's a lot of polymetallic nodules around them.

And so we need

to use the recovery of these polymetallic nodules as the cover story to go and recover these sunken Russian submarine.

So they thought, well, they're not going to believe that we, the government, are going to be involved.

So who can we get to front it?

Howard Hughes.

Because everyone thought he's a bit crazy.

He'll be up for this.

And so they reached out to Howard Hughes and he said, yeah, of course, no problem.

And so the CIA funded it all.

And there were other companies involved.

And the Glomar Explorer was, you know, became the first deep sea exploration vessel and mining vessel.

And it,

you know, that attracted other people into the industry because, of course, no one else knew about this.

And so then you had other consortia formed, Shell and BP and

Mitsubishi from Japan and many other corporations became involved.

And this whole industry was moving forward.

But then

The United Nations decided they wanted to get involved as well because because they were like, well, who owns the ocean?

Like, we should all agree this set of rules.

Like, we should share these resources in a more equitable manner.

And so 169 countries now

signed on to this treaty called UNCLOS.

But what it meant was America had this leading position when it comes to polymetallic nodules and ocean metals.

But then they decided to step back and see where this international consortia went.

And so the mining companies involved then got busy looking for more minerals on land.

But when you see this deposit, like they estimate there are more than 20 billion tons of these.

Wow.

More than 20 billion tons.

As I said,

we have an estimated 2 billion tons on our license areas.

So it's generally regarded we've got the best ground out there.

But so you had...

all of these countries form this treaty and of course,

well, not form it, agree a treaty, but ronald reagan was the president then and he's like no way in the world we're not going to join another international treaty so america stood aside and um said well because no one has sovereignty over the oceans right every nation can

traverse the oceans every nation has the rights to the seabed minerals on the floor

to lay cables

But all of these other countries said, well, when it comes to the seafloor minerals, how about we agree a set of rules?

And so they signed the treaty, but America did not.

And so, you know, it's been a pretty exciting year for us, last 12 months at least, because,

you know, we've pivoted our business away from this international organization to now focus entirely on permitting this resource through the U.S.

administration.

And that really became possible with the election of President Trump.

That's good to hear.

That's good to hear.

What, I mean,

what percentage of that rock has precious metals in it?

Well,

it's amazing, right?

This forms through

precipitation.

So it grows a little bit like a pearl grows.

And so we turn 100% of this into salable material.

And it's got about 33%

pure metal.

But the rest of the material is

there's some silica in there.

There's a lot of crystallized water in there.

So about 24% of it is

moisture.

But the rest of it we all turn into saleable product.

And that in itself

is almost

well very unique to this resource because on land, you know, you go looking for a copper deposit and last year the average greater copper mined was about 0.6 of 1%

so it means that you go digging up a ton of material a thousand kilograms of material and you have to treat it and process it and cart it and take it places looking for six kilograms of copper so it's so it's very inefficient and it's very expensive and it creates a lot of impacts.

Whereas we lift these up, take them to shore, process them, and we turn it all into saleable material.

So it's kind of unique.

You do the processing as well.

That's our plan.

Wow.

That's our plan.

Mine and process.

Yeah.

And the reason why we're so excited about the U.S.

is because President Trump and his administration made reindustrialization a priority.

Because

for decades, America has been outsourcing mining and processing and refining to other parts of the world, particularly China.

And then, of course, you wake up one day and you realize that

your adversaries have control out of all of the critical minerals that you need.

And

it was a

foolish playbook in hindsight.

But it was hard and heavy industry.

you know the world wanted to be involved in cool new industries but when it comes down to it if you if it ain't grown it's mined

and so

you can't just dream up a land-based mine you know they don't just appear out of nowhere and all of the obvious ones were found and developed

so that's why if you look at about half of our revenue comes from nickel and 100% of the the growth in nickel supply over the last seven years has come from what we call rainforest nickel and to get to it you've got to remove the rainforest to dig up this material called nickel laterite

and of course you and we're not talking about

you know

anything other than pristine beautiful rainforests which are filled with indigenous people in some cases certainly filled with enormous amount of biodiversity and biomass

filled with cute cuddly animals.

And, you know, led by China, it's just, you know, bulldozing it out of the way.

And that's the beginning of the impacts, you know, because

the process that material comes with a host of impacts.

The waste material gets spilt into rivers and oceans and

kills off the local industry, the fishing industries.

And, you know, I mean,

for your listeners, just punch into your favorite search engine, Rainforest Nickel.

And,

you know,

I've had the first had experience of witnessing, you know, in one particular region.

It was in Indonesia, actually, where 10 years ago

there were

no people focused on nickel mining.

We visited there, my team and I, maybe three years ago.

This town of 70,000 people had been built, all focused on nickel mining by 70,000 people.

70,000.

That's a lot of people.

And all of a sudden, and it was all 100% done by China.

I mean, when China sets its mind on things,

you know, they become very, very impactful and

successful.

And in this case, that's what they've done.

And, you know, I know we're going to talk about it today, but

this industry almost went that way as well.

And it it was only the election of President Trump that provided a pathway

to us rescuing it and America reasserting its dominant role

when it comes to ocean metals.

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So is this a U.S.-based company?

We started the company in Canada, but we set up a U.S.

subsidiary in 2013, and it's our U.S.

subsidiary that is applying for the permit.

Yeah.

Gotcha.

Gotcha.

And you said 50% of our revenue comes from nickel.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Is that U.S.

revenue?

Well, at the moment, we haven't generated our first revenue.

2027 is when we're aiming for first production.

Yeah but if you look at the metals in here we've got nickel and copper and cobalt and manganese and

America imports about 50% of its copper but it pretty well imports almost 100% of its nickel, cobalt and manganese.

Wow.

What do we use those metals for?

Well

Let's think about, well, copper's used everywhere, right?

For

wires and many other things but nickel is mainly used to make

it's a hardening substance to make stainless steel so you add it to steel to make stainless steel it's also used in super alloys you need it for making military equipment and

and then cobalt is of course used in your iphone battery But it's also a very efficient thing.

They're all used in batteries for cars as well.

So if you have a, you know, a Tesla

EV, it's full of nickel and used to be full of cobalt.

They kind of managed to get cobalt out of it, but mainly because

they weren't able to get a affordable

supply that hadn't touched the hands of child miners in the Congo, which is where the cobalt market is characterized.

And then steel, manganese is used to make steel.

You can't make a ton of steel without manganese.

And now more manganese is going into batteries as well.

So these are all what we call base metals.

They're the foundation building blocks for industry.

And you know, if you want to

if you want to look at

you know over the last since 2002

about 20,000 companies have evaporated who were involved in heavy industry.

20,000.

20,000.

20,000.

Wow.

20,000.

Millions of jobs have disappeared.

And it's all because of outsourcing to

developing countries.

You know, China saying we can do it.

And of course,

you know, what I know that the current administration are very focused on,

you know, looking at

dumping and have these materials been coming back into the country at cheaper prices and you know 232 reviews are underway, I

because it's another way where you can go and buy

where you can go and buy market share and end up controlling an entire industry.

Because

the incentive price

for local production

is too low to attract investment into those industries.

Because, you know, there are some nickel deposits in America.

They're small,

but they need nickel prices to be

50% higher than where they are to even break even.

Interesting.

We don't have that problem because we're so high grade.

I mentioned before

last year the average grade of copper was 0.6 of 1%.

So this is

filled with nickel, copper, cobalt, and manganese.

But if you were to put all of those other metals into copper equivalent, just for value perspective, we're like more than 7% copper equivalent.

So an order of magnitude richer material and that obviously has a big impact on the economics and so you know we we can withstand

dumping from you know certain markets like china so we're not mining any nickel here in here in the u.s no there are some that are they've shut down because the

the what the the

they're not making the company's not making enough money no that's right if you um yeah over the last five years you've seen

some of the biggest nickel miners,

BHP, Valet,

slow down or shut their operations, put them on

care and maintenance, hoping for a recovery in the price.

But there doesn't seem to be any recovery in the price available in the next few years.

And, you know, and at the moment, you know, if you've got

70% market share, which is probably what China has when it comes to nickel, 70% of zero.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Why not go for 100?

Keep the price down there.

Yeah.

Go for 100.

And then you can put the price to whatever you want.

That's true.

That's true.

Man, China's just got us in so many different angles.

The whole world, it seems like.

That's because they're really smart.

You know, and I

you mentioned Eric before, Bethel.

He's one of the guys that gets it, you know, because he's lived there.

He's lived the experience.

I've lived the experience as well.

I've admired their approach.

I was, you know, one of the companies I

grew was making batteries in China back when they

started to attract,

invite foreign investment, you know, in the early 90s.

They were starter batteries, not so much they weren't EV batteries.

You know, I watched Pedong come

out of ground.

You know, there were hundreds of cranes building at the same time.

It was like, I remember I used to take people with me on trips to say, you've got to come and see this.

Like, you will not believe it.

You know,

you'd pull up at a train crossing and there'd be 2,000 bikes there.

Now you pull up and there's no bikes there.

You know, it's, it's a,

it's, it's, it's just, it's impressive.

It's impressive.

But

I think the West has fallen into the trap

of

letting them do that thinking it'll all work out in the end

but that's a trap i don't think you're right i know you're right with that i know you're right i mean they they own practically our whole damn supply chain i mean is australia are they

are they concerned about all the stuff that china's involved in and going and innovating

yeah and i think the you know the the

Scott Morrison,

you know, recent president,

former

prime minister we call them, had a bit of a blow-up with the Chinese because he ordered an inquiry into where COVID came from.

They didn't like that, so they banned our coal and

fresh livestock.

Didn't impact it.

They just bought it somewhere else.

And so we supplied them.

I think the current prime minister is

laying out a red carpet.

He is.

Yeah.

How so?

Sees them as a great trade partner.

Sees them as a great trade partner, not spending enough money on defense, just thinking everything's going to work out beautifully.

It's a trap to fall into.

What is the sentiment in Australia about that?

Australia's lost its way a little bit, in my

personal opinion.

I think that

people want to follow.

Voters want to follow someone, a leader,

and

there is not a good viable alternative in Australia at the moment, so it's a left-leaning government.

The net result of that is,

you know, you've got

eight out of every ten new jobs created in the last four years are in the government.

Are you serious?

Eight out of ten?

Holy shit.

Yeah.

Wow.

And you can see a theme repeating, you know.

And I think that

one of the challenges is,

you know,

these economies go on until they bust, right?

You know, I see it in the UK now as well.

I mean, eventually, whether it's immigration or whether it's government spending, eventually

the books don't balance, you know.

And eventually,

you know, we've

the press coming out of the UK at the moment is horrible.

You know,

free speech, you can't say things.

You end up being locked up for saying stuff

compared to some of the other crimes that some of the not-so-welcome visitors are committing.

But the world went a little bit crazy.

And I think it's kind of coming back a little bit.

At least people feel safer, partly because of platforms like your own, you know, being cancelled by the media now.

It doesn't matter, you know, it's like, whatever.

There are better avenues to express views safely,

you know.

Yeah, I think mainstream media is going to the wayside, like we were talking earlier.

I mean, the average, the average viewer of mainstream media right now is about 69 years old.

Yeah, yeah.

It will die with the baby boomer generation.

Unless they make some miraculous change, which I don't see that happening at all.

Just as divisive as they've ever been.

Yeah.

Maybe more now.

but yeah,

yeah.

Look, I think

not before time.

I mean, and I've lived that firsthand.

I've lived it with China, where I've seen what people like Eric talk about.

I've had first-hand experience of them intimidating me and what we're doing and our

aligning with the USA.

They don't like it

because they thought they had it

all going to plan, and we broke the plan.

Good for you.

Yeah.

That's honorable.

Yeah.

So where all does the Metals Company operate?

Is it strictly off the coast of North America?

There's only one deposit that we're focused on at the moment.

It's this area known as the Clarion Clipperdon Zone.

And it was discovered way back in the 1870s by the British.

who sailed around the world on HMS Challenger with a basket off the back.

And thankfully the steam piston had been invented so they could haul up this basket.

It was at sea for four years.

And they came across this big field of nodules about a thousand miles southwest of San Diego.

And I mentioned before, they precipitate, right?

They grow a little bit like pearls grow in

the ocean.

And so There are nodules found in other oceans, but they're just not as interesting as these because these contain a very high grade of nickel and copper.

And the reason for that is if you look to our east, you've got the Rockies and the Andes.

And over millennia, they eroded into the Pacific Ocean.

And so you had these currents that came from the north and south, met, headed west.

And that's where you have this belt of nodules.

It's amazing.

It's about

a thousand miles high.

about 4,000 miles wide, where it's like a carpet of nodules.

I mean,

it's the most beautiful mother nature gift, you know,

far away from human settlement,

no alternative use for this part of the ocean floor, just sat there looking proud, saying, come and get me.

Man.

So how does it work?

I mean, well, actually, let me.

How much of the ocean floor have you explored for other deposits of nodules?

We haven't, to be honest.

But, you know, there are other people exploring, including NOAA, the U.S.

agency.

They go out and Boeing, who explore their own territorial waters, and, of course, other explorers.

The Chinese, I think, have explored a lot of the ocean floor, a lot more than they probably admit.

But this is so big,

like it's...

multi-generational deposit.

You know, as I said, 70% of the known reserves of nickel, cobalt, and manganese are in this one deposit.

And so that's where we've had our focus since 2011, purely there.

So

you don't even have a need to explore anymore.

No.

Do you think that there are other metals under there that we don't know about yet?

Yeah, probably.

Yeah.

Probably.

I mean, you know, before I mentioned where these tectonic plates meet, you know, if you get a map out of the world, you can see how the globe, how planet Earth all sticks together.

So you get a lot of pressure coming up from the core of the Earth.

And, you know, that's where a lot of these deposits have formed.

And the systems die, so they're very hard.

Some of the systems are still active.

They're still emitting gases.

So they're easier to find.

They're like chimneys underwater.

They're fascinating.

But some of them have

been dead for, you know, I don't know, million years or hundred thousand years and so they're covered and so you've got to go really exploring and so yeah there are other deposits out there for sure and Tonga

is an interesting

example there because they have a lot of

volcanogenic activity around where they are you saw that massive underwater volcano exploded some years ago

So look, some of these Pacific Island countries in particular have a lot of medals in their

potential medals in their economic zones.

So there will be opportunities there as well.

And I think what the world is waiting to see

is,

you know, us to get started.

And then, you know, I think there'll be a massive rush.

You know, now,

we know we have the best ground in the best area.

But once people see firsthand the low impact of what we're doing, the fact that the area recovers fast.

I mean in the last

since 2011, we've spent,

I don't know, now approaching three quarters of a billion dollars, a lot of it on environmental research.

Even though, you know,

I always use this first principle analogy to say we should be carrying out extractive industries in parts of the planet with the least life,

not the most life.

At the moment, we're pushing into our rainforests, which is the area with the most biodiversity, the most cute and cuddly animals.

When

down here on the other end of that table is the abyssal zone.

And the abyssal plains and the abyssal hills cover 50% of the planet.

50% of the planet, almost approaching 70% of the oceans are considered abyssal, characterized by deep,

low amount of biomass there because all the food gets eaten on the way down the water column.

And, you know, if you look on our website at metals.co, you'll see lots of video of us doing trials down there.

And, you know, there are no plants down there, of course, because we're talking, you know, more than 4,000 meters

deep.

And the amount of life living down there is grams per square meter.

Most of it bacteria, single-cell organisms living in the sediment.

So if you ever had to have a big resource somewhere, this would be the perfect place.

You can't go and grow crops there or live there or, you know, it's the perfect thing.

Yet

we also have people who wish we wouldn't do it, you know.

There's pushback.

I mean,

first of all, I love what you're doing.

I mean, you're doing it cheaper and you're...

You are, I mean,

it's net positive for the earth, right?

Because the mining is hopefully going into the ocean where there's not much life.

But when it comes to the rainforests and some of the stuff that we see, I've seen

documentary after documentary about what we're doing there.

And it goes through my head when I see those things.

Are we destroying more resources than we're even gaining?

And

all the undiscovered life.

organisms, microorganisms, I mean, timber, trees clean the air.

I mean, it's just, it's, it's, it did, it didn't bother me early on in life because I didn't realize, you know, but now when I see it, I'm like, man, if you look at all the landfills and shit, I just watched one about

Amazon

and all the destruction that that company is doing to the earth.

And they, you know, they try to put this facade on that, that, that, you know, oh, we're saving the earth.

And it's like, no, you're not, man.

You've created more waste, you know, through Amazon than arguably anything that that's ever existed.

And so

I love that about your company.

Is that a early on ethos or is that a byproduct that

came out of it?

Yeah, I mean,

I've always deemed myself an environmentalist and

I often get criticized for

the fact that

by the NGO community or,

activists who don't want to see any progress saying, oh, you've just switched from talking about environment to now talking about geopolitics and critical supply chains.

It's like, well, if you go back to my presentation decks a decade ago, you'll find security of supply was always highlighted as one of the critical issues.

But

at the end of the day, geopolitics are pretty important, you know, because we've got trading partners who've said they'll turn off supply

if they choose to.

And

that tells you you've got to make some changes in that supply chain.

And so,

but if we just maybe take a journey down that path, because

circularity

is something we should aspire to.

And at the Metals Company, we do aspire to it.

And if you go, we just had a big strategy day on August 4, actually,

where we, you know, talked about step one is where can we find the lowest impact supply of these critical minerals.

And when I say lowest impact, I mean,

you know, less destruction of biomass ecosystem, less impact on biodiversity, less CO2 emissions, less impact on freshwater ecosystems.

And the list goes on.

And we've We've spent so much money, like hundreds of millions of dollars on that whole basket of studies.

And they all point to one thing, and that is that we can massively reduce the impact when we create metals from these rocks compared to land-based alternatives, no matter where they come from.

Ocean metals from these rocks is the way to go.

But eventually,

the world has to get more focused on recycling, and they will.

And when I say we need to aspire to circularity, in the future, I hope we won't be picking up these rocks.

In 100 years' time,

we should be making sure that we're using, recycling every single atom we put out there.

In fact, we talk a lot about is metals as a service.

I built a software as a service company in a previous company.

And metals as a service is a similar idea.

It's like, hey, we'll give you these metals, you can use them, but we want them back.

Because they have to do something with them, right?

At the end of life, you've got a responsibility,

so you can't just put them in the waste pile, you've got to hand them back somewhere.

So, instead of us just treating fresh nodules, we'll treat recycled material, black mass, as well.

And eventually,

you know, recycled material will have a growing share.

But at the moment, there are not enough metals in the system to meet the needs.

So, we need to find a fresh input

of billions of tons

until we build that reserve

because

there are just not enough metals coming back in to be recycled.

You know, when it's easy to see how an electric vehicle battery gets recycled, but a lot of the other metals in the system don't get recycled or they have a much longer life.

So

I can see

in

decades to come that we will not be in the business of picking up rocks.

We'll be in the business of purely recycling the metals that we've previously sold.

And that's a good day because that's going to be a great thing for planet Earth.

An amazing thing.

That's very forward-thinking on your part.

Do you have any idea how much metal would need to be in circulation for that to actually take place?

We've done the calculations and it's a big number.

It's a big number.

Like,

I think

if we use

a trusted source, say the International Energy Agency or the World Bank, they pretty well align.

They say we need to increase extractive industries by between 4 and 500% per annum by 2040.

Four to five times more mining

by 2040 to meet the needs.

Wow, that's a lot.

It's a lot.

And, you know, and I think that

that's where people don't give enough attention to where the materials are coming from.

You know, for the electric car battery that you're using or your iPhone battery or

just generally stuff.

You know, if it ain't grown, it's mined.

It's that simple.

And of course, we've been talking in the recent years all about AI and, you know, bits.

You know, it's the bit economy but actually it's time for atoms you know because reindustrialization is going to depend on the atoms that are contained in here the real world infrastructure and so

you know and I think that's where

you know I'm

I get criticism from some people in the environmental group who are very anti-anything.

They're anti-growth.

They're anti-the fact that, you know, despite the fact that we've spent hundreds of millions of dollars on scientific research, they criticize the fact, yeah, but you spent it so you can influence the outcome.

It's like, it doesn't work that way.

We went and hired, you know, the best universities and organizations to carry out this research, the Natural History Museum,

Texas AM,

you know, Florida University, like there's 20 of the world's leading institutions who have subject matter experts, expertise when it comes to ocean research.

So we went, said, this is our goal, this is the work program, we'll pay for it, you get to do it, you get to publish your results, but it all filters back into this one integrated environmental impact study.

And,

you know, we've

had the green pieces of the world

come and board our boat in the middle of the Pacific to try and stop us doing this research because they don't want to see the results.

You know, the results are very inconvenient to their argument.

You know, we've seen time and time again that these groups that they don't want to see growth.

And I mean, I think the first one that comes to mind is U.S.

energy sector.

I mean, we've really kneecapped ourselves, especially when it comes to comparison to China.

You know, they're building a new coal plant every other damn day.

And they're way ahead on nuclear, it seems to be.

And, you know,

we

We don't mine our own gas, you know, not nearly enough.

And

can't go nuclear, the cleanest form of energy in the world, according to the people that I, the folks that I've interviewed on the subject.

I agree.

And we use, we want to, you know, there was this big push, which seems to have died down a little bit now with this administration, but this big green push with renewables, you know, and

the groups behind that claim energy independence for America, but it's not energy independence because all of the,

we don't mine our own lithium.

We don't produce our own solar.

We don't produce our own wind turbines.

That's all imported from China.

And so

I don't understand how anybody can think that that is energy independence when

you are beholden to another country for the materials and the tech.

actual production of all of the panels and stuff that come from China.

That's not independence and you talk about independence uh from china when it comes to the metals and so i do have a a question i mean

in regards to the u.s i mean we've had the ability to gain independence in a variety of ways from our oil and gas reserves which we have not tapped into very much And we are relying on, you know, the Middle East for that.

We just talked about renewables.

We talked about nuclear.

I mean, does the U.S.

have the stomach to become independent in the metals industry or any other industry for that matter?

Do we have the appetite for that?

Do we have the stomach?

Can we actually, do you think we'll actually do it?

Because we've had the opportunity several times.

And it's really, you know, when you think about it in that aspect and how far we are behind on energy,

our supply chain, all these things, and beholden to China.

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Is it going to happen?

But I think no matter what your political view,

people should be grateful for the Trump administration

getting into government because

I swear to you, ocean metals was about to go China's way.

And

this is a bipartisan issue.

Critical mineral supply chain is a bipartisan issue.

But not many people have the stomach

or the kahooners to be able to see it through.

And, you know, we saw President Trump issue an executive order on April 24 to say, we have a right to these minerals.

I'm instructing my government agencies to fast-track the permitting

because

we need the critical minerals.

China dominates the supply chain now.

They're going to dominate this as well if we don't get busy.

And so

I think that...

A lot of the moves that this administration are

making are starting to

work.

Every innovator that I've had in here that is doing some type of

good for the country is

saying the same thing.

They're all beating to the same drum saying that this administration is

getting rid of a lot of the red tape for innovators to be able to do what they do and make the world a better place.

And the thing I see, Sean, is the political appointees,

they're really top shelf people.

Like they are people that have come out of they're either amazingly successful or they're people that have come and put their careers on

hold so they can come and help out.

You know,

there's one guy, he's the critical minerals are, you know,

he just said, the administration needs me.

I'm going to stop what I'm doing for this major mining company and come and help the administration sort out critical minerals.

And

like,

he's at the top of his game, you know, like, and that's what I noticed with the political appointees that we're dealing with.

The same with Noah.

You know, the people we're dealing with have conviction and they are super talented.

And I think that that is going to create that momentum.

And, you know, we're confident that we'll be in production during the 47th administration.

And

we're also confident that we will make it a bipartisan issue because,

you know, reindustrialization is

so critical I don't think anyone

would argue that it's not going to be good for the long-term benefit of America to bring back some of those jobs to America

and

you would think the other side of politics wanted even more right

But I think this administration will get that ball rolling.

And I think it won't matter,

please God,

who's in power.

Because once you get the ball rolling, people will get a taste of it.

They'll get a taste of jobs being created.

Because it's true, right?

AI is going to cost jobs.

It's hard to.

I see the optimists talking about how it's going to work out fine.

You know, I'm not sure about that.

I think a lot of people are worried about AI taking their jobs.

Yeah.

And it's already, it's started.

It's already started

in just about every sector, other than than manual labor.

So let's talk about how this actually works.

What does it take to mine minerals at the bottom of the ocean floor 4,000 meters below?

Well,

it's a big advantage that they just sit on the ocean floor like this.

So we don't have to drill.

or dig or tunnel to find them.

It's a two-dimensional resource, which is quite amazing.

You go down there looking, exploration is pretty easy.

So we send a robot down.

So we build this beautiful robot.

In fact, our partner Alsies have built it for us.

Alsies are one of our biggest investors.

And for the last 40 years, they've been laying pipes in the deep ocean to connect oil and gas to transport it around the world.

owned by an amazing engineer, Edward Harimer.

And

so we build the robot.

We have a production vessel floating up top.

In fact, our first production vessel called the Hidden Gem was a former oil and gas drillship which we bought for,

well All Seas bought it, but with some help from us

very cheaply.

It was a $700 million boat.

new in 2011 and bought it for less than $50 million.

And

we then

connect it with a big riser, it's called.

Think of it as a big straw, which is the vertical transport system.

And so basically, the robot crawls along and fires a jet of water at these nodules, so kind of a curved head, fires a jet of water, it creates an inverse pressure and lifts the nodule,

goes into the hopper.

We separate the sediment, which we spit out the back,

and we then move the nodule into the vertical transport system and pump it up to the boat.

4,200 meters.

How big are these robots?

Well, the first one we built was six meters wide,

weighed about 90 tons.

The biggest challenge was keeping it on the floor.

90 tons?

Because when you put it in water, it gets a lot of buoyancy.

Then you add more buoyancy.

90 tons?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In fact, funny story, another contractor

was out there doing some trials.

They too had a collector, but they weren't doing, you know, in 2022, we ran a full collector, full end-to-end production system, but they were just testing their robot.

They put it over the ship and dropped it, literally.

And they thought, oh my goodness,

4,200 meters.

And there was big panic, including from us, because it wouldn't have been helpful to me either.

And

I mean,

shit happens, right?

I mean, it shouldn't, you know.

But they were able to retrieve it, and it was fine, because it, you know, just floats down and landed.

It's like, okay, I'm here now.

And they checked it over and put it back down, and it went working.

And so, so anyway, back to my story.

So we put a robot down there.

Our production one will be wider,

more like 15 meters wide.

Maybe even wider and it crawls along like snowtrack tires

and you know back in the 1970s when they ran these collector trials so so it's all pretty cool but then 1979 they they actually launched a machine and they to pick up these very same rocks back when america was driving the innovation

That was really pioneering engineering.

But back then they used a Archimedes screwdrive system to propel it forward and they made a big imprint in the ocean floor about 80 centimeters and

but whereas ours makes about a two centimeter imprint just literally glides on the ocean floor.

So we fire a jet of water separate it out pump it up and

and eventually you know I anticipate we'll have a lot of production vessels out there.

We then offload them.

You know, the analogy, two analogies I use.

One is they're like golf balls on a driving range.

We've got to pick them up with the greatest efficiency and the lowest impact.

And then it's a little bit like harvesting a paddock of wheat.

You know, you just keep harvesting and then the bin pulls up alongside.

In our case, it'll be a bulk carrier.

We offload the nodules.

It goes off to port.

Another one comes.

It goes off to port.

But you're always in production.

Interesting.

And you know what's interesting?

What's interesting is this thing weighs like,

looks like it would be heavy.

It weighs almost nothing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so,

I mean, how much of this is metals?

About 33% of it is metal.

It's got a specific gravity of about 1.9.

So no, it's very light.

It's because of how they form, right?

Because of them precipitating.

It starts around a kernel of something.

It could be a grain of sand or a broken shell.

And how

and so these are just

on the ocean floor like sand.

They're just right there on the top.

You don't have to do anything, you know, digging-wise to get to them.

They just go in the hopper.

They get sucked up to the yeah, to the mothership and bring it over for processing.

That's right.

How many of those

can you give me a a

a snapshot of how much of those you're gaining an hour a day?

I mean, how many of those are you picking up?

Well, our production vessel will do about

3 million tons a year.

3 million tons a year?

Yeah.

Wow.

And we'll be in production about 270 days a year.

Yeah.

So

with this international treaty,

and everybody has has access to the ocean, I mean, what would

and you found you found the mother load of these things or back in, I think you said 1870?

Yeah, the British found them in 1870, yeah.

The British found them in 1870.

I mean, will we start to see, you know, as this gains traction?

When it sounds like it will, I think you said 2027 will be the first production vehicle.

Yeah.

How are the competitors, if there are any, I mean, will they, will everybody be vacuuming these things up off the ocean floor in the exact same spot?

Will it become crowded?

I mean, how do you,

is there any possibility that you will secure, you know, any specific rights to an area?

Yeah.

It's highly regulated now.

Very highly regulated.

So since 2011, we've been working through the International Seabed Authority.

And if you recall when I said the United Nations stepped in and took over the process,

they created this framework called UNCLOS, the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea.

And it basically said,

you know, every country owns 12 miles from your coastline.

has an economic right to everything within 200, but beyond that it will be considered the area.

And

this UNCLOS called for the establishment of the International Seabed Authority to be established, which it was in 1994.

Now, remember, the United States never agreed to it.

In fact, they've been a consistent objector to it.

So they're not part of it.

But for 169 other countries, including China and Russia,

They signed this treaty that said when it comes to minerals, these are the rules we'll play by.

And America went, nah, we're not going to do that.

They were like, we don't even like multilateral organizations.

You know, one vote, one country doesn't seem to work for

the biggest economy in the world.

And,

oh my goodness, how insightful they were.

How insightful they were.

Because this international organization has been entirely overrun by NGOs.

And it's played right into China's hand.

So China have five licenses through this body, the International Seabed Authority.

But what started to happen was,

and this is more a representation of politics around the world, how the world went a bit crazy.

You saw

governments in Europe be very heavily influenced by smaller

governments who had to form coalitions to govern.

So you don't have two parties, like in some countries like

UK is still that, Australia is still that, US is pretty well still that.

But in other countries like Germany and France, you had

or Belgium or the Netherlands, you have like a dozen different parties to form a coalition to get the votes to be able to govern.

So you had green voters who might only hold two or three seats, so a very tiny, tiny, tiny majority, but they might have the balance of power.

Without their two votes,

they could,

you might not have majority.

And so what the Green Party started to do was to say, we really care about this ocean metal.

And there's no better example than France.

So France have a pretty good nuclear industry, right?

And if we go back

Four years ago now, Macron, the president, came out with a very public statement, which I was very excited about.

Said, here's our 2030 plan.

France needs to reindustrialize.

We need to bring back jobs.

For that, we need metals.

We have these ocean deposits.

We can get these ocean metals far more effectively than we can possibly find metals on land.

It was a pretty good speech.

18 months later, at COP, I think it was COP23, total switch.

We should ban deep sea mining was Macron's new pitch.

And the reason why he changed his position was because, once again, he was losing influence, losing power.

So he had to do a deal with the Greens.

And they wanted him to pull back his nuclear ambition.

He said, I can't touch that.

We need it.

And it was like, how about I give you ocean medals?

It's literally like that.

And, you know, and I've seen firsthand how they've worked with corporations.

You know, WWF did the same to Maersk.

You know, Mersk were one of our shareholders.

They were one of our early supporters.

Great company, one of the great shipping companies of the world.

And but

WWF went in there and said, we don't like you being part of the metals company.

We'd like you to sell your ownership.

Or we're going to come after you for your green shipping ambitions.

And it's like, I had a friend sat in the room with them.

Like, they are bullies, these NGOs.

They are absolute bullies.

And so

that was

how they overtook some of these countries.

So these countries, like Germany is another great example, right?

Germany used to be an industrial behavior.

Now they're de-industrialization because of energy policy and other things.

And there is an industry body there that represents every industry association who has pleaded with the government to support ocean metals like they used to because America can't get reliable supply.

Sorry, Germany can't get reliable supply.

Yet their government were appeasing the green side of things saying, oh, we should slow down and just wait.

Now, this all played into China's hands because we are the most

ambitious player in the industry, right?

We were driving the industry forward.

China,

despite the fact that they want to dominate this, because you know, President Xi made a public statement saying we want to dominate deep ocean, deep earth, and deep space.

Part of their plan.

But

they're running a little bit behind us, five to seven years.

That's good to hear.

It's good to hear.

And it was going pretty well for them because the NGOs were in there influencing the countries who were influencing the International Seabed Authority adopting the final rules.

And without those final rules, it's very hard for me to get started.

And so this is playing into, this is what I mentioned, it was playing into China's playbook this is how they were doing it

China sat back going oh it's going to take a bit longer is it no problem just let it happen you know but for me I depend on shareholder support

and unfortunately shareholders were not would not have been willing to give me another five years to sit around and see what happens

I would have had to pivot the business into something else, which I was preparing to do

because I did not like what I was seeing.

What would you have pivoted into?

Well,

we were running the ruler over a number of other assets,

land-based opportunities.

My board didn't like it particularly, but we would have done what we had to survive because we would have just kept the licenses and kept them rolling on.

I would have had to streak the business, you know.

The team

that we've had together over the last many years would have had to go.

But,

you know when things get so bad,

they've got to self-correct.

It's like the rubber band.

It was just pulling and pulling and pulling.

And we just knew it would break.

Question of when.

And luckily it broke.

in the form of President Trump being elected.

And it had gone so far crazy.

So we knew there was a pathway because America put the rules and regulations in place in 1980 that the International Seabed Authority still can't agree.

And you can understand why they can't agree.

There's 169 countries trying to agree something, even though they have a smaller council, 36-member council.

So getting agreement when the NGOs are there

chipping away.

trying to slow progress or stop the industry.

That's their plan.

And, you know,

we knew what the strategy of the NGO, the activist was.

Their strategy was to bleed the metals company dry, you know, to just slow things down, to let us run out of money.

And we were lucky to have amazingly supportive shareholders.

I mentioned Andre before, and Alsies and myself agreed to keep funding the business.

And we lent the company money

because we believed we didn't want to keep printing equity.

We wanted to, you know, just keep the business moving, waiting for

a moment in time when the value could be restored to something more equitable.

And so we knew there was a legal pathway to lodge the application through the United States because they had the rules in place.

So this is a very long, windy answer to your question about who's going to dominate it because Because now, of course, that international body, including China, have been very critical of us

and of

the United States of America for

operating outside of the system it's like but America's like they came out with very forceful statements saying we've never been part of that system we've been a consistent objector to that system we have a legal right to be able to go and collect these metals you

169 countries all agreed to be bound by those set of rules that you can't even agree on.

So why don't you just keep doing whatever it is you're doing and we'll see you out there.

That's good to hear.

Yeah.

That's good to hear that we're doing that.

It is, it is.

And

the administration have been amazing, ranging from the regulator, Noah,

Secretary Lupnik.

We were lucky to have a lot of people that the president chose in his cabinet who we knew well when they're in opposition.

They'd been big supporters of ours and they'd written letters on our behalf and lobbied

Congress to make funding available to do studies on processing here in the United States.

And

so, you know, all of our stars aligned all of a sudden.

Let's take a quick break.

When we come back, I want to get into how this concerns national defense.

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All right, Jared, we're back from the break.

We want to get into some national security stuff and the implications of this and what it would do for national security.

And I know we covered some of it, but I just wanted to, you know, revisit that.

I'm big on national defense and

something I talk about a lot here.

So I'd like to just go into more detail on that.

So how is this going to help our U.S.'s national defense?

Well, as I mentioned in 2000 and

since 2002, we've lost

so much of the manufacturing industry.

We've lost millions of jobs.

We've lost hundreds of billions of dollars of annual GDP.

You know, and I think

all of a sudden when you realize the reason we've lost them is because we've exported those industries because it was very convenient to outsource to the developing world heavy industry because it was a little bit dirty.

And, you know, this was before some of the greener pollution controlling

controls became

statutory.

But it also makes you really vulnerable.

The fact that you can't build a ton of steel without manganese

means that and the fact that we import 100% of our manganese puts you very vulnerable you know and I think it was a great initiative that the the president wants to bring back shipbuilding and if you think about you know what turned the second world war it was America's navy right at the end of the day and they were able to build ships efficiently and

Now, ships don't get built in America.

You know, they're built in other parts of the world.

And so

I think national defense and national security is a

very complex, intertwined

network of you've got to have desire,

you've got to have really strong partners.

And it so happens that

because China dominates the, if they don't dominate mining, they certainly dominate all of the processing and refining.

So it means that, you know, I gave you that example of one town we visited where, you know, China went from zero to 70,000 people in less than a decade.

You know, they control 70% of the nickel market.

And

they are doing...

They play the long game.

They're playing with the classification standards.

They're playing with the IMO standards, trying to put in place initiatives that would become very expensive for the shipping industry, but only they can supply the equipment.

We saw Secretary Rubio come out and stamp on that the other day.

I was very pleased to see that.

So

it's very complex, and they're very smart and tactical, the Chinese.

And you asked before, does America have the will and endeavor to fix this?

And

I think

the trend of this administration does, they see the problem and they've got people in power who see the problem and they're putting in long-term strategic fixes.

I know in our case, we've had many meetings,

become a frequent visitor to the White House because

they are making it very clear that they want to support us to come and build processing capacity on USA soil.

But they also recognize that capital needs to be available to do that.

And when you're competing against a country like China, where capital is freely available from the state,

then you've got to have something equally

enticing from the US government to encourage it as well.

So

I think that

building

a reliable supply of all of these critical minerals and including rare earths.

We saw them do a deal with MP the other day.

You know, it was a smart deal.

I think we've heard from the administration that they're going to do more deals like that because they want to see investment on the ground.

They want to see jobs created.

There are so many good knock-on benefits, like we talked about before.

Bring jobs back, you know, and I think

giving people purpose and is another benefit that's going to come out of this, you know.

Well, you know, what's interesting, a couple things that are jobs I want to talk about, but you know, you had mentioned the shipbuilding, you know, that used to take place in this country.

And that

a lot of things seem to be coming back with this administration.

In fact,

are you familiar with the company Sauronic?

Yes.

You know, Dino Mavrukas, he's doing the autonomous

surface warfare vehicles.

And I mean, that guy is, you know,

it's awesome what he's doing.

And, you know, I remember, I don't remember the exact stats, but, you know, I remember him telling me that China had over 50% of the ship of the

global shipbuilding capacity and that the U.S.

had less than 1%.

of shipbuilding capacity of the world.

And, you know, and he's trying to change that.

And he's making these boats that, you know, they're, they're,

they, I mean, he's, he's going to pump them out at record pace.

And so

I'm sure your metals company is going to be able to, you know, enable them to make them even cheaper than what they already are doing.

And

hopefully we can get back to being, you know, some type of naval superpower with

many boats, not, not just, you know,

0.1% or whatever it is, 0.0, 0.5%.

I can't, it was less than 1% of the U.S.

shipbuilding capacity.

Another question that I have for you, though, is: Are any of the metals that you are mining in the ocean or getting ready to mine in 2027?

Do those will those play any type of a role in the computer chip business?

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, I mean, we do, we do have a lot of rare earths in here as well.

Um, we don't recover them in our first uh plant, we, we, um,

But there is a plan to recover them.

And of course,

there are

a lot of

the cobalt and,

of course, copper is used in that entire AI space extensively.

Will be used a lot.

And so

yes, is the answer.

I just want to go back to that shipbuilding because

one of the exciting things about some of these industries is that,

you know,

when China started taking these industries away from the US and other countries,

they had a big workforce.

You know, farmers were becoming

non-farmers, or peasants

were looking for other industry jobs to move into.

And so they were happy to use a very available, cheap, abundant labor force.

But of course, a lot of things have happened since then in the automation space.

And the shipbuilding industry is a really good one to look at.

If you look at what

Hanwha and Hyundai and

the other Korean shipbuilders have done is they've brought a lot of automation into those industries where

And the same is going to be on metal processing, you know, that

now with automation, you can take some of the dangerous jobs away.

And

what you end up doing is just generating a lot of GDP for local economies.

So there's a lot of direct jobs, but there's an enormous amount of indirect jobs that come as a result as well.

But it also, it's...

It means that you can compete

because

you're not having to compete with

100,000 almost free labor force.

You're actually competing for

on a technology basis.

And once again, China have been amazing at building and deploying technology at a rapid rate.

But the West and America are starting to recognize the need to do that.

And when it comes to certainly critical minerals, they've made it very clear that they're going to make the capital available to encourage and entice.

We took a big investment from a

company called KoreaZinc recently.

And

they're in many metals other than zinc, but they have a rich, long history.

And outside of China, they're one of the only companies that can produce the PCAM materials using their own technology.

And so it's a really important partnership for us.

And in fact, their chairman and I

attended some White House meetings

a couple of weeks ago.

And, you know, they

have moved their position.

And they've moved it primarily because of the Trump trade strategy.

Their view was

we've already got a recycling business here.

It's not working because China's underbidding us or outbidding us for all the recycled material, which is another strategy China is very smart at.

They're like, you know, we'll overpay to get it to get them out of the country and send them back to China.

Wow.

Yeah, it's very clever.

It's very clever.

But

if I know that a year ago, you know, Korea Zinc would not have contemplated building here in the USA.

But now,

along with us, they are very keen to bring their

expertise and turn it into jobs on the ground and local supply chain.

And, you know, that, of course, is the beginning because it spawns many, many other industries.

When you have available supply of these metals

then you can look at all of the ancillary industries and you know

my standard presentation there's like

a thousand other industries that can be built off that other industry but but if you don't have the material

and then of course if the government

truly have

you know, these dumping reviews that are underway at the moment, if they truly do impose some sort of penalty over importers and it's not just China there'll be other players as well

dumping material into the US then if that can all be sorted out then you're going to see a very very vibrant industrial re-industrialization go on here and

and

you know and I think everyone wants to trade with the USA, right?

And

so America will go from import replacement to becoming, under our plan, the

biggest supplier of nickel and cobalt and manganese and a big exporter of it as well.

And so it's a massive turnaround and that's going to lead to tremendous GDP growth.

It's going to lead to

you know, new companies being formed, new jobs being formed, new

industries to support those industries.

It's a massive knock-on impact.

And, you know, it's, but it's only possible if you've got the kahunas to

say,

you know, this is how we've got to turn this around.

You know, we've got to get things back on

a level playing ground.

And, yeah, I got to tell you, when President Trump started talking tariffs,

you know, it was like, it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out.

But I got to say, it's working out pretty well.

It's working out pretty well.

When you say

that

new companies will be formed from

the new industry that you're creating right now,

what kind of companies do you envision popping up around this?

It's just, it's not just what companies, but it's the efficiencies of redesigning new industrial process.

And

if we think about

manganese, for example,

you know,

there are two ways of treating our nodules.

You either dissolve them in acid or you use heat.

Now,

actually, because of parts of America's abundant supply of affordable energy, which is ironic, right?

I mean, energy is the cornerstone of a healthy

industrializing economy.

You need energy.

And of course, that's why parts of Europe are de-industrializing because they can't compete.

But America has it, so it's a great, great starting point.

And that's why America will be able to compete with countries like China as well.

CapEx is higher, but the government recognized that, so they'll make it easier.

But operationally,

actually, you can compete largely because energy is abundant and

affordable.

But when we use heat, we generate really hot.

I mean, the furnaces go up to

1200, 1,300 degrees Celsius.

And

as that material comes out, it cools down again.

But then when you go and use it, you've got to heat it back up again.

So one of the immediate opportunities is to be able to use it when it's still hot.

And you save all the energy of it cooling down and you avoid having to spend energy heating it back up again.

So there are opportunities to build adjacent industries near where we are

to be able to use those materials in their current form.

But if we then look at manganese, what else is it being used for?

Well,

it's used in water purification, it's used in fertilizer, it's used in

batteries are now moving to a manganese-rich battery cathode.

So it used to be very high in nickel, still is, but it's now starting to use more manganese and less nickel because manganese is cheaper so all of a sudden america could be very competitive and we've already produced our first it's called manganese sulfate uh which goes into a battery uh we we so we've been working on that for some time there's no real magic to doing it um you just got to do it but but at the moment there is zero industry and to make manganese silicon, we import 100% of that in from China at the moment.

But to be able to to build that right next door to a reliable supply of manganese is more jobs

we don't make much stainless steel here in America because we don't have the

we import the iron ore we import the nickel and we import the manganese so

all of a sudden there is a pathway to be able to to generate that

you know, the the material that goes into the stainless steel and the steel making industry.

It's like all of these things are very interconnected.

And then when it comes to nickel, I mean,

firstly, it's used, it's a super alloy.

So you need it for, you know, in these beautiful planes that we see the U.S.

Air Force flying around.

There's nickel is a vital ingredient, as is cobalt in those structures.

But there's a lot of simpler industries as well, you know, whether it's energy-related businesses, solar.

In fact, I have a page on one of my presentations.

There's literally a thousand industries that

depend on nickel, cobalt, manganese, or copper as an important

import.

And I think,

you know, because at the end of the day, You know, one of the great things we've learned from people like Elon Musk is how to get in and drive cost out of processes.

You know,

he'll look at things and go, well, the bill of materials says $100.

Why am I paying $5,000 for this?

And of course, that's what's enabled him to build rockets and cars and everything else much more economically.

And then, of course,

he's a great manufacturing genius.

And so

I think

we receive inspiration out of that as well.

And I think, you know, there are many, many efficiencies that when you start focusing on and re-industrialization, the fact that we exported it all,

and

as I, as I mentioned before, more than 20,000 companies have disappeared.

More than 2.5 million jobs have disappeared in the last 20 years.

Two and a half million?

Two and a half million jobs have disappeared from the manufacturing sector in the last 20 years.

Jeez.

So the amount of jobs this could create is really

unfathomable with all the new industry that could this.

I think the opportunity is a lot more new industries.

Those 2.5 million jobs might come back at a lower number, right, because of automation and other things.

But it's about GDP growth as well.

And that GDP growth will lead to more industries around it.

It's about direct jobs

and indirect jobs.

And so I think that's the exciting part for the American economy.

And,

you know, a reliable, affordable supply of these critical minerals is the beginning of a great era, I believe, for the United States.

I think you're right.

I think you're right.

When it comes to the

refining of these things, how fast will you be able to turn that into a usable product?

Well, the good news is

the approach that I have taken is to bring partners in who can help speed that up.

So for example, I mentioned a company Allseas who have worked with us on the offshore.

And Allseas employ many thousands of people.

For 40 years, they've been laying pipe for the oil and gas industry in the deep ocean.

So they're used to

365 day, 24 hour day operations, laying pipe.

It's a magic to see.

They built the world's biggest production vessel.

They build a boat that can lift 30,000 tons at a time.

So instead of decommissioning an oil platform at sea, which they used to take apart piece by piece, they build a boat that allows you to cut the legs off, lift it, bring it back to shore, and then do all of that

deassembling there.

Much safer and much faster.

Takes risk out of it and danger out of it for everyone.

So they bring all of that expertise to help us on the offshore.

And the same is the case with the onshore.

We've been working with a group in Japan called Pacific Metals, but more recently we took this big investment from Korea Zinc.

And

Korea Zinc want to come to America.

They want to put infrastructure on the ground.

They also are the world's biggest antimony producer and a very large galleon producer as well, which are two critical minerals needed here in the United States.

So they bring a lot of strategic

importance as well, but they can help us build much, much faster.

And, you know, the Trump administration are very committed to taking away the permitting challenges.

And I think

for construction and approval, and I think that's where the red tape has really slowed things down.

So, you know, there's been desire, but there's been so many people who need to stamp the page.

And I think there are tremendous efficiencies.

Palantir, of course, have really helped perfect that as well.

You know, we're talking to those guys about how they could help us streamline that whole permitting process.

And they've been very successful in other industries and they can help us in our industry.

And

so

much quicker than we could do it by ourselves.

Production, I mentioned 2027.

We've already got our first boat.

So that's good.

And I think it's probably a four-year window window to put processing and refining infrastructure on the ground here in the United States.

So 2031, you think?

I hope sooner than that.

I hope sooner than that.

When you say 2027 would be the first actual

mining,

successful mining operation, I mean, how fast do you see that scaling?

Does it start with one vehicle?

It does, yeah.

It does, unfortunately.

But already

this morning I'd been on the phone with all seas,

you know, we're mapping out, you know, how do they build more scale?

And

I held a strategy day in New York on August 4, and we had the owner of All Seas, Edward Harrimer, there.

And,

you know, we asked the question, like, what's the appetite?

Do you want to have a fleet of these boats out there?

And he's like, yes, we want a fleet of these boats.

And that's what we want as well.

we love to hear that yeah yeah love to hear that yeah

and you know you get the first one done

you know and the the strategy we've adopted at the metals company

is

we don't want to be the boat owner there are people who are really good at owning boats you know and

they make a business out of it Whereas what I want to be is focused on the permitting, owning the resource, letting contracts out to companies who can come and collect our nodules for us in return for long-term contracts, and

owning part of the processing onshore,

and then very much in the marketing of those materials into

the marketplace, because

I'm absolutely certain that when people see the lower environmental and human benefits of ocean metals, they're going to want to buy products that are made with these metals.

And,

you know, remember that great campaign, Intel Inside, that they used to run?

You should buy a computer with an Intel chip.

I think it'll be the same

when it comes to our ocean metals because we can measure every single thing.

We can guarantee whose hands have touched it.

We can tell you how much CO2 was

generated.

We can tell you how many trees we felled.

Zero.

We can tell you how much child labor we used.

Zero.

We can tell you how much contamination was caused in the water tables.

Zero.

And once we start measuring and making these commitments, other people are going to be forced to do the same.

Or they'll go out of business.

Or they'll be limited to where they can sell the product.

They'll sell their products into markets where people turn a blind eye.

But that won't be in the United States of America.

Well, they likely won't be able to compete either because you'll drive the price of these metals down.

I think that's a realistic

expectation that

prices can go lower.

You know,

if you can deliver efficiencies in the way you handle these materials, because

in

years to come, there won't be many people on these boats.

Now, Jerry, we're wrapping up the interview.

And so my final question is, you know, I bring a lot of innovators in here, and there's some amazing companies

that are coming to fruition right now in the U.S.

And

almost all of them have been private companies.

And so, is this a company that people can invest in?

So, in so, we're a public company, and our ticker is TMC.

We're listed on the NASDAQ.

And

it's fun being a public company.

Is it?

Some days.

Some days.

I mean, it is,

there's been some dark days.

And

but the days have been a whole lot brighter since November 6th, put it that way.

And

but look, we, you know, we

look, it's, it's, I think it's

it's an amazing place to invest your money.

It's a, it's an amazing company at the beginning of a new industry.

We've got a really loyal group of shareholders.

The key shareholders own just under half of the company.

Our retail brigade of shareholders are an absolute army of loyalists.

We've got a growing list of institutional shareholders.

And

we're going to form...

perform a very important part in reindustrialization, you know, and we're going to be wearing that badge very, very proudly.

So,

well, Jared, I love what you're doing.

It's good for the planet.

It's good for the country.

It's bringing jobs back.

And it's not good for China.

And I love that.

So thank you for coming.

And I wish you the best of luck.

And I can't wait to see what happens in 2027.

So

thank you.

Cheers.

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