Will Cain Country - Did Trump Just Defuse The China Threat? (ft. Gordon Chang & Lipi Sternheim)

Episode Date: May 18, 2026

Is the current anxiety surrounding China justified, or is it just another paper tiger? Author of ‘Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America’ Gordan Chang joins Will to examine the sudden stall of China’s meteoric rise, and whether they truly are the threat that they have led the rest of the world to fear in the wake of President Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.Plus, CEO of REalloys, Inc., Lipi Sternheim explains how China grew so dominant in the field of rare earth minerals, and what the U.S. can do to get back up to speed. And Will and The Crew dive into the breaking news around Luigi Mangione's trial and Tennessee State Representative Justin Pearson's recent aggressive posturing.Subscribe to ‘Will Cain Country’ on YouTube here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Watch Will Cain Country!⁠⁠⁠Follow ‘Will Cain Country’ on X (⁠⁠⁠@willcainshow⁠⁠⁠), Instagram (⁠⁠⁠@willcainshow⁠⁠⁠), TikTok (⁠⁠⁠@willcainshow⁠⁠⁠), and Facebook (⁠⁠⁠@WillCainNews)Follow Will on X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@WillCain⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It is Wilcane Country. Streaming live at the Wilcane Country YouTube channel, the Wilcane Facebook page. always here, as you know, by hitting follow at Spotify or on Apple. Back together again. Back and healthy. Back from COVID, back from Hunter virus. Except I believe that Dan is headed downhill. Which suggests that somehow Hunter virus is contagious through microphones and Zoom.

Because I have not seen Dan in several weeks. but after a week on my deathbed, it sounds like, Dan, you are headed downhill with Henta virus. Yeah, somehow I got it from you. We're just going to blame you for it. But yeah, it's rough. I don't know why. Excuse me. And the first day I missed of work in what I believe is seven years.

Patrick wants to poke a hole in that mythology, but that doesn't make for good content or fit with my memory. First day I missed of work in seven years. I returned last Thursday, as you guys remember. was here with you. And I hosted the Will Kane show on Fox News. In all transparency, I was hacking along at every commercial break and during every sought played, that's a piece of sound on tape, industry jargon in the no lingo. Every piece of sound that I played on television, I took the opportunity to cough. By the end of that show, the television staff, who is not in Dallas, said, why don't you take tomorrow off? And as I looked around the studio in Dallas, most people were like,

yeah, we think you should go ahead and take off Friday. And I had to come to a realization that most of my life I have thought of sickness as weakness. And I have thought that you should not give in, that showing up to works a little bit like storming Normandy. If you can't make it, then you better have a serious, lifelong limp. This injury better be something that you are not shaking off in a matter of hours. It's one of the things I really don't like about soccer, watch my boys play soccer, and I just don't like the dramatic falls, the dramatic tumbles, the bullet shot wounds from the stands, that turn into a walk-off some 30 seconds later.

If we have a rule in my family, if the cart comes out on the field, you're done for the day, and I'm assuming it's going to be for weeks. So I don't like the idea of missing games, missing playing time, missing work. But what I had to come to the realization of in the past week is nobody wants you at work. You are not storming Normandy. You are not that important. Griff Jenkins will soldier on just fine. We would rather you stay home and get well.

And I think it took me a while. It took me about a week and everything I felt reminds me not of hunter virus, but does remind me of COVID. And as I've been told, COVID is going around. Now there's so many different strains that nobody cares. You can't test. You can't do anything. Just live. You got COVID.

Go ahead, Simpsons tinfoil, Pat. I don't think that's a really good way to look at things. You just ask Wally Pip, you know, what happened when he didn't show up for work one day? He never got it back. Correct. You're looking at the Griff Jenkins show. I agree, Pat. I do live.

I do. I believe in that moniker. I think you're exactly right. I grew up with the tales of Wally Pip. anybody too young to remember ought to know the story of Wally Pipp. Wally Pipp was the everyday first baseman of the New York Yankees. He got hurt, a young rookie came in. I believe if I have my history correct by the name of Joe DiMaggio.

And... Garrag. Joe DiMaggio never gave up first base. Never gave it up. Lou Gehrig. Is it Lou Gehrig? Yeah. It was Lou Gehrig that took Wally Pip's spot.

Tony Fernandez, too, Derek Jeter. That's how we started. Tony Fernandez got hurt. Derek Jeter comes in. Rest is history. Drew Bledsoe, Tom Brady. Yeah. That's exactly right.

You're just one hunt of virus away. Wait, what do you say about my job then? The Griff Jenkins show. Bletsso was bleeding internally. He had no choice. To be fair, I'm sure all these men were legitimately injured. It's not about it being fake. But it's how much you can soldier on, because as I was trying to say, you're one hunter virus away from the Griff Jenkins show.

There is news this morning from the trial of Luigi Mangione. The judge has ruled that certain evidence collected by police in his backpack, subsequent to his arrest, will be suppressed at trial. Despite what we first heard when that headline blared across the news this morning, it does not seem to be critical evidence that is being held. away from a potential jury in the trial of Luigi Mangione. It is the gun magazine. It is a computer chip. It is a passport. It is a conversation about a fake ID. But the judge did rule that the search of the backpack incident and subsequent two arrests that included the gun, the silencer, and the manifesto, all critical pieces of evidence are still admissible. They were legal searches after the arrest of Luigi Mangani and those items will be available to the jury at trial.

But what struck me in sort of the reporting around this this morning as he appeared in court was the people outside court. And you saw some of the ladies out there supporting Luigi Mangioni. And it's funny and interesting to put a face to the anonymous accounts on social media. When you see people supporting and posting and supportive Luigi Mangione, it's hard to imagine who it is that is rallying to his side, rallying to this cause. But outside the courtroom in New York City, yeah, these look like women that you could know, Dan.

These look like members of the Brooklyn brunch crew. And what I think is a fairly accurate description, you're looking at attractive, 27-year-old women who are all out there lined up to support Luigi. They got a little bit of style. They're all making a bit of a fashion statement. They're on the edge of something. Some of them are dressed like 1940s. You got a got a goth girl there?

You got a goth girl. But you also have like a suburban... They're printing shirts. Woman in a free Luigi t-shirt. Yeah. It's pretty interesting. I mean, we've already done the studies. People have wondered about women and their attraction to murderers,

the women that want to marry Charles Manson, and the women that send letters to serial killers. And here you have a version of that, just the murderer with a cause, the assassin with a message. And I would suggest that these women are more attracted to not the message, but the man in Luigi Mangione. The left has begun to double down, triple down, ante up at the table once again to make race the number one issue when it comes to midterm elections.

And that is manifesting in some really fascinating and shocking ways, both at the State House in Tennessee, where the new Malcolm X is getting in the face of Republican legislatures and in Washington, D.C., you're beginning to see the price of looking at everything, including climb policies through the lens of race as a horde of teenagers took over a Chipotle at the Navy yards and absolutely destroyed each other in the facility. Charges pending against the parents, according to D.C. prosecutor, Jenny Impiro. But after a week in China, what is the current status of our relationship with China? That's coming up in just a moment with Gordon Chang on Wilcane Country. But who answers the call for America's energy?

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Rivals, enemies, partners. After a week in China, meetings between Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump, what is our relationship with China? Gordon Chang is the author of Plan Red, China's Project to Destroy America. He's been a longtime friend of every show I've ever hosted from Real News on the Blaze to the Will Cane on Fox News. And Gordon Chang joins us now on Will King Country. Hey, Gordon. Thank you so much, Will. Yes, it's been quite some time since The Blaze. Yeah, we've been together on television in some capacity for at least, I would imagine, 16 years, maybe 15, 16 years. And we've been talking about China pretty much all that time,

Gordon. Do you think anything's different from maybe what you and I would have said 15 years ago after a week in China and the meetings between Xi Jinping and President Trump? Is anything different in our relationship with China? No, I don't think that it is. I don't think President Trump thought he could change that relationship with China. My guess is that he was giving China an off-ramp, as he tried to give off-ramps to Vladimir Putin and to Kim Jong-un. And the idea is to accommodate them and see if there can be some working relationship.

What we found after this summit is that, yes, there is some possibility of that. The important thing here is that we will not know about the results of the summit for quite some time. You know, as I mentioned on your show on Thursday, there is a lot of canned summits. There are a lot of canned summits that occur. This was not one of them. And what President Trump did, and whatever you think of the summit, and I was not a big fan of it, but whatever you think of the summit, we've got to give a lot of credit to President Trump for going into enemy territory and trying to negotiate a off-ramp for the Chinese,

because that's what they need right now. Xi Jinping is too arrogant, but President Trump is generous. Gordon, has there ever been a relationship like this in history where I don't think someone could accuse you of being totally inaccurate when you describe us as enemies, but I think that no one could disagree if we described our relationship as rivalries, and yet so mutually independent. I mean, China needs the United States. for exports, for consumption. The United States needs China for imports, for production. And in some

ways, it is a mutually, not just beneficial, but a mutually assured destruction to go to war or go to at odds with each other in the most obvious of ways, because it threatens the ability to crater either economy. And yet still, here we are, if not overtly, fighting each other in every subversive way, possible. And that's right. We are not going to go into a major war with China, or at least we're going to do our best not to. But China has redefined warfare. They call it unrestricted warfare. And that's the title of that slim 1999 book by then two Chinese Air Force colonels who talked about the use of any tactics, including terrorism, to take down the U.S. And in that book, they actually mentioned bin Laden, who was China was supporting at the

time, supporting bin Laden hitting the United States. So this was two years before 9-11. And that shows you the nature of the relationship, which is why I use the term enemy. And if they, you know, if the Chinese, you know, we're there, they have made it absolutely clear. In May 2019, People's Daily, the most authoritative publication in China, carried a landmark editorial that declared a, quote, People's War on us. And although we may dismiss that as propaganda, that phrase, people's war, has a meaning which resonates in the Communist Party. It's total war, as PLA daily defined it in March 2023. So we've got to understand, and that's why we should put into context, like the fentanyl deaths in our country. They're not overdoses. These are murders because the Communist Party is behind

the sale of fentanyl. And it is actually done. all it can to kill as many Americans as possible. And I know that's hard for Americans to understand, but if you look at what the Chinese Communist Party has been doing, support the fentanyl gangs, it becomes evident. What would you rattle off if I asked you to quickly rattle off 10 examples of unrestricted warfare being committed by China? Obviously one of those would be fentanyl production and export. Give me your other. Off the top of your head, quick list of actions taken by China in unrestricted warfare. Maintaining biological

weapons facilities on American soil. Two of them. One in Reedley, California, the other in Las Vegas. And by the way, there's almost certainly at least a third. Then you have the secret Chinese police stations. The one in New York

City, which was discovered and closed, but at least seven to nine more according to the New York Post and People's Daily. The planting of bombs, as we saw on March 10th at McDill Air Force Base. That was a warning to the United States. The drone flights over our military facilities,

there were two major incidents, the last being in March of this year, when there were drone flights over four U.S. military bases. The illicit surveillance of our infrastructure, the importation of modified pathogens by Chinese researchers, the sending of, seeds unsolicited into the United States, including and especially the state of Texas. And I think that's an attempt to plant invasive species in the United States.

They're fueling protests. They're urging violence and urging violence openly, which they did in 2020. They're importing into the U.S. counterfeit currency, which is an act of war. They're importing into the U.S. automatic weapons parts, which they have done. The list just goes on and on and on. And when you look at the totality of this, plus what they'd say in their propaganda, and propaganda is really important to a regime like China, you have to assume that this is a war. A war fought on sort of a different footing that we Americans are used to. We're used to war as we see it in the movies.

The Chinese have taken this to a new level. Let's take a quick break, but continue this conversation with Gordon Chang here on Wilking Country. Welcome back to Will Kane country. We're still hanging out with the author of Plan Red, China's Project to Destroy America. Gordon Chang. In that book, which I have a copy of Unrestricted Warfare, it also talks about the Chinese mindset, Gordon, that it is not captured by five, 10-year increments, but rather it thinks in terms of 50-year increments in centuries. And that these wars, as you describe, can be won and will be won over a long period of time. Reconcil something for me, Gordon, if that is the Chinese mindset that we were going to, we're going to commit ourselves to unrestricted warfare against America. So by the time we arrive at 2050 or 2100, that China is the preeminent global superpower over the United States, how do you reconcile that long-term commitment and vision against sort of their short-term focus

and acute, potentially kinetic focus on Taiwan? or is it all the same stuff that's playing out in Taiwan, but it seems that there is patience at play with the United States and impatience at play with Taiwan. Or Hong Kong or a number of other things. And that's a really important comment you made because Xi Jinping has been making some very short-term decisions. And if you look at Xi Jinping versus President Trump,

Trump has been actually making some very long-term decisions willing to take political heat in the short term in order to accomplish big objectives. So that's really important in terms of the way we think about this rivalry with China. With regard to Taiwan, Xin Jinping has made it a test of his personal legitimacy to annex Taiwan. So C thinks he's going to be there a long time, so he's willing to wait a little bit. But I also think that C sees a limited window of opportunity because he has. has these grand ambitions. After all, he pushes the notion that China is the world's only sovereign state and that the moon and Mars should be sovereign Chinese territory. But he can see his country,

or I think he can see his country falling away beneath him, especially with a crumbling economy, a demography that is in collapse, the biggest collapse in demography, in history, in the absence of war. So we're watching a country fall apart, which is fascinating. And I think that that means Xi Jinping is starting to accelerate his plans. The problem from him is he's decimated the Chinese military, and it's not capable of launching an invasion of the main island of Taiwan in the absence of the use of nuclear weapons. So right now, I think that Xi Jinping knows he has to wait. His military is not ready for a conventional war, and so he is adopting a sort of a wait-and-see attitude on Taiwan, and that means we have a lot of room for maneuver.

Lastly, Gordon, I feel like I've had this conversation with you, but also many, many other people. And I've read many pieces of journalism about this for the past almost two decades, that China's rise is actually that of a paper tiger. As you described, the economy is not so strong. It's propped up on government spending. There's false construction and building all over the country. There are demographic problems. But I've been hearing that again for a long time, Gordon. Like, if that is such a problem for China, When do those chickens come home to roost? I think fairly soon. Now, I wrote a book in 2001 that said that the Communist Party would fall within a decade.

So maybe I'm the worst person to ask about that. But the 2008 downturn occurred in that time frame, and it gave the Chinese leaders a renewed sense of confidence. And I think that it had strengthened the regime. The problem is you have Xi Jinping, who is basically a Marxist. trying to take China back, trying to undo all the things that made China successful. And he has alienated a large part of the Communist Party. We see infighting at the top. We see an economy, which is not growing at the pace that they report.

So I think that this is coming to a head pretty soon, because he does see that closing opportunity and he could do something take us by surprise, which could be really dangerous. We saw the arrogance on display on Thursday in Beijing. We saw it again on Friday, treating President Trump very poorly. You know, I just don't know what to say. I think that's the mark of a weak leader. And Xi Jinping probably, I don't know if he knows it well, but I can be sure that the more aware of subordinates know about it, and we certainly can see it.

All right, Gordon Chang, by the way, can be followed on X at Gordon G. Chang, we always appreciate the conversation. Fascinating. Gordon, it's good to see you. Thanks for being with us here today. And thank you so much, Will. I really appreciate it. All right. By the way, coming up in just a moment, we're going to be joined as well by Lippie Steinem, who's the CEO of realloy to talk about rare earth minerals and China's dominance, not of the minerals themselves, of the ability to produce those minerals and turn them into something usable in the market. But I want to go to the state of Tennessee. After the Supreme Court's ruling, that states can no longer use race as a prerequisite in drawing up lines for congressional voting districts,

the left has leaned all in on the idea that we have reversed course and have arrived at a pre-1964 Civil Rights Act America, that we are once again in the midst of Jim Crow, that we are once again in the midst of segregation. that America has taken a gigantic step backwards. Amidst that fight, Tennessee State Representative Justin Pearson has become one of the frontmen for this message. A message that is being echoed by Cory Booker, Senator of New Jersey, Jim Clyburn, representative from South Carolina, and many, many others, including Alexandria, O'Brien, including Alexandria O'Brien. Cortez, who made a visit to the south, stood behind bulletproof glass in a cage like the Pope and said it's time for the north to step up to the south, suggesting it's almost time for a fight. But amidst all this, a modern-day Malcolm X has emerged in Justin Pearson of Tennessee.

Pearson last week was seen getting in the face of a Tennessee state trooper and saying, and get up out of my face, boy. He's got an afro. He wears an African scarf or scrawl across his shoulders. He hasn't always been this way, by the way. You can go find videos of him in college, where he's talking about compromise and bipartisanship and bringing people together.

But somewhere along the line, he has decided it's better to be Malcolm X than Harold Ford Jr. So this is what he did recently. Again, in the Statehouse at Tennessee, if you're listening on Spotify or on radio, I'll explain to you what takes place here as Pearson gets up and gets in the face of a Republican. Pearson gets up and walks around the backside of David. I'm not sure what you call that where in a committee room

politicians sit behind long desks and approaches I think it's a dais I'm not positive I think you call that a dais not a pulpit not a pew I'm not sure what you call that and he gets behind there and the Republican just sits there

by the way as Pearson leans down over him with his finger into his face pointing at him, saying something very aggressively about his family, like stay away from my family. This is the second time of this many weeks where Pearson looks like he's ready to take this to physical violence, physical confrontation, which by the way he has no business of doing, because Pearson looks like he is 5'10, 6 foot 1 with an afro, like Fletch. He'll find out. He looks like he is 160 pounds, 175 with an afro. He is nothing. He is a buck nothing.

Five foot, nothing. And he's acting like he's the toughest kid on the block because of tone and style, which is going to carry him as far as the first punch. It's going to carry him as far as his little bark can reach. And he is going to become a star. Sadly, as you talk about politics and you want to hope that this is a shame, a moment of shame for how someone would conduct themselves in elected representative, It's going to make him an absolute star in modern day politics.

Go ahead, Patrick. Either way. Either way. So, like, if you, I think what he's trying to do is gin up a response, a physical response. So then you can go, oh, look at us. We're, you know, we're being repressed by people physically. And then he wins. Did you hear the crowd?

When he did that, did you hear the crowd? The crowd was full of women. And the women are yelling, don't touch him. They're not talking about Pearson touching the Republican rep who hasn't moved. They're talking about the security that steps in and pulls Pearson away. And they're all yelling, don't touch him, immediately positioning him as the victim. And, of course, the victim in a racist physical confrontation. Played again and listen this time to the crowd and the way that they're reacting to Pearson.

being restrained? One of the three men that are restraining Pearson is a black man. And yet here are these women yelling, don't touch him, don't touch him, let him go. The first man who approaches him is a white man who says, no, sir, no sir. We're not doing this here. at which point Pearson is turned into the martyr, don't touch him, don't touch him. And here is what I would forward you today. We are sickened with something, sickened with, as Gadsad would describe it, as suicidal empathy,

sickened with white guilt, sickened with something that forces us into seeing any interaction with race as not the facts or not the interaction before us, but as a larger story, a story driven out of 100 years of history that can only see these moments as a larger act within the greater play. And it has toxic, deleterious effects, not just on the nation as a whole, not just on civil discourse, but on the purported champions in these events, on the black community. For example, I'll give you what just happened in Washington at the Navy Yards. This is something that happened at a Chipotle. And what you're going to see is something that's happening all too often. And that is a, if I use the term flash mob, I believe that diminishes what you're about to see. It looks like a massive group brawl.

It appears two factions of people going at it with one another. but it's pure chaos with chairs being thrown and chipotle destroyed and violence in every corner here of this fast casual Mexican restaurant. Go ahead now. You're talking about a crowd of possibly, oh, look at that. Oh, my gosh.

There at the end of the video, you see a father with a little girl. Do you see that hiding in the corner? Man, like a four or five-year-old little girl hiding behind her father. As you see a crowd of, I don't know, 10, 15, 20, exclusively black males, picking up chairs, throwing them at one another, destroying the restaurant,

punching one another, incredibly violent. Judge Jeanine Piro has come out now and said, we're done. We're done with this. So here's what's going to happen. You have a curfew law, and if you don't adhere to the curfew law, we're going to go after the parents. parents you will be fine, ticketed, and face potential jail time for not having your kids at home on curfew or participating in anything like this if you knew or should have known. This is going to take place.

Yemisee Egbenwale, who is a Fox News contributor, a Democrat, Black, had a fascinating tweet this morning where she said, no more. No more can we pretend this is a story about rec centers and nothing else to do. boredom. This is about cities. In, by the way, the spirit of what we were talking about with Justin Pearson, taking on the attitude that these kids are victims. They're victims of a society that doesn't create enough rec centers or give them enough to do. They're victims of a system. Instead, they are people with agency who should need to be held accountable for their actions and they need to have the proverbial book thrown at them. They need to be put

in juvie or jail. And I agree with Judge Piro. I think it's going to be very hard legally because of the concept of agency to prosecute a parent for the crimes of a child. But if you really ask yourself what's wrong here, really ask yourself, what's the core issue? It is secondarily, secondarily, cities going light. on all of this stuff and continuing to see the criminal as the victim. Coming up, Lippi Steinem, the CEO of Rie Alloys, explains to us exactly why it is for now that China dominates rare earth minerals. We just watched this weekend, suspected three, maybe four people in teenagers, again,

in Austin, Texas, arrested for 12 random shootings. Twelve random shootings across the city. Fired at homes. Pedestrians, a fire station. Hit four. One is in serious condition. These, by the way, are not black suspects. These are Latino suspects.

Austin's got a problem. Austin has got a problem that a city that I used to love has got a massive problem with going light on everything. curring a horrible environment where criminals get out, shootings on 6th Street, fights on 6th Street, and this random act of violence. Secondarily, your problem is these cities.

Secondarily, D.C. Austin. Primarily, your problem is the breakdown of the family. It will almost always go back to the family. What's the situation with the father? what's the situation with the mother? What's the kid learning at home? What kind of home is he being raised in?

And if that's the case, I don't know if prosecuting the parents is a path to the savior of these societies, these cultures, these communities. Because what I'm here to tell you, the original premise is the people that suffer from the cosplay Malcolm X actors, like Justin Pearson,

are the people who vote for Justin Pearson. the people he purports to champion, his policies that will professionally, personally benefit his afro are the ones that will hurt that community and have hurt that community for decades. Keep doing this. Keep doubling. Keep tripling. Keep quadrupling down. And see everything exclusively through the lens of race. And you will continue to get outcomes that produce the same thing, nothing more, but the celebrity of Justin Pearson. Lippi Sternheim is the CEO of realloys, a critical mineral processing business here in the United States of America after coming off our conversation with Gordon Chang about the current status of the relationship between U.S. and China.

He just had to reconnect. He'll be right here once again. Sorry. Really? Here. on Wilcane country. All right. Oh, Lippy's red. All right. Lippy. There he is.

Jeff's take a call? No, no, no. It was frozen. Something going down? Oh, I want to make sure something wasn't going down in the world of critical minerals. How you doing? A big deal coming down the pipe. By the way, it's coming down the pipe, right?

It's not coming down the pike. I bet we're 50-50 on that. People say, coming down the pike or coming down the pipe. And you could either see it either way, like a turnpike. It's coming down the turnpike or is it coming down a pipe. In fact, Dan, let's settle that debate here before the end of this interview with Libby's time. Let's start with something that we've known for quite some time. The issue with critical minerals and China's dominance in the world of critical minerals

is not where the minerals lie and not the ability to mine those minerals. The United States is rich, rich in minerals. The question is, what do we do with those minerals? How can we do something with those minerals? How do we turn them into a usable product? Correct. As Trump said in Davos, it's not the rare minerals. It's the rare processing.

And that was actually a quote from Elon Musk, which came about, I think it was two years ago in April. He tweeted that out. It's not the rare minerals. It's the rare processing. Just get a little, a little, a little, Well, your radioactive components of rare earth make it complicated. So most rare earth has uranium and thorium, which is complicated.

As you know, with environmental, EPA, and all of these things in America, it gets complicated. There's a company Loynos, which is a Malaysian company, one of the two largest by market cap companies in Rear Earth. There's Mountain Pass and Loinus. Loinus got a grant from the government in 2021, I think it was, to build a rare earth processing facility in Texas. and they canceled it this year, and it's most likely the EPA hadn't given them a permit. And it's complicated. Nobody wants radioactive waste in their wastewater. So that's why these things were offshoreed for many years and reasons for that. You know, there's many countries with many mines, as you started off by saying,

it's not the mining that's the problem. There's 100 rare earth mines that will come online at some point. That's not the issue. The processing is the problem. And the problem is also the technologies and the sophistication of the components. So just to run you through it in a short snap, there's, call it rocks for the layman. There's rocks in the earth. You've got to process it, turn it into oxides.

You've got to metallize it from oxides. You've got to metalize it. And then the final product is rare earth magnets. So first, everybody just needs to understand what we're building here. China today controls all the processing, most of the mining, but that's not the issue, that we can get over with. But then the processing, and you can't just build a plan tomorrow for the reason I mentioned, plus all the technologies that go with it. I used to run a gold mining company. A mill in gold you put in rocks.

It goes through flotation. It's simple. It comes out the other side, d'ure. Rare earth is many, many. It's like separating 21 here from your eyelash. It's just that's that complicated. And you're separating them in these minute amounts, in these very minute amounts,

to make something commercially viable. So the processing. Metalizing. There's very little metalizing. We own a company, the only one in North America that I know of, that's in the metallizing business, Mountain Pass bought one in some other country. I think Australia, USA Rare Earth bought one in London that they bought.

But the metalizing is another heavy, you know, complex, sophisticated thing to do. And then the final one, which is making magnets, which we announced early on that we did an MOU with Jogmag, the Japanese, who are the most advanced in this space of magnets, making mount magnets. And it kind of has to do with the temperatures and the, you know, the different version of magnets. As lights go into your EVs, heavies are more for military, F-35s, missiles, high temperature.

At high temperatures, the magnetic capabilities drop, so you have to have a higher powered magnet. A higher, you know, the magnets have higher capacities for temperature and things like that. So that's just the understanding of the business. Mine, processing, refining, metalizing, and then magnet making. Everything but the mining has to be brought onshore to America. Now it's China. They say 99% is like your question of down the pike or down the pike. Is it 99% in China or 99, 98.7? I don't know, but it's China. They own it all.

So, processing, refining, metalizing, and magnetizing. That is all China? All four of those stages, 90% plus China? For heavies, definitely. For heavies, definitely, yes. And for lights, starting to get more, you know, like you have the big mine in California from and they're focused on their, that's light rare earths, and they're processing and I'm bringing it now, you know, over here. Originally they were shipping that to China to process there, and now they're building their processing facilities here. Our company realloys is focused specifically on the fence, and I'll tell you why. January 1st, 2027, as Trump tweeted on the social, on the social, truth social, Trump social, whatever it's called, the online, on Sunday, no more waivers. Till now, everybody's getting waivers. So if you can't make it, you go to China and you get a waiver. The law, written in law, it's not an executive decree.

It's not, you know, it's a law January 1st, 2027. You can no longer supply defense establishment with anything that is a Chinese nexus. So we're very focused and racing towards that deadline to make sure that the defense industrial base has what they need. And focus mostly on the sprozyme and terbium, which are the heavy metals, which go into those, those, that's the capabilities we're looking to make. I know that China is a black box, Lippi, but has there been much research? out of China on the environmental effect of all of the processing, refining, and magnetizing all the stages that we are missing here in the United States because of concerns over environmental issues.

Has there been an analysis on the environmental issues in China? And has there been a way they've gotten around that? Or are they just poisoning the well water of the Chinese? Probably number two. It's not a clean business. We just announced a couple of weeks ago that we've invented a process, which, so hydrochloric acid, you know what that is? You put it on your hand. It goes through the other side's one of the most dangerous chemicals.

It's used in all rare earth processing. We just came out with a new way of making it without a hydrochloric free way of making it. That's an example. China is, it's, you know, mining is dirty, processing is dirty, and it's made there. One of the benefits, in our case, specifically, we partnered with the Canadian government. And so it's a quick background. SRC, Saskatchewan Research Council, which is the provincial government of Saskatchewan's kind of back laboratory for a lot of mining companies and do a lot of work.

It's a profitable business, but it's a government company. They set out in 2021, like others, to go build a facility for processing rare earths. They were going to go to China and get components from there and machinery from there. And China said, we're not selling to anybody that's not our friend anymore. So they ended up building it without any Chinese ties. said, okay, we're going to build it from ground up. So it's the only North American facility that's from the ground up. Therefore, it's built with North American style, you know, zero discharge, clean. They take out the uranium thorium when, you know, in the beginning of

the stages so they can take that out so it's not a problem. There's the other, the other plants are all built with Chinese chemicals. Anybody else that has a plant today is built running on Chinese chemicals, Chinese components, it's got a Chinese tie somehow. So if one day, the president says nothing else coming in from there, they got a problem anyway. But in the sense of selling to defense, those are Chinese toys, we have zero. And this was built with clean, and that's where this hydrofluoric free acid kind of technology. All of these things are now our technology, our ingenuity of making this a North American thing. That's what I was curious about. Have we reached the capability of doing this in a way

that is not concerning for the environment? So the excuses that have prevented us from building this infrastructure in the United States, are those excuses environmentally still valid? Or have we figured this out, perhaps more expensive than getting it from China, but we've figured this out in a way to do it that's safe for the environment? We and our partners have figured that out, and we can show it. We've figured that out. And it took, again, thanks to the SRC and our company in Ohio and Euclid that we originally bought PMT, we have gotten that. It will take time, though. I was going to ask, how come, you know, I got asked the other day, how come it's not, how come we're not up and running? You can't build 40 years and four minutes. It just, it takes time.

But by 2030, Well, that's what I went to ask you. So, actually, Lipi, that's the line of questioning I wanted to go down. And I understand what you guys are doing with realloy is important. There are others as well working in this industry trying to build stuff. I know there's a magnet factory right here in Texas and Fort Worth, not far from where I am right now working. I believe that would be on the final stages of magnetization.

But what I'm curious about is, okay, we have the capability to do this in a safe way that's environment, but it doesn't happen over the night. So how big of head start does China have on us? I mean, how long does it take to build this infrastructure? These plants, these symbiotic relationships among the stages of processing and the different plants that are needed. Like, in President Trump's law, as you just described, like, we can't just start from nothing and have it done in three or four years, I would imagine. So what type of time lead are we looking at here before we can start pulling the percentage? is down from 90% from China.

So on the heavy side, which I'll stick to, which is, again, defense-related and on the defense side and what we're doing on the heavy rear-earth, will be in production by the beginning of next year at the latest to meet those deadlines. And capacity, expanding capacity, to where you're actually fulfilling almost, if not all the needs of the defense,

which, you know, there's a lot more electric cars than their IF-35s, obviously. But to meet those needs in the next three years, we'll have built out the infrastructure. It was taking the time because we also have a head start. So we do have, because of the SRC, we have at least the three to five years. And I would say possibly even longer a head start on other people on that. But the infrastructure will be built out because of this administration's efforts.

All the credit goes to them for funding the companies, for being behind them. It will be built out by 2030, 2031, I think. The Chinese problem will be over in rare earth, I believe, and the demand will be met for the most part. Definitely on the defense side, definitely on the heavy side from what we're doing. And then on the light side, I think the other companies, as you mentioned, there's other people in the space.

One of the critical things is we're not coming out with, like our plant works on solvent extraction. It's an old, you know, old technologies. It's just the cleaner, newer version, modern, AI-driven. We have for 80 people that work in China on one thing, we can do it with two-N AI. So there's a lot of technological advances being, you know, built into these capabilities,

but I believe to answer your question, simply within three to five years, this entire thing will be built out. Let's take a quick break, but we're right back here on Will Cain Country. Welcome back to Will Cain Country. Oh, that's fascinating. That's fascinating. And then we'll go back full circle here at the end of our conversation. We have at home in America on American soil what percentage of the critical minerals that we actually need.

And I know that's varied. There's all types of minerals. that will be used and are needed for various products. And we don't have them all in America, but I'm led to believe we're pretty rich. It's not rare. Maybe everybody has it, but there's some that we might have to go other places to get.

Agreed. So mining is not the, it's not the focus that we're in business. So one of the big, big component factors here, when you build a mining facility, so typically you own a piece of land, bless you, you want a piece of land, you got rocks in there, you got gold, So you go build a mill on it, you process it, and you process your gold.

We've built it backwards. Even though we're a mine to magnet company, we went from the end to the beginning. So our processing facility that we're currently finishing and the next one is feedstock agnostic. That means I can take the feedstock, the rocks, from anywhere. I can take it from Kazakhstan. We signed a deal. We signed a deal with Brazilian companies. We signed a deal with a Greenland company.

U.S. has, but again, all of these mines, our mine, we own a mine too. It's in Saskatchewan. It's actually 32 kilometers from Uranium City where the uranium for the Manhattan Project came from. So that's the reason the processing is, in our case, in Canada, in Saskatchewan, particularly, because they have the permits necessary for all of this uranium, thorium radioactiveness. They're good on that. But the mine itself, that's in the processing. But getting back to the mine, which ours is there, we've signed deals,

then you'll see in the coming weeks other deals with American companies. In America, it's not so not only the mine, but there's other. clever ways. For example, some of the big coal mining companies, coal mining from the tailings, they're coming up with processes to take out rare earths, which are in there. So I think one day that demand may be satisfied from here. You know, Trump has the Greenland in his eyes. The company we signed a deal with in Greenland. They have one of the largest rare earth mines in the world. But as you said, there's a lot of different components. There's lights which are, not to get it, too technical, neodymium, prasidium, that's the lights. There's an abundance of it. There's no

shortage of it. Turbium, dysprosium, heavies, a lot less. It's a lot more rare. Then you have exotics. Oh, and then you have critical. You still critically. You have lithium. Then you have the galleums, the gadoliniums and the stuff I can't pronounce, and you can't definitely want to pronounce for you. But a lot of these things, you know, that just, you need a little bit of it for some shield for a saddle, you know, different things. All of those, they'll end up being here. They'll find them. They're finding now in Georgia. They're finding in other places. There's plenty of riches in the United States and not to go further. But then it comes to mining it out, and we do have to figure out ways to do it where it's, it's environmentally friendly to an extent, you know, of the 21st century

with what we have, which has to be done. So you have to manage both. But I think there's plenty here, plenty. And this administration, as I said before, is on top of that. All right. For your edification, Lippi, and the audience, it is officially down the pike. It's turnpike. Not down the pipe, but down the pike. after the turnpike. Okay. All right. Terrified.

So you can take that with you home today. Don't say I didn't offer you anything. You offered me a lot of information, and I offered you that one little important, useful. You won't forget it, by the way. You're going to use that somewhere down the road, and you're going to remember where you learned it. Libby. Thank you very much. CEO of Realloys.

All right. I appreciate you being on the show today. Thank you, Libby. Dan, thank you for that update. Two of days, Dan came clutch on down the pike. Do you think the audience will remember Lippie's very detailed and educated instruction on critical minerals better or that it is down the pike? Which one will be remembered longer and repeated more in casual conversation? Did you know that over 90% of heavy critical minerals, and a lot of the light critical minerals as well, or rare earth minerals, are produced?

They are processed. They are refined. They are metallized. And they are magnetized in China. Which, by the way, did you know those are the four stages after the mining of rare earth minerals? Do you think that or, hey, man, it's not down the pike? It's down the pike. I didn't get any of that information.

It would be the bigger takeaway from most people listening. I was just researching things we say wrong. The only other lippy that I know is lippy, the piano player from Lonesome Dove. I just met, and I'd ever met that lippy. He was a fictional character in Lonesome Dove that hung out with Gus and Lori Darling at the bar in Lonesome Dove. That's the first real-life Lipi that I've ever met. Great movie, glad you told me to watch it. You watched Lonesome Dove?

Yeah, some of it. all six hours? Oh no, wait. Sorry, I was thinking about Tombstone. I am sick and my brain is not working, so don't listen to me. I did watch the first episode or two. And? And?

I liked it a lot. And? Yeah, it's good. You did? Yeah. Oh, good. My youngest son is super into TV shows and movies and not just watching them, discussing them. He is on an Instagram algorithm that gives him lists all the time.

And so he'll come to me and be like, Dad, should we watch The Prestige? Dad, should we watch Heat? Dad, should we watch No Country for Old Men? And the last one throws me off because that feels like that came out yesterday compared to Heat and the prestige. But I'm like, yes, yes, yes. Those are great movies. I told you last week we watched Shawshank Redemption because he brought that up from a list. So this is a fun thing actually because he's actually watching good movies.

And by the way, they're holding up. He's like, after Shawshank, he said it's the best movie he's ever seen. He said, that's the best. another one that hit his list was prisoners with Jake Gyllenhaal. So good. And Paul Dano and Terrence Howard. And yeah, he loved it. He loved it.

But then he watched Shawshank and he's like, oh, that's another level. That's another level from prisoners. So he's really enjoying seeing the quality. Is he rare for that age? And he knows how highly I think of Lonesome Dove. I don't know if that shows up on lists. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would show up on Instagram lists. But there's a little bit of me.

I'm like, yeah, man, it's my favorite ever. But there's a little bit of me that's like, I don't know that it holds up. It's a little dated feeling. It's cinematography. It's pacing. I just worry a little bit, like, is he going to be able to do this? And I would be super disappointed if he didn't like it. I think the issue.

And so, like, one of the thing we used to do a lot more of is, like, the mini-series. you know, which is essentially an extended movie. And I don't feel like we do that much anymore. But that was very common in the 90s. They do. It allows you to have slower pacing. But they stretch it out too long. They add too much fluff.

So what you had in the 80s, in the early 90s, is you had the six-episode miniseries on broadcast television, the north and the south, the blue and the gray, lonesome dove. That is still around, I would argue, Patrick. That is one season, one-season, shows. They do stretch out into eight or ten episodes,

but they're one and done. I mean, in a way, that's True Detective. Even though True Detective did three seasons... HBO does a lot. Chernobyl... Chernobyl's a great example of that. Yeah. I feel like you don't see a lot of those. Chernobyl back in the day would have been a miniseries.

Right. They do more documentary miniseries now. I mean, like all the crime ones and that kind of thing, those are still in heavy rotation. It's appealing to me. Like, if I look up, someone says, you should watch this series, it's really good.

And I find out it's five seasons. I'm like, can't do it. Too big a bear. Can't take down that 72-ounce stake. But if it's one or two seasons, I'm like, okay, I could do that. I think there'd be some. I re-watched Chernobyl. It's awesome.

Recently, I watched that a second time. It's incredible. Would you rather watch a three-and-a-half-hour movie or a five-a-five-hour movie or a five episode season of a show. Five's tricky because five can be unsatisfying. Exactly. I feel like a sweet spot. I feel like a sweet spot is eight.

Eight is a sweet spot. Ten, sometimes you're like this should have ended two episodes ago. Five to six, you're like, oh, man, I really enjoy this. It should have been a little longer. But it can get stretched even in five. I think eight is your sweet spot. Yeah. They just add fluff just to fill time to keep watch hour.

so people will stay on your app. Like it's literally just a, it's just an algorithmic thing, which is super frustrating. Because I'm like most of these shows, like the Harlan Coven ones, like those crime shows, could probably be two or three times. I've done one of those. I've done one of those, and I find those pretty unsatisfying. Yeah. Those are pretty unsatisfying.

Speaking of good entertainment, Gavin Newsom, you know, one of the world's leader, premiered defenders of democracy. Like a, like if this were the. crusades and they were invading fascistan and he was the guy carrying the shield for democracy, it would be Gavin Newsom, right? He's probably already commissioned the painting that will hang inside the Church of Democracy, showing him defending democracy, has an interesting new take on defending democracy. The current race for governor in California has two Republicans at the top, and they do rank voting. They have rank voting, right? So, like, there's no guarantee a Democrat

even gets in. And right now, like two Republicans. And so here's how Gavin Newsom, well, would defend democracy. We all have agencies. We can shape the future. There's still a lot. Look, I've said this before it's all repeated. I don't anticipate this need to be the case. But there is a break the glass scenario. And there's many people that have a deep understanding of what it would look like if Democrats were locked out. And we're going to do everything to make sure that doesn't happen. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, tell me more. Break the glass scenario, multiple agencies. What does that mean?

That the people's will of voting to Republicans to the top of the ranked choice voting would be subverted by multiple agencies and a break the glass scenario? That's a unique way to defend democracy. It's kind of like the black redistricting thing again. You know today on Will Kane Show on Fox News Channel, I will have one of the leading candidates for the newly drawn Tennessee district that is the center point of a lot of these fights. Oh, you're writing out a black district, interestingly represented by a white man and Steve Cohen. But now the leading candidate with a newly drawn district is a black woman. Huh Why is everybody upset?

Because she's a Republican. Oh, so it's not about Wait, is it about race? Or is it about something else? Bro. Wait, wait, who had that seat, Will? Steve Cohen. And who, what is he?

White Jewish man, Memphis. Democrat. Interesting. What? Oh. Democrat. So the, right. So the white Jewish Democrat

reflected the properly drawn district to protect black voters, but the black woman Republican is an example of the re-institution of Jim Crow. Interesting. Interesting. Kind of like how Burgess Owens and Byron Donalds and several other black members of Congress are not and are not allowed to be members of the Congressional Black Caucus. Right? It's weird.

That's for black congressmen. Aren't they? Black. Yes, for black congressmen. And I think they're black. And they're Congressmen. But they're not allowed to be in the congressional black caucus. It's kind of like...

Really interesting. It's only for Democrat, black congressman. Was Steve Cohen in there? So I'm beginning to think this isn't about race. I'm beginning to think they're not defending race. But everything's about race, Will. It's about race Like the Titanic was about a three-foot ice cube

Nice Sure something that sticks above the surface Sure is flashy Sure is the way to get people worked up Blow the whistle, Captain I see some ice You have no idea what's under the surface That's just the little

addictive drug they use to bring you in to something lurking beneath the water. It addicts the masses. I'll tell you what. In my algorithm, at least. That Republican congressional candidate will be today at 4 o'clock Eastern Time on the Wilcane show on the Fox News channel.

That's going to do it for us today here on Wilcane Country. Get better, Dan. We hope you join us again tomorrow. Make sure you follow some Spotify or Apple. We'll see you again next time. Listen to ad free with a Foxxie. News Podcast Plus subscription on Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Prime members, you can listen to this show, ad-free on the Amazon Music app.