Mining the Gap | Securing Resources for the High-Tech Economy

This episode discusses the crucial role of mining in supporting high-growth industries such as defence, electric vehicles (EVs), and artificial intelligence (AI). The speakers examine the  essential mineral requirements for these industries and the supply chain vulnerabilities and challenges associated with meeting surging global demand.

Speakers include:

• Amanda van Dyke | Founder | Critical Minerals Hub
• Rasmus Tammia | Programme Manager - AI in Mining | Boliden
• Joséphine Quioc | Senior Sustainability Consultant - TDi Sustainability (Host)

This episode is part of the TDi Sustainability special series of podcasts produced in advance of the 2025 Resourcing Tomorrow event that will take place in London between 2-4 December. Find out more about the event>

Transcript

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Joséphine Quioc 0:09

Hello

Introduction — mining & high-tech industries (Joséphine)

Joséphine Quioc 0:10

and welcome to this special edition of Students and Boosts, the TDI podcast series in conjunction with resourcing tomorrow. In this series, speakers at this year's resourcing event discuss some of the key themes that will be covered at the conference in December. I'm Josephine Quioc, Senior Sustainability Consultant at TDI, and today's podcast host. Today's discussion focuses on the crucial role of mining in supporting high-growth industries such as defense, electric vehicles, and artificial intelligence. We'll be discussing the essential mineral requirements of those industries and exploring the supply chain vulnerabilities and challenges associated with meeting surging global demand, as well as how new technologies in AI and electric vehicle manufacturing are impacting the mining sector. Our speakers will examine strategies and practical solutions to diversify supply sources, reduce dependency on specific regions, and adapt to changing technological requirements. I am delighted to be joined today for this discussion by Rasmus Tammia and Amanda van Dyke. Rasmus is program manager for AI in mining at Boliden. He is a software and development engineer and leads Bolyden Mines research and development program in artificial intelligence, driving RD initiatives in AI and machine learning for process control and mine automation applications. His role involves developing new technologies using cutting-edge techniques within simulation, model-based control, and machine learning. Amanda is the founder of the Critical Minerals Hub as part of the Critical Minerals International Alliance. She has more than 20 years' experience in commodity markets, managing gold and precious metals fund, as well as multi-asset and fixed income funds. In previous roles, she has raised more than $500 million of dollars in debt and equity-related finance for junior mining in her investment banking career. Amenda has also relaunched Women in Mining UK into a globally recognized brand and has carried out significant work developing the business case for women on boards in the mining industry. Welcome, Erasmus and Amenda, and thank you for joining us today. Let's start with some context. Mining is crucial to high growth sectors such as defense, electric vehicles, and artificial intelligence, because it supplies the critical minerals and the metals essential for development and operation for electric vehicles and their batteries. This predominantly includes lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, as well as other components. With regards to AI, metals such as copper are vital for data centers and advanced electronics, while silicon is key to producing the semiconductors which power AI. Finally, the defense industry relies on minerals like graphite, lithium, and rare earth for powerful magnets, advanced alloys, and specialized electronics, including stealth and electronic warfare technologies. However, as demand for these minerals grows and their production remains unevenly concentrated across a handful of countries, the resulting supply chain vulnerabilities and environmental and social challenges necessitate innovative and sustainable mining practices and technology. Could you each share your perspective on how mining is evolving to meet the needs of these high growth sectors?

Amanda van Dyke 3:32

Hi.

How is mining evolving to meet new demand? (Amanda)

Amanda van Dyke 3:33

Thank you for having me. So in terms of how mining is evolving to meet the growth in the requirements for critical minerals, more generally in minerals, I think that mining actually isn't evolving. Mining by its very nature is demand-led. So demand globally for almost all materials for mining across the board is growing at about 2% a year for everything. And in critical minerals, demand is growing faster at approximately, and this is a gross generalization, 5% a year. Some things it's growing 10%, some things it's growing 2% or 3%. So as a as a subset, you have mining growing at 2%, compounding every year, demand, but the subset of critical minerals are growing much, much faster at double or triple the pace. And the problem is that mining is demand-led, so it doesn't tend to react until there is a shortage. So when there's a shortage, prices spike. And then it takes anywhere between two and five years, usually, for new supply to come online, to take things that were sitting in reserve and to sort of make other areas of existing mines, like grow the capacity of existing mines, and to put mines that were in development into production to meet the new need. And I think that one of the problems we're going to have, which is evidenced by increased volatility in critical minerals pricing and increased, shall we say, press and attention within European Union and America for critical minerals lists globally, is people are seeing that these shortages are leading to delays in industrial production and energy, uh energy growth. And all of those things are all being delayed because of their inability to access raw materials and short-term price spikes are making things difficult. And so they're responding with policy. But unfortunately, the mining industry, because it's demand-led and because it has such long lead times associated with increasing production, is very slow to respond because of the nature of the industry. And so I think that increasingly, as demand grows and keep and starts growing with pace, um, you're gonna start shortages and price spikes are gonna become more and more common.

Joséphine Quioc 6:01

Thank you. Very, very insightful. Rasmus?

Regional supply chains & sustainability (Rasmus)

Rasmus Tammia 6:04

Yeah, so my take on that is that, well, I agree with Amanda here. I mean, it's very much demand-led, but you also have to remember that the um mining industry stands for the commodity of commodities. So what that means is that a lot of mining companies today have a quite broad portfolio of metals, copper, for example. And so what it's more about is I think offering these materials or these metals in a very sustainable way. And I'm absolutely certain that we're kind of leaving this whole post-World War II era with a global market in its current nature and shape and form, and moving more towards having local or regional markets for mining, for example, in Europe. And the Swedish mining industry is working quite a lot in that to kind of reduce the carbon footprint and be able to reach those scope one, scope two, and scope three uh targets targeted towards debt. So that's my take on it.

Limits of regional self-sufficiency (Amanda)

Amanda van Dyke 7:03

I would put in that I I completely agree with Rasmus. I think we are, I think most areas of the world have realized that having a supply chain that isn't dependent on other people is important, and that Sweden is a great example of a country that's really trying to ramp up its sustainable supply chain of minerals. And Sweden has, but Sweden, I would also say, is one of the only countries in the European Union that actually has a developed mining industry at this point in time and actually has a reasonable number of the minerals across the spectrum that we need. But I think one of the big problems is going to be it's never been the case that all the minerals are available in one region or one country. Part of the nature of so many more minerals being required, more than just iron and copper, um, many critical minerals are just regionally dependent. And I think that's going to be a challenge for developing self-sustaining, sustainable supply chains going forward.

Which minerals face the greatest supply risk? (Joséphine)

Joséphine Quioc 8:01

Noted, thank you. And so in this context with the ramp-up of demand from different sectors, but also the recent headlines related to trade tensions globally, are there some minerals in particular that you would consider being the most at risk in terms of supply? And why?

Rasmus Tammia 8:16

Well, I

High-risk minerals & investment barriers (Rasmus)

Rasmus Tammia 8:17

mean, everyone wants copper currently, and I think that's probably one of the most sought-after metal uh when it comes to electrification or AI data centers. So that's one, and also these rare earth metals that we have talked about before. But I think that's also quite important to understand that the way, for example, a country like China is able to take risks is essentially that you have the Chinese government backing up that risk, whereas in Europe, we don't see that to the same extent. So it takes, I mean, there's so much financial risk for a mining company to start having operations solely targeting those metals. And so we need to think of a way to kind of come over that obstacle uh currently.

Amanda van Dyke 9:01

I would

Rare earths, germanium & state-backed supply (Amanda)

Amanda van Dyke 9:02

agree um with Rasmus that uh I think copper and and production is going to be seriously challenged going forward because of declining grades with rapidly increasing demand from almost every sector of the economy. But also, like you said, there's rare earth, germanium, gallium. Um, and the problem with these operations is that we don't have that much production. The majors, 80% of the mining industry, of all of the revenues in the mining industry comes from four main commodities copper, gold, iron ore, and coal. The rest of it, so the other 60 or so minerals are are 0.05. Like all of rare earths are 0.05% of the industry. And the risk in developing a high-cost rare earth mine is extremely high. Um, and the private sector and the mining industry is not really set up or prepared to deal with these niche operations, even though demand for things like rare earths is growing at 7 to 10% a year. And so I think that without state backing, the way China has done, it's going to be next to impossible for the mining industry to expand into these niche areas that are frankly not particularly contrary to popular belief, the biggest issue with a lot of these niche critical minerals is they're not worth billions, let alone trillions of dollars. And the mining industry isn't set up to mine rare earths. The mining industry as we know it isn't set up to mine germanium. And so if they're going to be expected to put in new mines that take a huge amount of time to develop and cost hundreds of millions and 10 years in development capital, if they don't receive state backing, I think the ability to develop non-Chinese supply chains for many of these critical minerals is next to impossible. And to be fair, the US has figured that out. It started with a critical minerals list, but quickly realized that unless they gave state backing to some of these smaller niche industries that were not that were quite risky and not financially investable on their own, that without state backing, nobody was going to develop them and they would not be able to develop supply chains without it.

Joséphine Quioc 11:23

Thank you.

Tech shifts & battery chemistry pressures (Joséphine)

Joséphine Quioc 11:24

To add to this complexity, we're also seeing that the demand of different sectors for specific minerals evolving. I think a really good example for this is um battery chemistries, uh, which we have seen are now potentially looking away from cobalt towards other chemistries. So with this in mind and mentioning also what you just told us, Amanda, that the mining industry can be slow to change, um, are we seeing any mining technologies that are enabling the industry to keep pace with these rapidly changing requirements in relation to battery chemistry changing, but also any other changes, sudden changes in technology?

Adapting to rapid tech change & new extraction (Rasmus)

Rasmus Tammia 12:00

I mean that when it comes to battery technologies, there's so much happening within that field. We saw Northwalt here in Sweden. Uh they had operations here where we're just about to start a production. But what you also have to remember there is that what happens as soon as some other battery technology becomes state-of-the-art? That's really, really difficult because it's not like you can just flip a switch and restart production in a totally different way. So there's a lot of competition there, a lot of development going on there that might require different, entirely different processing stages throughout the entire operation. So that's definitely one aspect to it. But also, as Amanda talked about in the previous discussion, is that I mean, these rare earth metals, yes, there's some tremendous risk to them, and the state has to back those up. But it's also there's a lot of innovation, a lot, a lot of RD efforts put into looking into how we can actually extract those metals from current operations and more specifically, uh, waste and tailings uh currently. I know it's still kind of in its um embryo stage, but I know a lot of mining companies are looking into that. And so hopefully we will see something coming out of that in the future. That's still quite far away, I'd say.

Amanda van Dyke 13:20

Um

Tailings, recycling & the limits of circularity (Amanda)

Amanda van Dyke 13:21

I I can jump in there. I think that so I take a bit of a more global um view on sort of pan demand and supply, and where is demand coming from and where is supply coming from? And Rasmus is is very correct that increasingly a lot of these critical minerals were not valuable in the past and were thrown away, like they were just they reported to waste. And finding a way to either extract them with a byproduct circuit or mine and reprocess old tailings is one of the ways in which the mining industry is looking to access critical minerals, especially considering many critical minerals have exceptionally low grades. So already processed tailings is a great way, is a cost-effective way often to recover them. Um, that being said, even tailings reprocessing is expensive and it's not always economic. And so where it's possible, I think you'll see over the next five years, 10 years, um, everybody's gonna look into their waste dump and see if there's economically recoverable tailings. And if there are, they will access them. But on their own, I don't believe that tailings are gonna be able to provide more than, let's say, 10% of going forward for a number of these critical minerals. It's just there's number, it's a numbers game, right? And yes, there's a lot of critical minerals sitting in tailing stumps, but not enough necessarily to meet global supply. It'll be a contributor, much like recycling is going to be a contributor. The IEA suggests that, but you need to put this in context. We already recycle um, so copper, aluminum, iron ore for steel, we already recycle around 10% of global, like 5 to 10% of global supply is coming from recycled sources. Um, and and slowly we're gonna start recycling critical minerals as well. But in its most aggressive scenario, the International Energy Agency believes that recycling will be able to provide up to 15% of global demand for all metals and minerals, including critical minerals. And so things like tailings and recycling will all be part of the solution, but none of them are an answer to the complete solution by themselves.

Can recycling and reprocessing meet demand? (Joséphine)

Joséphine Quioc 15:46

Thank you. And that leads me to wondering. So, as we were highlighting the role of tailings and recycled material to meet domestic production needs, and going back to the point that you both made on the need for state backing, um, how can governments make sure that they have the right infrastructure in place when it comes to having powerful recycling industries? Are you seeing any examples that are noteworthy in how countries are actionizing this?

EU policy & greenfield projects (Rasmus)

Rasmus Tammia 16:10

I mean, I can give a really short answer to that from a European perspective, in particular here in Sweden. There's a lot of effort currently put into facilitating and making it easier for mining uh companies to actually uh start new operations at new greenfield projects. Uh but in terms of recycling and those kind of aspects, it's more so kind of tied into the business model of the mining companies themselves. So for the smelters side, you could have a recycling part that fills in quite a big part of the uh, I mean, that profit value of the company. So if you're smart, you can have a broad portfolio from that perspective.

Amanda van Dyke 16:51

What I

Why recycling struggles without state support (Amanda)

Amanda van Dyke 16:52

would say on the recycling end and sort of government backing and support, you need to look. So let's let's talk about the people that are most advanced to sort of least advanced. Um, China pays for everything. State backing, if you want to start a business, whether it's in mining or refining or recycling for any metals and minerals which they consider important to their economy, you can get state backing for that business. The West, Europe and North America, mostly have always believed that it was up to private industry to do that. And policy is seen to be very supportive of recycling. And the European Union especially has put out every single policy that says recycling will be part of the critical minerals solution, but they've failed to actually provide any economic state backing for that. So while there's a huge number of universities that have grants for different types of recycling technology, and there's a huge amount of policy that says it's supportive of recycling, you're not seeing any money supporting actually building recycling circuits. And I think that until you're economically backing these recycling operations, you'll find it very difficult to actually build new recycling capacity.

Can AI enhance mining efficiency sustainably? (Joséphine)

Joséphine Quioc 18:12

Thank you. I will um shift a bit back to some of our key topic of today's podcast, namely artificial intelligence. Um the way I'm going to introduce this is by talking about the duality of AI when it comes to mining and environmental performance. We're saying that AI is both an enabler as it improves mining techniques, including waste recovery, which we were just talking about, but it is also an avid consumer, both of minerals and um energy. For this question, Erasmus, could you provide some insight on how, with this rising demand for critical minerals, how can AI enhance the precision, efficiency, and the sustainability of mining?

AI use cases & industry readiness gaps (Rasmus)

Rasmus Tammia 18:55

Oh, in so very, very many ways. I mean, there you can target specific use cases for through your entire uh value chain essentially. You can look at process optimization in your mills, you can look at past planning optimization algorithms down in the mine or computer vision algorithms or something like that. But I feel that in general, when I talk to my peers around the industry, there's a lot of, I mean, I would say that the mining industry is sort of confused, right? Because you need to kind of de-risk uh in terms of investing in RDs. You need to how that usually works is that a lot of mining companies enter these consortiums and they have sort of this non-transactional uh discussion, sharing insights, sharing technologies uh between one another to kind of reduce the costs across the uh companies. So that's kind of one aspect, but then it's also part of, I mean, a lot of new business models will pop up in the future and currently are also amongst our vendors and suppliers through, for example, these traditional automation systems. There's still quite a big uh knowledge gap between having mining comp that mining companies don't currently have, is that the skills and knowledge to really understand these technologies that rely on, for example, modern software technologies that are state of the art if you look at the technologies coming from California, Silicon Valley, those kinds of uh technologies. And they can absolutely be utilized by mining companies as well. That's my firm belief. But yeah, there's still quite a bit of a gap in terms of how mature the mining industry is when it comes to AEI, but we're getting there. I feel like we're moving in the right direction. It's more of kind of how do we reduce uh going and investing in a wrong path? So that's why we enter these sort of shared consortiums where we reduce cost.

AI’s real limits in raising output (Amanda)

Amanda van Dyke 20:58

Rasmus is correct. Um, we're still at the very beginning of utilizing AI to its maximum potential within the mining industry. Um, one of the core issues in the mining industry is the fact that it's it's heavily siloed. So the geologists who find new resources are siloed from the engineers who mine it out of ground, who are siloed from the process engineers who who process the minerals, and who are siloed from the refiners. And, you know, even within, let's say, processors, the guys who deal with waste management are very different from the guys who deal with crushing, um, and different from the guys who deal with recoveries. For such a huge-scale industry that that is called mining, it's a very complex industry with so many sub-specializations. Um, and all of them really do live in silos. And I think one of the great things about AI is it has two great potentials within our industry. One, it has, because we're we we mine such huge scales and we move so much stuff, its ability to optimize every single one of these processes is great. But more so than anything else, its ability to integrate optimization, I think, is one of the greatest potential things that AI could do for the mining industry. And I think that both the optimization and the integration of optimizations could be a huge help to the mining industry as we seek to meet the challenge of growing demand for minerals. On the other hand, there's a limit to how much those optimizations and integration can really deliver significant efficiencies beyond what we're at. And so, yes, effective optimization and integration via AI systems over the next five to 10 years, I think, could be transformative, but I don't think it's going to start increasing production by 10 or 20%. We're looking at 5 to 10% maximum increases in throughput, if that is possible. So there are limits to what AI can reasonably do. At the end of the day, there's an expression in English that, you know, you can't get blood out of a stone. There's no place where that's more true than the mining industry. So we need to be have some realistic expectations about what AI can do. And yes, it can help, but I don't think it's going to completely, much like recycling and waste management, these are all going to be very incremental additions to mining in the long term. And are they going to, as to your original question, offset the increase in demand for things like an AI, for example, an AI data center, 50% of the costs of all of these new trillion dollar AI build-outs are is power, not just infrastructure, but power infrastructure specifically, which is heavily copper reliant. So is AI's addition to mining efficiency going to offset AI's demand? In my opinion, that's highly, highly unlikely.

Joséphine Quioc 24:09

And maybe

How can mining close the future supply gap? (Joséphine)

Joséphine Quioc 24:10

this is almost a concluding question, and we're not at the end, but um we're talking about how much AI, these 5%, could increase um mining output or how much recycling could increase mining output. And we're not necessarily getting to a full coverage of the upcoming rise in demand. So what do you think from your viewpoint, Amanda, could help us bridge the gap in the missing output that we're seeing in light of the rising demand?

Amanda van Dyke 24:35

At

Faster discovery & development essential (Amanda)

Amanda van Dyke 24:36

present, uh within the present mining paradigm, I'm all of the things that we're discussing are are incremental. They're a little bit. Um, and one of the issues that we haven't discussed is pre-mining. So mining development, the exploration and development of new projects. And I'm not sure AI is necessarily going to help with this, but I think the only thing that's gonna be able to help us meet demand going forward is finding new ways to both find and develop new minerals at a much faster pace than that the mining industry is presently finding and developing new minerals. BHP has highlighted, for example, that in terms of copper, copper grades have fallen in the last 10 years, almost halved. They've fallen by over a third. And we've in the last five years, I think we've only found four new major discoveries of copper. And on average, it takes about 15 years minimum to develop a new copper project. That isn't fast enough to meet demand. So I think we're really gonna have to invest in and make far more efficient our ability to find new types of deposits and develop them at a pace that we haven't done in the past, if we have any hope of meeting future demand.

Joséphine Quioc 25:56

Rasmus, do you have um any inputs on

Deeper mines require autonomy & electrification (Rasmus)

Joséphine Quioc 25:59

this?

Rasmus Tammia 25:59

Yeah, I mean uh I totally agree with Amanda here. And uh I all what you gotta remember also that our current minds that we have operational are actually getting deeper and deeper. So so there's this sense of urgency that we don't want to send miners so for far down in our minds. So there's a big kind of reason for us to increase the level of autonomous operations and uh removing electrifying the entire fleet. So I think that's kind of it's a way for the mining industry in itself to understand it's okay for us to be able to conduct mining operations further down where we currently are, we need to have autonomous operations way more than before. Uh so that's that about yes, I do agree with Amanda. This these changes, they take time. I mean, after all, we're dealing with people here. So implementing these new technologies will for sure take quite a bit of time. That's kind of my take on it.

Amanda van Dyke 27:00

I

Automation & the existential supply challenge (Amanda)

Amanda van Dyke 27:01

would agree with I we haven't mentioned it earlier, and and and Rasmus is very correct. We should have mentioned autonomy as a technology that that is changing and making incremental differences. Automation is one of them. And it's it's also a requirement of the fact that mines are both getting bigger. So open pits are getting much, much larger to deal with lower grades, but they're also going much deeper. And but the reason our mines are getting so much bigger and we're mining such lower grades and so much deeper is partially because we we are simply not finding more materials and the cost and development timelines for new mines is so slow. And this is an existential problem the mining industry is facing, where we're significantly increasing demand at a pace, uh, but not increasing supply at the same pace from all the different places supply comes from, whether that's efficiencies, deeper mines, new discoveries, new mines. Um and it is probably one of the biggest challenges the mining industry is going to have going forward. We also need to be really careful. The bigger mines get on the surface, um, the more of an environmental impact they have. Um, and the deeper mines get, the more dangerous they get, to be perfectly honest. And and Rasmus is so correct. It needs to be to go that deep needs automation. It's uh Kodelko's recent uh loss of life and and an underground mine collapse is a very good indication that if we're gonna keep going deeper and we're gonna keep getting bigger, we're gonna need to find ways to do that safely.

Environmental impacts of bigger & deeper mines (Joséphine)

Joséphine Quioc 28:35

Um this is very interesting. And I think especially bringing this back to the very physical realities that maybe some of the audience will not be um hearing about the depth of the mine increasing, I think, is very interesting and adds a whole wealth of new challenges as you've been mentioning it. Following up on what you mentioned, Amanda, with the increase of environmental challenges as mines get bigger, would you be able to tell us a bit more about what you think are the new environmental issues that we're seeing with this need for more uh minerals and yet a bounded environment?

The true environmental footprint of mining (Amanda)

Amanda van Dyke 29:07

The uh the mining footprint in the world is surprisingly small. I think um SP did it and did some analysis a few years ago um that showed that the total mining footprint in the world is 0.07% of habitable land, but it's growing. The lower the grades we mine, there are two things. It's like Rasmus said, we can go deeper, which is much more difficult and much more complicated, or we can go wider and we can start mining lower grade materials. And the reality is we dig holes in the ground that you can see from space. That's how big they are. And there's just no getting around that like, and for every hole we dig, we have to have an equally, if not larger, pile of waste because we're mining grades that are like 1% or less, right? So that means 99% of the material that's been processed goes to tailings and waste. So not only as Said bigger holes and bigger piles of waste. And that's that's a big environmental footprint. And that environmental footprint is not only difficult on the environment, but is also very, very costly. Like bigger mines are more expensive. And so I think the mining industry is coming to a wreck, and communities and environmentalists don't like those big holes. I mean, they like using all of the materials that having a mineral-intensive lifestyle provide to us. I think a lot of these people aren't aware of the fact that we in the West generally, in the developed world, have three times the mineral footprint, three to four times the mineral footprint of people in the developing world. But that comes at a cost, and that cost is very, very physical. And as we keep demanding more, that cost on the environment is going to just get bigger. And that's just, it's an existential issue. Are we willing to pay that price? Because if not, development goes backwards. And as much as a lot of people in the West have been very anti-mining and they said, you know, we'd rather have less development and live more at an equilibrium with the needs of the environment. I'm not sure people who are still developing and still trying to achieve our level of our quality of life are necessarily going to be willing to be as patient or necessarily forego minerals and energy for the price of the environment. So we really do have a very existential tug of war going in terms of our need for more resources and the ability of the of the planet to give them to us.

Outlook on land scarcity & alternative sources (Joséphine)

Joséphine Quioc 31:43

Inspiring is maybe not the word because you're definitely highlighting an incredibly difficult situation. But um I think this is an incredibly insightful rendition of the challenges that this industry is facing. Um Rasmus, do you have any words on this again? Um key environmental and social challenges that mining is facing.

Space mining & long-term scarcity (Rasmus)

Rasmus Tammia 32:01

No, not not necessarily more than that, just like I talked about before. I mean, like, for example, here in Sweden, there's a lot of work and effort putting into making it easier to start mining operations. But just like Amanda said, I mean, that's still not gonna resolve the long-term problem, which is that, I mean, these resources are gonna get much more scarce throughout our planet. And I was actually at a workshop at NASA's research center in the Silicon Valley where they were seriously talking about space mining. I know that sounds very kind of alien almost, but that was a big reason to why they're looking to collaborate with the mining industry to understand more mining operations for them to be able to, well, it's essentially establish a sustainable presence on the moon, uh, essentially, and looking into what kind of metals do they have there. But that's very, very, very far into the future. But their main reason for that take was that, well, we don't currently have the rare earth metals um required uh for the upcoming future here on Earth. So we need to look into other parts in our universe, so to speak.

Deep sea mining vs. land scarcity (Amanda)

Amanda van Dyke 33:13

This is a very contentious issue, and I will put it out there. Um, and to slightly uh bring another point of view to what Rasmus said, rare earth minerals. Right now, we don't have enough production to meet what we know is the growing demand for rare earth minerals. But in actual fact, according to USGS, we have about 300 years' worth of reserves and resources in the world available. And the largest resource of rare earth metals in the world is presently owned by Japan and is sitting at the bottom of the seabed. One of the potential solutions to ongoing scarcity in the mining industry is deep sea mining. And it's an extremely contentious issue. But the reality is we know that there are significantly high grade resources in the deep sea available that are arguably easier to access, not easy, but easier to access than going to space. Um, but so far there's a lot of contention about whether or not we should be mining the deep sea. Um and it's a it's a real issue. But we do need to scarcity on land for mineral deposits is a very, very real thing. Um, and the question is, do we keep mining bigger and deeper and lower grade mines, or do we consider alternative sources like the deep sea or space to meet that new that need and an anticipated scarcity? And it's very unsurprising that the guys who use the most, um the guys in Silicon Valley who have the most advanced machinery and robots that require the most power are the ones thinking about it because they're the biggest consumers. And so it's it's it's very right that they're thinking about how and where we're gonna get the resources to keep technology going. But I do think we're gonna have to think far more creatively about it going forward if we're gonna meet that, because there is demand is growing much faster than supply.

Competing sectors & rising mineral pressure (Joséphine)

Joséphine Quioc 35:13

Exactly. And I think in this, again, in this context, something that I'm constantly seeing is that the risk for supply chain collision between different sectors, um, whether it's defense industry, whether it's electric vehicles or artificial intelligence, all of these companies and sectors are competing for the same resources. At the same time, we're having governments, whether it's the EU with the EU Critical Mature Act or the American Inflation Reduction Act imposing domestic sourcing targets. Um, how do you see that we could potentially avoid these collisions, or do you think that these will happen, nevertheless? I'll have Amanda to start.

Amanda van Dyke 35:50

It's quite

One interconnected demand — defence, EVs, AI (Amanda)

Amanda van Dyke 35:51

interesting. I've been reading a lot of books um recently on the defense industry. So defense is becoming I don't think these are separate industries. Industry generally is becoming far more automated. Every industry is becoming more automated, every industry is using AI to different extents, and every industry is using more energy. Um, and that's an energy demand and material demand are are causally correlated, as in they all grow together. So I don't think it's going to be defense versus AI. I think it's going to be how fast can we develop? All industries are interrelated at this point in time. And the question is how quickly can we continue to industrialize if there are material constraints? And I think it's a reckoning. I I don't know that necessarily this sounds really horrible, but the modern army is actually much more about satellite positioning and autonomous systems and AI than than you think than it is necessarily even about missiles and guns. Everyone is depending on the same systems and depending on the same materials to grow their industry. I don't think we get to separate them anymore. I think it's all the same demand. And the question is how fast can industry grow? Period.

Joséphine Quioc 37:12

Rasmus,

Cross-sector mineral competition (Joséphine)

Joséphine Quioc 37:13

I don't know if you have any further elements on uh this question as well. How can the demand be answered to uh potential collision between sectors, even though it might indeed be all the same demand for the same minerals?

Rasmus Tammia 37:25

I

How fast can industry adapt? (Rasmus)

Rasmus Tammia 37:26

I mean, uh I don't think I have anything more specific to add to data. Uh the way I see it is just like Amanda put it. A lot of these different sectors and industry, you can't sort of separate them from one another. They're so interconnected that demand from the mining industry will happen all almost like by itself. So it's more just like Amanda said, more kind of a question about how fast can we uh adapt and provide this from the industry as a whole.

Joséphine Quioc 37:56

Noted.

Closing remarks & RT event invitation (Joséphine)

Joséphine Quioc 37:57

Thank you. Um we're arriving towards the end of our recording. Um so I'll be uh closing our session today with some remarks. Um I'd like to thank you both so much for joining us today. Um, for our audience to please check out the rest of this special series of resourcing tomorrow's podcasts on the TDI Suits and Boots Podcast channel. We hope to see you at this year's event in December, where the conversation on the critical mineral requirement in high tech industries will be continued. And you hear more on today's topic from Amanda and Rasmus. Thank you for listening.