Will Cain Country - Is The A.I. Revolution The New Industrial Revolution?

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

Story #1: Everything is changing by the day, hour, and minute. As we stand on the cusp of a new A.I. Revolution, what does that mean for small towns in America?  Story #2: What is a critical mineral? What does President Donald Trump's mineral deal with Ukraine mean for the world? Will breaks it all down with Chairman & CEO of Cove Capital and Kaz Resources, Pini Althaus.  Story #3: There's no such thing as a bad day. Will is joined by the Author of 'No Bad Days: Turning Your Biggest Challenges into Your Greatest Opportunities,' JT Mestdagh for a conversation on his inspiring story and amazing accomplishments despite significant huddles in his life.  Tell Will what you thought about this podcast by emailing [e-mail] Subscribe to The Will Cain Show on YouTube here: Watch The Will Cain Show! Follow Will on Twitter: @WillCain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One, everything is changing by the day, by the hour, and by the minute. We're on the cuss of a brand new industrial revolution. What does that mean for small town in Louisiana? What does that mean for Wyoming? What does that mean for Texas if we sit at the revolution of AI? And as everything changes, so too does MSNBC. So too does the view. And breaking now, so too, does the Washington Post.

Two, what is a critical mineral? Donald Trump has struck a deal with Ukraine for their critical minerals. Kazakhstan, Africa, America. I talk to an expert on critical minerals. Three, no bad days. J.T. Mesta, the author of a brand new book on turning your biggest challenges into your greatest opportunities. bad days. It is the Will Kane show, streaming live at Fox News.com on the Fox News YouTube channel and the Fox News Facebook page.

Hit subscribe at any of those digital channels, then you can be with us every day at 12 o'clock Eastern time. If you're listening on Terrestrial Radio and you'd like a schedule or your schedule changes and you'd like a schedule where you could still listen to. the Will Kane show. Head over to Spotify or Apple and hit subscribe. An absolute fire hose of news once again. Difficult to keep up, but President Trump does his damnedest every four o'clock on the Fox News channel to share with us what he has planned for that roughly six hour period before we hear from him once again with brand new things over what we are to do with the federal

government yesterday he gave a wide-ranging executive order signing from the oval office let me pull back the curtain for just a moment on what these oval office executive order signings entail i often hear during the four o'clock hour of the will cane show on fox news why don't you take president trump you why are you cutting off president trump okay this is a little behind the scenes on how it works when president trump is in the oval office signing executive orders it is not provided to the media live. I'm not exactly sure why that's the case. I think it has to do with security. But I think I'm 100% correct in saying you will not see that live anywhere. You won't see it live streamed on X. You won't see it live streamed on YouTube. You won't see it live on another cable channel. What happens

is immediately after that executive order signing ceremony is over. The tape is ingested and it is aired on the Will Kane show. That's why you'll see up in the corner of the screen. moments ago or moments earlier almost immediately after it's over it can be ingested and turned now here's the great big curveballs in doing a television show you never know when these executive order signings are going to begin there is a schedule for example today there's a schedule for three o'clock eastern time it will not start at two 30 it never starts early and it rarely starts on time. So for example, if it's scheduled for 3 p.m. Eastern time, there is a very good chance that airs during the 4 p.m. Eastern Time, aka the Will Cain Show. That's for two reasons. One, it's not

carried live. So as long as it goes, it will take that time before it is turned and played on cable news. So if he signed on time from 3 to 3.30, you wouldn't see that until 3.30. Secondarily, after acknowledging it doesn't really start on time very often, you never know how long it will go. You don't know whether he'll be there for 20 minutes or he'll be there for 45 minutes. As of at this point in his presidency, President Trump has answered,

somebody cataloged this, over 1,000 questions from the media. You want the context on that? At the same point, President Biden had answered something like 150. questions from the media. So you're talking about, I believe it's something like a 700% increase in transparency, accountability, and availability from President Trump. But that does add up to, I don't know, 20, 25, 45. So you don't know when it starts and you don't know when it ends, but you know that you get it when it ends. So if anyone ever wondering, you know,

how you can expect to see that on a day-to-day basis or whenever it happens, just know, that game of juggling is taking place. I'm not complaining. I'm telling you this is how it unfolds. And so therefore it's very hard for me to tell you, hey, here's what's coming up today on the Will Kane show. More than once I've had to say goodbye. Some very interesting guests because you know what's more interesting,

President Donald Trump. And he was yesterday. Yesterday, he went on a tear. He answered a lot of questions. He executed a lot of orders, including pulling the security clearances away from not just special prosecutor Jack Smith, but the law firm, which employs Eric Holder, former Attorney General to President Obama, that aided Jack Smith. And he also addressed this controversy over who's allowed in the White House press briefing room. Specifically, he talked about the Associated Press. Watch. We're going to be now calling those shots. As you know, we won that lawsuit right there.

of America, which is a beautiful name. Most people agree. I don't know. You know, AP has been terrible. I think they're radical left. I think they're third-rate reporters. I know the specific young lady that works on the account is terrible. She's a radical-left lunatic, as far as I'm concerned.

They don't treat us fairly. That's number one. And number two, they had no right to do that. This is the Gulf of America. Like so many things that sounded like right-wing talking points, has now become an acknowledgement in mainstream culture. For example, your mainstream media is not center-left. It is almost as a monolith far-left.

Here's what you've seen happen over the last couple of days. MSNBC is going through some restructure. We don't know what's going on. Joy Reid is out. Alex Wagner is out. But they're bringing in people like Michael Steele and current head of the White House Correspondents Association, who, I mean, we can assume

and he's going to be incredibly far left. As we told you about a week ago, there's instructions from within ABC to the view to basically straighten up, get it together. You have gone insane. Most notably, this morning, there was an email sent from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to the Washington Post, which he owns,

saying going forward, there's going to be a change in the Washington Post's opinion page. We will now focus our values on personal liberties and free markets. He goes on to say, in the past, we've focused on a wide range of opinions, a diversity of opinions. Now we don't need that. We have the Internet. Instead, we're going to focus our values on personal liberties and free markets.

It's causing absolute chaos to watch the list. I believe the editor at this moment has quit. There was a time when personal liberties and free markets weren't really the exclusive domain of one political party, but rather it was a universal value of America. But you're seeing a great pivot. Everything's changing underneath our feet. And by the way, industry is no exception. President Trump talked about, as early as this Friday, Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, could be coming. in to sign a minerals deal with the United States of America. And Trump is saying yesterday that it's going to pay off for Americans. Watch. The other thing that we don't like is that Europe has spent $100 billion. We've spent $350 billion. Europe gets their money back because they spent it in the

form of a loan. And we just gave them, whether it's $300 or $350 billion, nobody really knows. They can't even tell me the answer to that. It means probably more than that. So what we're doing is now we're saying, look, we want to be secured. We want to get that money back. We're helping a country through a very, very big problem, a problem like very few people have had. Shouldn't have had this problem because it shouldn't have happened. But it did happen. So we have to straighten it out. But the American taxpayer now is going to get their money back plus. Here's a question. What are critical minerals? Which minerals are critical? Cobalt, lithium. Where are they located?

where is the world's biggest stores Kazakhstan, Africa, Ukraine, Wyoming What are they needed for? What products? And which minerals for which products? How valuable are all of these minerals that are said to now be everywhere, including Greenland? I'm going to get into that a little bit later

because I am very curious about the answers to those questions. We're going to be talking to Pini Altouse. He is a CEO focused on making deal. across the globe that helps American dominance in quote-unquote critical minerals. That's coming up in just a moment on the Will Cain Show, but let's get into a few stories that caught my attention today with story number one. Yesterday on the 4 p.m. Fox News Channel version of the Will Cain Show, I talked to AI and Cryptozar, David Sacks, and I talked to him about this AI revolution. And he drew an analogy,

But I'm going to be honest, I found, and I would if I had a longer conversation with David Sacks, and it was long by cable news standards, probably over 10 minutes. I would ask him if this right here is the perfect analogy for the AI revolution. And I think that AI is going to drive a boom and productivity over the next decade. That's similar to the way that the Internet drove a boom in the late 90s. And I think we need that boom. We need that productivity to drive our economy. The United States is something like $35 trillion in debt.

How are we ever going to get out of that debt unless we have that economic boom? So we need these new technologies. And I believe that we can marshal them responsibly. I think that we can use them responsibly. Like the vice president said, we can use them in a pro-worker way. And so I think that we can use them to benefit the United States. And just one final point is that if we don't do it, it's not like the innovation is going to stop. China's going to do it.

China is very competitive. Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a budget bill that included tax cuts, extension of tax cuts, and some cuts in government spending. But one Republican held out, Congressman Thomas Massey of Kentucky, because he said it's going to continue to explode the deficit. That is true. And one of the things that's going to be necessary to balance our budget is growth. Now, growth is a trick used by politicians on 10-year plans over the past. It's always projecting unrealistic growth. But Sachs points out something interesting there.

If we're going to balance our budget and we're going to get our economy on the right track, we're going to have to grow. And AI clearly appears to be the big path for growth, the technological revolution. He compared it to the Internet revolution. I find that lacking. If AI is everything everyone is saying it's cracked up to be,

I think this is potentially more transformative than what happened with the Internet in the 2000s. I think we're going to have to go back to the industrial revolution, you know, 1890s through 1930s, roughly. If you looked at life before and after the Industrial Revolution, it would be unrecognizable to people over a half-century span. Yesterday we were joked around about hygiene, you know, in the 1800s. How do people brush their teeth? Did they have showers? Think about living either in the Old West or in a place like New York. city in 1875. Think about what that life looked like. Horses, carriages, you know, lanterns, gas lights,

perhaps. And then you fast forward 50 years, and you're talking about an extremely different way of living for Americans. Motorized cars, you're on the verge of refrigeration, you have electricity running through cities. I mean, the Industrial Revolution put products and jobs right there at our fingertips that totally transformed America. Think about Pittsburgh. You know, think about the entire Midwest in the Rust Belt and how it was built, what it looks like. We have a football team, iconic one, named after something that happened during the Industrial Revolution, the Pittsburgh Steelers, an entire area of the country to this day influences voting, how they vote, their values, because of what happened in the Industrial Revolution.

Well, news is today that META is discussing an AI data project center that could cost $200 billion. Now, this data center inside this article from Zero Hedge, suggests that Mark Zuckerberg is looking at putting it either in Texas, Louisiana, or Wyoming. And this data center could run four miles long, like a building four miles long. One more piece of information. I want to show us with you from ZeroHedge because it shows the capital expenditures of the biggest tech companies. If you're listening on radio,

I'm going to show you what these graphs look like, but this one shows CapEx of Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, and Meta, over a five-year period from 2020 to 2026. And what you see is an explosion, the amount of money they are spending over that time frame from $71 billion,

over $300 billion in that year alone. And each year there's another $70, $69, $69 billion invested, and it's all going up. Now, this is fascinating. On multiple levels, one, does this guarantee or put us in the best position to dominate this next revolution that rivals the industrial revolution of AI,

meaning the United States of America? two does this suggest that the freak out over deep seek might not have been as legitimate these are very smart people with very big budget suggesting this is necessary huge server farms built across america today as we speak invidia the technology company behind most of the tech in these AI chips and power their needs. is going to have an earnings call. And people are suggesting that it's going to go much better. InVitya got crushed by the Deep Seek news.

But it looks like now it's going to rebound based on clearly some of this investment, these four-mile-long server farms from just one company. Three, though, if Deep Seek is legitimate, is this a giant black hole of investment? Is this investing in widgets that have no use for our future? if DeepSeek truly can build AI with a fraction of the chips and a fraction of the infrastructure needed, what is all this hulking, four-mile building going to be doing in Louisiana? Five, if it's real, what does that mean for this area of the country? I mean, are we going to have a professional sports team?

I know this is making light of it, but just show you illustration of how transformative. Are we going to have this Reveport chips taken on the Dallas Cowboys in the year 2050 in the NFL? I mean, I just think that's a good illustration when you think about the Pittsburgh Steelers as an illustration of how transformative the Industrial Revolution was and how it was tied geographically to one place. You're just talking about something that we're all sitting here. And look, AI is not a big part of my life. I don't know if it is yours. At least not to my knowledge. I don't really use chat GPT. I've tried out Jim and I and I'm GROC. But they're not, you know, I should start, I guess, writing monologues based off these things or something. I don't

but I don't but I'm sure it's buried in everything else including probably this show reaching you today in the comment section that you're in right now what's up, Wollisha you know I mean I just kind of step back in Marvel

like imagine you were alive okay imagine you were alive in 1895 1905 or so right and this is all happening around you and not your grandkids but your kids' lives are going to be so different and your life and your job and your lifespan and everything is going to change history is like everything else in life it's

like nothing happens and then everything happens and is that what this means and by the way if it is happening like everybody's suggesting unlike the industrial revolution it doesn't unfold over half a century it unfolds over what a decade a decade and a half now for all of us. The other story I wanted to hit on with you today is this fascinating thing happening where it's still disruptive and the left just doesn't get reason. They just don't get sanity. That's the truth.

The left, and I think that's what's happening with the Washington Post and the view. Here's a question for you. Are the leaders of those companies looking back with embarrassment is who they've been over the past 10 years? and making a course correction? Or are they simply followers who now see the trend and they're like, well, this is where the vibe is in America? Because the Democratic Party doesn't seem to be picking up the vibe.

The vibe is obvious in pop culture and even on those who were on the left. I'm talking about the issue of trans. Bill Maher was on the Pod Save America podcast where he was talking about this issue and how damaging it is for the left. And he got into it with one of the Obama bros, John Lovett. Listen. You asked about the Biden administration.

That was their position. If you even question this, you're some sort of a bigot. And this is new science and it has to do with children. And it's not going to look good in the future, that position. Can I just respond to something? Now you can. Now I can respond? All right.

I got to go. All right. I said my piece. You definitely said your piece. Just say your bullshit while I'm in the back. Just stay for one second. Okay, I'm kidding. Unbelievable.

I'm kidding. There is no perfect answer to this. It's as many naughty questions, the least bad answer. And the least bad answer is to not have the government decide from above. It's just to leave it up to people and parents and the kids and the doctors. Right? You want the government to ban gender affirming care for kids? You want to lose every election.

Just keep coming down on the side of parents coming in second in a who gets to decide what goes on with my kid contest so can we talk about the tone of that for just one moment for those you're listening on radio or podcast let me just describe the situation bill marr sitting on a couch with just one of the obama bros john lovett who's sitting on the couch as well he's sitting indian style i know i don't know if we're supposed to say crisscross applesauce but i still to this day don't understand what's offensive about indian style but bold move for a grown man to sit indian style up on a couch and he manages in this thing to out condescend out smug bill mar guys i was telling you a little bit earlier i you know i don't want to i don't want to um insult an entire

generation but there's something about that dude in that clip and there's a longer clip where he continues to interrupt bill mar and then it's like there's this joyous laugh joyless laughter it's not really full of joy. It just, it's very, okay, if you're in the chat, if you're part of our program, if you're the Willisha and you're a millennial, feel free to push back. Two days, though, you're a millennial. I am. I feel like that attitude is very millennial.

Like, it's this tone, and I hear it on sports radio in Dallas. It's such a turnoff for me. For me as a Gen Xer, I don't know, you. James, which I think you're a Gen Zier. Yeah. But, you know, I don't know if it's a turn off to other millennials, but the tone is

everything is stupid. Everybody is stupid. Sneering, smug. And you, you said it well. I think it was you two days on our colleague. It's like, if you dare to say you like anything, you've made yourself vulnerable to be made fun of

by somebody like John Lovett. It's lame to like things. It's essentially how he grew up as millennials. If you like something and you're excited about it, you're dumb, stupid, lame, loser. That's how we made fun of it. The currency is dumb, stupid, lame. The world is dumb, stupid, lame.

Everyone's dumb, stupid, lame. My guess, the presumption is but for you. You know, and it's how he treats Bill Maher. Right. Everything you're saying is dumb, stupid lame. Everybody's dumb, stupid lame. I just think that little attitude that's exhibited, it's such a turnoff.

It's a huge, huge turnoff. I'm curious. if it's also a turn off to other millennials. But this issue is a turn off to Americans. And so it's fascinating to see some people push back, like the state of Maine. State of Maine cinctured a local representative in Maine over pushing back on their trip.

Because Maine is doubling down, man. They're tripling down. In fact, the Maine governor was called out by Donald Trump. This was earlier this week or late last week at a press conference. Watch. The NCAA has complied immediately, by the way, that's good. But I understand Maine.

Is it Maine here, the governor of Maine? Are you not going to comply with it? I'm complying with state federal law. Well, we are the federal law. Well, you better do it. You better do it because you're not going to get any federal funding at all if you don't. And by the way, your population, even though it's somewhat liberal, although I did very well there, your population doesn't want men playing in women's sports.

So you better comply because otherwise you're not getting any federal funding. Every state, good, I'll see you in court. I look forward to that. That should be a real easy one. And enjoy your life after governor because I don't think you'll be in elected politics. Wow. Wow. I mean, they're all like in like a room sitting at tables.

I don't know if it's the governor's association and he's up at a podium. She yells, see you in court. And he comes back with, enjoy your life after politics. I mean, it's not just Maine, though. Massachusetts is appealing a court ruling that 11-year-olds don't have to tell their parents. You know, if the school finds out, all this. California. Pam Bondi, the attorney general, has told Minnesota, Maine, California,

get with the program or get ready to be soon. it's the easiest layup in politics the polls are clear and yet here we are not learning to step away from insanity which now seems to be even have been learned by the washington post what are critical minerals and more coming up on the will cane show don't eat breakfast until you learn about caloric bypass your breakfast is setting you up the entire day to either gain weight or lose it the term breakfast literally means break your fast you started the night before about four hours after you eat dinner, your body switches from the nutrients we get from food to stored glycogen we have in our bodies.

Once glycogen stores are depleted, typically after 8 to 12 hours of fasting, the body shifts to burning fat for energy. Fatty acids are released from fat stores where they're converted into ketone bodies through a process called ketogenesis. Then when you eat your breakfast in the morning, the body starts the cycle all again. This is where a caloric bypass comes into play. Dr. Gundry, a heart surgeon in California, learned that if you, break your nightly fast with something called MCTs or medium chain triglycerides,

you can actually keep burning fat throughout the day and use it for energy, but there are specific types of foods that contain these MCTs. Using this breakfast breakthrough, he's able to lose 70 pounds just through diet, and he did it in his 60s. You can find out all about it and his exact method by going to the healthy fat.com slash will. That's the healthy fat.com slash W ILL or click on the link in the description box below. It is important to remember that everyone's body processes fat differently and it all depends on your unique metabolic type, which is why in the video he released for my viewers, he talks all about it.

It really is quite fascinating. It might change the way you think about your health. So go to the healthy fat.com slash will or click on the description box, the link in the description box below. I just rattled off 10 questions I have about critical minerals. Now I have the expert with the answers. Next in the Will Cain Show. It is time to take the quiz.

It's five questions in less than five minutes. We ask people on the streets of New York City to play along. Let's see how you do. Take the quiz every day at thequiz.com. Then come back here to see how you did. Thank you for taking the quiz. critical minerals? Where are critical minerals located on the globe? How scarce

are critical minerals? And what are they used for that is needed in the modern economy? It is the Will Cain show streaming live at foxnews.com on the Fox News YouTube channel and the Fox News Facebook page. Please hit subscribe at Apple or Spotify or make sure you go over to YouTube, set a reminder, jump into the comments,

and then you're part of the Willisha. Penny Altouse is the chairman and CEO of Cove Capital and Kaz Resources and he joins us now. Penny, great to see you. Thanks for being with us. Yeah, good afternoon. Willa pleasure. Let's start with news. What do you think of the potential deal, which could be signed as early as Friday, between President Donald Trump and the President of Ukraine,

Vladimir Zelensky, about rare earth minerals, critical minerals in Ukraine? Yeah, I mean, Firstly, from a, I guess, a practical standpoint, the US getting something back for the aid it's provided obviously makes common sense, but the US is facing an existential issue and I guess a threat, if you will, to its national security and industrial base, because we simply don't have and don't produce the critical minerals that are required for many industries, most notably the defence industry, but consumer electronics, medical industries, etc. and critical minerals are required for pretty much the manufacturing of most high-tech and advanced technologies today. So looking outside the US, whilst we are looking also to bolster domestic

production and processing of these materials, is really a prudent step that the administration needs to take. And we're seeing in the very early days of the Trump administration a very strong focus on this. Notably, the agreement that apparently has been reached between Ukraine and the United States. Okay. I have, I want to walk through this in an organized manner, if I can, if you wouldn't mind. Let my questions take us through this one step away, because I really want to digest this, okay? And some of it will be repetitive. So you just said, okay, we need these minerals for consumer electronics. I assume so many of the things we're using in. technology and the defense industry. Just give me a little flesh on the bone of what it is

that we need to survive as part of our modern economy that is incredibly dependent upon quote unquote critical minerals. What products? Yes, so for example, the computer screen I'm on now, the computer screen you're using, the cell phone you're using. It has several critical minerals in it, most notably lithium for the batteries, rare earth magnets, which are used for different stabilizers, etc. So there wouldn't be a day in any of our lies that we're not using an application with critical minerals. Most medical equipment, MRI machines, etc., contain critical minerals. But again, if we're looking at all electric vehicles, so even non-electric vehicles contain copper, cobalt, rare earths, less rare earth than electric vehicles.

And when we start looking at electric vehicles, we're looking at more substantial quantities of copper, cobalt, lithium, and rare earths. So we really can't manufacture anything in this country without these critical minerals. And I should also mention defense, right? So defense applications. I mean, if you take an F-35 fighter jet, it contains one ton of rare earths for magnets. It contains other materials. So you're talking about 50 plus materials that are consistent. critical materials by the U.S. government, and these materials are prevalent across a broad

range of defense applications as well. Okay, so you began to answer the next question there. What is a critical mineral? There are 50, you said, that we could rattle off that are listed by the American government. You, in the course of that first answer, rattled off some. Copper, lithium, cobalt. What else should we consider right now as priorities of critical minerals. So I'd add rare roots to that, again, given the magnet of applications that are ubiquitous in most of or many high-tech products. But then we're talking about key critical minerals, and notably that have recently been that China has banned the export off to the US. So let's look at chipsets and semiconductors. I heard in a prior segment you were talking about

AI. So for AI, we need semiconductors. So gallium, germanium and antimony. These are three more critical minerals, and on December 3rd of 2024, China banned the export of these materials to the United States. Tungsten, another critical mineral, and in the top 10 critical minerals on the US government critical minerals list, is required for, again, a number of defence applications, including armour piercing applications. And we have had no production of tungsten in the United States since 2015. China controls approximately 90% of the global supply chain. On January 2nd, while the United States was enjoying its new year holidays, the world was enjoying its new year holidays, China quietly announced a ban on tungsten exports to the US. So we have no viable, let's say, long-term domestic supply of these materials.

And we have two options. We either have to bolster, we actually have to focus on both, bolstering domestic production and processing of critical minerals, but also looking outside the United States at allied countries, countries, the US, has a relationship with to be able to retain these materials because it's going to take the U.S. at least a decade, probably closer to two, to develop its own independent supply chain of these minerals. All right. Let's talk about which of these critical minerals and rare earth materials. I don't know the difference in those two things, but I hear them often group together. Which are available domestically in the United States?

I lived in Montana for a while. I know that Montana, and this is a now ancient economy for Montana, was rich in copper at one time. I don't know if it still is. So talk to me, I think for a moment there, we all thought Arkansas was going to be the big next lithium rush. But it turns out, and you're here to correct me where I'm wrong, lithium seems like it's everywhere now. Like everybody has lithium. What do we have here at home first? Which of these can we harvest in America?

Yeah, so near-term production, there are a handful of lithium projects in the United States. The big issue has been, and there is a viable project in Arkansas, in California as well. The biggest issue for the United States has been the permitting process. So completely not understanding how this can happen, the U.S. has been. one of the longest permitting processes in the world. It can take between seven and ten years and even more to permit a process. So there's a significant copper mine in Minnesota, in Minneapolis, which hasn't been developed. It's been in a permitting process for close to 20 years. It could reduce the dependence on external countries, including China, for this material. But we simply

can't permit these projects in the country because of NGOs, environmentalist groups, filing frivolous lawsuits that tie these projects up in court for years. Under President Trump's first administration, he did introduce something called the Fast 41, which was a plan to expedite the permitting for infrastructure projects that were deemed to be critical to the United States. And I believe quite firmly that in this administration as well, the president will seek to do away with what we call the frivolous lawsuits. I mean, the way that U.S. companies are required to mine and to process these materials are among the most rigorous in the world. So adding these extra hurdles to it simply just keeps these things tied up.

We do know now that China has been behind a lot of these lawsuits by NGOs, which furthers their control of the supply chain. So the first thing is the permitting. That has to be addressed. Yes, that's been testified to Congress. So we've got to alleviate the issue around permitting, because right now the U.S. has looked at one of the worst jurisdictions for investment in mining in the world, which is shocking. So we need to, then you've got also the downstream processing.

So for the past 40 years or so, China has had the exclusivity on processing these materials. So not only the U.S. isn't mining these materials, it doesn't have the capability in most cases to actually process these materials. So what's happening around the world now is these materials as being sent to China for processing, which then remains in the Chinese supply chain. Okay, it seems to me, again, you're here to correct me where I'm wrong. There's another complicating factor on domestic minerals as well, and that's the issue of scarcity. How scarce actually are these minerals? Because if they're not scarce, then they're not as economically viable to pull out of the ground, right?

If lithium is everywhere and it's cheap, then it's not that profitable for a company to go dig and harvest lithium, especially when they have to deal with, admittedly, like you pointed out, a very onerous permitting process. So are all the things we're talking about, whether or not we call them critical, rare would suggest they are scarce. Are they really like, you know, I almost use the analogy of diamonds, but we also know that diamond is an artificial market that it's not as scarce as that we all want to believe. But, you know, are they scarce?

and therefore we want to make sure we hoard it, we get it, or are they everywhere, all these minerals? Yeah, really good question. So just for clarification, critical minerals is a term referred to when we're talking about a number of materials that we mentioned before, including rare earths. So rare earths is one of the critical minerals. Sometimes it's conflated and referred to as critical minerals or rare earths,

but rare earth does fit into the critical mineral category. So rare earths are not rare. what is rare is to find them in economic quantities where the grade and the quantity can justify the economics of extracting from the ground. And that is in great scarcity, not just in the United States, but everywhere around the world. The same thing for lithium as well. I mean, there's lithium in many locations. There are a number of lithium deposits, but most of these remain in the exploration phase because they have not been brought to the stage yet where they can demonstrate the economics. The major issue we're facing when it comes to pricing of

these materials is not that there's an abundance and therefore the prices is negligible, but rather China has engaged in price manipulation of these materials for many, many years because it controls the supply chain. So what tends to do is, is when the scarcity, the value goes up, the prices go up. There's no transparent prices for some of these materials. There is for copper and cobalt, but when you're talking about rare earths, the market or the price is set by China. So what happens is the price of these materials go up due to scarcity, Western countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, start to develop projects, including rare earths and lithium.

China sees this, then starts to dump on the market. The prices go down. Projects have to then be put on care and maintenance because they're no longer economic, and this cycle keeps repeating itself. So what needs to happen here is some sort of a global critical minerals task force where the United States, together with key producers and key users of critical mineral. For example, Japan, Korea, Germany, France, the UK, etc, with producers like Australia and Canada are getting together and setting a pricing mechanism. And again, this may involve near-term pain like President Trump's recent copper tariffs, so there will be some short-term pain. But this is the only way to establish a domestic supply chain and also to establish pricing that isn't manipulated and it then enables the West to develop these projects without having to rely on China. what you describe it sounds like china has the capability and is and is is is flexing this muscle

of control over the rare earth minerals not necessarily by rights but in the same way opec has such an influence on oil prices or the de beers do on diamonds prices like you you said it's because they control the supply chain they can release minerals they can constrict minerals, killing projects, whatever they want, because they have such a stranglehold on the whole supply chain? That's correct. So China currently holds about 60% of global resources for critical minerals, but because China has dominated the processing, it actually controls 85% of the critical mineral supply chain. Now, this is an astounding number. So the whole world is reliant on critical minerals for different applications. And to control 85% of it doesn't only give it the actual

stranglehold on the resources itself, but then gives it the ability to apply its own pricing to these. And as you gave a correct example of OPEC, you know, OPEC will decide pricing based on, you know, how many barrels it wants to produce and what price it wants to set, etc. But there's really no counter to China at this point in time. What do you mean by the supply chain? So, and you talked about earlier, the process of the minerals. So, I mean, I know in oil and gas terms, there's pulling it out of the ground and then there's refining it, right? So is that a good analogy? Like getting lithium, cobalt, copper, everything out of the ground is one thing, but turning it into a usable product,

that's the processing side of it, is another step. And that's the part that China controls 85% of? That's correct. Absolutely. So what you call the refining and oil and gas, we'll call sort of the downstream, the processing, but it's not just the processing of these materials. It's turning, example, rare earth into magnets. It's turning lithium into batteries, metals and alloys, etc. So China really wants to control the supply chain as well of the raw materials because its objective is to sell the final product to the rest of the world. So it's curved exports of these materials starting in 2023, continuing 2024. So whilst people talk about, you know, this being sort of part of a trade war, it's not just part of a trade war. It's China dominating

the sector. And unfortunately, in the case of the refining, this wasn't any IP that China took illegitimately or stole. China actually legitimately acquired the processing capabilities for a number of critical minerals during the Clinton administration. The thought process of the United States was, well, China's not a very strong country, let China develop these materials, let them mine it. It's a dirty business. Let them process it. It's a dirty business as well. And then we'll be buy it from China cheaply. And the signals were very much missed by the United States and the rest of the world because the Premier of China at the time, Den Jaoping made a very overt state and he said the Middle East has oil, China has rare earths. So it wasn't a secret that China

understood that the building blocks for advanced manufacturing is going to be through critical minerals. And for inexplicable reasons, the United States and the rest of the world has been asleep at the wheel for four decades. And it's only recently, when I went to Washington during the first Trump administration, when I founded a company here in the U.S. called USA Rare Earth, when I came to Congress, there was maybe four or five members of Congress that actually knew what a critical minerals were,

and they were on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. So you're talking about the apparatus of the U.S. government, for the most part, not being aware of this issue. The Department of Defense has been dealing with critical minerals for a while, but again, as the DOD alone, it's not enough to lift up the rest of the government in terms of its policy. So we've really fallen behind here.

All right, two more questions. Can we bring that problem? It seems to me, it seems to me, raw materials are everywhere. That's going to be my final question for you, okay? But it seems to me that there's this chokehold, there's stranglehold on the processing side, which China's come to dominate. That figure you gave us, 85% is staggering, right?

I mean, again, if this were in the oil and gas world, the answer would be build refineries in America. but and we we dominate refining i think here in america um but i know how hard it is to build an oil refinery is it really hard to build these mineral refinement processes here at home like why can't we just start or do we already process minerals here in america somewhere i don't know Wyoming yeah well some of the key critical minerals like lithium uh we're going to start producing in the united states it's still at a very very limited capacity in terms of the refining. Rare earths, the one rare earth producer right now that's in California actually

ships their materials to China for processing. So we don't have, let's say, a full processing capability yet in the United States for rare earths. That being said, it can most definitely be done. There are significant challenges when it comes to critical minerals that do not exist in oil and gas. So for example, if you're processing a lithium deposit or from a rare earth deposit, it is somewhat of a bespoke solution to that particular all body. So there are unique characteristics that each all body has that needs to be addressed in the refining or the processing techniques. So the issue is there's a bit of a chicken and egg. You need to have the deposit built out in order to justify a processing plant which can cost the hundreds of millions of

dollars. Yet you need to develop, let's say, the core processing capabilities in order to give investors the incentive to go and to start developing these deposits. And we certainly have the capabilities in this country. So the national labs have been working at this for a number of years. And I think what needs to happen is some sort of a public-private partnership where the stakeholders on the mining and exploration side are involved, the national labs are involved, the U.S. governments involved, because what we're competing with here is a completely subsidized system that China have enacted.

So China subsidized everything all the way from the initial mine, all the way through to the final product, whether it's a lithium battery or it's copper, cobalt, whether it's an alloy, a metal. It's completely subsidized by the Chinese government. So we cannot compete in terms of price. We cannot compete in terms of our capabilities. So we need to get it started now and can most definitely be done. But it is going to take a while.

Well, I think there's a counter argument to that, Penny, though, or at least a big word of caution. Because it's so subsidized in China, it doesn't reflect a real market in terms or at least a real strong projectable market. It would seem to me, I mean, the value of projecting the necessity of oil and gas has been proven over a century. You could probably make a similar argument for nuclear. So in other words, you're going to have this demand long into the future for this type of energy, right? So therefore, the cap X, the expenditures needed to build the plants to refine oil or to produce nuclear will pay off over this long period of time. The problem with minerals, I would think, is you're in the realm of technology.

And that is revolutionized on a decade-by-decade basis and speeding up. So you build a lithium plan. I'm just picking one because it's the easiest word to say, right? Cobalt plant. Okay. How do you know that's going to be necessary in 10 years? The way we continue to innovate, how do you know where the world's going to need cobalt?

You know? Yeah. And so you can't build out these expensive processing plants based on the idea that you can project out of the future. this is a long-term need, unless, by the way, you're subsidized by the government like they are in China. Yeah, good question. So we do know what the projected requirements are in terms of, let's say, lithium and rare earths, for example. So the EU have given their numbers in terms of what they're going to require in terms of quantities of these materials. The

US has some idea as to what it needs for these materials. And what we know from these numbers is it is expected to be about a 20 to 30 times shortfall between production and supply to what's required in the EU and the United States. So I can't tell you what's going to happen in 25, 30 years. But we know for the next few decades, these materials are definitely going to be an essential part of manufacturing.

So there will be technology advancements in certain areas, nobody suggesting that these materials will not be applicable in the next 20 or 30 years or so. And we do know that there is a shortfall of supply of these materials. So, again, I don't think the concern from a risk perspective is that these materials are going to become dated. It's certainly not the case.

In fact, the longer we go or the further we go into the future, the more prevalent these materials are becoming, the more they're being utilized in a number of applications. And again, the shortfall is becoming bigger in terms of supply and demand, and it's just getting worse and with China's dominance of this and they continue to expand their dominance. So China's been scouring the globe, continues to do so. It dominates Africa where the US is not a key player at the present time. So it has off-take agreements. If you look at the DRC, you look at Zambia, Tanzania, et cetera. It goes around the world in South America and most of the concessions there are owned by Chinese entities or they have the off-takes, which are the purchase agreements

for these materials. If you look at allied countries like Australia, many critical minerals projects in Australia have offtake agreements with China or with Chinese companies. So we can't rely solely on external countries or allied countries as well. We need to take a dual approach of building a domestic supply chain whilst also having cooperation and agreements in place with foreign countries. And that's part of sort of what the idea behind what President Trump is doing with Ukraine. Part of what we saw on Saturday, Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, held a call with the Foreign Minister of Uzbekistan. There is an agreement between the middle corridor countries and the United States called the C5 plus one. So Secretary of State Rubio had a discussion

on critical minerals with the foreign minister of Uzbekistan. And we know in Kazakhstan, where we're very active, it's also an opportunity for the United States to obtain critical minerals whilst it develops its own supply chain. Okay, last question. Let's do this as a lightning around really quickly. Just give me the gist, okay? What minerals are in the middle corridor, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan. What are you getting at over there? Pretty much everything. Tungsten, tantalum, nalobium, rubidium, cesian tin, defense applications, lithium, rare earths, renewables. These middle corridor countries have been explored for over five decades by the Russians during the Soviet era. There are very meticulous databases that exist.

There are significant deposits in these countries. And these countries are looking to the United States to have a closer relationship. They've reformed their mining codes to enable U.S. and Western companies to enter into these markets. And there's a big opportunity for the U.S. to utilize these agreements now. Got it. Ukraine. What's in Ukraine? So Ukraine, that's a different one.

So Ukraine's rare earth deposits, even all the talk of rare earths, have not been developed, which means they're Greenfields projects, they're early stage, they're going to take a lot of money and expertise to develop that. And it'll be interesting to see what the administration's approach is going to be to this. There are other critical minerals like titanium, etc, that are available, that are further developed. So my understanding is that the agreement hasn't been fully fleshed out yet in terms of the specifics. So I'm going to be interested like many others to see, you know,

what exactly the mechanics of the agreement is, which projects they'll include, Is this just early stage projects that the US will have to invest a lot of money? Will Ukraine give the United States access to what we call Brownfields projects, which are further developed, or projects that are actually in production already, and that were sort of all on standby to see? Right. And lastly, Greenland. Well, Greenland has some significant rare earth projects. A lot of environmental concern in Greenland.

In fact, Greenland have already banned historically the production from one of the largest rare earth projects there. The one rare earth project that's been in play, which is called Tambreeze, which has been a focus, also needs a lot of development work to bring it into production. So, again, I would add Greenland to the list of countries that we should be looking to have a relationship with and help develop those projects so those materials can come back into the U.S. supply chain. All right. Fascinating conversation.

Penny Altos. He's the CEO of Cov Kaplan and Kaz Resources. They're doing a lot, as he mentioned in the middle corridor, who's Bekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Turkmenistan. and so forth when it comes to critical minerals. Thanks so much for educating us on this issue, Benny. Thank you. Thank you, Will. Thank you. All right, there he goes. Okay, fascinating conversation coming up on the author of No Bad Days,

how to turn your biggest challenges into your greatest opportunities. That's next on the Will Kane Show. Hey, I'm Trey Gowdy host of the Trey Gowdy podcast. I hope you will join me every Tuesday and Thursday. as we navigate life together and hopefully find ourselves a little bit better on the other side listen and follow now at foxnewspodcast.com from the fox news podcasts network hey there it's me kennedy make sure to check out my podcast kennedy saves the world it is five days a week every week download and listen at foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast

paddling 62 miles running skiing 100 miles there's no bad days when you turn your biggest challenge and your greatest opportunities it's the will cane show streaming live at foxnews.com on the fox news youtube channel and the fox news facebook page julie crow over on youtube says i'm a lifetime mainer and i don't want men playing in girl sports we'll be at the capital on saturday matt vallone says i'm in northern maine and we hate our governor she's a clown Glad to have so many manors with us today here on the Will Kane show. Just Think says the mineral idea will only be good if it pays the debt off, not make a politician or their friends rich. That's definitely something that has to be monitored. Cranky says Will Kane stinks. He's a Dallas fan. True and true. Thank you, Cranky.

J.T. Mesda is the author of No Bad Days, Turning Your Biggest Challenges into Your Greatest Opportunities, and he joins us now. What's up, J.T? I will. Thank you so much for having you. me on and uh and being able to come here and share a little bit of my story yeah i'm glad to have you man so let's start with your story a lot of the things you're doing are absolutely incredible um but the whole premise of your book and i think maybe what inspired you to do a lot of this is the challenges as you put in the title of your book the challenges that you have faced tell us a little about your challenges yeah so my journey started at birth and uh it was an

an incredible journey. I was born with medical challenges. And these challenges were what's called Vectoral Syndrome. And this is a birth defect that affects your GI system. So from my esophagus all the way down to my anus were compromised. And these things had to be revised right away. And so at birth, I had tracheosophageal fistula surgery. And basically, the way I explain it is like these endless, these tentacles that don't attach to anything. And so my, at that point, my esophagus was compromised and they fixed that. And then from there, I would have lower GI issues. So I had a colostomy bag that would be put on for the first few years of my life. As my journey continued, I'd have resectioning of my colon, 18 inches of my colon removed. And in surgery and surgery

after that. And again, like you said, 16 major surgeries by the time I was 16 years old. And the lower GI was the biggest struggle. But with vectoral syndrome, there's other aspects of your body that are compromised. And so I had tethered spinal cord. And then I had the resectioning of the imperforated anus. And so as this journey continued, I would travel to see lots of doctors across the country that specialized in factorial syndrome and would have great success. And so basically what I had learned throughout this journey of life with the medical was the fact that I wanted to be able to give back and help others and share my story, but through that, share other people's stories and how they have overcome adversity in life. And so that's where no bad days came from.

And, and that's the, that's sort of the, the gist of the book is sharing other stories. Well, where, how are you today, man? Like, after all those surgeries and that's a big track of your body you just described. It had to have, had to be reconstructed. Like, and that's everything to do with your digestive system, what you eat, how you build muscle, all of that. Exactly. How are you today? So I'm blessed because I've had amazing doctors throughout the journey.

And I have had some more. surgeries actually just recently of my lower GI. But one of the things that, you know, comes along with the GI issues is that there's no motility throughout your GI from the top of my esophagus all the way down. And so what we do on a day-to-day basis is I do a bowel management program that irrigates my lower GI. And so before it was a sort of a daunting task every day to do with about an hour to an hour and a half procedure. And now what they have done is they have taken when I turned 15, or excuse me, 13 years old, they took my appendix and attached it to my belly button. And from there, I catheterized through there and I'm able to irrigate my system

with a saline solution that flushes through and works great. And so with that, I'm blessed. I'm very um they have the ability to do you know pretty much everything that i want and it's really you know highlighted in my story um how adventure has been a big part of my life and why that's been such a big part of my life too by the way how old are you today so i'm 29 years old okay now let's talk about the other side of your life not the challenges or not the perhaps challenges you were born with, but the challenges you chose to take on. Let's just get a quick overview of some of your adventures. Tell me some of the races or challenges that you've taken on. I know a few of them, but I'd love to hear it from you. Yeah. So one of the biggest parts of my life is that I found

you know, throughout these challenges, whether it was, you know, medical things where people said that I want people to go and do certain sports and things like that, one of the things I learned is that my biggest passion is for the outdoors and just being able to be in, you know, what I call God's country. And it's my time to reflect and just let go of the negatives and kind of move forward. And so some of those challenges are just a passion of mine. But with that being a passion, I've been able to create a foundation that we give back to children in need, too, with medical challenges. And so throughout that journey of figuring out how are we going to raise money and how are we going to be able to, you know, help these children, one of the things that we've done is done it through adventure.

And so one of my favorite things to do is paddleboarding. We do a 62-mile paddle board in Detroit, Michigan, where I'm from. And we start at Port Huron, just north of Lake St. Clair, and we head down the river, and we end at Bell Isle, which is a, a treasured place of Detroit area. And so it's 62 miles, and it takes us about 13 hours to complete. And it's a pretty amazing journey. And it's been a great success for the foundation. And then other adventures that are awesome.

Please. Go ahead. No, I wanted to hear some other ones. So other adventures that I love and have passion for are skiing and high. and we've done with the call rim to rim in the Grand Canyon. And we've also done this event called 29029. And I've also climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. And some of these stories are highlighted in my book as well.

But one adventure that I'm really excited for is it's called the Benedict 100. And it is going to be a 100 mile skinning event. And for those that don't know what skinning is, It's where you attach a felt material to your skis and your bindings release in the heel, which allows you to hike uphill. And on that journey of hiking uphill, we will be tackling 100 miles from Aspen to Vale. We'll be staying in huts along the way. And I believe our longest day should take us about 12 hours.

And so there's four of us doing that to raise money for the foundation. And also, I think it's like perfect time. being in April is the best time to do it. And that is also when we're being sharing and launching the book, No Bad Days. These things would be hard enough on their own, everything you just described. But now I have to put two sides together. You got to do a 13-hour paddleboard or a four-day hike or a 100-mile ski trip while also doing all the stuff you just told us about at the beginning that you have to do to maintain your GI track.

Yeah, yeah. It's quite an adventure. But the coolest thing, I'll just share a quick story. One of my favorite things that I've been able to do with a mentor of mine is climb Mount Kilimanjaro. And on this adventure, you know, for me, the longest amount of time I'd been away from a bathroom was 24 hours. And so figuring out to tackle this feat of doing four days, which on average it takes six to seven days to climb, we said, you know, let's set out and do this. but how are we going to be able to do my medical procedure there? And along that journey, we adapted and figured it out and had amazing people. And one thing that I love to talk about is my tribe, my tribe of people that surround me. And I think that that's so important to have such a solid group. And on that mountain, it proved to me, you know, how important that is. throughout the adventure a few days into it it was the first day was a great success second day was awesome third day we started to get to an elevation that which which was much higher than i had ever

been and at that point um definitely started to experience some difficulties and on our fourth day heading up to the summit we did what they call an alpine start and prior to that I had done my medical procedure and I had known that it was not successful and I wasn't sure why, but we set out to finish this mountain. And so as we continued up the mountain and headed to the summit of Kilimanjaro, we came across these glaciers and our guide said, you know, once we crossed these, there's no turning around. And so we had gotten past that. And at that point, heading up the mountain, we realized a, that I was experienced what I call a stomach bug. And this challenge just made it that much harder as we continued on.

But we pushed on and it became a point where I was so fatigued and drained that the porters jumped in and said, you know, let us take your backpack. And I said to them, you know, I came here to this mountain to climb with everything I have and I want to finish it with everything I have. And so as we pushed on,

it came a point where I realized, you know, I can't finish this without my tribe of people. And so I gave up that backpack and we made it to the summit. But, you know, I think that's a great lesson in life that, you know, sometimes we need help and we need those around us to support us. They say in what I do for a living, the audience listening to you can hear you smile. If you can, the entire time that J.T. is telling me these stories of these, I mean, we don't have to belabor the details, but we can all, at least in some small way,

identify with the challenge that he faces on a much more extreme basis while putting himself into extreme situations is that he's telling me these things while constantly smiling. You are obviously incredibly positive. So, Lassie, tell me about that. Like, it's got to be really a big part of what you mean by no bad days. Yeah, that's a big. It's actually a chapter in my book is about smiling and just how important it is to smile. You know, every day I wake up and I thank the Lord for the day that he's given me and the blessings that he's given me and that results with the people he's surrounded me with and the journey of life that he's allowed me to enjoy.

And so with that, I just feel that a smile brings so much positivity because when you're walking down the street and, you know, you run into someone. And just by having a smile on your face, you don't know how that can impact their day and change the outlook of their day as well. That's really good stuff, J.T. The whole story is everything that you're doing, raising money, writing this book, living the way that you live,

which you lay out in no bad days, turning your biggest challenges into your greatest opportunities. He's the founder of the JT. Mezhtop Foundation. And just mentioned to a little bit earlier, the book will be out along with this new adventure you take on in April. Yes, it will be.

And we're pumped to share the story of so many incredible individuals in the book and then through the foundation too. All right, J.T. Thanks for sharing that with us today. We really loved hearing your story. I think a lot of people find inspiration. And hopefully they'll also find your book. No Hard Days.

Thank you, man. Well, thank you so much, well. All right. There you goes. J.T. Mest thought. No bad days. Okay, that's going to do it for us today here on the Will Cain Shaw. at 4 o'clock this afternoon on the Fox News Channel.

And tomorrow, right here. Same time, same place, same channels. See you next time. And Amazon Prime members, you can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon music app. I'm Janice Dean. Join me every Sunday as I focus on stories of hope and people who are truly rays of sunshine in their community and across the world. Listen and follow now at Fox Newspodcast.com.