 Natural resources. This is a big topic, we'll cover a little bit of it today, but it's, I think it's an interesting topic, the whole topic of natural resources and how they control and who controls them. But the reality is that with the advent of new technologies, primarily new technologies that are now being subsidized by governments like clean tech, batteries and things like that, there is a whole new class of materials, natural resources. That have now come to the forefront and in a sense the demand for them has gone through the roof. Things like natural rare materials, or copper, nickel, cobalt, lithium, graphite, all of these materials that are necessary for the new technologies that are going to be necessary even more in the future as everything becomes electronic tech related, we're going to require more and more and more of these materials. As it happens, you know, China is, it controls mines and refines many of these materials. It has a big percentage of the world supply of rare earths, somewhere close to 85 to 90% of those, both in terms of mining and refining. And now we know that there are reserves in other countries. When it comes to graphite, China has almost complete, almost 100%. Lithium, it's somewhere close to 60%, so substantial, cobalt close to 70%, over 70%, nickel, copper, not quite as much, but still a dominant position. And then of course, again, that is China, but then if you look at the top three processes of any one of these materials, they dominate. Lithium, graphite, rare earth, it's basically 100% in three countries. A lot of countries are now recognizing this and stopping the exploitation of these materials. Not clear why, I mean the whole point of this is to export them. But fundamentally, you know, China is going to start using this for geopolitical means. These natural resources are not owned and controlled by private companies in China that are governed by supply and demand global economics, but they are controlled by the Chinese government. Sadly, much of these materials now are being discovered, mindful, extracted in countries that have very, very status governments, whether that is in Africa or Latin America. And even countries like Chile that used to have robust private mining ventures are nationalizing some of the ventures because it's so crucial. We need to nationalize it. If it was so crucial, you need to privatize it. It works exactly the other way around. Latin America is becoming a powerhouse when it comes to natural resources. Chile has Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela. A lot of these companies have significant minerals that they need to exploit. And of course, the more government gets involved, the less ability they will have to exploit them. These exploitation of these minerals in these countries is one of the ways in which we reduce the dependence on Chinese and take away the leverage China is going to try to use over the West. Oh, you won't sell the sophisticated chips. Well, we won't sell you Galenium that we control completely. But in order to facilitate this, we need a robust market. We need privatization. We need to allow the best, most innovative mining companies and equipment to get into Latin America to go to Africa. Africa is another area where there is a huge amount of minerals and mineral deposits, but where unfortunately either you have centralized governments that are trying to dominate this, or you have gangs like the Wagner Group, the Russian Wagner Group, that control these mining operations and exploit people and devastate the human environment in which this mining is happening and don't really care and rather than professional mining operations that can come in and allow everybody locally to benefit from these things. So the world is becoming more and more and more dependent, if you will, on natural resources that come from Africa, Latin America and China. Now, this is of course not new. This is reminiscent of the fact that we've been dependent or we're dependent for decades and decades on natural resources from Saudi Arabia and Iran and Iraq and Kuwait, oil. You think we would have learned from that. One is to invest in our own capacity to produce natural resources at home. We'll get to that in a minute. But second, to encourage these countries to try to educate these countries, to try to convince these countries to privatize these markets, to allow for private companies to come in and extract these resources and exploit what's out there. Again, it's lithium copper silver, which is dominant in Latin America. I mean, what we need is not chili to nationalize these things, but quite the opposite to privatize and privatize and privatize. And that's how we'll get more and more deposits. And we need to encourage Western companies to go out there and find these minerals in the West. I think Sweden, Greenland, other places have vast resources of, for example, rare earth materials. We need to be able to exploit those. Now, what is the biggest barrier for the West to exploit its own natural resources to be able to bring to market some of these resources that are buried deep in the ground? Well, the big part of that is, of course, environmental regulations, environmental controls, and so-called environmental sensitivity. This is primarily true in the West, in Europe, in the United States, but these kind of concerns have also been exported elsewhere to Latin America and Africa. Environmentalism stands in opposition to bringing to market of new resources, to bringing to market of additional resources. And it makes us more and more dependent on those countries that don't give a damn about environmentalists like China. Mongolia, for example, has vast resources of both rare earth materials and many of these other natural resources. And the United States is trying to build relationships with Mongolia. Mongolia, of course, sits right smack between China and Russia. It is very, very, very vulnerable both on its Chinese border and its Russian border. It is a vast country the size of Europe with a population of three million people, yet it has huge quantities of natural resources. Natural resources that Chinese would love to control, the Russians would love to control. The US needs to invest in Mongolia and relationships with Mongolia and invest in bringing US companies over there to mine these resources and get them out. So there's a lot to be done. Again, you need a strategy, foreign policy strategy. And to the extent that some of these are required for national security, you need a security strategy. You need to build up inventories of some of these materials so that you don't become dependent on the Chinese. You need a strategy of how to deploy technology, how to build technology, and how to create relationships with those countries that can provide you with those natural resources without selling out to them like we did to the Saudis. Now, the United States, so there's a lot of stories right now about the different superpowers that are rising, not real superpowers, but in terms of natural resources. Indonesia, for example, in Cobalt and in Niko, Chile and Argentina have Lithium and so on, so these countries. And again, the importance of bringing market forces, market technology, marketability to these countries and to these industries so that we can get them cheaply and effectively. The United States is doing its part to increase the availability of natural resources in the world. Biden has just created a new national monument near the Grand Canyon. He's taken about a million acres, one million acres, and basically permanently banned new uranium mining in the area. And who knows what else could have been mined in the area. And giving it over to, I don't know, the Hopi tribe. The Hopi tribe, which I'm sure this is, remember this is like desert, there's nothing there, can do many productive things with it. Instead of like, if you want to give it to the Hopi tribe, great, give it to the Hopi tribe and give them the mining rights. So that, don't give it to the Hopi tribe, give it to individual Hopis. So that they can exploit the land, make money, become rich and get uranium out of the ground. So unbelievable, right? Uranium, an essential material if we're going to move to nuclear power. We have tons of it in the desert. God forbid we go mining for it. Instead we're going to make it into a national monument. This is the, yeah, let's, we face a crisis where we become more and more dependent on other countries, even hostile countries. So instead of building our own ability to mine these things, let's just lock it up. Let's just deny ourselves the natural resources. We do it in Alaska, we do it in Arizona, we do it in Wyoming, we do it in Montana, we do it all over the country. We could be far more economically. I'm not even talking about government subsidizing, government doing anything. Just privatize the land, sell it off. But even here, if you're going to do anything with the Hopi people, give it to individual Hopis, not to the tribe. I don't think they've given it to the tribe. They haven't really given it to the tribe. They're just making it into national monuments. Basically we're turning more and more of the country into nature untouched by man. Not a good move if you care about the human environment.