From Deep Sea to Deep Policy: What's Fueling the Modern Energy Race?

In this episode of At the Boundary, Dr. Andrew Whiskeyman sits down with Milo McBride of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to explore one of the most consequential issues in global security today: the race for critical minerals and the future of energy transition.

From solar and battery innovation to deep sea mining and friendshoring strategies, this conversation breaks down how access to rare earth elements, lithium, and other essential materials is reshaping geopolitics, military readiness, and climate ambitions. McBride shares why China’s dominance in energy supply chains is a structural challenge for the U.S., how new geothermal and battery storage technologies could offer a way forward, and what policies might close the gap between environmental ideals and practical realities.

If you care about energy security, emerging tech, or the intersection of national strategy and sustainability, this is a must-listen.

At the Boundary from the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida, features global and national security issues we’ve found to be insightful, intriguing, fascinating, maybe controversial, but overall just worth talking about.

A "boundary" is a place, either literal or figurative, where two forces exist in close proximity to each other. Sometimes that boundary is in a state of harmony. More often than not, that boundary has a bit of chaos baked in. The Global and National Security Institute will live on the boundary of security policy and technology and that's where this podcast will focus.

The mission of GNSI is to provide actionable solutions to 21st-century security challenges for decision-makers at the local, state, national and global levels. We hope you enjoy At the Boundary.

Look for our other publications and products on our website publications page.

Transcript

Glenn Beckmann: 0:12

Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of at the boundary, the podcast from the global and national security Institute at the University of South Florida. I'm Glenn Beckman, communications manager at GNSI and your host for at the boundary today, today on the podcast, we're excited to bring you a conversation between Dr Andrew whiskeyman and Milo McBride, as they'll be discussing critical minerals and resources, specifically in the context of energy transition technologies and the role of next generation advancements that's coming up in just a couple of minutes. First, I'd like to invite you to register for our upcoming policy dialogs virtual event, Trans Atlantic forum on cyber security. We've teamed up with cyber Florida and the University of Paris Saclay for the event, they're France's leading cyber University and one of the leading institutions in all of Europe, bringing a true global perspective to the discussions. The webcast is scheduled for June 23 9am here in Tampa, 3pm in Paris. Some of the featured speakers already lined up will be Alexis Olivero, Alexander raday Julian signals and Louis galbin from the French side of the Atlantic. Closer to home, featured speakers include anchor Malley, Marvin Pazos Revilla and John licado, all from the newly formed USF Bellini College of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and computing. Also joining us in the discussions will be James Jacobs from cyber Florida. You can check out the panel discussions and speaker details on our website. We'll drop a link in the show notes. That's June 23 the Trans Atlantic forum on cybersecurity, a three hour virtual event from GNSI. Finally, if you're interested in a probing analysis of the future of defense spending in the US. You need to read our latest research article, authored by GNSI non resident Senior fellow, Dr Frank Hoffman. He makes one thing clear in the article, America's national security strategy must reconcile ambition with fiscal reality. In his words, you cannot defeat tomorrow's enemies with yesterday's budgets. It's a compelling analysis, one you won't want to miss. We'll have a link in the show notes. Okay, it's time for our featured interview today. Dr Andrew whiskeyman, another GNSI non resident senior fellow and adjunct professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School, sits down for a critical minerals discussion with one of the nation's leading experts, Milo McBride. He's a fellow in the sustainability, climate and geopolitics program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC, their conversation starts on the current state of energy in the US explores the concept of friend sharing as it relates to the global energy landscape, dips into environmental and social concerns with mining a whole lot more. I know you'll learn some things from this conversation today, so let's turn it over to Dr. Andrew whiskey,

Dr. Andrew Whiskeyman: 3:19

fantastic. Hey, and thank you very much for that introduction. I'm Dr Andrew whiskey man, and today I'm talking with Milo McBride. He's a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a specialty focuses on the geopolitics of the technology surrounding energy and critical minerals. That's quite a bit it's quite exciting. It's unfortunate we only have a short time to talk today, but hopefully it whets your appetite for continuing the conversation about a field that's absolutely critical to national security and international relations. And with that, Milo, welcome to the podcast today. Really super excited to have you here. I wanted to start off by giving our listeners a chance to get to know you a little bit more beyond the work that you you've done and is out there. How did you get interested in energy, and where are you at today in terms of research that you're seeing and doing?

Milo McBride: 4:13

Well, any pleasure to be on the show. Thank you so much for having me. By way of background, I became immersed in energy technology and critical minerals, probably in the late 2010s when we were starting to observe some significant shifts in the cost of some emerging renewable technologies, wind, solar and batteries, and that was the main narrative. But beyond that, people weren't really looking under the hood and asking the difficult questions about, where was this IP based, who had the actual presence of the manufacturing capacity, and what sort of raw materials would those technologies require? And this isn't a story. Best of those technologies extends, of course, to nuclear power, as well as to a range of other verticals that we'll describe today. And by way of background from there, I worked in the consulting space for a while, and I think this took off, really, at Eurasia group, which is a geopolitical risk advisory working with governments and corporates on thinking about how geopolitics affect various trajectories for for certain markets, and the markets that I covered were critical minerals and these emerging energy technologies. At the same time, I was teaching at New York University, teaching in class to young engineers about understanding how policy and geopolitics impacts global energy markets and technological trends. And then, with that, landed here at Carnegie to work on this research and really focus in on some of these emerging next gen opportunities, particularly where the United States could have opportunities in some of these markets.

Dr. Andrew Whiskeyman: 6:08

Absolutely fascinating. I'd like to start off the conversation with sort of where we're at today. So we've seen, at least, my observations, has been a back and forth over the past few administrations in terms of the call to drill baby drill right to increase domestic production, largely from a fossil fuels perspective, the discussions about nuclear energy and the possibilities of changes when It comes to micro reactors, emerging energy markets, changing consumption habits, the push to electrify everything. What do you see the state of play is right now in the US, in terms of domestic production, perhaps, and then critical minerals, which are absolutely a key piece of emerging technologies, at least as I understand where we are from a technical perspective, I

Milo McBride: 7:06

think that's a great assessment of the landscape here in the US. Would love to also, down the line, talk about how this relates to the global energy landscape and kind of where the US situates. And feel free to tie that in together if you'd like. I mean, I just started off from a from a US perspective, shows my own bias at times. But if you want to tie that into a global person, feel free, I think, take that away. I think on the US side, it's an interesting place where there are some of these verticals that you rightfully outline, that we actually see really strong bipartisan levels of support, and that's been great to see on nuclear power. There's been a renaissance. You see with the passage of the advance act. You see with the bipartisan infrastructure law giving funding for new nuclear reactors, which we really haven't built much of in decades. Just for the listeners on here, we've built one reactor in Georgia that recently came online. It took, took at least a decade to get to get going, and it was quite an expensive endeavor, so it's a muscle that we have to relearn if we're going to be deploying these types of technologies. There's also, as you mentioned, a lot of bipartisan support around the critical minerals needed, not just for energy technologies, but also for military applications, for the high tech sector and for the industrial production of the economy writ large, right? And those are a range of minerals. They range from big metals like copper and nickel to battery metals. These are in the batteries and storage technologies in your phone and electric vehicles. These are things like lithium, graphite, cobalt, nickel manganese and and then there's also more niche metals that that are some of which are called rare earths. These have sci fi like names dyspraxia, neodymium, Praseodymium. They're essentially used to make a very specialized type of magnetic motor that is in everything from fighter jets to electric vehicles to offshore wind turbines. So it's a range of of of a supply chain challenge, and there's been some positive development, specifically in the battery sector, where we have seen some onshoring the production of lithium back home in the US and the production of batteries. But this all comes as there's a kind of massive structural challenge in in the energy equation, driven largely by ai demand from data, and for the first time in decades, we're seeing electricity demand growing at pretty unprecedented rates. And I think where the question mark comes for the US is what sort of approach is is needed to deal with it? Is it an all of the above approach that includes renewables and fossil and nuclear? And storage, is it? You know, perhaps the last administration would have wanted a more renewable focused approach. This administration looks like wants a more carbon or base load focused approach. But there's, there's a hard reality that that between both of those political perspectives, you're going to need some semblance of both to actually do this and meet the Meet the load growth required. So I'll pause there. It's an exciting and dynamic moment. There's a lot of shifting variables. And yeah, Happy. Happy to also talk globally what this means, what we're seeing for energy markets around the world?

Dr. Andrew Whiskeyman: 10:42

Yeah, absolutely, I do want to include that global piece a bit, because you mentioned onshoring, which is definitely a sense that I get of a push to move to. But there's the concept of friend shoring as well, of moving some things to, perhaps nations that are more closely aligned with strategic outcomes that the US would want to see, or a world order the US would be, would be biased toward, but also between those two, along with artificial intelligence, because that has spiked a huge demand in energy, that nexus between the possibilities of artificial intelligence with Other nations is also an issue when it comes to energy. It's not merely deploying, oh, somebody else needs to adopt. Ai, do they have the infrastructure that's able to support the demand signals required, which puts an additional strain on perhaps energy supply places. So any one of those areas that that that you want to kind of touch on as we move through this next piece of sort of the relation to the global environment.

Milo McBride: 11:49

Lot of great stuff to unpack. I know it's a lot. You can pull it through anyone, any one of those that you that you want. It's a fantastic group of questions. And I'll start off for the listeners, just just running through this point that I think is not as widely known as as it should be, which is just the for these advanced energy technologies, electric vehicles, nuclear power, wind turbines, green fuels, synthetic fuels, the Chinese are about five to 10 years ahead right now of the rest of the world. It is a historical asymmetry that is, that is somewhat unprecedented, and from an energy markets perspective and from an inspect perspective in Washington quite concerning. And that's the sheer production volume of new nuclear reactors, of solar panels. And it's also, as I mentioned earlier, the ownership of that IP, the unilateral integration of those supply chains, and the fact that now these are being exported across the world at incredible rates, really staggering and unprecedented numbers coming out, and also two poor developing and emerging markets as well. Right? These are flooding, Pakistan, Nigeria, really all over, and that creates a structural challenge for the US. One, in terms of just the sheer ability for China, the Chinese industry, to access global markets. Two, in the long term, poses challenges to the US is position today as the world's dominant hydrocarbon producer, where we have developed immense amount of leverage from oil and gas exports into the global markets. And there is concern that the flooding of these alternatives, which are not fuel dependent, right? They are. They are, in that way, weirdly, energy secure. They don't work. They don't they're not at risk from volatility in LNG markets. That poses a grander challenge. And I think one, one area for that you address that's really important is that the US just fundamentally cannot abate these issues alone. It's going to need to work with partners and allies that you outline have strategic long term interests with the United States. And I think there's a couple interesting examples of that. India is a really top one, where right now, the control of the solar supply chain. And just for the listeners on here, solar energy is now the fastest growing energy source in human history. It is there is enough solar manufacturing in China and from Chinese companies to get the world to its solar net zero goals. And it is on the cusp of a next gen innovation that will that will make solar far more effective. Efficient. The Chinese dominated. That is, that is a concern, but the US may not ever be able to economically compete with its domestic production of solar panels, which we have, and we have some good producers, for sure, but the labor costs don't necessarily work out. What's interesting to see is India evolving under Modi as a secondary solar producer to de risk this supply chain, and we've seen developments from the US to help try and scale that up to ensure that there's an alternative hedge. And this isn't just a monopoly industry on what, in the coming decades could be a dominant, growing energy source. So I think that's an example of how the friend shoring equation comes into play. I think on the mineral side, there's a lots of other questions as to how best to do this. The costs are hard, and getting capital into mining projects is a daunting task. It can take decades to bring a mine online, and we see a kind of ongoing trend of the Chinese control of minerals, resulting in a structural oversupply, flooding markets and creating a low price environment that to our western investor community just makes it really difficult to sign the check and pull the trigger. So there have been some interesting multilateral and bilateral frameworks developed to try and bring some mining projects online, and it will be interesting to see where that leads with the current administration that has very specific mineral security goals and this all to say it, there is, there's no silver bullet solution to to this problem. It takes an all hands on deck, holistic and comprehensive approach to try and bring about some, some some structural changes in mineral security.

Dr. Andrew Whiskeyman: 16:59

I want to pull a Nexus together when it comes to mineral security, in particular with this, and it has to do with the tide of the environment, which has been one of the things when it comes to clean energy, that has also been a goal in terms of air quality, pollution, a whole host of things with that, to bring around certain goals. But there's a side to mining, oftentimes in places that is, is dirty, it pollutes. There's been accusations of child labor and abusive labor practices beyond that, with some of the mining emerging, as well as the ability, perhaps, to do deep sea harvesting of critical minerals, that opens up a whole other domain, if you will, of accessibility to get after some of these critical minerals that are needed In the production of clean energy are those merely missed? Excuse me, risks to be mitigated. Are they real concerns? Are they? Where do you see that aspect of things? As you mentioned, there's no silver bullet and there's there's pros and cons to everything. But how do you see that aspect of things from perhaps an environmental concern perspective? You know, you don't want to throw out the baby with the bath water to run into one thing. You've just created another problem that you perhaps could have addressed along the way, any thoughts or insights into that aspect of of energy.

Milo McBride: 18:33

It's a great point. And I think that this goes back to better of what I was saying in 2010 where a lot of people were saying, Wow, batteries are getting cheap, but not necessarily doing the due diligence of looking under the hood and saying, Where is this coming from? I think a short answer is that there is nuance to the dirtiness and the social risks of mineral extraction. Certain certain minerals and certain mining jurisdictions are far worse than others, and that is an important as other parts of the world are drilling for it, like oil and gas and even in all oil fields, and they're coming to commercial scale pretty quickly. There's another firm in Canada that's showing some real promise, and it's a much less land intensive community opposed process, where you can extract basically endless volumes of lithium without strip mining, hard rock mining, but and also with an industry, particularly the oil and gas industry, that knows how to handle subsurface fluids with with great expertise, and we're seeing that synergy emerge right now, particularly in Arkansas, where There's some exciting developments. So that all to say, with this, with this complication, there needs to be attention drawn to, to those areas that are most severe. And I think you know, we can one think about other technologies to to to substitute other technologies that just don't demand those minerals. For example, if cobalt and nickel are the issues for the battery supply chain, now, about half of all EV batteries and increasing don't require those minerals. Maybe that's just a way that, in the long term, we can phase out the demand for some of the most controversial aspects of this supply chain. And I'll end on deep sea mining, which is full of unknowns. I'll start with just saying I have not seen a solid peer reviewed analysis on the costs of scraping nodules off the deep sea floor compared to just buying copper on the global spot market. There's also questions about the processing types of machinery you would need to extract the minerals from that nodule. That's an unknown. And then lastly, and your point is important, we really don't we're not quite clear the scale of damage this would do to an undiscovered and potentially important ecosystem, with regard to carbon cycles, with regard to some of the world's most magical oceanic floor biodiversity that we just simply don't know a lot about. I think we'll start to see some deep sea mining. But again, the economics of it alone make me cautious that it's going to become this panacea that some are touting. Yeah,

Dr. Andrew Whiskeyman: 24:22

I think that's a great point about the unknowns that we have. So how you know, rhetorically, almost, how do we have a cautious optimism where there's potential, but we ought to study it in a very real way as to the second and third order effects that we don't know? I mean, even less than a century ago, we'd fill in marshland because it was wasted land, right, not realizing the criticality of marshes to the not only biodiversity, but just the water system in terms of what it does, in terms of water purification, etc. So without, without. Really thinking about or assuming, you know, there's probably second and third order effects to what I'm doing. How do I keep paying attention to that and studying it as an important aspect? I would think of policy recommendations and recommendations for industry to perhaps self govern if that's a if that's a thing we can hope for with folks hope not being an operative word in the last bit of time we have together, I want to turn toward the future, because there's that, that promise. I think it's a nice pivot off of the potentials, perhaps for deep sea mining, but some some pitfalls that come to it. I don't know we have time to get into asteroid mining and what space might offer in terms of finding, you know, new minerals and opportunities, that'd be another fascinating discussion, I think. But the three areas I'd like to focus on in our last bit of time, from an emerging tech perspective, or where you see trends going, is from a production perspective, you know, can we increase, for instance, the effectiveness of solar production beyond, say, the 25 to 28% is there something like titanium, which is way more expensive, but potentially way more, over the next five to 10 years. Do you see advances in those three and where they might be or where it might be a good idea to really lean into exploring more us. Or if you have a fourth one or a fifth one, feel free to add that to those. Are just three that that I've sort of been paying attention to,

Milo McBride: 27:13

fantastic. And I do have a fourth fifth one that is my favorite. I'll save the best for last. on storage. I mentioned it earlier. There's been a long promise of moving away or blending a new type of cell known as a perovskite solar cell. Folks have been talking about this for decades, and essentially, you'd overlay it with your silicone panel, and it would begin to increase the energy efficiency beyond that 25 28% limit that you mentioned, and that is now, at least in the past couple of weeks, really seeming like it's starting to happen. It's known as a perovskite tandem cell. The Department of Energy recently validated a panel from China asserting that it could get to 35% range. It's unclear how long it lasts. The issue has been depreciation, but it seems that now the these major solar players all have this intellectual property and will start in the coming decade to blend that panel, which opens up, as I mentioned, a new a kind of new possibility for solar on storage, we're at a really exciting point where storage has become one of the fastest growing parts of this whole story, essentially doubling year on year, in installations in the US. And there's an amazing arsenal of companies, particularly here in the United States, that have cracked a bunch of the issues with storage, ranging from the mineral security issue to the duration of it. Right? The conventional Tesla pack that you get or fluence pack next to a solar farm, will get you about four to six hours, which, by today's standards, is fine, but once you start increasing the load of variable renewables, you're going to need a longer duration system. So there's been a really interesting wave of companies that have designed new storage technologies known as iron air flow batteries or zinc bromine batteries. There's one company that even uses a My favorite topic, though, in all of this, especially from an American perspective, is what's happening right now in the geothermal energy space. This is just by far the most exciting energy story right now. Geothermal has been a niche energy source for decades. It's required this kind of Goldilocks resource of good heat and good water, but thanks to our world leading engineers in the shale patch who have mastered horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing techniques, they have figured out basically how you could, you could build a geothermal well artificially, pretty much anywhere. And it's a story that's coming to market very fast. By next year, we'll see the first two commercial scale facilities up and running. We're starting to see involvement from leading oil and gas drilling service companies, from big tech players. And I think what's most exciting is from the Pentagon. DOD has been an active procure in getting off takes for these systems, because not only can they produce continuous baseload power, but from a resilience and from a fuel security perspective, this is a kind of silver bullet solution to making sure military installation is as resilient as possible. There's no potential fuel cutoffs. It can provide not just electricity but heat, and it doesn't have any of the risks from a nuclear, you know, micro nuclear plant on a base. So it's a really exciting story, and it's a you it's particularly just a US story right now, but that's, I'd say, what I'm watching most closely and most excited about

Dr. Andrew Whiskeyman: 33:57

awesome. And thanks for ending our time on a little bit of hope. Oftentimes, we hear the perils of energy at the moment, whether it be pollution or supply supply chains, just the tax on it in terms of the how it affects security and decisions that we all make, and the rising cost of energy. For many people, it hasn't been as bad in the US, but the UK in particular, which you hadn't gone into, is really seen some stark increases in energy that has really pinched people's pocketbooks. But that bit of of hope at the end of where emerging tech could take us, and some things that are not just science fiction, but also really right around the corner in development and potentially scalable, I think, is really, really hopeful. It's been an I wish we had more time to talk about this and and maybe we'll generate enough interest on the podcast that we'll both get invited back for a subsequent discussion in more detail on one of these topics. We'll have to see, hopefully it goes viral. 15 minutes of fame in life, but it's been an absolute pleasure chatting with you. I look forward to continuing the conversation. I hope others do as well.

Milo McBride: 35:11

It's been a joy speaking with you. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast, and likewise, I hope to continue it. Hope there's a round two follow up in the future for folks looking to learn more, to connect with me, just find me on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, my contact, my research, is all listed there and keen to engage so again, grateful for your time and for being able to contribute here. Thanks again. Milo, absolutely fascinating conversation and topic pleasure chatting with you today.

Glenn Beckmann: 35:50

What a great conversation today on the podcast. Many thanks today to Dr Andrew whiskeyman GNSI, non resident senior fellow and an adjunct professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School, along with Milo McBride, a fellow in the sustainability, climate and geopolitics program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC, next week on at the boundary, our special guest will be Dr Nicholas sabaret from the University of Paris. Saclay, he's the director of their Graduate School of Computer Science and one of the primary organizers behind our upcoming Trans Atlantic forum on cybersecurity, scheduled for June 23 thanks for listening today. If you like the podcast, please subscribe. Let your friends and colleagues know and tell them to subscribe as well. You can follow GNSI on our LinkedIn and X accounts at USF, underscore GNSI, and check out our website as well. Usf.edu/gnsi, that's going to wrap up this episode of at the boundary. Each new episode will feature global and national security issues we found to be worthy of attention and discussion. I'm Glenn Beckman, thanks for listening today. We'll see you next week at the boundary. You.