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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.

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Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Odd Lots podcast.

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Speaker 3: I'm Jill Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway.

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Speaker 2: Tracy, I'm in a mood of a little bit of

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Speaker 2: heartbreak this morning.

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Speaker 4: Oh mood of a little bit of heartbreak. That sounds

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Speaker 4: like a country single, doesn't it.

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Speaker 2: That's right.

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Speaker 4: No, you're singing. I don't know what you're sad about.

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Speaker 4: You're singing the Tungsten Cube.

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Speaker 2: The Tungsten Blues. I'm actually a little shook. In twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty two, remember the tungsten cube hype.

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Speaker 3: Unfortunately I bought.

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Speaker 2: One and it was the only and it feels so good,

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Speaker 2: like a nice big block of tungsten your hand. It

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Speaker 2: feels so good. It's so unexpectedly heavy, probably like a

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Speaker 2: little like wild autism, like I like related like sort

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Speaker 2: of like heavy things like weighted blankives, some heavy objects.

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Speaker 2: And I was going to bring it to this episode

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Speaker 2: because I know you love props. Sometimes I do like

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Speaker 2: a good and I was like, I'll bring a prop.

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Speaker 2: I couldn't find it on my desk, so we did

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Speaker 2: a desk move recently and either somehow, I hope I

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Speaker 2: shall find it. Either it got misplaced in the move,

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Speaker 2: or because the value of tungsten has gone up so much,

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Speaker 2: maybe someone stolen.

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Speaker 3: I think I know which one it is, Joe, I

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Speaker 3: think I know.

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Speaker 2: Let me just have a messy desk too.

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Speaker 4: For listeners who were lucky enough to have missed out

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Speaker 4: on the tungsten cube craze, there was a moment where,

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Speaker 4: for some reason it was mostly crypto bros Onto it

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Speaker 4: all seemed to go nuts for buying tungsten cubes and

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Speaker 4: then showing pictures of them on social media and then promptly,

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Speaker 4: like Joe, forgot about them. And actually, this is a

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Speaker 4: really good analogy for what we're about to talk about,

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Speaker 4: because we're going to.

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Speaker 3: Talk about tungsten.

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Speaker 4: The metal and tungsten, it turns out, has gone through

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Speaker 4: these cycles where for a few years it's an absolutely

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Speaker 4: a cent show strategic asset that you need in order

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Speaker 4: to declare war, and then as soon as the war

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Speaker 4: is over, you kind of forget about it. You still

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Speaker 4: need it for some industrial applications or for novelty dusk, yes,

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Speaker 4: but then you find out that you need it again.

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Speaker 4: And so there's this like long running kind of boom.

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Speaker 2: Bus cycle I'm really sad.

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Speaker 4: There's a demonstrative example of how everyone seems to forget

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Speaker 4: about tungsten except China.

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Speaker 2: I'mctually I'm actually really said about this. This is by

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Speaker 2: the way, when I say one thing, please please.

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Speaker 3: I know where you can find some tungsten.

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Speaker 2: In the West, in Western Australia, in the bahamash.

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Speaker 3: Really FTX famous, that's right, that's right.

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Speaker 2: Yes, this is.

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Speaker 4: Gonna install a giant tungsten cube at their headquarters in

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Speaker 4: the Bahamas. And everyone seems to have forgotten this bit

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Speaker 4: of the Michael Lewis book. At the very very end

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Speaker 4: of Michael Lewis's book on Sam Bateman Freed, he says

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Speaker 4: he found the giant tungsten cube in a storage unit

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Speaker 4: in the jungle, and it's probably still there because no

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Speaker 4: one would wind of move.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so would be so heavy. I have this. It's

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Speaker 2: actually depressed me.

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Speaker 5: You know.

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Speaker 2: One of the reasons, like I didn't buy the cube

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Speaker 2: is a quote investment unquote. But I think I've always said,

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Speaker 2: you know, one of the things that people don't talk

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Speaker 2: about with hard asset investing is that you actually pay

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Speaker 2: a negative interest rate because a you have to either

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Speaker 2: pay for storage constant storage like a safe or something

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Speaker 2: like that, or if you haven't or eventually security guards. Right,

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Speaker 2: if you really had a lot of gold or silver

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Speaker 2: or whatever. But then if you don't have that, if

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Speaker 2: you don't do that, then and every year there is

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Speaker 2: like a non zero percent chance that you lose your

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Speaker 2: asset you misplace it. Yeah, maybe you have like some

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Speaker 2: keys to a crypto wallet that you lose or whatever.

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Speaker 2: So that is a way of replicating except sort of

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Speaker 2: stochastically a negative interest rate. I think I'm gonna find it.

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Speaker 2: I didn't totally forget about it. I had it on

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Speaker 2: my desk even as recently as a few months ago,

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Speaker 2: and I have some very messy drawers, so I think

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Speaker 2: I actually I'm not a I haven't actually given up hope.

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Speaker 4: I'll create a bet on a prediction mark right about

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Speaker 4: whether you'll find your tonguesten cube.

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Speaker 2: But anyway, setting as a desk toys, it turns out

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Speaker 2: tungsten is actually, as you said, important sometimes. You know,

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Speaker 2: it's not like copper or oil where it's important all

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Speaker 2: the times. It seems to be a commodity that's important

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Speaker 2: sometimes and that creates as you said, interesting diameters.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, and it seems to be growing more important because

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Speaker 4: going back to the military applications of tungsten, we've had

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Speaker 4: a lot of wars recently, and tungsten apparently is in

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Speaker 4: a lot of cruise missiles and drone shrapnel and.

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Speaker 3: Things like that.

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Speaker 4: And at the same time, like a lot of other

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Speaker 4: I guess, rare earth metals, it's also becoming more important

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Speaker 4: to our vision of the future, to the AI build

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Speaker 4: out things like that, So it's getting more attention. And

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Speaker 4: of course, again like a lot of rare earths, there's

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Speaker 4: a limited supply and it seems to be dominated by

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Speaker 4: one particular country.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's right, this is the thing. There's a lot

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Speaker 2: of it, but it's expensive and low margin and typical

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Speaker 2: times and so you're just like, yeah, it's like distributed.

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Speaker 2: There's some countries that are friendly to the US that

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Speaker 2: are like more seen as geostrategic rivals. But in normal times,

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Speaker 2: it's just not worth the squeeze to actually spend to

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Speaker 2: spend the time and environmental costs of minding it. So

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Speaker 2: we should talk about the current state of tungsten in

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Speaker 2: a state of heightened geopolitical tension. Let's yeah, anyway, I'm

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Speaker 2: very excited to say, we really do have the perfect guest,

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Speaker 2: someone who we probably should have had on odd lots

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Speaker 2: a long time ago. One of our colleagues coming to

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Speaker 2: us from Sydney. We're gonna be speaking, of course, to

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Speaker 2: Bloomberg Opinion calumnist David Fickling, who's just done a big

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Speaker 2: reported piece about a tungsten mine in Australia, and what

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Speaker 2: this tells us about all the things that we're talking about. David,

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Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining us. How are you doing,

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Speaker 2: great to see you. Thank you so much for staying

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Speaker 2: up late to chat with us. Why would we talk

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Speaker 2: about war, geo political uncertainty, all this stuff? What is

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Speaker 2: it about tungsten that suddenly becomes important?

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean tungsten.

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Speaker 6: You can look at it as a bit like a

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Speaker 6: sort of century old missing prediction market for war basically,

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Speaker 6: and I didn't realize this until I started looking at tungsten,

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Speaker 6: but actually, if you go back right to the turn

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Speaker 6: of the twentieth century, it has operated like a prediction

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Speaker 6: market in the sense that people making real investments, once

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Speaker 6: they get a sense that war is a real possibility,

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Speaker 6: they put real money behind tungsten. And you can see

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Speaker 6: the sort of process with that if you're operating a

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Speaker 6: tungsten mine, then you're in touch with tungsten traders, and

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Speaker 6: the tungsten traders are in touch with military materiel companies

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Speaker 6: who get the first big orders when there's a real

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Speaker 6: prospect of war. And this mine I visited has this

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Speaker 6: extraordinary history where it first opened in nineteen seventeen during

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Speaker 6: World War One. It closed at the end of the

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Speaker 6: war because then the war ended, no one needed the

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Speaker 6: tungsten anymore, and the European government sold it for all

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Speaker 6: their tungsten stockpiles. Opens up again nineteen thirty eight before

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Speaker 6: World War II starts. It goes through a bit of

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Speaker 6: a struggle after World War Two, but then it's more

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Speaker 6: or less rescued by the Korean War. It closes down

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Speaker 6: almost altogether round about when Sputnick is launched and people

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Speaker 6: start rethinking what wars are going to be like. But

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Speaker 6: then it sort of keeps going through the Vietnam War

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Speaker 6: and finally closes down the Cold War, and it's been closed.

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Speaker 6: This mine it's on a beach in an island just

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Speaker 6: off the coast of Tasmane. It's a pretty isolated wind

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Speaker 6: sweat spot in the Roaring forties. In nineteen ninety it

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Speaker 6: closed down, the mine flooded, and it was basically been

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Speaker 6: ignored for most of the last three decades, and it's

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Speaker 6: now finally starting up again at this very moment when

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Speaker 6: war is looking more likely.

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Speaker 2: So this is a story. But just to be clear,

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Speaker 2: what is it about the properties of tungsten such that

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Speaker 2: it is important for material.

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Speaker 6: I mean, it's the same thing with the tungsten cube

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Speaker 6: on your desk. It's incredibly dense. I think one of

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Speaker 6: the things that attracts the crypto roose to tungsten is

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Speaker 6: it's not just incredibly dense, it's about the same density

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Speaker 6: as bold, but it also has this ridiculously high melting

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Speaker 6: point but more than three thousand degrees celsius, so sort

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Speaker 6: of three times hotter than lava, Tungsten will still be solid.

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Speaker 6: And that means that if you're trying to make projectiles

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Speaker 6: with it. For instance, if you're trying to make an

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Speaker 6: armor piercing projectile to get through the armor plating of

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Speaker 6: a tank, it's going to hold its shape. Most materials

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Speaker 6: are going to sort of turn into a mushroom and

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Speaker 6: dissipate their force. This is going to go straight through

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Speaker 6: to the inside of the tank, so that'll be very effective.

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Speaker 6: Or also a thing that's more current at the moment,

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Speaker 6: say you're having a sort of cluster munition, a sort

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Speaker 6: of a warhead that explodes into a sort of distributed

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Speaker 6: charge so that you can take out a command post

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Speaker 6: or a drone. With tungsten, you can have a bunch

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Speaker 6: of very tiny tungsten pellets and they will make a

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Speaker 6: sort of metal rain that will smash anything in the vicinity.

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Speaker 6: And because it's so dense, it's going to be much

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Speaker 6: more effective than steel. So for all these reasons, it's

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Speaker 6: just very useful for military purposes.

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Speaker 5: And of course if.

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Speaker 6: War is pending, people pay any price for those sorts

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Speaker 6: of physical properties.

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Speaker 4: Getting hit in the head by a tungsten cube would

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Speaker 4: certainly be painful and damaging. Talk to us about the

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Speaker 4: non military applications, because it's possible, you know, you wrote

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Speaker 4: about this new mind that's restarting. Maybe what we should

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Speaker 4: get into what the investors actually say the reasons behind

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Speaker 4: them opening up this mine. Maybe it's because they're predicting

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Speaker 4: more tungsten demand because of additional military conflict. Maybe they

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Speaker 4: just think there's going to be more demand for, like,

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Speaker 4: I don't know, carbide tooling or something like that. What

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Speaker 4: else is tungsten used for? And then also what does

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Speaker 4: we should also talk about how colorful some of these

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Speaker 4: characters are. What is your merry band of tungsten investors

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Speaker 4: say about their reasons for opening it.

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Speaker 6: You've done your research, Tracy, I mean this carbide tooling,

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Speaker 6: I could tell that was the I mean, the key

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Speaker 6: reason you will use tungsten is again because it's very hard.

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Speaker 5: It's basically drill bits. If you're in an.

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Speaker 6: Auto shop, then you'll use the drill bit for working metal.

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Speaker 6: If you're in a mine, it will be on the

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Speaker 6: end of a drill bit there, or in an oil well,

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Speaker 6: anywhere where you need to drill something very hard. Tungsten

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Speaker 6: carbide is a mixture of tungsten and carbon, as the

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Speaker 6: name suggests, and it's the best value way to get

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Speaker 6: incredibly incredibly sort of powerful sort of drilling power. And

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Speaker 6: that's actually essentially in all sorts of ways. But I

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Speaker 6: think we don't often anticipate. I was in the course

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Speaker 6: of working on this article, I was reading something about

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Speaker 6: during World War two when Nazi Germany, when we can

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Speaker 6: talk about this later was very concerned about its supplies

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Speaker 6: of tungsten, and they were running short of supplies of tungsten,

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Speaker 6: and one of the things they did is to conserve.

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Speaker 5: It for the weapons industry.

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Speaker 6: They stopped using it in tooling, and you hear these

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Speaker 6: reports of Allied soldiers capturing German tanks late in World

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Speaker 6: War Two and just going this equipment's terrible because they

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Speaker 6: didn't have the tungsten car vibe for the tooling.

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Speaker 5: So the machinery wasn't working very well.

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Speaker 6: The gears were all out of whack, and nothing was

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Speaker 6: working very well. And so most tungsten, now eighty percent

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Speaker 6: of it is just tungsten carvide its tools, and you

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Speaker 6: can buy it in your local toolshop. You'll find it everywhere,

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Speaker 6: and it's a fairly fairly boring hum drum element.

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Speaker 5: The other things, there are a few other uses for it.

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Speaker 6: Like almost every critical mineral, it gets used in some

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Speaker 6: weird processes in oil refineries. If you're as integritical mineral design,

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Speaker 6: there's always like five percent there's always used as some

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Speaker 6: weird catalysts in oil refinery. And that's the case here.

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Speaker 6: Another one that's actually quite interesting again because of these

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Speaker 6: sort of high temperature, high strength properties. If you're making

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Speaker 6: turbine blades, it's very important for turbine blades a lot

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Speaker 6: of you know in a jet turbine, but also in

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Speaker 6: a gas turbine which gets used a lot of powering

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Speaker 6: data centers and things in LNG compressors. About up to

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Speaker 6: ten percent of that ally might be tungsten as well,

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Speaker 6: So there's a certain amount of demand for that, and

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Speaker 6: there is even supposedly a use in some AI chips

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Speaker 6: for tungsten as well, but the quantities there will be

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Speaker 6: absolutely tiny, because of course anything involved in chip making

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Speaker 6: the raw materials is just infinitesimal because the chips themselves

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Speaker 6: are so small.

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Speaker 4: So the investors in this mind that's reopening the Dolphin mine,

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Speaker 4: you know, I call them a colorful bunch earlier, and

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Speaker 4: it really does. I think you make this point in

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Speaker 4: your piece, but it really does sound like a cast

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Speaker 4: characters from like a heist movie. It's like a red

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Speaker 4: Bull air and like some distressed debt guys and then

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Speaker 4: some retired miners doing last one, last job. But when

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Speaker 4: they talk to you about their reasons for reopening this mine, what.

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Speaker 3: Did they say?

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Speaker 6: Well, the main one I was speaking to is actually

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Speaker 6: the chief executive or the executive chairman of the mine himself.

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Speaker 6: He was actually he was brought in by one of

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Speaker 6: these investors. As I said that, if you look at

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Speaker 6: the shareholder reds of this company, it's like nothing I've

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Speaker 6: ever seen of a shelled regis certainly of a company

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Speaker 6: of sort of global importance. Like you say that, I

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Speaker 6: think the reason Red Bull are involved is that there's

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Speaker 6: a sort of long central European Germanic interest in tungsten,

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Speaker 6: and Red Bull are based in Austria, a couple of them.

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Speaker 2: Are they urged.

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Speaker 3: To acquire tungsten? I'm well aware, yes, absolutely.

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Speaker 6: The Peabody Energy that the American coal mining company bought

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Speaker 6: a coal mine off a couple of Australian investors about

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Speaker 6: twenty years ago and they used the payout from that

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Speaker 6: to invest in this mind they were some of the

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Speaker 6: first people who were involved. There's a Caterpillar dealer who

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Speaker 6: actually worked at the mine in the nineteen sixties.

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Speaker 5: He's one of the shareholders.

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Speaker 6: That the state government of Tasmania is one of the

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Speaker 6: shareholders because they were bailing it out. And even that

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Speaker 6: some of the companies that were leasing cranes and mining equipment.

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Speaker 6: They basically took equity in lieu of unpaid bills. There's

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Speaker 6: really hardly anything in the way of bank finance in

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Speaker 6: this company at all. It's equity is about seven million

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Speaker 6: Australian dollars and the total CASHTUN invested since it started

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Speaker 6: up has really tried to get back into operations twenty

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Speaker 6: years ago. There's been a lot of reports and environmental

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Speaker 6: studies and things over that period. Total is about seventy

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Speaker 6: seven million dollars. You know what Amazon spends in about

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Speaker 6: four hours, so it's really very little money. I would

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Speaker 6: say their ambition, they weren't betting for twenty years on war,

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Speaker 6: but their ambition was that China produces eighty percent of

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Speaker 6: the world's tungsten, and by twenty you were seeing China

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Speaker 6: threatening Japan for instance, over its rare earth supplies, and

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Speaker 6: you could see this was a potential risk even back

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Speaker 6: then and people around the world. There was one tiny

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Speaker 6: tungsten mine that the US is last tungsten mine was

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Speaker 6: actually just east of Los Angeles. It was a sort

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Speaker 6: of retired Vietnam veterman who would go up to the

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Speaker 6: mountains and dig out a few tons of tungsten every summer,

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Speaker 6: and that went on until he went on mining until

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Speaker 6: about twenty thirteen. I think he was talking back then.

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Speaker 6: In the process of writing this article, I dug out

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Speaker 6: at a letter that he'd sent to Congress complaining about

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Speaker 6: reducing tariffs on Chinese tungsten because he was concerned back

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Speaker 6: in twenty twelve that China controlled too much of this

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Speaker 6: and was a strategic competitor.

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Speaker 5: Back then, people weren't worried.

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Speaker 6: About it very much, and now it's everything everyone worries about.

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Speaker 2: So I definitely want to talk more about the sort

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Speaker 2: of economics and significance of this, mind, but can you

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Speaker 2: just talk a little bit more. You mentioned China producing

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Speaker 2: eighty percent of the world's tungsten. Can you just give

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Speaker 2: us a little bit more color on what the peace

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Speaker 2: time tungsten market looks like in terms of how big

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Speaker 2: we're talking about, the sort of the I guess I

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Speaker 2: would say, why there hasn't been so much investment, Like,

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Speaker 2: what are the economics such that generally during peacetime it

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Speaker 2: does not make sense to do a new project given

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Speaker 2: either the size of the market and maybe assuming presumably

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Speaker 2: the cost, competitiveness and the efficiency of the Chinese miners.

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Speaker 6: I mean, I think the biggest thing, and I think

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Speaker 6: this gets underestimated a bit because China does try to

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Speaker 6: lock down a lot of a supply chain and a

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Speaker 6: lot of critical resources. But in the case of tungst,

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Speaker 6: and I think is actually similar in the case of

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Speaker 6: rare earth. It has just happened to get the best

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Speaker 6: geological resource of this by far. And that's a thing

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Speaker 6: that happens in mining. South Africa and Botswana have the

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Speaker 6: best geological resources of diamonds, and Russia and South Africa

328
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Speaker 6: have the best resources for platinum group metals, and Australian

329
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Speaker 6: and Brazil have the best iron.

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Speaker 5: Or that just happens.

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Speaker 6: These resources are unevenly distributed around the world, and it's

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Speaker 6: hard if you don't have resources as good as that

333
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Speaker 6: to get a look in China, going back to the

334
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Speaker 6: turn of the twentieth century, dominated global tungsten supply, and

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Speaker 6: the only time that that's really changed was during a

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Speaker 6: period in the Cold War when Tungstan was basically closed

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Speaker 6: off from the rest of the world. As soon as

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Speaker 6: Chinese tungsten was able to get into the world market.

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Speaker 6: Their minds are the highest grade minds and there is

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Speaker 6: justly more of it. There now some investors outside China

341
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Speaker 6: and tungsten. Alongside the geofelisical argument, they would probably say, look,

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Speaker 6: these mines have been mined for a century. One of

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Speaker 6: the reasons China at this moment has export controls on tungsten.

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Speaker 6: I think it's probably mostly geopolitics. But the defense of

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Speaker 6: that that the Chinese government might have is that these

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Speaker 6: mines are very old and we need to reorganize the

347
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Speaker 6: industry because it's an underperforming industry.

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Speaker 5: So there is a fairly scarce resource of this.

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Speaker 6: It's about eighty five thousand metric tons a year is

350
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Speaker 6: all the tungsten that's used. It's not a super exciting

351
00:17:21,640 --> 00:17:25,080
Speaker 6: market because it's very expensive, and because it's mainly used

352
00:17:25,119 --> 00:17:28,399
Speaker 6: in places like tool shops and mines. Most of that

353
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Speaker 6: stuff gets recycled. If you're in an auto tooling shop,

354
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Speaker 6: once your drill bit gets worn out, it might get reground,

355
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Speaker 6: or you might just send it and it'll be recycled.

356
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Speaker 6: So there's not a sort of huge ongoing demand surge

357
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Speaker 6: for tungsten. It really sort of grows at the pace

358
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Speaker 6: of tooling capacity worldwide.

359
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Speaker 3: Can you talk to us.

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Speaker 4: About the market structure of tungsten as well, because I

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Speaker 4: know Joe said he didn't buy the tungsten cube as

362
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Speaker 4: an investment, but if you had, I mean, you would

363
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Speaker 4: have a hard time actually looking up the price of

364
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Speaker 4: tungsten right now because it doesn't seem to have a

365
00:18:01,160 --> 00:18:04,280
Speaker 4: forward curve in the way of a traditional commodity like

366
00:18:04,359 --> 00:18:06,480
Speaker 4: oil or something like that. So if you're an investor

367
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Speaker 4: trying to make a bet on a tungsten mine, it

368
00:18:09,600 --> 00:18:13,120
Speaker 4: seems really hard to predict what your current returns are

369
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Speaker 4: going to be, much less your future returns.

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Speaker 6: I think that's absolutely right, and I think it's one

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Speaker 6: of the biggest problems with critical minerals generally, because there's

372
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Speaker 6: not a futures market. Because there's no way of hedging

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Speaker 6: your cost with any mine, you are making capital investments

374
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Speaker 6: right now for something that might only pay off in

375
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Speaker 6: years five to ten. Now, if I'm doing that with copper,

376
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Speaker 6: I can go to the London Metal Exchange or Comics

377
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Speaker 6: and I can have as many contricts as I want

378
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Speaker 6: setting the price of copper five years hence, and then

379
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Speaker 6: I can take that to the bank and say, look,

380
00:18:45,920 --> 00:18:48,520
Speaker 6: here's my operating costs, here's the value of cover, here's

381
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Speaker 6: how much I'm going to produce. This is a bankable project,

382
00:18:51,880 --> 00:18:55,479
Speaker 6: very simple, totally different with tungsten, they're just there. Simply

383
00:18:55,640 --> 00:18:58,320
Speaker 6: is no futures market in this because it's such a

384
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Speaker 6: tiny market most of time. One investor I spoke to,

385
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Speaker 6: I think he's been on the podcast before, actually Alex Turnbull,

386
00:19:05,840 --> 00:19:07,920
Speaker 6: you know. He said, sometimes it could be three he said,

387
00:19:08,160 --> 00:19:11,720
Speaker 6: like tungsten, it could be three hundred dollars adrimetric ton unit,

388
00:19:11,760 --> 00:19:13,840
Speaker 6: which is the unit the is, It could be three thousand,

389
00:19:14,560 --> 00:19:18,160
Speaker 6: three hundred, three thousand each is a reasonable price for it.

390
00:19:18,200 --> 00:19:21,680
Speaker 6: Because depending on the state of supply and demand of

391
00:19:21,720 --> 00:19:24,320
Speaker 6: the market, the fact that China may suddenly close off

392
00:19:24,359 --> 00:19:26,919
Speaker 6: supply and China has eighty percent of supply and then

393
00:19:26,960 --> 00:19:29,280
Speaker 6: you have most of the world fighting over the remaining

394
00:19:29,280 --> 00:19:31,959
Speaker 6: twenty percent, any of these prices is viable. And that

395
00:19:32,000 --> 00:19:34,240
Speaker 6: means that if you're stuck in the middle, and most

396
00:19:34,560 --> 00:19:38,479
Speaker 6: tunkster minds outside China are above that a ton level,

397
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Speaker 6: then you find it very hard to finance your mind. No,

398
00:19:42,280 --> 00:19:45,040
Speaker 6: no banker will really lend money to you on that

399
00:19:45,080 --> 00:19:47,199
Speaker 6: basis because they don't know what your revenues are going

400
00:19:47,280 --> 00:19:49,840
Speaker 6: to be next year, let alone five years from there.

401
00:19:50,320 --> 00:19:52,760
Speaker 2: There's no forward curve at tunction, but we do have

402
00:19:52,840 --> 00:19:56,880
Speaker 2: one ticker on the terminal, which is tungsten held in

403
00:19:57,119 --> 00:20:00,280
Speaker 2: warehouses in Rotterdam. And I saw, Oh my god, this

404
00:20:00,359 --> 00:20:02,359
Speaker 2: charge just makes me want to cry. It was literally

405
00:20:02,359 --> 00:20:05,159
Speaker 2: it was three It's probably about three hundred dollars for

406
00:20:05,240 --> 00:20:08,560
Speaker 2: a ton when I bought it sometime in twenty twenty two,

407
00:20:08,600 --> 00:20:11,760
Speaker 2: and it is over three thousand dollars right now. So

408
00:20:11,840 --> 00:20:12,640
Speaker 2: if I wanted to.

409
00:20:13,680 --> 00:20:16,320
Speaker 6: Yeah, I should say that's three thousand dollars for this thing,

410
00:20:16,720 --> 00:20:19,320
Speaker 6: this weird thing, which is a dry metric tonunit, it's

411
00:20:19,320 --> 00:20:22,480
Speaker 6: actually about four hundred thousand dollars for a ton of tunkstont.

412
00:20:22,119 --> 00:20:23,879
Speaker 2: Wait wait, wait, actually this is helpful.

413
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Speaker 5: Great.

414
00:20:24,240 --> 00:20:27,760
Speaker 2: So when I actually so, when I see that three thousand,

415
00:20:28,080 --> 00:20:30,560
Speaker 2: what are what is this? I like learning stuff like this,

416
00:20:30,640 --> 00:20:31,840
Speaker 2: What are these prices even? Men?

417
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Speaker 6: So I had to spend like half a day trying

418
00:20:35,440 --> 00:20:38,879
Speaker 6: to work out what this even means. So the price

419
00:20:38,880 --> 00:20:41,000
Speaker 6: you're seeing is I think called ammonium para tunks date,

420
00:20:41,080 --> 00:20:43,920
Speaker 6: which is a compound of tungsten, and it's a it's

421
00:20:43,960 --> 00:20:47,040
Speaker 6: a nice, easily tradable form of tungsten. You can just

422
00:20:47,119 --> 00:20:49,040
Speaker 6: put it in sacks and ship it around the world.

423
00:20:49,440 --> 00:20:51,280
Speaker 6: And then I think you heat it and the ammonia

424
00:20:51,359 --> 00:20:53,359
Speaker 6: comes off and you've got tunksknotside, and then you can

425
00:20:53,440 --> 00:20:55,200
Speaker 6: quite easily turn it into a lot of other things.

426
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Speaker 6: And that is priced quoted in dry metric ton units. Yeah,

427
00:21:00,040 --> 00:21:03,800
Speaker 6: which a few critical mineral quest in these these these units,

428
00:21:04,240 --> 00:21:07,679
Speaker 6: A dry metric ton unit contains about I think seven

429
00:21:07,760 --> 00:21:12,479
Speaker 6: point nine to three kilograms of tungsten. Okay, so if

430
00:21:12,520 --> 00:21:15,440
Speaker 6: it's three thousand dollars a griometric ton unit, it's about

431
00:21:15,440 --> 00:21:17,560
Speaker 6: four hundred thousand dollars for a ton of tungsten.

432
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Speaker 5: So so that's why someone still your cube. It's good money.

433
00:21:23,800 --> 00:21:27,280
Speaker 2: I really, I'm really depressed about this. I gotta find it.

434
00:21:27,359 --> 00:21:27,960
Speaker 5: I gotta find it.

435
00:21:29,800 --> 00:21:32,840
Speaker 2: So this is this is really bothering me. All right,

436
00:21:32,960 --> 00:21:36,719
Speaker 2: talk to us about okay, this particular mind, walk us

437
00:21:36,720 --> 00:21:39,159
Speaker 2: through a little bit more of the sort of the

438
00:21:39,280 --> 00:21:43,520
Speaker 2: economics or the best case economics. Let's say it works out.

439
00:21:44,000 --> 00:21:47,080
Speaker 2: What are we talking about in terms of how much investment,

440
00:21:47,600 --> 00:21:50,399
Speaker 2: what a sort of flow, how much it could shift

441
00:21:50,520 --> 00:21:54,320
Speaker 2: in terms of Australia's ability to exp Where would it

442
00:21:54,440 --> 00:21:56,960
Speaker 2: change in terms of market share and so forth, and

443
00:21:57,119 --> 00:21:59,720
Speaker 2: like what would it represent if it were successful.

444
00:22:00,240 --> 00:22:02,639
Speaker 6: The thing that fascinates me about critical minerals is that

445
00:22:02,760 --> 00:22:06,480
Speaker 6: the numbers involved are often absolutely tiny. Like I said,

446
00:22:06,520 --> 00:22:10,080
Speaker 6: the total cash some invested in this in twenty years

447
00:22:10,200 --> 00:22:12,320
Speaker 6: is seventy seven million dollars.

448
00:22:12,680 --> 00:22:13,560
Speaker 5: It's nothing.

449
00:22:13,960 --> 00:22:16,600
Speaker 6: I mean, I wrote a piece about critical minerals a

450
00:22:16,960 --> 00:22:19,920
Speaker 6: few months ago. So you know, think of the price

451
00:22:19,960 --> 00:22:22,080
Speaker 6: of a white house ballroom, which I think are we

452
00:22:22,200 --> 00:22:24,800
Speaker 6: talking like eight hundred million a billion dollars?

453
00:22:24,840 --> 00:22:25,000
Speaker 5: Now?

454
00:22:25,040 --> 00:22:27,000
Speaker 6: I can't remember what the latest, but I mean you

455
00:22:27,119 --> 00:22:31,080
Speaker 6: could solve the entire rare earth problem for the price

456
00:22:31,160 --> 00:22:34,200
Speaker 6: of that. And actually some of the investors who've been

457
00:22:34,600 --> 00:22:37,200
Speaker 6: putting serious money into solving the rare Earth's problem with

458
00:22:37,320 --> 00:22:41,359
Speaker 6: China though that's the order of money that they're spending.

459
00:22:41,400 --> 00:22:43,119
Speaker 6: It's in the sort of hundreds of millions of dollars.

460
00:22:43,320 --> 00:22:46,879
Speaker 6: And this is a time when we're spending brillions of

461
00:22:46,960 --> 00:22:50,920
Speaker 6: dollars on AI or a single FAD missile, one of

462
00:22:50,960 --> 00:22:53,280
Speaker 6: these missiles that uses a bit of tungsten, a single

463
00:22:53,480 --> 00:22:56,320
Speaker 6: SAD missile use it costs about ten million dollars. So

464
00:22:56,920 --> 00:23:00,040
Speaker 6: the sums that we're talking about are absolutely infinitesnal and

465
00:23:00,080 --> 00:23:02,560
Speaker 6: the amount that it can move the market. Of course,

466
00:23:02,560 --> 00:23:05,600
Speaker 6: it's a very small market this mine. I visited them

467
00:23:05,720 --> 00:23:08,359
Speaker 6: in Tasmania. If it gets up and running, it should

468
00:23:08,359 --> 00:23:10,359
Speaker 6: be able to supply about two and a half percent

469
00:23:10,400 --> 00:23:12,520
Speaker 6: of the global market. Now it doesn't stand a lot,

470
00:23:12,600 --> 00:23:15,200
Speaker 6: but remember China supplies eighty percent of the global market,

471
00:23:15,640 --> 00:23:18,280
Speaker 6: so you're actually talking two and a half percent of

472
00:23:18,280 --> 00:23:22,600
Speaker 6: the remaining twenty percent, and actually North Korean Russia supply

473
00:23:22,640 --> 00:23:24,359
Speaker 6: another five percent, so it's two and a half percent

474
00:23:24,400 --> 00:23:28,359
Speaker 6: of many fifteen percent. It's it's quite a significant percentage.

475
00:23:28,520 --> 00:23:31,280
Speaker 6: If you go back to sort of old commodities reports

476
00:23:31,320 --> 00:23:33,640
Speaker 6: from the Cold War, people would talk about the free

477
00:23:33,720 --> 00:23:36,600
Speaker 6: world market. So that two and a half percent is

478
00:23:36,840 --> 00:23:38,840
Speaker 6: that's roughly one six of the three of the free

479
00:23:38,920 --> 00:23:43,480
Speaker 6: world market. So for a very small sum, that's the

480
00:23:43,520 --> 00:23:45,560
Speaker 6: sort of thing that you can acquire in critical minerals,

481
00:23:45,680 --> 00:23:48,080
Speaker 6: and yet no one is prepared to invest in it most.

482
00:23:47,960 --> 00:23:48,320
Speaker 5: Of the time.

483
00:23:48,920 --> 00:23:52,480
Speaker 2: It's very similar to the selling down of the helium reserve. Yeah,

484
00:23:52,480 --> 00:23:55,080
Speaker 2: which is just like which is like the numbers are

485
00:23:55,280 --> 00:23:57,920
Speaker 2: it's so pennywise or whatever, you know, it's so like,

486
00:23:58,200 --> 00:24:00,280
Speaker 2: here's this thing that Okay, could be strue to in

487
00:24:00,320 --> 00:24:02,240
Speaker 2: the future and we're going to sell it for like

488
00:24:02,280 --> 00:24:03,240
Speaker 2: half a billion or whatever.

489
00:24:03,520 --> 00:24:04,879
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.

490
00:24:04,920 --> 00:24:05,080
Speaker 5: Well.

491
00:24:05,119 --> 00:24:07,280
Speaker 4: Also, just going back to China, so I take the

492
00:24:07,400 --> 00:24:11,640
Speaker 4: point that, I mean, China geographically does have an advantage

493
00:24:11,680 --> 00:24:13,359
Speaker 4: when it comes to a lot of rare earths and

494
00:24:13,680 --> 00:24:18,320
Speaker 4: including tungsten. But it also feels like China is more

495
00:24:18,440 --> 00:24:22,840
Speaker 4: willing to tolerate lower returns for some of these industries.

496
00:24:24,240 --> 00:24:26,080
Speaker 4: And I guess treat the market like a little bit

497
00:24:26,160 --> 00:24:28,800
Speaker 4: more like a chessboard rather than just a sort of

498
00:24:28,880 --> 00:24:32,480
Speaker 4: short term spreadsheet. Does that mean if anyone in the

499
00:24:32,560 --> 00:24:35,719
Speaker 4: West tries to start up a new tungsten mind, can

500
00:24:35,840 --> 00:24:38,760
Speaker 4: China just come in and flood the market very easily

501
00:24:38,880 --> 00:24:42,600
Speaker 4: and suppressed prices given that they're still the dominant producer

502
00:24:42,680 --> 00:24:45,560
Speaker 4: and literally anyone else is as you just outlined a

503
00:24:45,720 --> 00:24:47,240
Speaker 4: fraction of total production.

504
00:24:48,680 --> 00:24:50,399
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean that's and that is one of the

505
00:24:50,520 --> 00:24:53,159
Speaker 6: main reasons that investors stay well away from this. It's

506
00:24:53,200 --> 00:24:55,640
Speaker 6: one of the main investors they've the reasons that they've

507
00:24:55,640 --> 00:24:57,200
Speaker 6: stayed well away from rare earth.

508
00:24:57,240 --> 00:24:57,840
Speaker 5: At the moment.

509
00:24:58,119 --> 00:25:00,159
Speaker 6: One of the reasons tungsten price is a high is

510
00:25:00,240 --> 00:25:04,639
Speaker 6: precisely because China imposed export controls just ran about the

511
00:25:04,720 --> 00:25:08,040
Speaker 6: time President Trump came to office last year. That doesn't

512
00:25:08,160 --> 00:25:12,160
Speaker 6: mean that exports stop altogether, but it means that if

513
00:25:12,160 --> 00:25:16,560
Speaker 6: you're dependent on Chinese tungksen exports, which every tungsten consumer

514
00:25:16,680 --> 00:25:19,920
Speaker 6: is dependent on, you want to get your supplies early

515
00:25:20,040 --> 00:25:24,399
Speaker 6: before those export controls result in the Chinese government saying no,

516
00:25:24,520 --> 00:25:27,520
Speaker 6: you can't sell it to them. So as soon as

517
00:25:27,560 --> 00:25:30,920
Speaker 6: those export controls are taken off, then that sort of

518
00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:33,639
Speaker 6: speculative action that's going on in the market, that's one

519
00:25:33,640 --> 00:25:35,320
Speaker 6: of the main things that's driving up prices at the

520
00:25:35,359 --> 00:25:38,880
Speaker 6: moment that speculative action goes away, and so that would

521
00:25:38,920 --> 00:25:42,560
Speaker 6: certainly bring down prices and then in turn bankrupt a

522
00:25:42,600 --> 00:25:44,880
Speaker 6: lot of miners who were dependent on those higher prices.

523
00:25:45,280 --> 00:25:48,480
Speaker 6: So that's absolutely something that has happened in the past,

524
00:25:48,920 --> 00:25:51,359
Speaker 6: and not just the Chinese government. As I said the

525
00:25:51,520 --> 00:25:54,000
Speaker 6: first time this mind that I went to shut down

526
00:25:54,080 --> 00:25:57,320
Speaker 6: in nineteen twenty after World War One, it was because

527
00:25:57,359 --> 00:25:59,360
Speaker 6: the Allies in World War One sold off all their

528
00:25:59,400 --> 00:26:02,159
Speaker 6: toungs supplies and flood at the market a bit like

529
00:26:02,280 --> 00:26:03,720
Speaker 6: you know, the Bank of England with gold in the

530
00:26:03,800 --> 00:26:07,080
Speaker 6: nineteen nineties or any other mistake in sort of government

531
00:26:07,160 --> 00:26:08,320
Speaker 6: sale of the commodity.

532
00:26:08,520 --> 00:26:12,040
Speaker 2: You know, obviously anything that is geostrategic or used in

533
00:26:12,119 --> 00:26:15,800
Speaker 2: warfare will have a spike in investment in spending during

534
00:26:15,880 --> 00:26:18,960
Speaker 2: a war, and then it will come down, obviously, But

535
00:26:19,200 --> 00:26:22,800
Speaker 2: you know, we have the defense industrial complex, and there

536
00:26:22,880 --> 00:26:27,720
Speaker 2: is an extraordinary amount of spending on munitions and so forth.

537
00:26:27,760 --> 00:26:31,240
Speaker 2: It goes on in peace and wartime, et cetera, producing

538
00:26:31,320 --> 00:26:33,760
Speaker 2: new missiles, and there's a fortune to be made in that.

539
00:26:34,240 --> 00:26:39,080
Speaker 2: At any point during again what we would call relatively

540
00:26:39,200 --> 00:26:43,359
Speaker 2: peaceful periods, maybe the nineteen nineties or maybe like early

541
00:26:43,440 --> 00:26:46,320
Speaker 2: twenty tens or something like that, were there any voices

542
00:26:46,400 --> 00:26:52,240
Speaker 2: that said, look, as part of this strategic expenditure in

543
00:26:52,320 --> 00:26:56,240
Speaker 2: the West, in Allied countries, we should just maintain constant

544
00:26:56,359 --> 00:27:01,080
Speaker 2: loss making production and investment into some of these resources.

545
00:27:01,200 --> 00:27:05,440
Speaker 2: Because again, the numbers compared to other defense or strategic

546
00:27:05,480 --> 00:27:07,680
Speaker 2: spending just do not seem very high.

547
00:27:10,320 --> 00:27:11,840
Speaker 6: I think there was a real lack of that, and

548
00:27:11,920 --> 00:27:14,440
Speaker 6: I think one of the interesting things that I sort

549
00:27:14,440 --> 00:27:17,000
Speaker 6: of realized as I was working on this piece is

550
00:27:17,119 --> 00:27:20,520
Speaker 6: that part of Tungsten's time in the wilderness was about

551
00:27:20,760 --> 00:27:23,680
Speaker 6: a rethinking of the nature what wars would be because.

552
00:27:24,320 --> 00:27:25,640
Speaker 5: In nineteen ninety you have two things.

553
00:27:25,680 --> 00:27:27,840
Speaker 6: You have the end of the Cold War, but then

554
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:30,760
Speaker 6: the also crucial military thing that happens is the First

555
00:27:30,840 --> 00:27:33,760
Speaker 6: Gulf War, and the First Gulf War causes a lot

556
00:27:33,800 --> 00:27:36,000
Speaker 6: of people in the West, particularly in the US, to

557
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:38,719
Speaker 6: really rethink what wars are going to be like in future.

558
00:27:39,040 --> 00:27:41,520
Speaker 6: Back then, people thought it would be a Vietnam type

559
00:27:41,560 --> 00:27:44,760
Speaker 6: situation potentially before the war actually started, that this was

560
00:27:44,960 --> 00:27:48,240
Speaker 6: a million strong Saddam's Army. We're going to be something

561
00:27:48,280 --> 00:27:51,399
Speaker 6: that looks a little bit like Ukraine essentially. And then

562
00:27:51,480 --> 00:27:55,360
Speaker 6: of course it was this incredibly quick technological war. Art

563
00:27:55,480 --> 00:27:58,480
Speaker 6: was very quickly devastated. You saw the sort of technological

564
00:27:58,560 --> 00:28:03,520
Speaker 6: superiority of the US military, and that made people go, okay,

565
00:28:03,600 --> 00:28:05,600
Speaker 6: hang on, the Cold Wars finished, so we don't need

566
00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:09,440
Speaker 6: to be building up these huge anti Soviet military arsenals.

567
00:28:09,600 --> 00:28:11,840
Speaker 5: But also we are going to be vastly.

568
00:28:11,600 --> 00:28:15,560
Speaker 6: Technological superior to every foe that we're going to fight

569
00:28:15,680 --> 00:28:18,520
Speaker 6: in war, so we need to have different types of weapons.

570
00:28:18,920 --> 00:28:23,920
Speaker 5: And did you have Chris Miller on the War author? Yeah,

571
00:28:24,119 --> 00:28:26,400
Speaker 5: I mean, I think he describes that really well.

572
00:28:26,680 --> 00:28:30,760
Speaker 6: That dynamic how basically chips won the Cold War, and

573
00:28:30,920 --> 00:28:34,720
Speaker 6: that caused a complete rethinking of military strategy, and so

574
00:28:35,040 --> 00:28:37,639
Speaker 6: at that point tungsten doesn't matter so much because if

575
00:28:37,680 --> 00:28:42,000
Speaker 6: you are so technologically sophisticated that you can take our

576
00:28:42,200 --> 00:28:46,680
Speaker 6: enemy command posts very quickly, you can paralyze their electronic

577
00:28:46,800 --> 00:28:50,400
Speaker 6: infrastructure and their entire sort of military command, and then

578
00:28:51,240 --> 00:28:52,600
Speaker 6: you don't really need to be.

579
00:28:52,640 --> 00:28:54,600
Speaker 5: Fighting this sort of war of attrition, which is where

580
00:28:54,680 --> 00:28:56,920
Speaker 5: tungsten really comes into its own.

581
00:28:57,960 --> 00:29:01,440
Speaker 6: Now we've of course had another revolution and military affairs,

582
00:29:01,480 --> 00:29:03,600
Speaker 6: we've had another sort of rethinking of what wars are

583
00:29:03,600 --> 00:29:06,720
Speaker 6: going to be like, because we're four years now into

584
00:29:07,000 --> 00:29:10,280
Speaker 6: the war in Ukraine and we've seen in Ukraine a

585
00:29:10,440 --> 00:29:12,960
Speaker 6: battlefield that looks like the big battlefield of the twentieth

586
00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:15,840
Speaker 6: century and it's still grinding on, and so that makes

587
00:29:15,880 --> 00:29:18,760
Speaker 6: you rethink our future.

588
00:29:18,440 --> 00:29:19,680
Speaker 5: War is going to look like that or not.

589
00:29:19,840 --> 00:29:21,880
Speaker 6: And of course the other thing that's looming in the

590
00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:26,120
Speaker 6: future is Taiwan, a conflict with Taiwan where you're going

591
00:29:26,200 --> 00:29:27,720
Speaker 6: to be up against the.

592
00:29:28,360 --> 00:29:30,840
Speaker 5: Biggest manufacturing power on the planet.

593
00:29:31,800 --> 00:29:34,920
Speaker 6: Are you going to be able to technologically over master

594
00:29:35,080 --> 00:29:37,720
Speaker 6: China in the way that the US in nineteen ninety

595
00:29:37,720 --> 00:29:40,520
Speaker 6: over master. I don't think people expect that to be

596
00:29:40,600 --> 00:29:43,400
Speaker 6: nearly so easy. So tungsten again comes into its own.

597
00:29:43,760 --> 00:29:43,960
Speaker 1: Yeah.

598
00:29:44,560 --> 00:29:47,200
Speaker 4: So I'm looking at a headline right now saying the

599
00:29:47,360 --> 00:29:50,320
Speaker 4: US is inviting proposals to boost supply of tungsten and

600
00:29:50,440 --> 00:29:54,440
Speaker 4: twelve other critical minerals. So if you were going to

601
00:29:55,360 --> 00:29:58,960
Speaker 4: encourage or make suggestions for encouraging tungsten production in the

602
00:29:59,160 --> 00:30:03,640
Speaker 4: US or elsewhere, what would you be suggesting at the moment,

603
00:30:03,720 --> 00:30:06,240
Speaker 4: Because there does seem to be this real tension between

604
00:30:06,320 --> 00:30:10,680
Speaker 4: a potentially strategically critical resource and then I guess the

605
00:30:10,760 --> 00:30:15,280
Speaker 4: limits of private capital and people actually wanting to fund

606
00:30:15,360 --> 00:30:17,440
Speaker 4: something that will pay off with a real return.

607
00:30:18,680 --> 00:30:21,120
Speaker 5: I mean, ultimately you need to have some sort of

608
00:30:21,200 --> 00:30:21,960
Speaker 5: a flow price.

609
00:30:22,560 --> 00:30:25,840
Speaker 6: There is a huge debate that has sparked in the

610
00:30:26,520 --> 00:30:29,920
Speaker 6: critical mineral space about whether floor prices are a good

611
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:32,680
Speaker 6: thing or not. Yeah, a lot of people will argue

612
00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:35,000
Speaker 6: that if you have a floor price for something, then

613
00:30:35,280 --> 00:30:37,400
Speaker 6: it operates as a giveaway to minors and it's going

614
00:30:37,440 --> 00:30:40,640
Speaker 6: to encourage sort of uneconomic supply. But I think in

615
00:30:40,760 --> 00:30:43,520
Speaker 6: the context of what we're talking about here, that's actually

616
00:30:43,560 --> 00:30:46,320
Speaker 6: the point. The only economic supply of tungsten is in China.

617
00:30:46,600 --> 00:30:48,760
Speaker 6: So if that is a problem for you, you actually

618
00:30:48,800 --> 00:30:51,760
Speaker 6: need a you need a structure that's going to encourage

619
00:30:51,760 --> 00:30:54,120
Speaker 6: the supply outside chair, and it's going to encourage it

620
00:30:54,240 --> 00:30:58,560
Speaker 6: for a set period. Now there is a huge philosophical

621
00:30:58,640 --> 00:31:01,440
Speaker 6: problem with this because you can't do that with every

622
00:31:01,600 --> 00:31:05,800
Speaker 6: single material that could be deemed critical. I saw an

623
00:31:05,880 --> 00:31:09,440
Speaker 6: article the other day talking about fears that China was

624
00:31:09,480 --> 00:31:12,000
Speaker 6: going to lock down a supply of citric acid. You know,

625
00:31:13,120 --> 00:31:16,959
Speaker 6: there's metallurgical coal has been put on the US Critical

626
00:31:17,040 --> 00:31:20,280
Speaker 6: Minerals List. Copper is on the US Critical Minerals List.

627
00:31:20,520 --> 00:31:23,360
Speaker 6: You can justify almost anything on this basis, And that's

628
00:31:23,400 --> 00:31:26,239
Speaker 6: a real problem because the US, for instance, has set

629
00:31:26,320 --> 00:31:29,920
Speaker 6: up this Project Vault, this twelve billion plan for some

630
00:31:30,040 --> 00:31:32,360
Speaker 6: sort of a reserve of critical minerals, something similar to

631
00:31:32,360 --> 00:31:35,600
Speaker 6: the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But it's not very clear what

632
00:31:35,720 --> 00:31:38,040
Speaker 6: the criteria will be for inclusion in Project Vault. And

633
00:31:38,080 --> 00:31:40,960
Speaker 6: I think the risk is that Project Vault becomes a

634
00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:44,640
Speaker 6: way of hedging price risk for fairly common commodities like copper,

635
00:31:44,800 --> 00:31:47,680
Speaker 6: like nickel, like aluminum, like metallurgical coal.

636
00:31:47,880 --> 00:31:51,240
Speaker 5: If the government is not very forceful. You don't actually

637
00:31:51,400 --> 00:31:52,280
Speaker 5: end up getting.

638
00:31:52,040 --> 00:31:54,360
Speaker 6: The minerals you want in that, you just end up

639
00:31:54,440 --> 00:31:59,600
Speaker 6: with the minerals where industry wants government backed price security.

640
00:32:00,080 --> 00:32:03,120
Speaker 6: What you actually want is a fairly small group of

641
00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:05,320
Speaker 6: minerals where there's a real strategic issue. And I think

642
00:32:05,360 --> 00:32:08,800
Speaker 6: tungsten's one, I think rare to another, things like gallium, germanium.

643
00:32:08,960 --> 00:32:12,320
Speaker 6: These are some of the crucial ones. It'll be much cheaper,

644
00:32:12,760 --> 00:32:16,200
Speaker 6: but you need to offer a medium term price security,

645
00:32:16,320 --> 00:32:19,760
Speaker 6: long enough that miners can actually borrow against that price security.

646
00:32:20,200 --> 00:32:21,480
Speaker 5: So three to five years.

647
00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:42,200
Speaker 2: Evidently China controls sixty five to seventy of the world

648
00:32:42,280 --> 00:32:48,640
Speaker 2: citric acid supply, and citric acid has certain niche applications.

649
00:32:48,880 --> 00:32:51,400
Speaker 4: Secure your sour flavored fruit candies.

650
00:32:51,480 --> 00:32:57,480
Speaker 7: Now, yeah, here's some pharmaceutical applications. Citric acid excels genderizer.

651
00:32:57,560 --> 00:33:01,280
Speaker 7: I know that excels at chelating metal ions and removing

652
00:33:01,360 --> 00:33:05,400
Speaker 7: mineral deposits, scale and corrosion from industrial equipment.

653
00:33:05,840 --> 00:33:07,880
Speaker 2: To not know that, yeah, I didn't know that either.

654
00:33:08,040 --> 00:33:11,920
Speaker 2: So if there's a citric acid expert out there, maybe

655
00:33:12,040 --> 00:33:14,360
Speaker 2: that'll be an episode we want to do. You know, David,

656
00:33:14,480 --> 00:33:16,360
Speaker 2: there was a piece you wrote, a very long time

657
00:33:16,400 --> 00:33:19,560
Speaker 2: ago that is stuck with my head, maybe like coming

658
00:33:19,640 --> 00:33:22,840
Speaker 2: on ten years now, I think, and I think it

659
00:33:23,000 --> 00:33:26,520
Speaker 2: was in the context of some of the fantasies that

660
00:33:26,640 --> 00:33:30,200
Speaker 2: tech people have had about asteroid mining, and I believe

661
00:33:30,240 --> 00:33:33,880
Speaker 2: you made the point that Okay, yes, there may be

662
00:33:34,000 --> 00:33:38,600
Speaker 2: asteroids out there that have extraordinary deposits of various minerals

663
00:33:38,640 --> 00:33:41,400
Speaker 2: and metals of all sorts, but we also have a

664
00:33:41,560 --> 00:33:44,960
Speaker 2: place here on Earth that also has extraordinary deposits of

665
00:33:45,040 --> 00:33:48,640
Speaker 2: minerals and metals, and that is your country of Australia.

666
00:33:49,040 --> 00:33:51,400
Speaker 2: And though there's a lot of stuff just sitting out there,

667
00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:55,080
Speaker 2: but it's and it's a lot closer than space, but

668
00:33:55,200 --> 00:33:58,200
Speaker 2: it's still too far to be worthwhile to mine, which

669
00:33:58,200 --> 00:34:00,320
Speaker 2: I thought was really interesting. It's like it's right there,

670
00:34:00,880 --> 00:34:03,680
Speaker 2: and yeah, it's just there's the infrastructure does existing. It's

671
00:34:03,720 --> 00:34:05,360
Speaker 2: just not worth going out there. It's too much of

672
00:34:05,440 --> 00:34:08,160
Speaker 2: a trek to get out to those parts of Australia.

673
00:34:08,520 --> 00:34:10,680
Speaker 2: Can you talk a little bit broader about like the

674
00:34:10,840 --> 00:34:13,840
Speaker 2: sort of Okay, we could say this is in the ground,

675
00:34:14,600 --> 00:34:17,799
Speaker 2: but like we need, we want this, this is industrially

676
00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:19,719
Speaker 2: used for it's in the ground. We know it is,

677
00:34:19,840 --> 00:34:22,759
Speaker 2: we know it's rich, but it's just not worth making

678
00:34:22,840 --> 00:34:25,200
Speaker 2: the long twelve hour flight or whatever it is to

679
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:27,640
Speaker 2: get out there. I know it's more than a flight,

680
00:34:27,760 --> 00:34:29,000
Speaker 2: but yeah, to get out there.

681
00:34:29,840 --> 00:34:33,240
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, I think that the world of mineral

682
00:34:33,280 --> 00:34:36,040
Speaker 6: explanation is full of this, and here in Australia there's

683
00:34:36,520 --> 00:34:39,960
Speaker 6: plenty of very small cap mining companies which are essentially

684
00:34:40,360 --> 00:34:43,840
Speaker 6: like some of them are almost like a holiday program

685
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:47,880
Speaker 6: for a geologist if it funds a geologist's expedition around

686
00:34:47,880 --> 00:34:50,879
Speaker 6: the world with his hammers and his reagents, because because

687
00:34:50,920 --> 00:34:52,800
Speaker 6: some of them are really just they're just sort of

688
00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:56,320
Speaker 6: wild exploration programs hoping to find something.

689
00:34:56,719 --> 00:34:57,880
Speaker 5: We see this with Tongusten.

690
00:34:57,960 --> 00:35:01,280
Speaker 6: This mine is an unw one that have been operating

691
00:35:01,320 --> 00:35:04,560
Speaker 6: for about a century already, so there's an established resource there.

692
00:35:04,880 --> 00:35:09,200
Speaker 6: But I mean to give another example, A crucial group

693
00:35:09,280 --> 00:35:13,120
Speaker 6: of rare earths depends on these things called ionic absorption clothes,

694
00:35:13,320 --> 00:35:16,240
Speaker 6: which when you get a very heavily weathered granite mountain,

695
00:35:16,760 --> 00:35:18,600
Speaker 6: you end up with a lot of these clays which

696
00:35:19,040 --> 00:35:21,600
Speaker 6: will capture some of the rare earth that we're most

697
00:35:21,640 --> 00:35:24,840
Speaker 6: concerned about, things like thissprobium and urbium. And if you

698
00:35:24,920 --> 00:35:27,080
Speaker 6: go back about five years people would say these can

699
00:35:27,239 --> 00:35:29,320
Speaker 6: only be found in southern China. And one of the

700
00:35:29,360 --> 00:35:31,560
Speaker 6: problems in the world is that there is no way

701
00:35:31,600 --> 00:35:34,920
Speaker 6: that you will ever find ionic absorption clays anywhere except

702
00:35:34,960 --> 00:35:35,600
Speaker 6: southern China.

703
00:35:36,840 --> 00:35:40,879
Speaker 5: But of course, now we're in a world where China

704
00:35:41,000 --> 00:35:42,560
Speaker 5: is putting controls on these things.

705
00:35:42,640 --> 00:35:46,080
Speaker 6: It is stopping exports of a lot of these particular elements,

706
00:35:46,520 --> 00:35:48,359
Speaker 6: and it's at the heart of the sort of rare Earth,

707
00:35:48,719 --> 00:35:53,160
Speaker 6: sort of magnet supply chain concern. And believe it or not,

708
00:35:53,280 --> 00:35:55,520
Speaker 6: all these ionic absorption clays are starting to turn up

709
00:35:55,520 --> 00:35:57,960
Speaker 6: in other places. They're starting to find them in Brazil,

710
00:35:58,000 --> 00:36:00,560
Speaker 6: They're starting to find them in Malaysia. Peple are starting

711
00:36:00,600 --> 00:36:04,560
Speaker 6: to find them here in Australia and across parts of

712
00:36:04,640 --> 00:36:08,640
Speaker 6: tropical Africa as well. People are suddenly realizing, okay, there

713
00:36:08,760 --> 00:36:11,239
Speaker 6: are deposits there. They might not be as good as

714
00:36:11,280 --> 00:36:13,719
Speaker 6: the Chinese deposits. There's a reason that Chinese deposits were

715
00:36:13,760 --> 00:36:16,640
Speaker 6: the first to be explored. But if China becomes an

716
00:36:16,680 --> 00:36:19,520
Speaker 6: unreliable resource, people are going to find them somewhere else.

717
00:36:20,040 --> 00:36:21,040
Speaker 5: And I think that's I.

718
00:36:21,080 --> 00:36:26,360
Speaker 6: Mean, there's two twin activities that happen in commodities and mining.

719
00:36:26,400 --> 00:36:29,160
Speaker 6: One is the sort of substitution effect. Sometimes you're just

720
00:36:29,280 --> 00:36:33,600
Speaker 6: going to say, we can't use this, it's become too scarce,

721
00:36:33,680 --> 00:36:34,759
Speaker 6: we need an alternative.

722
00:36:35,000 --> 00:36:35,239
Speaker 5: I mean.

723
00:36:35,280 --> 00:36:37,120
Speaker 6: A good example of that, I think is if you

724
00:36:37,160 --> 00:36:41,680
Speaker 6: look at electric vehicle batteries. Go back five seven, eight years,

725
00:36:42,080 --> 00:36:45,160
Speaker 6: people were talking about the importance of having batteries dependent

726
00:36:45,239 --> 00:36:49,440
Speaker 6: on cobalt. Cobalts very heavily exposed to one country, Democratic

727
00:36:49,600 --> 00:36:52,080
Speaker 6: Republic of Congo. There's a lot of child labor in

728
00:36:52,120 --> 00:36:55,239
Speaker 6: the mining industry there, and also it's in some ways

729
00:36:55,320 --> 00:36:58,160
Speaker 6: not quite as good. So a lot of the Chinese

730
00:36:58,480 --> 00:37:01,400
Speaker 6: battery producers started us using a different chemistry that doesn't

731
00:37:01,440 --> 00:37:05,440
Speaker 6: use cobalt, lift them iron phosphate, and so so you've

732
00:37:05,480 --> 00:37:08,080
Speaker 6: substituted away from that product and you don't need it anymore.

733
00:37:08,120 --> 00:37:10,240
Speaker 6: And to go back to the analogy with asteroid mining,

734
00:37:10,960 --> 00:37:13,920
Speaker 6: if a commodity is so scarce that you need to

735
00:37:13,960 --> 00:37:15,960
Speaker 6: go to space to get it, you're probably going to

736
00:37:16,000 --> 00:37:19,360
Speaker 6: substitute it for something else instead. However, if it's not

737
00:37:19,520 --> 00:37:21,360
Speaker 6: quite as scarce as that, you're probably going to be

738
00:37:21,400 --> 00:37:23,879
Speaker 6: able to send that geologists around the world and they're

739
00:37:23,920 --> 00:37:27,240
Speaker 6: going to find it somewhere else, and if the established

740
00:37:27,280 --> 00:37:32,040
Speaker 6: supply is insecure enough, then the alternative location is going

741
00:37:32,120 --> 00:37:33,200
Speaker 6: to get more and more attractive.

742
00:37:33,719 --> 00:37:36,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we should just substitute for gold.

743
00:37:36,719 --> 00:37:39,839
Speaker 3: I mean it's going to say, if it's the same density.

744
00:37:41,840 --> 00:37:44,840
Speaker 2: You just buy, you just start having gold based munitions.

745
00:37:44,880 --> 00:37:47,280
Speaker 2: Those are sliced right through that tank as well. David

746
00:37:47,320 --> 00:37:49,600
Speaker 2: Fickling is great chatting with you. I'm so glad we've

747
00:37:49,640 --> 00:37:52,560
Speaker 2: made this happen. There's such a fascinating journey and great

748
00:37:52,640 --> 00:37:54,640
Speaker 2: reporting that you did, so thank you so much for

749
00:37:54,719 --> 00:37:55,520
Speaker 2: coming out of us.

750
00:37:56,040 --> 00:37:56,719
Speaker 5: Thanks very much.

751
00:38:09,480 --> 00:38:11,800
Speaker 2: It does seem so crazy to me that we have

752
00:38:11,920 --> 00:38:16,040
Speaker 2: this huge the military industrial complex, et cetera, and then

753
00:38:16,080 --> 00:38:18,920
Speaker 2: there's these few things that are like rounding errors.

754
00:38:20,040 --> 00:38:23,760
Speaker 4: Right, the capital outlays for a tongusten mind, seems pretty

755
00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:25,360
Speaker 4: small in the ground scheme of the.

756
00:38:25,560 --> 00:38:27,960
Speaker 2: And yet no one was like, let's just yeah, sure

757
00:38:28,040 --> 00:38:31,640
Speaker 2: it's on economical, but so is all defense spending, because

758
00:38:31,680 --> 00:38:34,440
Speaker 2: you don't it's loss making because there's no market use

759
00:38:34,560 --> 00:38:36,480
Speaker 2: for a lot of this stuff. But it's like, I

760
00:38:36,520 --> 00:38:38,520
Speaker 2: don't know, it seems like you just allocate a few

761
00:38:38,600 --> 00:38:41,239
Speaker 2: billion here and there and you could alleviate some of

762
00:38:41,320 --> 00:38:44,480
Speaker 2: these potential stress points. Instead, you sell down the helium

763
00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:47,440
Speaker 2: reserve over twenty years for a billion dollars or.

764
00:38:47,400 --> 00:38:47,920
Speaker 5: Whatever I mean.

765
00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:52,160
Speaker 4: To some extent, it does seem like a failure to

766
00:38:52,280 --> 00:38:55,080
Speaker 4: predict the future, which is difficult. Right, people thought that

767
00:38:55,239 --> 00:38:57,720
Speaker 4: war was going to evolve in different ways. We didn't

768
00:38:57,760 --> 00:39:01,600
Speaker 4: think that we would be shooting this many cruise missiles,

769
00:39:01,840 --> 00:39:04,560
Speaker 4: or that we would be shooting shrapnel at drones, or

770
00:39:04,600 --> 00:39:07,560
Speaker 4: having drones shooting as much shrapnel, and so like, here

771
00:39:07,640 --> 00:39:11,200
Speaker 4: we are with to some extent an unexpected need for tungsten,

772
00:39:11,320 --> 00:39:14,440
Speaker 4: and the same for helium in some sense because we

773
00:39:14,520 --> 00:39:16,640
Speaker 4: didn't know that we were going to have the semiconductor

774
00:39:17,040 --> 00:39:20,160
Speaker 4: m and things like that. So hindsight is twenty twenty.

775
00:39:20,560 --> 00:39:23,400
Speaker 4: But I don't know, it does seem like maybe we

776
00:39:23,440 --> 00:39:26,160
Speaker 4: should restart that tungsten mind in California. Should we go

777
00:39:26,280 --> 00:39:28,400
Speaker 4: check it out when we're we're in Yeah.

778
00:39:28,200 --> 00:39:29,640
Speaker 2: We're gonna be in a listeners, We're going to be

779
00:39:29,640 --> 00:39:31,200
Speaker 2: in LA in early September.

780
00:39:31,520 --> 00:39:33,520
Speaker 3: Maybe we can find the guy who used to run it.

781
00:39:33,680 --> 00:39:35,920
Speaker 2: We could go find Yeah, let's go check out that.

782
00:39:36,200 --> 00:39:38,359
Speaker 2: I also, you know, I just think that what again,

783
00:39:38,600 --> 00:39:41,120
Speaker 2: one of the things I always think about with respect

784
00:39:41,200 --> 00:39:45,759
Speaker 2: to China specific league, is the fact that there's not

785
00:39:45,880 --> 00:39:48,960
Speaker 2: really a business cycle there and they've never had They

786
00:39:48,960 --> 00:39:52,000
Speaker 2: don't have these like they have secular busts like obviously

787
00:39:52,080 --> 00:39:54,719
Speaker 2: real estate, et cetera. But you know, there's been this

788
00:39:54,880 --> 00:39:57,560
Speaker 2: sort of like refusal to accept the premise that overall

789
00:39:57,640 --> 00:40:02,359
Speaker 2: recessions are an inevitability and therefore you don't get these

790
00:40:02,800 --> 00:40:05,960
Speaker 2: periods where it's like big industries that were once important

791
00:40:06,040 --> 00:40:08,160
Speaker 2: hollow out and then it's like, oh, it's so costly

792
00:40:08,200 --> 00:40:08,799
Speaker 2: to restart them.

793
00:40:08,960 --> 00:40:11,280
Speaker 4: I mean, you do get some of that, and China's

794
00:40:11,520 --> 00:40:14,400
Speaker 4: pig pork industry is a pretty good example of that,

795
00:40:14,520 --> 00:40:16,560
Speaker 4: where there was a shortage and prices went up, and

796
00:40:16,640 --> 00:40:19,520
Speaker 4: so the government provided a bunch of support. It over expanded,

797
00:40:19,600 --> 00:40:22,120
Speaker 4: prices collapsed, and then a bunch of private operators went

798
00:40:22,160 --> 00:40:24,080
Speaker 4: out of business. So there is some of that, But

799
00:40:24,200 --> 00:40:26,880
Speaker 4: I do think in general China is more willing to

800
00:40:27,040 --> 00:40:30,560
Speaker 4: accept just lower returns in general for some of these

801
00:40:30,840 --> 00:40:31,720
Speaker 4: for some of these long.

802
00:40:31,640 --> 00:40:33,360
Speaker 3: Term which also begs the question.

803
00:40:33,440 --> 00:40:37,240
Speaker 4: If one of the big themes of our current period

804
00:40:37,480 --> 00:40:40,359
Speaker 4: in time, as we've discussed on the podcast repeatedly now,

805
00:40:40,680 --> 00:40:43,480
Speaker 4: is that everyone seems to be trying to build up

806
00:40:43,560 --> 00:40:48,239
Speaker 4: their own supplies, their own responses to like certain choke

807
00:40:48,280 --> 00:40:51,279
Speaker 4: holds in the global economy. And so one of the

808
00:40:51,400 --> 00:40:54,279
Speaker 4: concerns that you see now and David talked about it, is, well,

809
00:40:54,320 --> 00:40:57,760
Speaker 4: if everyone's trying to create their own supply of tungsten,

810
00:40:58,560 --> 00:41:01,920
Speaker 4: even if it's a relative small supply, even if it

811
00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:05,560
Speaker 4: doesn't actually take that much capital to create a new tongsten. Mind,

812
00:41:05,800 --> 00:41:08,600
Speaker 4: if everyone's doing it all at once and then you

813
00:41:08,800 --> 00:41:11,640
Speaker 4: don't have a definitive buyer of last store at the end,

814
00:41:11,719 --> 00:41:13,640
Speaker 4: then like people are going to think that we're going

815
00:41:13,680 --> 00:41:14,640
Speaker 4: to become oversupplied.

816
00:41:15,400 --> 00:41:18,480
Speaker 2: But in the meantime, all of this expenditure is at

817
00:41:18,520 --> 00:41:21,920
Speaker 2: the margins inflation area. Yeah, so you have the double

818
00:41:21,960 --> 00:41:26,360
Speaker 2: whammy of more spending on non productive things because they're strategic,

819
00:41:26,960 --> 00:41:32,120
Speaker 2: and the diminishment because of anxiety about security of free trade.

820
00:41:32,360 --> 00:41:34,520
Speaker 2: So you get the double lots and lots of spending

821
00:41:34,600 --> 00:41:38,680
Speaker 2: and replication of spending across multiple geographies in countries.

822
00:41:38,800 --> 00:41:41,279
Speaker 4: The one other thing I would say is whenever we

823
00:41:41,400 --> 00:41:45,000
Speaker 4: do these commodities episodes, and especially lately, given what happened

824
00:41:45,040 --> 00:41:48,160
Speaker 4: with oil supply in Iran, I kind of I always

825
00:41:48,239 --> 00:41:51,960
Speaker 4: marvel at the markets. I guess creativity or ingenuity when

826
00:41:52,000 --> 00:41:54,480
Speaker 4: it comes to responding to some of these shocks. So

827
00:41:54,640 --> 00:41:57,480
Speaker 4: Japan had its supply of a bunch of rare earths,

828
00:41:57,520 --> 00:42:01,200
Speaker 4: including tungsten, cut off by China, which I'm sure at

829
00:42:01,239 --> 00:42:04,279
Speaker 4: the time was thought to be an absolutely dire thing

830
00:42:04,760 --> 00:42:08,239
Speaker 4: for a lot of Japanese industry, including car makers, but

831
00:42:08,560 --> 00:42:10,880
Speaker 4: in the end it ended up dealing with it reasonably

832
00:42:11,040 --> 00:42:15,959
Speaker 4: well by sourcing recycled supply and scrap tungsten and things

833
00:42:16,080 --> 00:42:16,239
Speaker 4: like that.

834
00:42:16,440 --> 00:42:18,040
Speaker 3: Now, again, if China.

835
00:42:18,280 --> 00:42:21,600
Speaker 4: Stopped exporting tungsten to everyone in the world, would would

836
00:42:21,600 --> 00:42:25,440
Speaker 4: there be enough scrap tungsten to replace that supply? Probably not,

837
00:42:25,760 --> 00:42:27,919
Speaker 4: But for some of these supply shops it does seem

838
00:42:28,000 --> 00:42:29,760
Speaker 4: like you can get pretty good response.

839
00:42:30,239 --> 00:42:33,320
Speaker 2: As we talked about with Javier Bloss last year, we

840
00:42:33,400 --> 00:42:35,480
Speaker 2: might have to go into a bunch of vacuum cleaners

841
00:42:35,520 --> 00:42:37,600
Speaker 2: and pull out some of the magnets and stuff.

842
00:42:37,680 --> 00:42:40,239
Speaker 4: Why don't you get into the scrap tungsten business, Joe,

843
00:42:40,280 --> 00:42:43,120
Speaker 4: I can get you started with some like metal toolbits.

844
00:42:43,440 --> 00:42:45,800
Speaker 4: I had one that split the other day, which was

845
00:42:46,040 --> 00:42:47,360
Speaker 4: really weird an unusual.

846
00:42:49,200 --> 00:42:52,279
Speaker 2: I'm done investing in tungsten, especially if I can't find

847
00:42:52,320 --> 00:42:53,799
Speaker 2: this thing. I mean, I don't want to ever think

848
00:42:53,840 --> 00:42:54,399
Speaker 2: about it again.

849
00:42:55,040 --> 00:42:58,279
Speaker 4: All Right, No more tungsten. That's the opposite message of

850
00:42:58,360 --> 00:42:59,800
Speaker 4: this entire podcast episode.

851
00:42:59,840 --> 00:43:01,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, all right, keep thinking about tungky, keep.

852
00:43:01,560 --> 00:43:02,360
Speaker 3: Thinking about tungsten.

853
00:43:02,400 --> 00:43:02,680
Speaker 6: All right.

854
00:43:02,840 --> 00:43:03,520
Speaker 3: Shall we leave it there?

855
00:43:03,600 --> 00:43:04,239
Speaker 2: Let's leave it there.

856
00:43:04,520 --> 00:43:07,080
Speaker 4: This has been another episode of the Authoughts podcast. I'm

857
00:43:07,160 --> 00:43:09,640
Speaker 4: Tracy Allaway. You can follow me at Tracy Allaway.

858
00:43:09,800 --> 00:43:12,520
Speaker 2: And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.

859
00:43:12,800 --> 00:43:15,799
Speaker 2: Follow our producers Kerman Rodriguez at Kerman armand dash Ol

860
00:43:15,800 --> 00:43:19,560
Speaker 2: Bennett at dashbod Kelbrooks at Keilbrooks, and Kevin Lozano at

861
00:43:19,680 --> 00:43:22,320
Speaker 2: Kevin Lloyd Lisano. And for more odd Logs content, go

862
00:43:22,400 --> 00:43:24,440
Speaker 2: to Bloomberg dot com slash odd lots or a be

863
00:43:24,520 --> 00:43:26,880
Speaker 2: daily newsletter and all of our episodes and you can

864
00:43:26,960 --> 00:43:28,880
Speaker 2: chat about all of these topics twenty four seven in

865
00:43:29,040 --> 00:43:32,160
Speaker 2: our discord Discord dot gg slash on lots.

866
00:43:32,360 --> 00:43:33,920
Speaker 4: And if you enjoy auth thoughts, if you want to

867
00:43:33,920 --> 00:43:37,239
Speaker 4: support a speculative Odd Thoughts mission to the Bahamas to

868
00:43:37,320 --> 00:43:40,719
Speaker 4: find that giant FTX tungsten cube, then please leave us

869
00:43:40,920 --> 00:43:44,120
Speaker 4: a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember,

870
00:43:44,200 --> 00:43:46,279
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871
00:43:46,440 --> 00:43:48,520
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872
00:43:48,840 --> 00:43:50,239
Speaker 3: All you need to do is find your.

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00:43:50,120 --> 00:43:53,200
Speaker 4: Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there.

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00:43:53,640 --> 00:43:54,440
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening

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00:44:11,360 --> 00:44:19,840
Speaker 5: In it