June 2, 2025 • 37 mins
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In this episode of At the Boundary, Dr. Andrew Whiskeyman sits down with Milo McBride of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to explore one of the most consequential issues in global security today: the race for critical minerals and the future of energy transition.
From solar and battery innovation to deep sea mining and friendshoring strategies, this conversation breaks down how access to rare earth elements, lithium, and other essential materials is reshaping geopolitics, military readiness, and climate ambitions. McBride shares why China’s dominance in energy supply chains is a structural challenge for the U.S., how new geothermal and battery storage technologies could offer a way forward, and what policies might close the gap between environmental ideals and practical realities.
If you care about energy security, emerging tech, or the intersection of national strategy and sustainability, this is a must-listen.
At the Boundary from the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida, features global and national security issues we’ve found to be insightful, intriguing, fascinating, maybe controversial, but overall just worth talking about.
A "boundary" is a place, either literal or figurative, where two forces exist in close proximity to each other. Sometimes that boundary is in a state of harmony. More often than not, that boundary has a bit of chaos baked in. The Global and National Security Institute will live on the boundary of security policy and technology and that's where this podcast will focus.
The mission of GNSI is to provide actionable solutions to 21st-century security challenges for decision-makers at the local, state, national and global levels. We hope you enjoy At the Boundary.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Glenn Beckmann (00:12):
Hi everybody.
Welcome to another episode of atthe boundary, the podcast from
the global and national securityInstitute at the University of
South Florida. I'm GlennBeckman, communications manager
at GNSI and your host for at theboundary today,
today on the podcast, we'reexcited to bring you a
conversation between Dr Andrewwhiskeyman and Milo McBride, as
(00:36):
they'll be discussing criticalminerals and resources,
specifically in the context ofenergy transition technologies
and the role of next generationadvancements that's coming up in
just a couple of minutes. First,I'd like to invite you to
register for our upcoming policydialogs virtual event, Trans
Atlantic forum on cybersecurity. We've teamed up with
(00:56):
cyber Florida and the Universityof Paris Saclay for the event,
they're France's leading cyberUniversity and one of the
leading institutions in all ofEurope, bringing a true global
perspective to the discussions.
The webcast is scheduled forJune 23 9am here in Tampa, 3pm
in Paris. Some of the featuredspeakers already lined up will
be Alexis Olivero, Alexanderraday Julian signals and Louis
(01:21):
galbin from the French side ofthe Atlantic. Closer to home,
featured speakers include anchorMalley, Marvin Pazos Revilla and
John licado, all from the newlyformed USF Bellini College of
artificial intelligence,cybersecurity and computing.
Also joining us in thediscussions will be James Jacobs
from cyber Florida. You cancheck out the panel discussions
(01:43):
and speaker details on ourwebsite. We'll drop a link in
the show notes. That's June 23the Trans Atlantic forum on
cybersecurity, a three hourvirtual event from GNSI.
Finally, if you're interested ina probing analysis of the future
of defense spending in the US.
You need to read our latestresearch article, authored by
(02:04):
GNSI non resident Senior fellow,Dr Frank Hoffman. He makes one
thing clear in the article,America's national security
strategy must reconcile ambitionwith fiscal reality. In his
words, you cannot defeattomorrow's enemies with
yesterday's budgets. It's acompelling analysis, one you
won't want to miss. We'll have alink in the show notes. Okay,
(02:27):
it's time for our featuredinterview today. Dr Andrew
whiskeyman, another GNSI nonresident senior fellow and
adjunct professor at SyracuseUniversity's Maxwell School,
sits down for a criticalminerals discussion with one of
the nation's leading experts,Milo McBride. He's a fellow in
the sustainability, climate andgeopolitics program at the
(02:49):
Carnegie Endowment forInternational Peace in
Washington, DC, theirconversation starts on the
current state of energy in theUS explores the concept of
friend sharing as it relates tothe global energy landscape,
dips into environmental andsocial concerns with mining a
whole lot more. I know you'lllearn some things from this
conversation today, so let'sturn it over to Dr. Andrew
(03:12):
whiskey,
Dr. Andrew Whiskeyma (03:19):
fantastic.
Hey, and thank you very much forthat introduction. I'm Dr Andrew
whiskey man, and today I'mtalking with Milo McBride. He's
a fellow at the CarnegieEndowment for International
Peace, and a specialty focuseson the geopolitics of the
technology surrounding energyand critical minerals. That's
quite a bit it's quite exciting.
It's unfortunate we only have ashort time to talk today, but
(03:41):
hopefully it whets your appetitefor continuing the conversation
about a field that's absolutelycritical to national security
and international relations. Andwith that, Milo, welcome to the
podcast today. Really superexcited to have you here. I
wanted to start off by givingour listeners a chance to get to
know you a little bit morebeyond the work that you you've
(04:02):
done and is out there. How didyou get interested in energy,
and where are you at today interms of research that you're
seeing and doing?
Milo McBride (04:13):
Well, any pleasure to be on the show. Thank you so
much for having me.
By way of background, I becameimmersed in energy technology
and critical minerals, probablyin the late 2010s when we were
starting to observe somesignificant shifts in the cost
(04:33):
of some emerging renewabletechnologies, wind, solar and
batteries, and that was the mainnarrative. But beyond that,
people weren't really lookingunder the hood and asking the
difficult questions about, wherewas this IP based, who had the
actual presence of themanufacturing capacity, and what
(04:55):
sort of raw materials wouldthose technologies require? And
this isn't a story.
Best of those technologiesextends, of course, to nuclear
power, as well as to a range ofother verticals that we'll
describe today. And by way ofbackground from there, I worked
in the consulting space for awhile, and I think this took
(05:15):
off, really, at Eurasia group,which is a geopolitical risk
advisory working withgovernments and corporates on
thinking about how geopoliticsaffect various
trajectories for for certainmarkets, and the markets that I
covered were critical mineralsand these emerging energy
technologies. At the same time,I was teaching at New York
(05:38):
University, teaching in class toyoung engineers about
understanding how policy andgeopolitics impacts global
energy markets and technologicaltrends. And then, with that,
landed here at Carnegie to workon this research and really
focus in on some of theseemerging next gen opportunities,
(06:00):
particularly where the UnitedStates could have opportunities
in some of these markets.
Dr. Andrew Whiskeyma (06:08):
Absolutely fascinating.
I'd like to start off theconversation with sort of where
we're at today. So we've seen,at least, my observations, has
been a back and forth over thepast few administrations in
terms of the call to drill babydrill right to increase domestic
(06:28):
production, largely from afossil fuels perspective, the
discussions about nuclear energyand the possibilities of changes
when It comes to micro reactors,emerging energy markets,
changing consumption habits, thepush to electrify everything.
What do you see the state ofplay is right now in the US, in
(06:48):
terms of domestic production,perhaps, and then critical
minerals, which are absolutely akey piece of emerging
technologies, at least as Iunderstand where we are from a
technical perspective, I
Milo McBride (07:06):
think that's a great assessment of the
landscape here in the US. Wouldlove to also, down the line,
talk about how this relates tothe global energy landscape and
kind of where the US situates.
And feel free to tie that intogether if you'd like. I mean,
I just started off from a from aUS perspective, shows my own
bias at times. But if you wantto tie that into a global
person, feel free, I think, takethat away. I think on the US
(07:28):
side, it's an interesting placewhere there are some of these
verticals that you rightfullyoutline, that we actually see
really strong bipartisan levelsof support, and that's been
great to see on nuclear power.
There's been a renaissance. Yousee with the passage of the
advance act. You see with thebipartisan infrastructure law
(07:51):
giving funding for new nuclearreactors, which we really
haven't built much of indecades. Just for the listeners
on here, we've built one reactorin Georgia that recently came
online. It took, took at least adecade to get to get going, and
it was quite an expensiveendeavor, so it's a muscle that
we have to relearn if we'regoing to be deploying these
(08:12):
types of technologies. There'salso, as you mentioned, a lot of
bipartisan support aroundthe critical minerals needed,
not just for energytechnologies, but also for
military applications, for thehigh tech sector and for the
industrial production of theeconomy writ large, right? And
those are a range of minerals.
(08:36):
They range from big metals likecopper and nickel to battery
metals. These are in thebatteries and storage
technologies in your phone andelectric vehicles. These are
things like lithium, graphite,cobalt, nickel manganese and and
then there's also more nichemetals that that are some of
which are called rare earths.
These have sci fi like namesdyspraxia, neodymium,
(08:59):
Praseodymium. They'reessentially used to make a very
specialized type of magneticmotor that is in everything from
fighter jets to electricvehicles to offshore wind
turbines. So it's a range of ofof a supply chain challenge, and
there's been some positivedevelopment, specifically in the
(09:20):
battery sector, where we haveseen some onshoring the
production of lithium back homein the US and the production of
batteries. But this all comes asthere's a kind of massive
structural challenge in in theenergy equation, driven largely
by ai demand from data, and forthe first time in decades, we're
(09:42):
seeing electricity demandgrowing at pretty unprecedented
rates. And I think where thequestion mark comes for the US
is what sort of approach is isneeded to deal with it? Is it an
all of the above approach thatincludes renewables and fossil
and nuclear?
And storage, is it? You know,perhaps the last administration
(10:05):
would have wanted a morerenewable focused approach. This
administration looks like wantsa more carbon or base load
focused approach. But there's,there's a hard reality that that
between both of those politicalperspectives, you're going to
need some semblance of both toactually do this and meet the
Meet the load growth required.
(10:27):
So I'll pause there. It's anexciting and dynamic moment.
There's a lot of shiftingvariables.
And yeah, Happy. Happy to alsotalk globally what this means,
what we're seeingfor energy markets around the
world?
Dr. Andrew Whiskeyman (10:42):
Yeah, absolutely, I do want to include
that global piece a bit, becauseyou mentioned onshoring, which
is definitely a sense that I getof a push to move to. But
there's the concept of friendshoring as well, of moving some
things to, perhaps nations thatare more closely aligned with
strategic outcomes that the USwould want to see, or a world
(11:04):
order the US would be, would bebiased toward, but also between
those two, along with artificialintelligence, because that has
spiked a huge demand in energy,that nexus between the
possibilities of artificialintelligence with Other nations
is also an issue when it comesto energy. It's not merely
deploying, oh, somebody elseneeds to adopt. Ai, do they have
(11:25):
the infrastructure that's ableto support
the demand signals required,which puts an additional strain
on perhaps energy supply places.
So any one of those areas thatthat that you want to kind of
touch onas we move through this next
piece of sort of the relation tothe global environment.
Milo McBride (11:49):
Lot of great stuff to unpack. I know it's a lot.
You can pull it through anyone,any one of those that you that
you want. It's a fantastic groupof questions. And I'll start off
for the listeners, just justrunning through this point that
I think is not as widely knownas
as it should be, which is justthe for these advanced energy
(12:11):
technologies, electric vehicles,nuclear power, wind turbines,
green fuels, synthetic fuels,the Chinese are about five to 10
years ahead right now of therest of the world. It is a
historical asymmetry that is,that is somewhat unprecedented,
(12:33):
and from an energy marketsperspective and from an inspect
perspective in Washington quiteconcerning. And that's the sheer
production volume of new nuclearreactors, of solar panels. And
it's also, as I mentionedearlier, the ownership of that
IP, the unilateral integrationof those supply chains, and the
(12:56):
fact that now these are beingexported across the world at
incredible rates, reallystaggering and unprecedented
numbers coming out,and also two poor developing and
emerging markets as well. Right?
These are flooding, Pakistan,Nigeria, really all over, and
(13:17):
that creates a structuralchallenge for the US. One, in
terms of just the sheer abilityfor China, the Chinese industry,
to access global markets. Two,in the long term, poses
challenges to the US is positiontoday as the world's dominant
(13:38):
hydrocarbon producer, where wehave developed immense amount of
leverage from oil and gasexports into the global markets.
And there is concern that theflooding of these alternatives,
which are not fuel dependent,right? They are. They are, in
that way, weirdly, energysecure. They don't work. They
(14:01):
don't they're not at risk fromvolatility in LNG markets.
That poses a grander challenge.
And I think one, one area forthat you address that's really
important is that the US justfundamentally cannot abate these
issues alone. It's going to needto work with partners and allies
that you outline have strategiclong term interests with the
(14:23):
United States. And I thinkthere's a couple interesting
examples of that. India is areally top one, where right now,
the control of the solar supplychain. And just for the
listeners on here, solar energyis now the fastest growing
energy source in human history.
It is there is enough solarmanufacturing in China and from
(14:47):
Chinese companies to get theworld to its solar net zero
goals. And it is on the cusp ofa next gen innovation that will
that will make solar far moreeffective.
Efficient.
The Chinese dominated. That is,that is a concern, but the US
may not ever be able toeconomically compete with its
(15:10):
domestic production of solarpanels, which we have, and we
have some good producers, forsure, but the labor costs don't
necessarily work out. What'sinteresting to see is India
evolving under Modi as asecondary solar producer to de
risk this supply chain, andwe've seen developments from the
US to help try and scale that upto ensure that there's an
(15:34):
alternative hedge. And thisisn't just a monopoly industry
on what, in the coming decadescould be a dominant, growing
energy source. So I think that'san example of how the friend
shoring equation comes intoplay.
I think on the mineral side,there's a lots of other
questions as to how best to dothis. The costs are hard, and
(15:58):
getting capital into miningprojects is a
daunting task. It can takedecades to bring a mine online,
and we see a kind of ongoingtrend of the Chinese control of
minerals, resulting in astructural oversupply, flooding
markets and creating a low priceenvironment that to our western
(16:22):
investor community just makes itreally difficult to sign the
check and pull the trigger. Sothere have been some interesting
multilateral and bilateralframeworks developed to try and
bring some mining projectsonline, and it will be
interesting to see where thatleads with the current
administration that has veryspecific mineral security goals
and this all to say it, thereis, there's no silver bullet
(16:46):
solution to to this problem. Ittakes an all hands on deck,
holistic and comprehensiveapproach to try and bring about
some, some some structuralchanges in mineral security.
Dr. Andrew Whiskeyman (16:59):
I want to pull a Nexus together when it
comes to mineral security, inparticular with this, and it has
to do with the tide of theenvironment, which has been one
of the things when it comes toclean energy, that has also been
a goal in terms of air quality,pollution, a whole host of
things with that, tobring around certain goals.
(17:23):
But there's a side to mining,oftentimes in places that is, is
dirty, it pollutes. There's beenaccusations of child labor and
abusive labor practices beyondthat, with some of the mining
emerging, as well as theability, perhaps, to do deep sea
(17:44):
harvesting of critical minerals,that opens up a whole other
domain, if you will, ofaccessibility to get after some
of these critical minerals thatare needed In the production of
clean energyare those merely missed? Excuse
me, risks to be mitigated. Arethey real concerns? Are they?
(18:05):
Where do you see that aspect ofthings? As you mentioned,
there's no silver bullet andthere's there's pros and cons to
everything. But how do you seethat aspect of things from
perhaps an environmental concernperspective? You know, you don't
want to throw out the baby withthe bath water to run into one
thing. You've just createdanother problem that you perhaps
could have addressed along theway, any thoughts or insights
(18:27):
into that aspect of of energy.
Milo McBride (18:33):
It's a great point. And I think that this
goes back to better of what Iwas saying in 2010 where a lot
of people were saying, Wow,batteries are getting cheap, but
not necessarily doing the duediligence of looking under the
hood and saying, Where is thiscoming from? I think a short
answer is that there is nuanceto the dirtiness and the social
(18:53):
risks of mineral extraction.
Certain certain minerals andcertain mining jurisdictions are
far worse than others, and thatis an important
(22:01):
as other parts of the world aredrilling for it, like oil and
gas and even in all oil fields,and they're coming to commercial
scale pretty quickly. There'sanother firm in Canada that's
showing some real promise, andit's a much less land intensive
community opposed process, whereyou can extract basically
endless volumes of lithiumwithout strip mining, hard rock
(22:24):
mining, but and also with anindustry, particularly the oil
and gas industry, that knows howto handle subsurface fluids with
with great expertise, and we'reseeing that synergy emerge right
now, particularly in Arkansas,where There's some exciting
developments. So that all tosay, with this, with this
complication, there needs to beattention drawn to, to those
(22:46):
areas that are most severe. AndI think you know, we can one
think about other technologiesto to to substitute other
technologies that just don'tdemand those minerals. For
example, if cobalt and nickelare the issues for the battery
supply chain, now, about half ofall EV batteries and increasing
(23:08):
don't require those minerals.
Maybe that's just a way that, inthe long term, we can phase out
the demand for some of the mostcontroversial aspects of this
supply chain. And I'll end ondeep sea mining, which is
full of unknowns. I'll startwith just saying I have not seen
(23:28):
a solid peer reviewed analysison the costs of scraping nodules
off the deep sea floor comparedto just buying copper on the
global spot market. There's alsoquestions about the processing
types of machinery you wouldneed to extract the minerals
from that nodule. That's anunknown. And then lastly, and
(23:49):
your point is important, wereally don't we're not quite
clear the scale of damage thiswould do to an undiscovered and
potentially important ecosystem,with regard to carbon cycles,
with regard to some of theworld's most magical oceanic
floor biodiversity that we justsimply don't know a lot about.
I think we'll start to see somedeep sea mining. But again, the
(24:12):
economics of it alone make mecautious that it's going to
become this panacea that someare touting. Yeah,
Dr. Andrew Whiskeyman (24:22):
I think that's a great point about the
unknowns that we have. So howyou know, rhetorically, almost,
how do we have a cautiousoptimism where there's
potential, but we ought to studyit in a very real way as to the
second and third order effectsthat we don't know? I mean, even
less than a century ago, we'dfill in marshland because it was
(24:44):
wasted land, right, notrealizing the criticality of
marshes to the not onlybiodiversity, but just the water
system in terms of what it does,in terms of water purification,
etc. So without, without.
Really thinking about orassuming, you know, there's
probably second and third ordereffects to what I'm doing. How
(25:05):
do I keep paying attention tothat and studying it as an
important aspect? I would thinkof policy recommendations and
recommendations for industryto perhaps self govern if that's
a if that's a thing we can hopefor with folks hope not being an
operative word in the last bitof time we have together, I want
(25:26):
to turn toward the future,because there's that, that
promise. I think it's a nicepivot off of the potentials,
perhaps for deep sea mining, butsome some pitfalls that come to
it. I don't know we have time toget into asteroid mining and
what space might offer in termsof finding, you know, new
minerals and opportunities,that'd be another fascinating
discussion, I think. But thethree areas I'd like to focus on
(25:49):
in our last bit of time, from anemerging tech perspective, or
where you see trends going, isfrom a production perspective,
you know, can we increase, forinstance, the
effectiveness of solarproduction beyond, say, the 25
to 28% is there something liketitanium, which is way more
(26:11):
expensive, but potentially waymore,
(26:58):
over the next five to 10 years.
Do you see advances in thosethree and where they might be or
where it might be a good idea toreally lean into exploring more
us. Or if you have a fourth oneor a fifth one, feel free to add
that to those. Are just threethat that I've sort of been
paying attention to,
Milo McBride (27:13):
fantastic.
And I do have a fourth fifth onethat is my favorite. I'll save
the best for last. on storage. Imentioned it earlier. There's
been a long promise of movingaway or blending a new type of
cell known as a perovskite solarcell. Folks have been talking
about this for decades, andessentially, you'd overlay it
(27:35):
with your silicone panel, and itwould begin to increase the
energy efficiency beyond that 2528% limit that you mentioned,
and that is now, at least in thepast couple of weeks, really
seeming like it's starting tohappen. It's known as a
perovskite tandem cell. TheDepartment of Energy recently
validated a panel from Chinaasserting that it could get to
(27:58):
35% range. It's unclear how longit lasts. The issue has been
depreciation, but it seems thatnow the these major solar
players all have thisintellectual property and will
start in the coming decade toblend that panel, which opens
up, as I mentioned, a new a kindof new possibility for solar on
(28:20):
storage, we're at a reallyexciting point where storage has
become one of the fastestgrowing parts of this whole
story, essentially doubling yearon year, in installations in the
US. And there's an amazingarsenal of companies,
particularly here in the UnitedStates, that have cracked a
bunch of the issues withstorage, ranging from the
(28:41):
mineral security issue to theduration of it. Right? The
conventional Tesla pack that youget or fluence pack next to a
solar farm, will get you aboutfour to six hours, which, by
today's standards, is fine, butonce you start increasing the
load of variable renewables,you're going to need a longer
duration system. So there's beena really interesting wave of
(29:04):
companies that have designed newstorage technologies known as
iron air flow batteries or zincbromine batteries. There's one
company that even uses aMy favorite topic, though, in
(32:17):
all of this, especially from anAmerican perspective, is what's
happening right now in thegeothermal energy space. This is
just by far the most excitingenergy story right now.
Geothermal has been a nicheenergy source for decades. It's
required this kind of Goldilocksresource of good heat and good
water, but thanks to our worldleading engineers in the shale
(32:41):
patch who have masteredhorizontal drilling, hydraulic
fracturing techniques, they havefigured out basically how you
could, you could build ageothermal well artificially,
pretty much anywhere. And it's astory that's coming to market
very fast. By next year, we'llsee the first two commercial
scale facilities up and running.
(33:03):
We're starting to seeinvolvement from leading oil and
gas drilling service companies,from big tech players. And I
think what's most exciting isfrom the Pentagon. DOD has been
an active procure in getting offtakes for these systems, because
not only can they producecontinuous baseload power, but
(33:23):
from a resilience and from afuel security perspective, this
is a kind of silver bulletsolution to making sure military
installation is as resilient aspossible. There's no potential
fuel cutoffs. It can provide notjust electricity but heat, and
it doesn't have any of the risksfrom a nuclear, you know, micro
(33:44):
nuclear plant on a base. So it'sa really exciting story, and
it's a you it's particularlyjust a US story right now, but
that's, I'd say, what I'mwatching most closely and most
excited about
Dr. Andrew Whiskeyman (33:57):
awesome.
And thanks for ending our timeon a little bit of hope.
Oftentimes, we hear the perilsof energy at the moment, whether
it be pollution or supply supplychains, just the tax on it in
terms of the how it affectssecurity and decisions that we
all make, and the rising cost ofenergy. For many people, it
(34:19):
hasn't been as bad in the US,but the UK in particular, which
you hadn't gone into, is reallyseen some stark increases in
energy that has really pinchedpeople's pocketbooks. But that
bit of of hope at the end ofwhere emerging tech could take
us, and some things that are notjust science fiction, but also
really right around the cornerin development and potentially
(34:41):
scalable, I think, is really,really hopeful. It's been an I
wish we had more time to talkabout this and and maybe we'll
generate enough interest on thepodcast that we'll both get
invited back for a subsequentdiscussion in more detail on one
of these topics. We'll have tosee, hopefully it goes viral. 15
minutes of fame in life, butit's been an absolute pleasure
(35:03):
chatting with you. I lookforward to continuing the
conversation. I hope others doas well.
Milo McBride (35:11):
It's been a joy speaking with you. Thank you so
much for having me on thepodcast, and likewise, I hope to
continue it. Hope there's around two follow up in the
future for folks looking tolearn more, to connect with me,
just find me on the CarnegieEndowment for International
Peace, my contact, my research,is all listed there and keen to
(35:31):
engage so again, grateful foryour time and for being able to
contribute here. Thanks again.
Milo, absolutely fascinatingconversation and topic pleasure
chatting with you today.
Glenn Beckmann (35:50):
What a great conversation today on the
podcast. Many thanks today to DrAndrew whiskeyman GNSI, non
resident senior fellow and anadjunct professor at Syracuse
University's Maxwell School,along with Milo McBride, a
fellow in the sustainability,climate and geopolitics program
at the Carnegie Endowment forInternational Peace in
Washington, DC, next week on atthe boundary, our special guest
(36:15):
will be Dr Nicholas sabaret fromthe University of Paris. Saclay,
he's the director of theirGraduate School of Computer
Science and one of the primaryorganizers behind our upcoming
Trans Atlantic forum oncybersecurity, scheduled for
June 23 thanks for listeningtoday. If you like the podcast,
please subscribe. Let yourfriends and colleagues know and
(36:36):
tell them to subscribe as well.
You can follow GNSI on ourLinkedIn and X accounts at USF,
underscore GNSI, and check outour website as well.
Usf.edu/gnsi,that's going to wrap up this
episode of at the boundary. Eachnew episode will feature global
(36:57):
and national security issues wefound to be worthy of attention
and discussion. I'm GlennBeckman, thanks for listening
today. We'll see you next weekat the boundary. You.
Hi everybody.
Welcome to another episode of atthe boundary, the podcast from
the global and national securityInstitute at the University of
South Florida. I'm GlennBeckman, communications manager
at GNSI and your host for at theboundary today,
today on the podcast, we'reexcited to bring you a
conversation between Dr Andrewwhiskeyman and Milo McBride, as
(00:36):
they'll be discussing criticalminerals and resources,
specifically in the context ofenergy transition technologies
and the role of next generationadvancements that's coming up in
just a couple of minutes. First,I'd like to invite you to
register for our upcoming policydialogs virtual event, Trans
Atlantic forum on cybersecurity. We've teamed up with
(00:56):
cyber Florida and the Universityof Paris Saclay for the event,
they're France's leading cyberUniversity and one of the
leading institutions in all ofEurope, bringing a true global
perspective to the discussions.
The webcast is scheduled forJune 23 9am here in Tampa, 3pm
in Paris. Some of the featuredspeakers already lined up will
be Alexis Olivero, Alexanderraday Julian signals and Louis
(01:21):
galbin from the French side ofthe Atlantic. Closer to home,
featured speakers include anchorMalley, Marvin Pazos Revilla and
John licado, all from the newlyformed USF Bellini College of
artificial intelligence,cybersecurity and computing.
Also joining us in thediscussions will be James Jacobs
from cyber Florida. You cancheck out the panel discussions
(01:43):
and speaker details on ourwebsite. We'll drop a link in
the show notes. That's June 23the Trans Atlantic forum on
cybersecurity, a three hourvirtual event from GNSI.
Finally, if you're interested ina probing analysis of the future
of defense spending in the US.
You need to read our latestresearch article, authored by
(02:04):
GNSI non resident Senior fellow,Dr Frank Hoffman. He makes one
thing clear in the article,America's national security
strategy must reconcile ambitionwith fiscal reality. In his
words, you cannot defeattomorrow's enemies with
yesterday's budgets. It's acompelling analysis, one you
won't want to miss. We'll have alink in the show notes. Okay,
(02:27):
it's time for our featuredinterview today. Dr Andrew
whiskeyman, another GNSI nonresident senior fellow and
adjunct professor at SyracuseUniversity's Maxwell School,
sits down for a criticalminerals discussion with one of
the nation's leading experts,Milo McBride. He's a fellow in
the sustainability, climate andgeopolitics program at the
(02:49):
Carnegie Endowment forInternational Peace in
Washington, DC, theirconversation starts on the
current state of energy in theUS explores the concept of
friend sharing as it relates tothe global energy landscape,
dips into environmental andsocial concerns with mining a
whole lot more. I know you'lllearn some things from this
conversation today, so let'sturn it over to Dr. Andrew
(03:12):
whiskey,
Dr. Andrew Whiskeyma (03:19):
fantastic.
Hey, and thank you very much forthat introduction. I'm Dr Andrew
whiskey man, and today I'mtalking with Milo McBride. He's
a fellow at the CarnegieEndowment for International
Peace, and a specialty focuseson the geopolitics of the
technology surrounding energyand critical minerals. That's
quite a bit it's quite exciting.
It's unfortunate we only have ashort time to talk today, but
(03:41):
hopefully it whets your appetitefor continuing the conversation
about a field that's absolutelycritical to national security
and international relations. Andwith that, Milo, welcome to the
podcast today. Really superexcited to have you here. I
wanted to start off by givingour listeners a chance to get to
know you a little bit morebeyond the work that you you've
(04:02):
done and is out there. How didyou get interested in energy,
and where are you at today interms of research that you're
seeing and doing?
Milo McBride (04:13):
Well, any pleasure to be on the show. Thank you so
much for having me.
By way of background, I becameimmersed in energy technology
and critical minerals, probablyin the late 2010s when we were
starting to observe somesignificant shifts in the cost
(04:33):
of some emerging renewabletechnologies, wind, solar and
batteries, and that was the mainnarrative. But beyond that,
people weren't really lookingunder the hood and asking the
difficult questions about, wherewas this IP based, who had the
actual presence of themanufacturing capacity, and what
(04:55):
sort of raw materials wouldthose technologies require? And
this isn't a story.
Best of those technologiesextends, of course, to nuclear
power, as well as to a range ofother verticals that we'll
describe today. And by way ofbackground from there, I worked
in the consulting space for awhile, and I think this took
(05:15):
off, really, at Eurasia group,which is a geopolitical risk
advisory working withgovernments and corporates on
thinking about how geopoliticsaffect various
trajectories for for certainmarkets, and the markets that I
covered were critical mineralsand these emerging energy
technologies. At the same time,I was teaching at New York
(05:38):
University, teaching in class toyoung engineers about
understanding how policy andgeopolitics impacts global
energy markets and technologicaltrends. And then, with that,
landed here at Carnegie to workon this research and really
focus in on some of theseemerging next gen opportunities,
(06:00):
particularly where the UnitedStates could have opportunities
in some of these markets.
Dr. Andrew Whiskeyma (06:08):
Absolutely fascinating.
I'd like to start off theconversation with sort of where
we're at today. So we've seen,at least, my observations, has
been a back and forth over thepast few administrations in
terms of the call to drill babydrill right to increase domestic
(06:28):
production, largely from afossil fuels perspective, the
discussions about nuclear energyand the possibilities of changes
when It comes to micro reactors,emerging energy markets,
changing consumption habits, thepush to electrify everything.
What do you see the state ofplay is right now in the US, in
(06:48):
terms of domestic production,perhaps, and then critical
minerals, which are absolutely akey piece of emerging
technologies, at least as Iunderstand where we are from a
technical perspective, I
Milo McBride (07:06):
think that's a great assessment of the
landscape here in the US. Wouldlove to also, down the line,
talk about how this relates tothe global energy landscape and
kind of where the US situates.
And feel free to tie that intogether if you'd like. I mean,
I just started off from a from aUS perspective, shows my own
bias at times. But if you wantto tie that into a global
person, feel free, I think, takethat away. I think on the US
(07:28):
side, it's an interesting placewhere there are some of these
verticals that you rightfullyoutline, that we actually see
really strong bipartisan levelsof support, and that's been
great to see on nuclear power.
There's been a renaissance. Yousee with the passage of the
advance act. You see with thebipartisan infrastructure law
(07:51):
giving funding for new nuclearreactors, which we really
haven't built much of indecades. Just for the listeners
on here, we've built one reactorin Georgia that recently came
online. It took, took at least adecade to get to get going, and
it was quite an expensiveendeavor, so it's a muscle that
we have to relearn if we'regoing to be deploying these
(08:12):
types of technologies. There'salso, as you mentioned, a lot of
bipartisan support aroundthe critical minerals needed,
not just for energytechnologies, but also for
military applications, for thehigh tech sector and for the
industrial production of theeconomy writ large, right? And
those are a range of minerals.
(08:36):
They range from big metals likecopper and nickel to battery
metals. These are in thebatteries and storage
technologies in your phone andelectric vehicles. These are
things like lithium, graphite,cobalt, nickel manganese and and
then there's also more nichemetals that that are some of
which are called rare earths.
These have sci fi like namesdyspraxia, neodymium,
(08:59):
Praseodymium. They'reessentially used to make a very
specialized type of magneticmotor that is in everything from
fighter jets to electricvehicles to offshore wind
turbines. So it's a range of ofof a supply chain challenge, and
there's been some positivedevelopment, specifically in the
(09:20):
battery sector, where we haveseen some onshoring the
production of lithium back homein the US and the production of
batteries. But this all comes asthere's a kind of massive
structural challenge in in theenergy equation, driven largely
by ai demand from data, and forthe first time in decades, we're
(09:42):
seeing electricity demandgrowing at pretty unprecedented
rates. And I think where thequestion mark comes for the US
is what sort of approach is isneeded to deal with it? Is it an
all of the above approach thatincludes renewables and fossil
and nuclear?
And storage, is it? You know,perhaps the last administration
(10:05):
would have wanted a morerenewable focused approach. This
administration looks like wantsa more carbon or base load
focused approach. But there's,there's a hard reality that that
between both of those politicalperspectives, you're going to
need some semblance of both toactually do this and meet the
Meet the load growth required.
(10:27):
So I'll pause there. It's anexciting and dynamic moment.
There's a lot of shiftingvariables.
And yeah, Happy. Happy to alsotalk globally what this means,
what we're seeingfor energy markets around the
world?
Dr. Andrew Whiskeyman (10:42):
Yeah, absolutely, I do want to include
that global piece a bit, becauseyou mentioned onshoring, which
is definitely a sense that I getof a push to move to. But
there's the concept of friendshoring as well, of moving some
things to, perhaps nations thatare more closely aligned with
strategic outcomes that the USwould want to see, or a world
(11:04):
order the US would be, would bebiased toward, but also between
those two, along with artificialintelligence, because that has
spiked a huge demand in energy,that nexus between the
possibilities of artificialintelligence with Other nations
is also an issue when it comesto energy. It's not merely
deploying, oh, somebody elseneeds to adopt. Ai, do they have
(11:25):
the infrastructure that's ableto support
the demand signals required,which puts an additional strain
on perhaps energy supply places.
So any one of those areas thatthat that you want to kind of
touch onas we move through this next
piece of sort of the relation tothe global environment.
Milo McBride (11:49):
Lot of great stuff to unpack. I know it's a lot.
You can pull it through anyone,any one of those that you that
you want. It's a fantastic groupof questions. And I'll start off
for the listeners, just justrunning through this point that
I think is not as widely knownas
as it should be, which is justthe for these advanced energy
(12:11):
technologies, electric vehicles,nuclear power, wind turbines,
green fuels, synthetic fuels,the Chinese are about five to 10
years ahead right now of therest of the world. It is a
historical asymmetry that is,that is somewhat unprecedented,
(12:33):
and from an energy marketsperspective and from an inspect
perspective in Washington quiteconcerning. And that's the sheer
production volume of new nuclearreactors, of solar panels. And
it's also, as I mentionedearlier, the ownership of that
IP, the unilateral integrationof those supply chains, and the
(12:56):
fact that now these are beingexported across the world at
incredible rates, reallystaggering and unprecedented
numbers coming out,and also two poor developing and
emerging markets as well. Right?
These are flooding, Pakistan,Nigeria, really all over, and
(13:17):
that creates a structuralchallenge for the US. One, in
terms of just the sheer abilityfor China, the Chinese industry,
to access global markets. Two,in the long term, poses
challenges to the US is positiontoday as the world's dominant
(13:38):
hydrocarbon producer, where wehave developed immense amount of
leverage from oil and gasexports into the global markets.
And there is concern that theflooding of these alternatives,
which are not fuel dependent,right? They are. They are, in
that way, weirdly, energysecure. They don't work. They
(14:01):
don't they're not at risk fromvolatility in LNG markets.
That poses a grander challenge.
And I think one, one area forthat you address that's really
important is that the US justfundamentally cannot abate these
issues alone. It's going to needto work with partners and allies
that you outline have strategiclong term interests with the
(14:23):
United States. And I thinkthere's a couple interesting
examples of that. India is areally top one, where right now,
the control of the solar supplychain. And just for the
listeners on here, solar energyis now the fastest growing
energy source in human history.
It is there is enough solarmanufacturing in China and from
(14:47):
Chinese companies to get theworld to its solar net zero
goals. And it is on the cusp ofa next gen innovation that will
that will make solar far moreeffective.
Efficient.
The Chinese dominated. That is,that is a concern, but the US
may not ever be able toeconomically compete with its
(15:10):
domestic production of solarpanels, which we have, and we
have some good producers, forsure, but the labor costs don't
necessarily work out. What'sinteresting to see is India
evolving under Modi as asecondary solar producer to de
risk this supply chain, andwe've seen developments from the
US to help try and scale that upto ensure that there's an
(15:34):
alternative hedge. And thisisn't just a monopoly industry
on what, in the coming decadescould be a dominant, growing
energy source. So I think that'san example of how the friend
shoring equation comes intoplay.
I think on the mineral side,there's a lots of other
questions as to how best to dothis. The costs are hard, and
(15:58):
getting capital into miningprojects is a
daunting task. It can takedecades to bring a mine online,
and we see a kind of ongoingtrend of the Chinese control of
minerals, resulting in astructural oversupply, flooding
markets and creating a low priceenvironment that to our western
(16:22):
investor community just makes itreally difficult to sign the
check and pull the trigger. Sothere have been some interesting
multilateral and bilateralframeworks developed to try and
bring some mining projectsonline, and it will be
interesting to see where thatleads with the current
administration that has veryspecific mineral security goals
and this all to say it, thereis, there's no silver bullet
(16:46):
solution to to this problem. Ittakes an all hands on deck,
holistic and comprehensiveapproach to try and bring about
some, some some structuralchanges in mineral security.
Dr. Andrew Whiskeyman (16:59):
I want to pull a Nexus together when it
comes to mineral security, inparticular with this, and it has
to do with the tide of theenvironment, which has been one
of the things when it comes toclean energy, that has also been
a goal in terms of air quality,pollution, a whole host of
things with that, tobring around certain goals.
(17:23):
But there's a side to mining,oftentimes in places that is, is
dirty, it pollutes. There's beenaccusations of child labor and
abusive labor practices beyondthat, with some of the mining
emerging, as well as theability, perhaps, to do deep sea
(17:44):
harvesting of critical minerals,that opens up a whole other
domain, if you will, ofaccessibility to get after some
of these critical minerals thatare needed In the production of
clean energyare those merely missed? Excuse
me, risks to be mitigated. Arethey real concerns? Are they?
(18:05):
Where do you see that aspect ofthings? As you mentioned,
there's no silver bullet andthere's there's pros and cons to
everything. But how do you seethat aspect of things from
perhaps an environmental concernperspective? You know, you don't
want to throw out the baby withthe bath water to run into one
thing. You've just createdanother problem that you perhaps
could have addressed along theway, any thoughts or insights
(18:27):
into that aspect of of energy.
Milo McBride (18:33):
It's a great point. And I think that this
goes back to better of what Iwas saying in 2010 where a lot
of people were saying, Wow,batteries are getting cheap, but
not necessarily doing the duediligence of looking under the
hood and saying, Where is thiscoming from? I think a short
answer is that there is nuanceto the dirtiness and the social
(18:53):
risks of mineral extraction.
Certain certain minerals andcertain mining jurisdictions are
far worse than others, and thatis an important
(22:01):
as other parts of the world aredrilling for it, like oil and
gas and even in all oil fields,and they're coming to commercial
scale pretty quickly. There'sanother firm in Canada that's
showing some real promise, andit's a much less land intensive
community opposed process, whereyou can extract basically
endless volumes of lithiumwithout strip mining, hard rock
(22:24):
mining, but and also with anindustry, particularly the oil
and gas industry, that knows howto handle subsurface fluids with
with great expertise, and we'reseeing that synergy emerge right
now, particularly in Arkansas,where There's some exciting
developments. So that all tosay, with this, with this
complication, there needs to beattention drawn to, to those
(22:46):
areas that are most severe. AndI think you know, we can one
think about other technologiesto to to substitute other
technologies that just don'tdemand those minerals. For
example, if cobalt and nickelare the issues for the battery
supply chain, now, about half ofall EV batteries and increasing
(23:08):
don't require those minerals.
Maybe that's just a way that, inthe long term, we can phase out
the demand for some of the mostcontroversial aspects of this
supply chain. And I'll end ondeep sea mining, which is
full of unknowns. I'll startwith just saying I have not seen
(23:28):
a solid peer reviewed analysison the costs of scraping nodules
off the deep sea floor comparedto just buying copper on the
global spot market. There's alsoquestions about the processing
types of machinery you wouldneed to extract the minerals
from that nodule. That's anunknown. And then lastly, and
(23:49):
your point is important, wereally don't we're not quite
clear the scale of damage thiswould do to an undiscovered and
potentially important ecosystem,with regard to carbon cycles,
with regard to some of theworld's most magical oceanic
floor biodiversity that we justsimply don't know a lot about.
I think we'll start to see somedeep sea mining. But again, the
(24:12):
economics of it alone make mecautious that it's going to
become this panacea that someare touting. Yeah,
Dr. Andrew Whiskeyman (24:22):
I think that's a great point about the
unknowns that we have. So howyou know, rhetorically, almost,
how do we have a cautiousoptimism where there's
potential, but we ought to studyit in a very real way as to the
second and third order effectsthat we don't know? I mean, even
less than a century ago, we'dfill in marshland because it was
(24:44):
wasted land, right, notrealizing the criticality of
marshes to the not onlybiodiversity, but just the water
system in terms of what it does,in terms of water purification,
etc. So without, without.
Really thinking about orassuming, you know, there's
probably second and third ordereffects to what I'm doing. How
(25:05):
do I keep paying attention tothat and studying it as an
important aspect? I would thinkof policy recommendations and
recommendations for industryto perhaps self govern if that's
a if that's a thing we can hopefor with folks hope not being an
operative word in the last bitof time we have together, I want
(25:26):
to turn toward the future,because there's that, that
promise. I think it's a nicepivot off of the potentials,
perhaps for deep sea mining, butsome some pitfalls that come to
it. I don't know we have time toget into asteroid mining and
what space might offer in termsof finding, you know, new
minerals and opportunities,that'd be another fascinating
discussion, I think. But thethree areas I'd like to focus on
(25:49):
in our last bit of time, from anemerging tech perspective, or
where you see trends going, isfrom a production perspective,
you know, can we increase, forinstance, the
effectiveness of solarproduction beyond, say, the 25
to 28% is there something liketitanium, which is way more
(26:11):
expensive, but potentially waymore,
(26:58):
over the next five to 10 years.
Do you see advances in thosethree and where they might be or
where it might be a good idea toreally lean into exploring more
us. Or if you have a fourth oneor a fifth one, feel free to add
that to those. Are just threethat that I've sort of been
paying attention to,
Milo McBride (27:13):
fantastic.
And I do have a fourth fifth onethat is my favorite. I'll save
the best for last. on storage. Imentioned it earlier. There's
been a long promise of movingaway or blending a new type of
cell known as a perovskite solarcell. Folks have been talking
about this for decades, andessentially, you'd overlay it
(27:35):
with your silicone panel, and itwould begin to increase the
energy efficiency beyond that 2528% limit that you mentioned,
and that is now, at least in thepast couple of weeks, really
seeming like it's starting tohappen. It's known as a
perovskite tandem cell. TheDepartment of Energy recently
validated a panel from Chinaasserting that it could get to
(27:58):
35% range. It's unclear how longit lasts. The issue has been
depreciation, but it seems thatnow the these major solar
players all have thisintellectual property and will
start in the coming decade toblend that panel, which opens
up, as I mentioned, a new a kindof new possibility for solar on
(28:20):
storage, we're at a reallyexciting point where storage has
become one of the fastestgrowing parts of this whole
story, essentially doubling yearon year, in installations in the
US. And there's an amazingarsenal of companies,
particularly here in the UnitedStates, that have cracked a
bunch of the issues withstorage, ranging from the
(28:41):
mineral security issue to theduration of it. Right? The
conventional Tesla pack that youget or fluence pack next to a
solar farm, will get you aboutfour to six hours, which, by
today's standards, is fine, butonce you start increasing the
load of variable renewables,you're going to need a longer
duration system. So there's beena really interesting wave of
(29:04):
companies that have designed newstorage technologies known as
iron air flow batteries or zincbromine batteries. There's one
company that even uses aMy favorite topic, though, in
(32:17):
all of this, especially from anAmerican perspective, is what's
happening right now in thegeothermal energy space. This is
just by far the most excitingenergy story right now.
Geothermal has been a nicheenergy source for decades. It's
required this kind of Goldilocksresource of good heat and good
water, but thanks to our worldleading engineers in the shale
(32:41):
patch who have masteredhorizontal drilling, hydraulic
fracturing techniques, they havefigured out basically how you
could, you could build ageothermal well artificially,
pretty much anywhere. And it's astory that's coming to market
very fast. By next year, we'llsee the first two commercial
scale facilities up and running.
(33:03):
We're starting to seeinvolvement from leading oil and
gas drilling service companies,from big tech players. And I
think what's most exciting isfrom the Pentagon. DOD has been
an active procure in getting offtakes for these systems, because
not only can they producecontinuous baseload power, but
(33:23):
from a resilience and from afuel security perspective, this
is a kind of silver bulletsolution to making sure military
installation is as resilient aspossible. There's no potential
fuel cutoffs. It can provide notjust electricity but heat, and
it doesn't have any of the risksfrom a nuclear, you know, micro
(33:44):
nuclear plant on a base. So it'sa really exciting story, and
it's a you it's particularlyjust a US story right now, but
that's, I'd say, what I'mwatching most closely and most
excited about
Dr. Andrew Whiskeyman (33:57):
awesome.
And thanks for ending our timeon a little bit of hope.
Oftentimes, we hear the perilsof energy at the moment, whether
it be pollution or supply supplychains, just the tax on it in
terms of the how it affectssecurity and decisions that we
all make, and the rising cost ofenergy. For many people, it
(34:19):
hasn't been as bad in the US,but the UK in particular, which
you hadn't gone into, is reallyseen some stark increases in
energy that has really pinchedpeople's pocketbooks. But that
bit of of hope at the end ofwhere emerging tech could take
us, and some things that are notjust science fiction, but also
really right around the cornerin development and potentially
(34:41):
scalable, I think, is really,really hopeful. It's been an I
wish we had more time to talkabout this and and maybe we'll
generate enough interest on thepodcast that we'll both get
invited back for a subsequentdiscussion in more detail on one
of these topics. We'll have tosee, hopefully it goes viral. 15
minutes of fame in life, butit's been an absolute pleasure
(35:03):
chatting with you. I lookforward to continuing the
conversation. I hope others doas well.
Milo McBride (35:11):
It's been a joy speaking with you. Thank you so
much for having me on thepodcast, and likewise, I hope to
continue it. Hope there's around two follow up in the
future for folks looking tolearn more, to connect with me,
just find me on the CarnegieEndowment for International
Peace, my contact, my research,is all listed there and keen to
(35:31):
engage so again, grateful foryour time and for being able to
contribute here. Thanks again.
Milo, absolutely fascinatingconversation and topic pleasure
chatting with you today.
Glenn Beckmann (35:50):
What a great conversation today on the
podcast. Many thanks today to DrAndrew whiskeyman GNSI, non
resident senior fellow and anadjunct professor at Syracuse
University's Maxwell School,along with Milo McBride, a
fellow in the sustainability,climate and geopolitics program
at the Carnegie Endowment forInternational Peace in
Washington, DC, next week on atthe boundary, our special guest
(36:15):
will be Dr Nicholas sabaret fromthe University of Paris. Saclay,
he's the director of theirGraduate School of Computer
Science and one of the primaryorganizers behind our upcoming
Trans Atlantic forum oncybersecurity, scheduled for
June 23 thanks for listeningtoday. If you like the podcast,
please subscribe. Let yourfriends and colleagues know and
(36:36):
tell them to subscribe as well.
You can follow GNSI on ourLinkedIn and X accounts at USF,
underscore GNSI, and check outour website as well.
Usf.edu/gnsi,that's going to wrap up this
episode of at the boundary. Eachnew episode will feature global
(36:57):
and national security issues wefound to be worthy of attention
and discussion. I'm GlennBeckman, thanks for listening
today. We'll see you next weekat the boundary. You.
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