WSJ What’s News - Why It’s Getting More Dangerous for Global Mining Companies

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

P.M. Edition for Jan. 7. Developing countries are pushing for a greater share of profits from mines in their territory, and are taking increasingly aggressive actions to get it. We hear from WSJ global metals and mining reporter Julie Steinberg about what those confrontations look like. And the Biden administration is negotiating a potential prisoner swap with Afghanistan. National security reporter Alex Ward tells us what it might take to make the deal happen. Plus, Meta drops fact-checking on Facebook and Instagram as it looks to align itself with the Trump administration. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Three, two, one. What will the world look like 10 or 20 years from now? The Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything podcast is here to give you a peek. And we can't wait to show you what's coming. Subscribe now. Meta pulls back from fact-checking as it looks to align itself with the incoming Trump administration. And the Biden administration is negotiating a potential prisoner swap with the Taliban. Plus, why it's getting more dangerous for mining companies to operate in developing nations.

Whenever times are good and commodity prices are high, countries will sometimes try to renegotiate with the miners that are operating on their land. But this time, mining companies are now saying, we've seen a level of aggression not previously seen. It's Tuesday, January 7th. I'm Alex Osala for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today.

We kick off today with news from the tech world. Meta is ending fact-checking and removing restrictions on speech across Facebook and Instagram. In a video posted today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the move was about free speech. We've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship. The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech. So we're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms.

For US users, Meta plans to replace its fact checkers with a community note system similar to the one on X. The pivot comes as Zuckerberg looks to align himself and his company with the incoming Trump administration. Metta has donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund. And last week, it installed Joel Kaplan, a former aide to President George W. Bush, as global policy chief executive, further boosting its Republican ties. China's hackers were once thought to be interested mainly in business secrets and consumer data. But more recently, they've infiltrated infrastructure targets like ports and telecommunications

networks, though sometimes not taking any additional action for months or even years. This new kind of cyber attack shows that hackers could be an asset to China in a potential geopolitical conflict with the U.S. Dustin Volz, a reporter who covers cybersecurity for The Wall Street Journal, told our tech news briefing podcast what the hackers' goals might be. They aren't actually disrupting systems. They're not taking down airports or slowing systems to a halt or anything like that. But what they are doing is lying in wait, essentially. And the reason U.S. officials are so convinced that this is what they're doing is they're breaking into systems with no clear intelligence value, nothing really worth stealing.

So they might break into a municipal emergency response system in Los Angeles, for example, and then lying in wait for months on end, or in some cases, years. The inaction there is what's being seen as so alarming by US and Western security officials, because if they're just lying there and wait, what are their future plans? And the assessment is that their future plans are to wait until there is a conflict directly with the U.S. and then they can start doing things to disrupt these systems. You can hear more about this story on tomorrow's Tech News Briefing podcast. We're exclusively reporting that the Biden administration is negotiating a potential

prisoner swap with the Taliban government of Afghanistan. In the deal that the U.S. originally proposed, Afghanistan would release three Americans detained there – George Gleesman, Ryan Corbett, and Mahmoud Habibi. In exchange, the U.S. would release at least one high-profile prisoner, Mohammed Rahim al-Afghani, who the government alleges was a senior al-Qaeda aide and is currently held in Guantanamo Bay. The Taliban has made a counter offer, and the talks are still ongoing. Joining me now with more on the potential swap and its implications is WSJNational Security

reporter Alex Ward. Alex, what's the latest and what will determine whether or not this prisoner swap actually happens? Roger Carson, who is the top US hotchis negotiator, was in Doha over this past weekend to meet with Taliban representatives. They have an office there in which he was, as I am told by a US official, a quote unquote significant offer to the Taliban. I do not know what's in it. I do not know if it materially differs too much from what you just laid out, the three for one, but it does sound like Biden has made a decision which was to counter offer. But who knows what the Taliban is gonna say to that, if it's gonna lead to anything,

if maybe Biden goes back to what the Taliban has countered, but here we are. Do we have a sense of how this deal might fair when Donald Trump becomes president? We don't. Trump and his team continue to say that he wants all Americans out just like Biden does, that hostage takers will rue the day that he was in the Oval Office. But who knows if he's going to accept this deal. He also may not want to make any kind of deal with the Taliban. Not that long ago, he gave a press conference.

She was telling reporters that it's horrible that the U.S. engages the Taliban in any way. Now he wants Americans out. He's made deals with, like, say North Korea and unsavory countries and leaders before. So it's not impossible, but it does start to feel like if Biden doesn't pull this off and it goes into the Trump lane, not to say the Trump team is going to ignore it, but that they just might be less willing to deal with the Taliban than Biden is. That was National Security reporter Alex Ward. Thanks Alex. Thanks for having me.

Coming up, developing countries are pushing for a bigger chunk of the profits from mining, and they're being more aggressive to get it. That's after the break. What then will the future reveal? There's one thing we know about the future. It's being built now. We all have a stake in the future. The future. The future.

The future. And the Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything podcast is here to give you a glimpse of what's on the way. I'm Danny Lewis. Join us as we dig into how science and technology are shaping the future. For that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. It's a busy moment for companies striking deals, and The Wall Street Journal is exclusively reporting on a whole bunch of them. Here's a quick roundup. Investment firm Sixth Street will manage $13 billion

of assets from insurance company Northwestern Mutual. Northwestern will also take a small minority stake in Sixth Street, bolstering the investment firm's balance sheet to help it fund growth. Also, Cintas, which makes workplace products like mops and restroom supplies, said it made a $5.1 billion offer for uniform supplier Unifirst,

but that it's been rebuffed multiple times. A deal for Unifirst, should it happen, would be Sintas' biggest transaction ever. Next up, home decor brand Jonathan Adler is selling to consortium brand partners and another investor. CBP owns Reese Witherspoon's fashion brand and Athleisure brand Outdoor Voices. The deal price is undisclosed. And we report that AI startup Anthropic is in advanced talks to raise $2 billion. The deal would value Anthropic at $60 billion,

more than triple its valuation from a year ago. It would also make the company the fifth most valuable US startup. And one deal that's not a scoop, Getty Images and stock photo rival Shutter Stock are merging to form a company worth $3.7 billion. They say the new entity will keep the Getty name and let the company synchronize their in-house investments in AI tools. In U.S. stocks today, major indexes dropped after better-than-expected economic data

stoked fears that inflation could remain stubbornly high. The Nasdaq fell the most, losing about 1.9%. The S&P 500 slipped by 1.1%, and the Dow dipped less than half a percent. The US and China are bankrolling mining companies around the globe to get access to critical minerals used in things like batteries and defense technologies. But host countries are making increasingly hostile moves to get more profits from those projects for themselves, sometimes by seizing mining locations and detaining executives. WSJ Metals and Mining reporter Julie Steinberg spoke with our producer Pierre Bienamé about how

and why mining has gotten more dangerous. Julie, what do these confrontations between host nations and mining companies look like? This happens every so often whenever times are good and commodity prices are high. We see that countries will sometimes try to renegotiate with the miners that are operating on their land. But what's different about this time that mining companies are now saying is we've seen a level of aggression not previously seen. So, for example, we spoke to an Australian veteran mining executive who had flown to southern Ethiopia at the end of 2023 to check out one of his sites.

It's one of the largest undeveloped lithium projects in the world. And he was on site when he was approached by armed soldiers who told him that because of a security issue, he and other expats had to leave the site immediately. They've not been allowed back. Then in October of 2024, the firm's local in-country director was detained, ostensibly to continue discussions with the government about mining rights and a mining agreement and he's not been released from detention since then either. So that's just one of many examples that we're seeing around the world and it signals just a much more intense approach by host countries to try to ensure that they are rebalancing the profits in their favor.

And why is it that we're seeing this spike in strong arm tactics happening now? There's a few different reasons. The first is some of these countries have been cash strapped since the pandemic and they need to refill their coffers. Another reason is both the U S and China are on the prowl globally for these incredibly important critical minerals, as they're called for use in defense applications, for use in clean technologies. And because they are deemed so important, the prices have been rising for some of these

metals and host countries are seeing that these are incredibly important resources to have and want to make sure that they're getting paid what they're worth. As the green transition continues and as demand for some of these metals continues to skyrocket, we're going to see increasing interest from both host companies and miners alike on digging up and securing access to them. And are some Western governments concerned about this kind of seizure of mining locations, given how important some of these metals are? Yes. The U.S. in our piece, there was a State Department official who went on the record to say that while countries should expect fair investments into their mining sectors,

the US is concerned about the increasingly aggressive actions toward Western investment in some markets. And is there any recourse for mining companies who find themselves in this tough spot? There's a division of the World Bank that oversees international disputes and some miners are turning to that unit to international arbitration effectively to get compensation for the seizure of their mines or licenses. Since the pandemic, mining cases have exploded at this division of the World Bank and we're seeing a lot of success for some of these companies that have submitted cases to that body. That was WSJ Metals and Mining reporter Julie Steinberg speaking with producer Pierre Bienamay. And that's what's news for this Tuesday afternoon.

Today's show was produced by Anthony Bansi with supervising producer Yolanda McBride and deputy editor Chris Dinsley. I'm Alex Osala for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.