 There's been so much talk on building the critical mineral supply chains of tomorrow closer to home. With growing economic tensions between China and the West, it's becoming abundantly clear the dominant hold that they have over the minerals and metals that we need to function as a society. With this in mind, I'm joined today with Jack Lifton to speak on what our North American governments are doing to regain control of these supply chains and if they're doing enough to make this a reality in the near future. Jack is educated as a physical chemist specializing in high-temperature metallurgy. He was first a researcher before becoming a marketing and manufacturing executive who would later become a metal trader specializing in the field of technology metals and rare earth elements. With over 55 years of industry involvement, I'm excited to dig into this topic with one of the most knowledgeable and in-the-know individuals you can find in this field of study. Jack, welcome. Thank you for that effusive introduction. I'd be embarrassed if that were possible. There we go. Well, I probably went about half of your bio. I could keep going on. You truly are someone who has been instrumental in this industry, the amount of knowledge you have. I'd love to start tapping into that. I'm going to do that really quickly here with my first question. Within the last two weeks, we have seen the Biden administration announce an additional $3.5 billion investment in U.S. battery manufacturing and clean energy transition while the Canadian government just launched a $1.5 billion critical minerals infrastructure fund. Have our North American governments finally woken up to the seriousness of building our critical mineral supply chains at home, and do you think they finally realized the urgency to do so? I have to admit that they may have woken up to the issue and they may have begun to understand the urgency, but they haven't done anything to help out. That's the real problem. The government of the United States and I think the government of Canada have no subject matter expertise in this area. Therefore, when they do DOE diligence, it's worthless. For example, between the time an exploration geologist discovers a mineral and the time it's proven as a deposit and then proven that it could be economically viable, in other words, the minerals could be recovered profitably, normally takes one to 10 years. And so Canada and Australia, the world's premier mining nations, both have agendas that financiers have to follow in order to qualify a mine, let's say, a proposed mine, so that when they sell its shares to investors, they don't have liability for fraud. And this is why you have 42-101 in Canada and the JORC, J-O-R-C, in Australia. These come from the fairly recent history of fantastic frauds in the mining industry. So imagine people who know what they're doing to build a mine, first produce several years of R&D into the chemistry of the deposit, the financial needs of the deposit, and the demands that deposit would have on known technology to produce products that can be ultimately used to manufacture more complicated products. And this is not two guys, this is usually, this probably in any given mine that is approved for investment, most likely hundreds of people have been involved in creating all the background information necessary, and then the investment is of course speculative because you have to determine that all of that research was viable, that the project is viable, and the only way to find out is to do it. What they're trying to do is eliminate everything as much speculation as they can, but at the end of the day, you never know if it's going to work out. Look at how many historical gold and silver mines are in North America, and constantly people are combing through records in courthouses in various places in the West of Canada and the United States, and finding a silver mine that was abandoned when silver was $2, it was only $2 an ounce, and now it's $20, of course there's been inflation, but then they say, gee, with modern technology, I can recover this over for $10 an ounce. So they try and reopen that mine. A lot of people make a lot of money doing things like this, also with gold, originally processing gold, you have to have a fairly good grade, as we say fairly, okay. Today, one or two parts per million, one or two grams per ton, people are processing that if the mineralogy is right, okay. So when I see a couple of kids in Washington or Ottawa say, well, we're going to sign here, Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister, you know, here, and the Prime Minister, the President says, okay, what did I just sign? It was good for you, don't worry about it, it's good for the party, we'll get votes from BC on this. Okay, great. Nobody cares. They don't, how can they look, I don't know if you've ever discussed anything in Washington with the Senator or Representative, I have. And I remember having a conversation about this topic with the Senator. And he told me, he was very honest guy, Senator Pi of Indiana, he said, listen, when you leave this office, the next guy comes in. He says, if my assistant, you know, carries out what I told her to do about this project with you, maybe something will happen. He said, you have to understand, we have exactly one goal in this office, and that's to be reelected. He said, so if whatever you're talking about is valuable to my campaign, I'll work on. No, he was very straight, okay. He retired. Okay. And my favorite American Senator was the former Senator Hollings of South Carolina, who, as he retired, made a speech and the most memorable line was, America has the best government money can buy. And if I, if I, if I may then, in terms of North America, because we, our governments have not been doing this for as many years as China and not been doing this as many or are as strongly putting towards the effort into finding the solution to these supply chains. I've got a question for you that I'm going to read out here because I believe that it's very important, but more specifically, I want to come back to that, that topic that you're talking about, about advisors, how to do this properly, because more specifically on the news of the $1.5 billion critical minerals infrastructure fund, there'll be $300 million for the first contribution funding where applicants could apply up until the end of day on February 29th, 2020, 24th, this is in Canada. This will be split amongst two streams. The first stream is pre-construction and project development. While the second stream is infrastructure deployment for shovel-ready projects. So they've got it. They've already got their FS. They're ready to go. Is this amount of $300 million split between these two streams? Is this amount meaningful enough to tip projects into the green, but more specifically on to what we were just talking about? And how should governments be deciding who gets a word of these funds? Really advisory of some sort on these experts you're just talking about should be a part of this. The people who drafted, for example, the Defense Production Act of the United States, which is famously described as the DPA-3, that Title III, which allows the Defense Department to fund projects in the national interest. So what they ignore is Title VII, which says the president shall assemble a group of industrialists specializing in the matter at hand to advise him. Nobody ever talks about that. Now, here's the problem. Every junior minor, every exploration minor has a project, right? The quality of the people they might send to explain the project to the bank varies. Most of these people send their CEO to talk to institutional investors to raise money. And most of those CEOs know nothing about processing. They are strictly talking about developing a discovery into a deposit. In other words, something that could be financed to produce economically a middle. Okay. Just exactly who is this money going to go to, the $300 million, the CEOs of junior mining companies were, as you know, when you shake their hand, you have to check to see if your watch is still on your wrist, okay, for most of them. I'm not knocking them, I'm just saying they are trying to raise money to keep something going in the hopes that a major minor, a producing minor, will buy the proven deposit one day and they'll get rich that way. Okay. That's what they're after. Now, who is going to get this money you're talking about? Is it going to go to promoters? Is it going to go to the fairly young men who are the geologists? Is it going to go to the real old timers who are the processing specialists? Okay. I, quite frankly, in Canada, I'm not going to embarrass the guy. I can think of just one gentleman who I would go to to say, is this deposit? Is this a deposit? And is it worth a damn? Okay. Much, maybe there are four people I could go to that I would go to. I actually know a little about what I'm talking about. Yeah. I know that I'm babbling away here, but I have to tell you something. I was at the US Defense Department in 2017, we were talking about recycling where it's for them, you know, they were, they could care less about the civilian economy. This was, you know, they have a lot of rare permanent magnet motors in the military, and they thought maybe we can recycle this stuff and be less dependent on the Chinese. Okay. And they said, what should we do? I said, you need to talk to somebody who knows what he's talking about. They said, well, we do. We have the, we have the experts in the department and then we, we, we address the, you know, the universities that have contracts with us. I said, why don't you let me tell you what you should do? Because I actually know something. They said, no, no, no, you're not an official, you're not a consultant to the Defense Department, you know, an official employee and you don't teach an university, so you don't qualify. I said, okay, great. I said, so we'll keep in mind that somebody who actually knows something about it doesn't qualify. And that, unfortunately, I'm not, you know, I am not a broad range expert, but I'm expert enough to know who I need to ask questions that I don't know anything about. And that's it right there. That's it right there. Forgive me for a break. That's where I think we need to have things formed. That's where, look, the critical minerals Institute and some other fantastic institutes that are out there that have these experts where government officials can say, hey, we're about to give out $300 million. And this is the first tranche of 1.5 billion. There's other things that were announced as well. Where do we do it? Because the first stream, like I was saying, is on expiration and pre-construction. So those are going to be closed as of February 29th. Those are closed and then they'll decide. So it sounds like there's some process of deciding. The second stream, which is shovel ready projects, specifically on the Canadian website, it says first come, first serve. So now maybe they're thinking because you got your feasibility study, it's gone through, you know, the grinder. People have already tried to kill the deal. They put a value on it and you've got your FS, you're good to go. But surely there's still a difference between one FS and a deposit that's there and another. So what they really truly need to do, this is what I'm trying to get out of you as well, which I know is already there. We need to have a platform. We need to have this avenue for government officials who are giving out substantial amounts of funds. The United States is quadruple what Canada is doing and be able to say, hey, can I come to you? The question, does this make sense before I give them $50 million? And you might add to the fact that they have no idea what things cost, okay? To build a mine today, an underground mine is easily half a billion dollars. So who cares about they're giving a million here and a million there? Okay. That's, you know, and I could tell you that while you're talking, I was thinking, I wonder how many projects are out there for the critical minerals named in either the Canadian or the American list. You know what I'm going to tell you? That those projects in the Americas and Australia and, you know, places where are either near shore or friendly shore, okay? Probably numbered the thousands, thousands projects. Now, in three months, we're going to determine which ones we should give a bunch of money. So who do you think is going to get that money? Is it going to be those that are organized to get government money? Because that's what they do for a living, okay? We call them grant mills and they don't have to be universities. They can also be private parties. There are lobbyists in Washington who specialize in getting grant money for universities and mining companies. That's all they do, okay? They know more about this than all the politicians put together, okay? And so the whole thing is a circus and it does not create any new material. That's the point. There are three main segments of this supply chain because people say, well, the supply chains, the supply chains. Well, what is the supply chain we were talking about? We have the upstream, which is exploration and mining. We have the midstream, which is processing and refinement. And then we have the downstream, which is manufacturing. Is there a particular segment of the supply chain that North America needs to address the most? And is there one that is the hardest to address? Yeah, they're both the same. It's the middle one processing. We have stopped doing that because we outsourced that to low-cost labor places and low-cost engineering. And for example, today China processes 60% of the world's lithium. China processes 80% of the world's cobalt, probably 90% or plus of the world's rare earthstone. You see, the Chinese worked out 25 and 30 years ago that these were the key areas they needed. And so they have put millions of man years or person years into the development of processing technology. And I think I've mentioned before that one time at the Department of Defense, they asked me, what should we do? And I said, we should take Chinese Americans and use them as spies to get the latest Chinese processing technology. And they said, that isn't even funny. I said, well, what do you think happens in a nation which started with ours? You know, we showed them or they found it, or they stole them, if you want to call that. But we showed the Chinese how to process work. Do you know that molecule, the original molecule, not the one that you might know about, the previous one. They showed China how to separate rare earths. They went over there with blueprints. And they made a joint venture with the Chinese company. And they built the first rare earth separation plant in China. Molecorp, you know, America's molecorp, OK? Yeah. That Professor Yan told me that about a day later, bootleg copies of the blueprint were all over China. And every provincial governor and mayor of a big city was building his own separation plant. OK, so we lost that. Now, that's OK. That's a comedy that occurred in the early 1980s. This is 2023, 40 years later. China has 100,000 people in the rare earth industry. They probably put millions of man years into building these systems. Now, I'm not going to tell you that they are in the stratosphere of technology that we can never catch up because the Chinese are extremely conservative. They're doing a lot of things now, the same way they did them 40 years ago. But so are we. OK, so all I hear about is I've got this new technology for separating or new technology for making metals. And I tell my consulting clients, why don't you use legacy technology? We know it works. We know how much it costs and it works in your in your model. OK, so yeah, but I but I know there's a guy who said that if I can use table salt, OK, I say, well, let's just go with legacy technology. Now, there are problems. Chinese metal making is extremely toxic. The technology, however, it works and they and they make a couple hundred thousand tons of metal that way. OK. So we can do that. But in America, it has to be health and safety concern. So the cost of building a metal making plan, a rare earth metal making plan in the United States is high. Not because of the technology to do it. It's quite simple. But of the health and safety management in China, recently, a colleague of mine, well, Americans aren't allowed in Chinese rare earth plants or in Vietnam where the Chinese were running a metal plant. He observed men wearing sandals and no respiratory gear standing over rare earth metal making pots which give off hydrofluoric acid gas, fluorine and carbon tetrafluoride. All of those are deadly toxic. OK, but he said any this gentleman is my agent. He said, you know, I remember when we used to go to Chinese metal plants 30 years ago, it was the same thing. OK, so the point is they're not worried at this point about health and safety. They're not worried about the environment. We worry about those things when you add. They don't capitalize any of that when you do that. We can make all this stuff the same for the same price they do. But in America, with our dumbed down education system, the minute somebody hears, well, this process gives off the hydrofluoric acid. Oh, my God, that's toxic. I know a kiss had a song about it. It's toxic. OK, so so unfortunately, of course, we can handle that. We know how to do that. OK, but we're not doing it. There is no rare earth metal made in the United States today. We're not doing it. OK, the only rare earth metal I know of is made in America since the 20th century. There's a small amount that the Saskatchewan Research Council made as a test of the legacy system of making metals. They're they're actually trying to to bring it back in America. So far, we have no rare earth metal being made. No rare earth alloy being made. We have as far as I know. Now, M.P. said that they've separated a few grams or kilograms of rare earth. But to the best of my knowledge, the only separation of rare earth has been done in the last 10 years is this again, the Saskatchewan Research Council, they're building a system. OK, so in order to address the need to re to re to re to reassure the rare earth industry that could supply North America with all of its needs. Is impossible. Because it would require the production of about. Forty thousand tons of earth, permanent magnets here. Yeah, our current production is zero. So so and the largest magnet plants where permanent magnet plants world are in China. OK, excuse me. The Chinese company JF Mag. Which is China's second largest magnet maker is now building a magnet plant in Mexico. Why is that? Well, they said they're going to source where it's from North America or South America. They're going to make the metals and alloys themselves from those rare earths. And therefore, they said they will qualify under the IRA to provide magnets for motors to American car producers. Now, you know what? That's probably actually from interpretation of law. That's correct. Yeah. OK. Now, I don't know that anybody will ever buy into that. The meantime, Korean. Conglomerate is also coming here to build a metal and magnet plant. And the Wachemschwaltz, the German, the only worth permanent magnet maker of any volume in Europe is is coming here. The US Department of Defense gave them a hundred million dollar grant to build out a plant in Kentucky to make worth permanent magnets. That'll be sourced from where? Well, the metal, they don't know on the source still. They have a problem because they promised their customers they'll they'll use only domestic rare earths and metals. Since there aren't any, that could be a problem. OK. Right now, let's say. Forget J.F. Mac, let's say the Koreans and Wachemschwaltz build out the plants that I think the size they're going to build. We'll still be 35,000 tons a year short on on on magnets. OK, so. No one outside of China's ever produced rare earth magnets at that level. OK, by the way, that's just North America. Europe needs more. They Europe makes more cars than North America does. OK, it's it's got more people. OK. So the idea of bringing this industry back, let's for argument's sake. I'm just guessing. I'd say to bring the industry back, we need to spend. At least 50 billion dollars and educate a generation of process engineers, metallurgists and scientists who are specializing in rare earth chemistry. OK, let's see. So that'll take, let's say. Sixteen years from now, with 50 billion on capital equipment and a few billion on education, we could catch up with the Chinese. And that's so difficult to do when new governments are brought into power every four years in North America, but arguably even with sometimes every two years in the States. Well, you know, the push here in America for electric cars, right? The mandate from Washington subsidies, i.e. taxes and all that. OK, Donald Trump gave a speech in my county, open county, Michigan about a month ago, and he said, if I'm elected, I will end Joe Biden's mandate for electric cars. You won't be forced by an electric car. Well, that was before the car companies agreed to pay those who work in electric car assembly plants the same as those who work in internal combustion plants. I don't know what the union is thinking now. But he got a lot of applause at that point. I saw it on television and I was and my friends, we sort of laughed that night. We said, geez, so what happens to all of the consulting for electric cars and the raw materials, but it's not just electric cars. Keep in mind, it's it's anything to do with a strong word for a strong permanent magnet that's small and it would stand lots of cycles of temperature extremes. That's going to be a word of permanent magnet. OK, right now we don't make any in the United States. And yet we keep talking about it. We've been talking about it for 10 years. We haven't made one. OK, so tell me, you think that throwing a few hundred million, which, as you know, is pocket change in Washington and anything is going to do anything other than make sure the relatives of congressmen and senators don't starve to death. OK, it's not it's not. And that's and again, that's where we need to have more accountability. And that's where you spoke about education. It's hard to cut you off there. So about education and education is the hard part. Money apparently doesn't just grow on trees. It can be imagined and written into a bill. Education cannot. Education takes actual hours of someone saying, I'm going to devote my life to this and it takes that one part of getting the next generation of the metallurgy of geologists, of those in manufacturing, you name it. But there's also this other element of it takes the education of training a whole new generation on the importance of this, because then you start having a case where your citizens are saying, no, no, no, you just gave this money. What happened to it? Where's the accountability? Where are the things that we are providing? Because what people don't realize is that at any time, China or other nations, whether it be for war, whether it be economics, going back and forth, which we see all the time, we see these tariff wars going back and forth at any time can just say for whatever reason, no more. And if they say that with our with our rare earth, if they say that with the calcium boron that we need in all of our screens, laptops and skyscrapers and fiber octaves, they say this for the lithium and the graphite that we're needing in all the cars that we're building the copper, whatever you name it. If they cut that off, are we ready for that? And I don't think people understand the significance of that yet because they haven't seen it happen in their lifetime. I know in my lifetime, there's there's never been a scarcity issue. The first scarcity issue we've ever faced was in 2020. And that was simply because of the pandemic lockdowns and and there's just a bunch of frets that were obviously stuck for a while. They're the evergreen crisis. What happens to that continues? Keep in mind that until almost now. The car industry needed just three metals, steel, aluminum, copper. That's how you built cars. OK. And of course, huge amounts of plastic. OK. But in general, they needed very everything was was mass produced. So called, you know, primary metals, iron, aluminum, copper, no problem. And the United States didn't certainly didn't import it until recently. Any of those. OK. They're all made here. Now we stop making much aluminum because it's very energy intensive and energy is getting too expensive. Our steel mills are told they can't use coke and coal of course, blast furnaces require these things. But so we're going to use hydrogen, but hydrogen is much more expensive than carbon. OK. OK. And then steel. Well, that was steel, aluminum, copper. Here's the interesting thing, two giant copper mines, which would restore America's independence and copper. One is the pebble mine in Alaska and the other one. I don't know the name. It's in Arizona and BHP and Rio invested two billion there. And the fellows and people have put nearly a billion into that. They can't get approved. OK. Yet copper has just been added to the critical metals list. Now, I believe this is what psychiatrists call some kind of, you know, internal tension. OK. You know, in other words, Washington is nuts. They they tell us coppers critical, but they won't approve the the friendliest, cleanest mining in the world in Alaska or in Arizona, New Mexico for copper that would completely make us independent of everybody else. OK. You know, we were independent until until we started closing the the less economical mines here and depending on Peru and Chile and places like that in Africa for copper. OK. We don't need to be dependent on them. We have plenty of material here. What we don't have is the. Let's say. I'm trying to think of a nice word. We were not we're not clever enough to see, you know, we're such hypocrites. We say copper is a critical metal, but don't you dare produce it in the United States? Now, what do you think happens to miners? You think they're all rushing out to look for copper? OK. And so it's the same thing. In 2012, I my partner and I produced a list of four hundred rare deposits that had been announced by that year. Four hundred two hundred and fifty companies chasing them. Half of half of all of those were in Canada. Half of the Canadian deposits were in Quebec. OK. Today, there is no producing wear with mine in Canada. There was for a short time in the Northwest Territory, the Australian company Vital Metals produced wears from from a mineral deposit that had leased from Avalon Advanced Materials, a Canadian company. OK. The Australian company went broke and shut it down. Interestingly enough, the company that was doing the physical mining was a First Nations company. So that was ESG all over the place, right? Now, what happened? What happened? What are you going to do with where is you produce in North America? Where's the cut? Who's going to be able to separate them? No processing. Guess who? The Chinese. Well, I guess whatever was going on, they had a contract with a Norwegian company. They were supposed to mine and send to a Norwegian company, which was going to separate and make metals and alloys, OK, called RETEC, funded by the Norwegian government, I believe. OK, since they couldn't afford to keep it going, that contract ended and they're not producing any there because there's no customers. I mean, the Chinese will probably buy it at a deep discount. But that's another reason why produce where in the United States. Where is it going to go? We don't have a processing industry. We don't have a metal, alloy or magnet industry. And there's only one. All right. Energy fuels of Colorado in Utah is is processing monosite or that they buy into mixed where earth carbonate, which is the precursor that goes into a solvent extraction separation plan. OK, they're selling that to new performance for its European separation plan. I don't know that nobody else in the United States is producing mixed carbonate for sale or Canada or South America. OK, the other one. And this is going to be the basis for your giant revival of the word industry, right? That's what you're telling me. That's the government's telling me. OK, are they really stupid or are they just blind and don't give a damn? My guess is that both. OK, they don't give a damn. It's just talk. And as you know, the bureaucrats don't change. But the government changes every four years in the United States and in Canada, the changes as often as people get tired of of whoever is in office. OK. And so in China, doesn't sort of doesn't change. It doesn't matter how that works, but, you know, they don't change too often. And the bureaucracy there is totally. Run by the by the the officials of the central government. Yeah, in China, the bureaucrats don't make policy like as they do here. They execute policy and execute is a word that has multiple meanings in Chinese. OK. So when when the government says we're going to produce X tons of rare earths this year, they issue quotas, right? Yeah. You know, then some minor. Well, they they've now consolidated all the Chinese companies into just six rare earth producers. And they're talking about making them to three. These are large companies. And they get financed by the Bank of People's Bank of China. They're the Communist Party has has a veto on anything they do with all those companies. There's no such thing as a private company in China. Every one of them has a party official with veto power. OK. Yeah. They're now running the world's largest metal processing industry. They don't produce it. They don't mind all these metals in China. But for 20 years, they've been buying deposits all over the world. And if they can't buy the deposit, they buy the output. OK. So China is now producing some 60 percent of all the metal of all types made in the world. And do you really think we can compete with that with the few politicians in Washington and Ottawa saying, hey, we're going to give 300 million dollars to people who tell us that they can fill out our forms real well? It isn't good. It's not going to have. I'll tell you to summarize this long screen. I'm going to tell you what's going to happen. We have companies that are going to be able to produce rare earths, rare earth metals, alloys and magnets. There may be one or two Americans in there, but you know, the Europeans and they they're coming here to do it because there's a market here. OK. And my guess is that we're going to have winners and losers. And I'm telling this to the automotive industry every day. You have to get on onto this. Forget the government. You need to to invest in mining, processing, fabricating right now, because those of you who line up the real sources of all these will be the only ones who could make electric cars, period. Now, I don't believe everybody's going to be able to make electric cars, but luckily they won't have to make as many as they thought. However, in closing, let me tell you something. The automotive industry, just in the United States, has invested about a hundred billion dollars in electrification. Too late, they can't back out. They're going to have to make electric cars or they'll go back or they'll go bankrupt. And the in my opinion, the US federal government is going to have to subsidize these companies and bail them out. And it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's and it's going to be very hard for politicians to say, well, we'll let the free market take care of this because they don't believe in the free market. They were subsidizing all this stuff. And the chickens are coming home to roost, but there's no electricity in the henhouse. That's the problem. So our car, if our car industry goes, so does Washington because it's it's still the largest manufacturing industry in the United States. It has to survive. If people don't want electric cars, they'll have to produce internal combustion engine powered cars, but they have to stay in business. So you're going to see the EV revolution is going to sputter along here. And sometime in the next 10 years, it's going to die. But it will be reborn into hybrids or be reborn into hybridism a very, very big hybrid fan. There's a big problem with hybrids. They are the ideal power crane for a car. Therefore, the people in Washington don't understand them. OK, no, no. Quite frankly, hybrid has always been the ideal power plant. The people who changed the world of automotive forever. It was international harvester that invented the hybrid. OK. So it does. The point is, they couldn't didn't go and you don't even remember that they made cars. But they did guess who bought a license from them? Toyota and they developed the Prius. Yeah. And and then the Prius was on sale in Japan. OK. And then California came up with their zero emissions policy. And so they Toyota said, let's we'll solve the United States. They've sold millions of them. And Ford has been making hybrids since at least two thousand three or four. OK. And you are absolutely right. The hybrid is the answer, but a hybrid needs a small battery. It doesn't need any of these monster batteries. OK. So probably instead of the thirty five battery plants currently under construction in North America with no lithium supply in North America. OK, with the trivial lithium supply, they'll all be gone. You'll have a couple of battery plants here making batteries for the hybrids. And that is going to be the power train of the future. That's very interesting. Well, Jack, I appreciate so much for your time. Truly the amount of years you put into this, the amount of time I know you are personally going through the papers and everything on a daily basis, continually updating that extensive knowledge that you have in that ahead of yours. I appreciate so much for being able to share with everyone today. There's lots more we can be talking about and lots more we will still talk about because there's many other critical minerals that are out there and may not have the same outlooks as maybe the EV revolution will. But very excited by this. There has been incredibly informative. Thank you so much for your time, Jack. I appreciate very much. Thank you, Brendan. And I'm looking forward to our next check.