Turning Gabbro into Rare Earths Akin to Spinning Straw into Gold

The latest grifter opportunity

A 9 December Wall Street Journal report caught the attention of Guancha reporter Cheng Xu who then did further research to write “Silicon Valley has entered the game and wants to challenge the dominance of China’s critical minerals.” I don’t want to reveal too much of Cheng’s report but will say the Outlaw US Empire’s Deep State and its few remaining industrial corporations—especially the Military Industrial Complex—are throwing billions of dollars at the problem of China’s vertical dominance of the entire rare earth metal supply chain so China’s leverage can be mitigated. Given the great thirst for a solution, the billions being thrown at the problem and the usual lack of oversight in such cases gives smart grifters excellent opportunities to make many easy millions. So, as you read, do keep that in mind as the first example seems a fine example since the material being used, gabbro, is the common mafic rock that makes up most of the planet’s seafloor.

Gabbro is an inconspicuous rock that is inexpensive and rich in minerals, and is often used as a paving material, but the United States is trying to use this rock to reduce its dependence on China’s critical minerals. According to a report by the Wall Street Journal on December 9, Silicon Valley companies are trying to process gabbro to produce aluminum, magnesium and other key minerals that need to be imported from China.

In Oakland, California, USA, a start-up called Brimstone is processing gabbro through proprietary chemical processes and ready-made equipment to extract minerals from it. Founded in 2019, the company has raised more than $80 million from investors such as tech giant Amazon and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

According to the report, Brimstone is improving its process and seeking to extract magnesium, titanium, and aluminum from rocks such as gabbro, as well as alumina, a key raw material for the production of aluminum. Brimstone CEO Cody Finke said the company can produce multiple minerals using the same ore, equipment and chemical process at about 40% lower cost than traditional methods.

Finke said that once full production is achieved, energy costs will be reduced by 30% to 50%, “You have to create a lower-cost, more profitable process, otherwise you can’t bring production back to the United States.”

While Brimstone has set an “ambitious” goal, the company also needs to prove its production capacity first. The report pointed out that Brimstone can only produce some minerals at the laboratory stage, and titanium production is even stuck in the paper stage. The company has not yet built a factory capable of industrial-scale production and does not have any timeline for building a factory.

The Wall Street Journal mentioned that some previous studies have shown that extracting certain metals from gabbro and similar rocks is not commercially viable because the production process is more complex, energy intensive and generates a large amount of waste, which can be very costly.

Aluminum is one of the most widely used industrial raw materials, but the United States has small bauxite reserves, producing less than 17% of the U.S. demand. Titanium is a vital raw material for the aviation industry, while magnesium is widely used in components for aerospace, automotive, and other important industries. China dominates the mining and processing of these three critical minerals.

The Wall Street Journal said that the United States has also tried to establish its own supply system for critical minerals and rare earths, but most of these projects did not have the ability to compete with China and quickly failed. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, most of the 54 minerals listed as critical minerals in the United States, it must rely on imports.

In recent years, the United States and other Western countries have advocated “reducing dependence on China”, and Silicon Valley startups like Brimstone have proposed their own “solutions” to try to “break China’s dominance” to produce key strategic resources in the United States.

The U.S. government and private investors have stepped up their efforts to fund mining companies and startups, and data provider PitchBook said that venture capitalists have invested $600 million in U.S. critical mineral startups this year, a record high.

The Trump administration has also invested hundreds of millions of dollars in related projects, including US rare earth company MP Materials, rare earth magnet startup Vulcan Elements, magnet recycling company ReElement Technologies, and lithium mining company Lithium Americas. The U.S. government has also signed agreements with more than a dozen countries, including Ukraine, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates, to secure access to critical mineral projects.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. announced a $1.5 trillion plan in October, which includes investments in critical minerals. Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, former deputy administrator of the National Nuclear Safety Administration, is running a new company called Litore Partners, which announced that it will provide procurement, financing and supply services for critical minerals to the US government and businesses.

Gordon-Hagerty declined to answer questions about the company’s funding sources and customers, but she claimed that Litore Partners is working with U.S. allies and partners to ensure they have access to critical minerals.

The Wall Street Journal also mentioned that researchers who have been involved in the development of autonomous vehicles in Silicon Valley are trying to apply their mathematical models to the exploration of critical minerals. Some Western companies are trying to use artificial intelligence applications to improve the success rate of mineral exploration or to find metal alloys that can simulate the properties of key minerals.

British chemical manufacturer Milvus Advanced is using machine learning to develop alternatives to key minerals synthesized in the laboratory. Assia Cassidy, the company’s founder, said she buys metal salts, dissolves them in water and mixes them with other ingredients that contain the desired properties of a particular mineral. The process produces alloys that mimic materials such as platinum, silver, and indium.

Cassidy claimed that Milvus Advanced was able to produce these alloys for at least 70% less than the market price, “which is the only way to compete with China.” ”

But some Western experts have questioned the efforts of startups, arguing that the fundamental problem lies in the shortage of skilled workers. Corby Anderson, a mineral processing expert at Colorado University of Mines, said: “What we really lack is the expertise that has accumulated a lot of experience and has the ability to handle minerals, and we have lost these people.”

The cost of alternatives for U.S. startups is also being questioned, with Gracelin Baskaran, director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a U.S. think tank, saying: “The question is not whether it is technically feasible, but whether it is economically cost-effective. We all agree that these minerals are needed, but the key is to be affordable.” [My Emphasis]

A look at the Brimstone website reveals its primary interest is in cement and the goal is to reduce Portland Cement’s carbon impact by replacing limestone with calcium-based silicate rocks. There appears to be a big interest in extracting alumina from gabbro, but there’s no mention of extracting the critical rare earths needed to make so many of high-tech’s key components. Brimstone is indeed a start-up that appears to be genuine, but not the sort that will provide any relief from China’s leverage.

The synthesis processers differ little from spinning gold from straw as told by the Brother’s Grimm folk tale, although that seems to be the best front for grifters to utilize. The money people usually are illiterate when it comes to science and industrial processes and should be easy to fool. And as the School of Mines person noted, very few are literate in geology and minerology, and non-oil and gas miners are an endangered species within the Outlaw US Empire.

So what’s a desperate Empire to do? Despite their bordering on alchemy, the synthesizers IMO have the right idea—replication: atomic level rearrangement of atoms to form the desired product, in this case rare earth metals. The drawback is the amount of energy such a process would require and the fact it remains theoretical. Yes, science fiction shows it works very well and with little fuss, but that’s not reality. Somebody mentioned cost must be reasonable. Chart of Shanghai Metal Market. Cerium oxide is one of the most commonly used Rare Earth Oxides and comes in two different grades and can be compared to the cost of other metals via the drop-down menus. The other part of the equation is how much is needed to make the critical high-tech components, like magnets? How many grifters are already at work getting their money for next to nothing?

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