Minerals Metals Initiative
‘The Minerals and Metals Initiative’ presented by M2i Global – is a podcast exploring the transformation of the critical minerals supply chain as we race for global resilience — From mineral extraction and refinement to policy and innovation— join us each episode as we examine a different aspect of the urgent push to modernize, diversify, and de-risk the world’s critical minerals supply chain. With each guest, we will break down critical mineral news and current events from all corners of the industry.
Minerals Metals Initiative
Policy & Partnerships: A Potential Path to Supply Chain Resilience with Mahnaz Khan
In our second episode of The Minerals Metals Initiative, our host, Alberto Rosende, speaks with Mahnaz Khan, Vice President of Policy, Critical Supply Chains at Silverado Policy Accelerator, about the role strategic partnerships and domestic action play in strengthening global supply chain resilience. Drawing on 14 years of trade policy experience, Khan outlines a “Quad Plus” framework between the U.S., Australia, Japan, and India to diversify and de-risk supply chains. She highlights the use of trade tools—including supply chain credits, targeted tariffs, and commercial stockpiles—to spur domestic processing and safeguard against export disruptions.
Episode Show Notes -
Our Host:
Alberto Rosende is the President and CEO of Mi Global, Inc., a company dedicated to strengthening global resilience through the development of secure, transparent, and sustainable critical mineral supply chains. With decades of experience leading in the public and private sectors, Rosende brings a unique combination of strategic vision, operational discipline, and global perspective to the forefront of the minerals and energy sectors. Under his leadership, M2i Global has advanced initiatives and forge partnerships that align industry innovation with national security priorities. His leadership embodies M2i Global's mission to build a resilient future grounded in collaboration, sustainability, and economic strength.
Our Guest:
Mahnaz Khan is Vice President of Policy, Critical Supply Chains at the Silverado Policy Accelerator where she leads efforts to develop bipartisan trade and supply chain frameworks that strengthen U.S. resilience in critical minerals and strategic materials. In her fourteen-year federal career across the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the U.S. International Trade Commission, and the Department of Commerce, Khan served as a subject matter expert on digital trade, global privacy, and industrial supply chains. She has authored or co-authored more than twenty publications shaping modern trade and economic policy. Mahnaz Khan also serves as a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council GeoTech Center, where she focuses on the intersection of national security, trade policy, and energy security.
Terms Reference Guide:
https://maipdf.com/file/d68eeba2cdacb6@pdf
Research & Additional Reading:
https://maipdf.com/file/d68eebefdad2d8@pdf
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in The Minerals and Metals Initiative podcast are solely those of the hosts and guests. They are provided for discussion and informational purposes only and do not represent the official policy, position, or recommendations of M2i Global, Inc. Any statements made should be understood as personal opinions, not factual claims, and should not be relied upon as investment, legal, or professional advice. While efforts are made to ensure accuracy, M2i Global makes no guarantees regarding completeness or reliability of the content.
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China has 1.4 billion consumers, right? The quad has 1.9 billion. And then when you add in all the signatories of the G7 critical mineral partners. And by the way, Australia and India and Korea signed off on that G7 Critical Minerals Action Plan. That market is 2.33 billion consumers. So almost 1 billion more than China. So there is an ability to create a critical minerals market outside of China. Hello everyone and welcome back. I'm Alberto Rosende, your host and CEO of M2i Global, a critical minerals supply chain company. And this is the Minerals Metals Initiative. It's a podcast exploring the transformation of the critical minerals supply chain from mineral extraction and refining to policy and innovation. Join us each episode as we examine a different aspect of the urgent push to modernize, diversify and de-risk the world's critical minerals supply chain. Today on the show, we have the vice President of policy for Critical Supply Chains at the Silverado Policy Accelerator, a bipartisan think tank addressing geopolitical challenges and trade, economic and ecological security and cybersecurity. She previously dedicated 14 years as a career civil servant at the office of the US Trade Representative, the US International Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce. She regularly publishes articles describing innovative bipartisan policy solutions and crafts forward looking trade policy frameworks to enhance supply chain resilience, with a particular emphasis on critical minerals. Needless to say, she's an expert and we're delighted to have her on the podcast. I'd like to welcome Mahnaz Khan. Thank you for being here today and welcome to the show. Hello, Al. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. When I saw, you know, your background, you went to law school and so forth. How did you wind up getting into the space and building this expertise in critical minerals? How did how did that that call kind of evolve for you? Actually, it was a complete accident. I, I was, three different government agencies for 14 years. And this opportunity just came up. I had a friend at Silverado and was looking to looking to do very similar trade policy stuff. So I, I interviewed with our CEO and she was like, do you want to go to Critical Minerals? I had no idea what it was. And I said, sure. And so it's so really so you're fairly new to the criminal space? Just a year and a half. But I spent 14 years in trade policy. So what I was, you know, I, I did steel, aluminum, textiles, apparel. So all these trade tools I'm borrowing from different, industries that I've worked in and putting them together in the critical minerals space like stone, aluminum are very protectionist, as is, textiles and apparel. So it's been allowed me to, like, be very creative and I, I told my boss I was like, look, we're because we're all like, trade policy experts and have worked inside of government. I'm like, let's try to carve a critical minerals trade policy lane in Washington because I don't think people understand it and they don't understand trade and how to use these tools. So that's kind of where we, you know, headed down that way is is bringing together our expertise. And then obviously on the data side, we have, we have, people I've worked with at the U.S. International Trade Commission. So putting out the data first and then the policy recommendations. So, that's how I got into the space. But complete accident. I didn't know it was. So, I also a year and a half of the people were talking about it, but not to the extent that people are talking about it now. So I had no idea that it would take off so much. And, and the work that I was doing at Silverado would take off so much. I thought, I have a 9 to 5... quiet life. So much for that, right? No, it's really fun. So. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So obviously having that experience, especially in the textile business, when you look at the all of the protectionists and the controls and, and so forth, you know, there's, I think that there's a lot of, you know, that's transfer from that space. And then and so I gave you the super foundation because it seems like you've been doing this for a long time, but obviously you have been just with a different focus. Yeah. And I wasn't for the textiles, space. You know, we put the the government put the UFP on, the textiles and apparel industry and that moved the supply chains like I lived through that, where it moved the supply chains out of China into other markets. And so that was that was interesting to see. That's why I'm like, we can use UFP for lithium ion batteries in China. But, yeah, there's there's a lot that can, can be borrowed from the textile space. But the countries that I found when I was doing analysis at the U.S. International Trade Commission, the ones that really were able to take China's market share, were the ones that were vertically integrated. So this this MP deal allows these companies, it allows MP to be vertically integrated so we can become export competitive at some point down the line. So right at that textile and apparel model with this mind to magnet model is how I kind of compare and contrast both of, of those industries. And you know, this is an infant industry here in, in the critical minerals space. So it's you know it's blossoming and evolving. So we'll see. It's good. I think it'll take at least 5 to 10 years to, to get anywhere. But you know, you have to start somewhere. Absolutely. I know that you've done an awful lot of, publishing of, several focused articles. On a lot. And I want to take you back to the one that you published in January. Before we get started in the dialog and look at that framework that you were, you had published, kind of, to provide guidance to those that were coming in with the new administration. I don't know if you'd want to take us through that, just kind of a laying of foundation of the different policy areas and pillars of the framework. And I'm sure that we can then dialog about some of those. Or that that seem like so long ago when you talked about that paper. I don't know if I forgot about it. But we put out a mineral security trade policy framework. And really, this framework at Silverado was leveraging all of our trade policy experience that we've had at all three agencies. So that framework basically asked the administration to, look at objective analysis before they enter into critical mineral deals. So look at you know, what would happen, what would be the economic shocks if we were going to enter into a deal with a particular partner. So we don't want to harm our own supply chains and harm our critical mineral industries that are trying to get up and running here. So we've asked, in that framework for the US International trade Commission. They're a big part of that framework to do that kind of analysis. And then we had at that time responsible mining and processing standards. That should be done through the interagency. And we see that already happening, with the Trump administration. So kind of taking all the best parts of government, putting it together, and then having USTR lead that process. So the landscape has changed significantly, since that time. So I think there's parts of that that they are barring, but you know, that that was our kind of objective insider, knowhow way of, of getting these deals off the ground. You know, when I thought, as I was reading through these articles again, I saw that you were really focused on understanding that we needed to have partners. And so I know that that was really kind of the focus of the framework was to be able to guide and in developing a repeatable, encompassing process going forward. Could you talk about the importance of partners, especially when we talk about the critical minerals space, and maybe you can talk to some of the deals that the administration has already taken on since they took power in January? Yeah. I always say when I talk about partners and allies, we have to play the long game, which is doing domestic mining and processing here in the United States, but also play the short game because, as you know, all, it takes a long time to get these projects up and running with our, very long lead times on permitting. And, you know, getting a processing plant up and running as well. So looking towards our partners and when I started the job about a year and a half ago, I kind of was looking around and seeing what frameworks for a collective trade agreement would work. So looked at NATO, looked at Aukus, looked at the quad for some of them. And then, you know, the political environment has changed substantially since that time. So what was interesting, we've actually been working on the quad since, let's say March or April 2024. And the reason that I really liked that framework was because Australia is a natural mining partner. They have 37% of global supply of lithium. They also have 28% reserves of zinc, which you can extract germanium and gallium out of. Unfortunately for lithium, 99% of the lithium concentrates go to China. Right. So that's a supply chain link that I feel can be broken with a collective partnership. Then we moved over to Japan. Japan is great at processing certain critical minerals. They've learned their lesson after getting slapped by China in 2010 with the rare earth export ban. They also have a great entity, JOGMEC, for funding. They're very, very strategic about what kind of partnerships and what they fund as well. So again, naturally, you know, there's a supply chain synergy there with India. India, they're not as, I guess strong in mining and processing right now, but they are very good on the recycling and recovery aspect. I actually visited India, a couple months ago and visited the largest recycling facility for lithium ion batteries outside of China. And it's fascinating what they can do in that space. They're also moving into the deep sea mining. They are, there's only three countries that have licenses for deep sea mining in the Pacific Ocean for the polymetallic nodules, between Hawaii and Mexico and then in the Indian Ocean. The other two are China and Russia. So they're they would be a natural partner. And then, of course, we have, we have downstream industry. We're trying to bring industry back here. We're a huge consumer market as well. So kind of seeing all these, supply chain linkages. So I was actually really shocked that, the critical that the energy executive order that came out with Trump that he listed quad as a for critical minerals diplomacy. And again, President Trump had quad as his Indo-Pacific strategy back. And Trump won. So we see that as a natural fit. We are at Silverado advocating for, you know, changing this newly announced quad mineral initiative into an actual collective trade agreement. So that's kind of what we've been talking to the administration about. I'll be honest, I think they're very focused right now on bilateral deals. But when the time comes, we are obviously in escalating tit for tat war. That that will be a vehicle, a trade vehicle that will be ready for them. Through our guidance and assistance. So. So when you talk about the quad, I know that each of the partners almost has a bilateral trade, some sort of bilateral agreement with each of the other partners, and so how would how would you see the quad being able to expand and really, encompass maybe more of a multilateral approach? I know that you said that the Trump administration really focuses on that bilateral kind of transactional type of a deal. But but how would you see the future of the quad really supporting the critical minerals flow and supply chains? Yeah. So, this is actually my my next article. I'm getting published. Okay. So for, so you get a sneak peek at it, but, a quad plus trade agreement, in my view, would have, first of all, it would have supply chain credits. So the 30 D, as you know, is getting has been done away with soon. And that was just for electric vehicles. So we're saying, you know, have a limited number of minerals in this quad. Plus it's really a quad plus agreement. And it doesn't have to be just for EVs. It can be for AI inputs, semiconductor inputs, you name it. And it doesn't have to be $3,750. It just has to be enough. Or companies are changing their buying decisions. So that's one part of it is the supply chain credits. And companies are not going to change their behavior if they don't have some sort of demand signal or demand pull, and some sort of incentives to change their behavior. The second is having a beneficial tariff structure, not just for the feedstock or the minerals, but also the processing technology. So we see, you know, with this, this, you know, all these tariffs going around with our bilateral partners. I've talked to companies that are saying that they're having a hard time sourcing that processing technology into the United States and that that's hurting, that's hurting their ability to industrialize. So that's that's very key. The third is creating a commercial stockpile, especially for rare earths. So all these countries can buy from each other. I really think that they can start buying from the United States. But again, for a limited number of minerals. So there can be a, I like the commercial stockpile better than the government stockpile, because if we get into a situation where rare earths are, you know, outright banned. We we can draw from each other, you know, from our from our QUAD+ partners. And I will say, Sarada, just put out a, rare earths dashboard last week, and, you know, we were able to get granular data. And so even after the June 10th agreement between us and China to approve these export controls faster, we don't see, exports of terbium, dysprosium, lithium oxide or yttrium coming to the United States. So that's the we should assume that we're still in that environment, and we'll might be in that environment for for a while. We see magnets going up, but we don't see the those type of materials. So having this commercial stockpile makes sense. And I'll say the last thing, you know, there can be also cooperation on deep sea mining between the partners, obviously. But this administration, I think, is also looking for these partners to have countermeasures as well and have a group. So that means if China is going to put another export ban or control on these, minerals that we need to act together with our partners. And then lastly, there is an ability to create a standards based market, and not have forced labor in, in the supply chain. So having, a Uyghur forced labor provision, between all the partners is would be key, so that we can create a ex-China market. And, and I'll say one more thing. China has 1.4 billion people. I shouldn't we will phrase it. China has 1.4 million consumers. Right. So that's their rights issue. And the quad has 1.9 billion. And then when you add in all the signatories of the G7 Critical Mineral Partners and by the way, Australia and India and Korea signed off on that G7 Critical Minerals Action Plan. That market is 2.33 billion consumers. So almost 1 billion more than China. So there is an ability to create a critical minerals market outside of China. If we do it right. There's a few strings that I'd like to pull on that. You know, I think when we spoke before M2i at the center has a pillar that's the strategic mineral reserve and again, that's civilian based in partnership with the government as we're building it. And it's not necessarily a stockpile, but it has a stockpile component. So how would how would you look at it? And I guess I'm being a little selfish here. How would you look at structuring that stockpile with the with the quad partners of India, Japan and Australia and us, the four of us? How do you see that synergy working within those four communities or those four, constituents of the quad. You know, MP materials? I've been digging into their acres and in case they have a buy and hold arrangement with some Japanese and Korean customers. So I'm thinking something like that with, the rare earths industry in general. Right. Like work treaties and companies from these countries have an option to buy, these, these rare earths or have buy and hold arrangements where they have access. So I'm seeing it that way. Really has to be driven by the market. I'm not a fan of just buying it for the government stockpile because it's very complicated. Especially you don't know which form you're trying to stockpile it in. It can, you know, be sitting in a government warehouse for a very long time. So having maybe companies, here in the United States or abroad, hold it for the end market. The year is what I see as the stockpile. You know that that process is not unheard of, right? I mean, there are other manufacturers in the states that in order to guarantee their supply into the future, work with other companies to buy and hold material that they feed into their industrial process. So that's that's definitely not something that's novel or new, but I think it would be great to be able to look at, at a policy that would maybe provide some seed money to be able to fund that going forward. Yeah. And the government can do it too. They can buy and hold as well for the defense industry. You know, so they would be the buyer as well. And foreign governments. Because the national defense stockpile, they currently exist is a it's kind of a cumbersome, slow reacting kind of a process. And because the congressional approval is required for its budget, it normally gets cut from what it really sees that it needs. So I don't see that really being able to expand to accommodate, the private sector. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you. Although this administration has put a lot of emphasis on that stockpile, I think they're still trying to sort that out as well. So we'll see what form that takes. So when, when, when you're talking about the buy and hold process within the four, I'd like to then bring you back to the other paper that you published in October, which was one of the reasons why you and I met on on that one, conference call was the Strategic Defense Critical Minerals, those 12 that you identified. Could you take us through a little bit of what the thought process was and arriving at those 12? And then if you could then maybe leap forward in looking at the quad again, do you see us looking at those 12 as well within the quad and maybe the buy an old, stockpile that you just spoke about? Yeah. So for for that, when I first came on the job, there was 50 critical minerals and three different lists. So, selfishly, I told our research team I have no idea which one is the most important and what should we have exposure to China. So we have a fabulous research team that when we had, dug through the data, looked at the net import reliance, generally that we have and from China and Russia and also the global share of processing and mining of each of the 50 critical minerals. And we picked the top 12 of those critical minerals. And those are the ones that we've been going to the Hill and administration saying, look at these critical minerals because this is where our exposure risk is. So what we found, though, when you add in what China has done, is that they've put export controls, or bans on 11 out of the 12 of those strategic defense critical minerals. And so they're to me, that shows that they know where our weaknesses are and we don't. The only one they haven't, put any sort of export restriction right now is arsenic. That worries me a bit because arsenic, we are importing about 96, 97% of arsenic metal from China, and that goes into semiconductors that are used for like lasers, for, sensors that the defense industry. It's kind of alarming that we have such a huge exposure risk. And I've talked to companies asking them, can you make arsenic? If we were to get cut off from China overnight, would you be able to make it? And no country wants to touch arsenic production because it's so toxic. It's very poisonous. And actually, as reading more about it, it was, they call it the king of poison and the poison of kings because arsenic was used to poison, the Borgia's, you know, Lucrezia Borgia, used to, put it in her ring and poison her opponents. So that's how toxic and dirty it is. And only showing that makes it so we don't have access to that that mineral. We're going to be in big trouble. So I look at that closely. So that's that's 1 in 1. But I think that this administration, you know, we've given them that list, we we've get it to the Hill or we're saying we need to move quickly to bring some production back or with our allies. So in terms of the quad, looking at those 12 and seeing again where we can source, and, and who can make what, and what sources we can draw from because we need to assume that, you know, of the of the 12 three are already banned germanium, gallium and antimony. And then looking at the processing technologies for those as well. It's kind of a scary picture. And, you know, there's a lot of attention paid on rare earths because there was this export control, but not as much on the others. And that can be also, you know, China's next playing card. When you look at everything that the administration has done so far, and there's been a huge focus on the critical minerals supply chain, I mean, it's on the front page above the fold, as they would say almost every single day, something to do with critical minerals. When you look at the the executive orders and the other things that they've done, where do you think there still is room for or opportunities, to enhance, the administration's focus on critical minerals, domestically, especially trying to attract, more processing and looking for that available technology to bring back to the States. What would if, you know, if you had your magic wand for the day, what else would you look at? I would say, so again, this administration is very focused on mining and processing, which is great. The two other areas that we we need to look at are also, recycling recovery and innovation. So at Silverado Policy Accelerator, we've partnered with the Council on Foreign Relations towing a working group on innovation and recycling and recovery, because we see policy gaps there. Again, this administration, they're very small team trying to tackle the the hardest problems first. But we are doing this series of, sessions in this working group looking at these policy gaps. And by paper out later this year, you know, to to guide the administration on that front because you can't leapfrog China without innovation. We're not going to, you know, out mind them or out process them, but we can outinnovate them. And that's where we need to be focusing our, our a lot of our resources and funding too. Right. It's not just on on the mining and processing. So looking at, where we can help on that front, as you know, there's I say there's like three valleys of death. There's a technological valley of death, the commercial and the profitability Valley of death rates. A lot of these, these companies fall just on commercial to try to scale and that technology piece. So I think that yeah, those are those are interesting. I've never heard them described that way. But I'll hopefully I'll steal those from you and but I'll always give you credit if I reference. That's okay. I think I saw for somebody else. So I saw. I know that you're going to be heading out to Texas, this week. And you were talking about the Democratic Republic of Congo. And I know that we mentioned it a little bit earlier on. Can you highlight some of the things that you're going to be talking about in terms of the DRC? I you know, the way I see how this administration is doing deals, it's really the art of the domestic mineral deal. That's like the M.P., deal that we've seen. But also there's an art of the international bilateral deal. And that's where I see DRC. I wouldn't put Ukraine in that context. But what happened behind the scenes with the DRC is you had a bunch of U.S. companies that were interested in furthering, business interests in the DRC. And then on the other side, you had the head of state coming to President Trump looking, you know, to to attract U.S. businesses. So it's almost like the government was a matchmaker. And this respect and this is all public. There was just a hearing last week, where the State Department talked about this, but partnering with companies on one side and then, the government on the other. And in that hearing, what, Scott, what our upset of the State Department said in many of these African countries were pushing on an open door. These are these are countries that want to partner with us. So that deal was a nice matchmaking. It was under the peace plan with, you know, DRC and Rwanda. And it's also a big infrastructure component. So every single African country I've talked to, they're like, we we don't want to just be in extraction only like DRC and Rwanda doesn't either. Or they want to have value benefit vacation. They want to be in the processing space, but they just don't have the, infrastructure or the energy infrastructure or the roads, you know, the buildings to make that happen. So I think that this is a really positive first step. Just on August 1st, both governments came together to work on, part of that deal is this regional economic integration framework to, to figure out how they attack that infrastructure piece. So that work is still ongoing, but I can see more deals like that happen on a bilateral basis with either Africa or South America. So very interesting way of doing deals, but I think it sets up a good model for how this administration will engage moving forward. Well, I think that that, it's definitely a great step forward. We know the resources that are there. And, we, you know, we all know that the countries need to develop economically. And so this is a great opportunity. And hopefully they'll be able to quell all of the friction points that have always been, plaguing that particular region. One final thing that I wanted to talk about, and we haven't mentioned it yet, is the Mineral Security Partnership. And I wanted to see, you know, where is that going under the Trump administration? Is there any movement, to solidify or strengthen that process going forward? What what have you seen and what would you recommend? You know, it's, it's hard to know at the moment. The political goals are not exactly in place. That would be wanting the MSP. I so I haven't put, a lot of stock in it right now because there's other kind of signals going on. Again, you have the G7 Critical Minerals Action Plan that was signed off. And a lot of those are MSP partners as well. So and there's a roadmap that's going to be developed for the Critical Minerals Action Plan. The next meeting is September in September in Chicago. So I'm not sure where the, the multilateral kind of frameworks are going to settle. But or how the MSP will be used going forward. But with the G7 critical minerals Action Plan, there is this sense of shared, you know, a standards based market, mobilizing the capital for funding projects within each other, within the G7, plus those three partners that signed off and then promoting innovation. So, they did mention in that G7 critical Metals action plan, the MSP, but didn't go into a lot of specifics on that. So it might be a supporting mechanism, for the G7 Critical Minerals Action Plan. But I think right now, I'm not sure it is referenced in in joint statements. So I don't see any way. But I think that this administration may do something different with it or use it as a enabling mechanism for the G7 Critical Minerals Action Plan. But but if that might all change. Then it might have changed. Absolutely. So I appreciate it. I know that you're pressed for time a little bit, and I just wanted to get a feel of what are the priorities that you have going forward as you look towards the beginning of the next fiscal year? What would be some of the things that are on your hit list or kind of on your to do list, if you will? Yeah. So one, I will say, obviously, you know, figuring out how we construct the bilateral deals, and looking at, Africa as a partner. So that's the one thing on my radar. The second one is, really looking at the minerals. I feel the next China's next hit on us will be the minerals used in AI and AI infrastructure. So there was a I, you know, action plan that the president put out. There's no reference of critical minerals, but I can see China definitely restricting, those components, especially now that, you know, they're trying to get, this tool, they've gotten some of these and Nvidia and H20 chips. So that's their next place in the AI space. So really looking at tantalum, arsenic, the copper, you know, kind of minerals and looking at what we can do there. But the AI community, they speak a different language. They speak more on regulations. The critical minerals community is here if they're talking very differently, but really bridging the gaps between both of them. And then you have chips like literally in the middle, the chips in the, so silverados very much, you know, in the chip space and the critical minerals space, but making that linkage to AI and trying to get the conversations pushed, pushed on the critical minerals space into the AI community so that they understand how their industry will be constructed going forward. So that's that's my next big thing on the horizon. So we'll see. We'll see where that leads us. All right. Thank you very much, man. Is there anything that the before we close out. Is there anything else that you want to leave us with? I want to say, you know, with, with this administration that they are moving with the sense of urgency, which is very, very positive. I think that, you know, they're focusing on all the hard things and they're trying to get the permitting right. They're trying to get the stockpiling right. They're also, on the funding side, trying to grapple with the interagency process to make that easier for businesses. So I think there's going to be a lot of positive things that come out in the next few months, few weeks from this administration. So I'm excited to see where all that leads us, because I feel like we've been talking about it for a really long time. And there's a lot of momentum in action. You're in the right space. In terms of the podcast line on these issues, well. I appreciate it. I'll tell you that. I went to the select USA of Investment Summit, both in 2024 and 2025, and the level of energy focused on the critical minerals space. And there was a focus on during both of those summits on critical minerals. And I can tell you that there was a sense of urgency and a high level of energy really focused at identifying those issues that where the administration could provide support. So, I'm very optimistic that we're going to be seeing a lot of progress. And with, you know, institutions like yours, kind of, you know, leading the cutting edge and providing those policy inputs, I think will be really, really helpful for all of us in the industry. So, Manas, thank you for being here today. And thank you for, all the work that you and Silverado are doing to support us. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. And to everyone who listened or watched this episode, thank you for joining us. 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