October 30th, 2025
By Adam Wood & Mat Yarger
Why?
It’s a relatively simple answer, and the answer is what fundamental economics has always been and always will be; demand from society.
Society has always demanded new innovations, and today’s innovations - as has been the constant for well over the past three decades - require inputs from across the globe. Some countries have what we call organic “factor endowments”, such as access to capital built on centuries of technological advancement and shrewd investment, human capital and knowledge ascribed to its interconnected trade and university systems, and geographic properties such as access to ports and natural resources.
Today’s society demands a basket of next generation technologies, and those advancements within the portfolio require not only significant investment to research, develop, test, evaluate, apply, and deploy at scale, but also the critical minerals, metals, and materials to power all of it. And, all of those capabilities consumed by society; from power generation, transmission, and distribution, edge compute speed, the oscillators within the chips of your phone, car, jet, computer, and boat, require nearly every element of the periodic table.
Don’t worry, though, this isn’t a lesson in chemistry. You can relax.
Seriously, though, the frame of your Ford Bronco requires steel and aluminium - at a minimum. And, while you may very well think that there’s an infinite supply of iron and bauxite to produce that steel and aluminium, there isn’t. What’s more, once we get into the materials required to sustain the power consumption, and the speed for which society demands, the competition for those elements becomes even more complicated due to those factor endowments mentioned above. Bottom line, the supply is contested, and, until recently, woefully inadequate in terms of investment.
On October 13, 2025, JP Morgan Chase’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, provided the ultimate demand signal when they announced the Security and Resiliency Initiative, a $1.5 trillion, 10-year plan to facilitate, finance, and invest in industries critical to national economic security and resiliency. For general awareness, had it not been for JP Morgan Chase, the United States as we know it today, relative to its financial markets, central banking system, and innovative prowess would be a shell of itself.
Within the press release, Dimon said:
This new initiative includes efforts like ensuring reliable access to life-saving medicines and critical minerals, defending our nation, building energy systems to meet AI-driven demand, and advancing technologies like semiconductors and data centers. Our support of clients in these industries remains unwavering.
JP Morgan Chase is an American institution committed to this Nation’s security and resiliency. Jamie and his colleagues also understand the importance of maximizing positive externalities within and across the financial markets, government, and our allies and partners.
Paging the United States Government. Hi guys. Great work.
On October 20, 2025, President Donald J. Trump executed a first-of-its-kind critical minerals and rare earth metals framework agreement with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia. Without overwhelming everyone here, the agreement between the United States and Australia, in one word, is; awesome.
Why?
In a sentence, the supply we were talking about, Australia has, well, a significant competitive advantage there.
Additionally, you’ll recall the factor endowments of know-how from human capital and the knowledge base inherent in their trade and university systems, right? Great. Australia is home to some of the most advanced mining companies in the world who genuinely care about the circular economy and sustainable development of materials production. They’re also one of the United States’ closest allies.
The objective of this agreement is to provide a foundation for cooperation between the United States, Australia, and our respective industries to aid in diversifying the supply of the materials required to sustain the societal demand we’ve discussed. And, by reducing the reliance on individual suppliers, especially foreign nations like China that control much of global supply and processing, this initiative dovetails perfectly with the ancillary and tertiary efforts from the tech sector to the tune of $2.8T in new investments from the tech sector.
In terms of the mobilization of capital for the betterment of national security and the primary materials absolutely required to support it, the Trump Administration is doing their part. However, to maximize the returns on this level of investment, the government and industry must work together to operationalize the strategic framework to include working with allies and partners such as Canada, the UK, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, the EU, India, and Africa.
Alrighty then. Good start. Strong start.
Now, we’ve got one more piece to address before our summation and that, simply put, is that the most difficult variable to solve for the critical minerals story isn’t finding what’s buried underground.
Why?
Well, there are several solutions that exist - they’ve existed for years - and are advancing rapidly.
Okay, great, what’s the problem then?
The problem, the confounder in this equation, is managing how we extract them and, far more importaat happens after they’ve been extracted.
For all the breakthroughs in exploration, the cracks start to show when the ore hits the bucket and is on its way for refinement. The world often celebrates discovery. Few celebrate the journey to delivery.
Some of the biggest mining and materials companies on Earth have workforces that rival small cities, yet simple questions elude them. Questions like; “How many haul trucks are running?” or “What’s the status of this piece of critical equipment?” can take months to answer.
Why?
Somewhere, someone knows, but that knowledge is cloistered in a spreadsheet, on a forgotten server, that no one can access without a dozen approvals.
And, like any organization hindered by the crimson tape, every delay has a financial cost. Missing data points mean a decision may be made blindly or too late, while maintenance drifts and energy consumption rises. Ultimately, procurement buys parts that they already have in storage, and the CFO is left oblivious to what was, is, and could be relative to asset management and realized gains.
Multiply this across an enterprise with tens of thousands of assets strewn across hundreds of global sites.
The result is waste that can be measured in the 10’s of millions of dollars, at a minimum, or the billions in the worst cases. The cost of inefficiency compounds with every missing connection, yet the reports don’t stop. “Progress” - loosely defined - continues, and legacy systems built for accounting, not operations, keep information crawling between mine sites, refineries, and ports. By the time the numbers reach an executive dashboard, the situation on the ground has likely already changed, rendering the intelligence irrelevant.
In a market shaped by regulation, supply shocks, and massive hikes in tariffs have created intrinsic uncertainty that impacts people on the ground, and it’s the people inside these systems that feel it the most. Entire teams spend their days reconciling mismatched data, chasing updates, and fixing errors that should never have existed. Engineers become administrators. Analysts become archivists and corporate librarians. Their talent could be driving innovation, but they end up maintaining spreadsheets.
Critical minerals and materials are the foundation of modern civilization, yet they are among the least transparent industries on the planet. We need a better system.
And, well, a better version already exists.
A market where every shipment carries verified data on origin, energy use, and emissions. A system where operators can see performance in real time, and the data necessary to inform investors and financiers is just a double-click away. Audits that are ready on demand, taking hours, instead of entire quarters… or more.
This system enables operational excellence, the hallmarks of which are tantamount to what is required on battlefields. Where trust is intrinsic in the data, and proof can move entire markets. The only thing missing is the willingness to correct it, but the shift is already underway.
Okay then.
We’ve discussed the core elements as to why critical minerals will define the next generation of industry. First, all of society demands it irrespective of the current contested supply and access. We must give the people what they want and quickly. If we do not, well, folks have a propensity to express their displeasure when they can’t log on quick, fast, and in a hurry, don’t they?
Next, recognizing the importance of society’s demands, the premier financial institutions, US Government, and dozens of tech sector participants have committed trillions of dollars to ensuring that cooperation with respect to these efforts is properly framed and supported with robust policy and capital. Good.
Who’s tracking all of this, then? Surely there’s a system in place to support these directives to strengthen the domestic supply-chain resilience, secure critical-mineral access, and deployment of artificial-intelligence-driven systems to modernize industrial capabilities, right?
There is.
That system was first identified in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and its capabilities, well, at a minimum, it’s an AI-native traceability architecture designed to improve reuse and recycling by increasing recovery efforts for materials from waste streams and excess materials to build a more circular domestic supply chain with demonstrable, verifiable origin, cybersecurity, and financial triggers.
I said, “At a minimum.” For more information, feel free to give us a call.
By submitting your email address, you agree to receive marketing emails from Demia, and accept our terms & conditions and privacy policy.
.png)
© 2025 DEMIA™ All rights reserved.
