Mining entrepreneur Robert Friedland delivers shock therapy on critical minerals, and the impossible challenges the West faces today.

At the 2025 Energy Business Summit at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, billionaire mining entrepreneur Robert Friedland delivered a tour de force dissertation on critical minerals and the raw materials supply chain.

His message was clear and sobering: The world has an insatiable thirst for metals, from surging military budgets to AI data centers and the greening of the global economy, but it does not have a credible way to supply the metals it intends to consume over the next few decades.

The United States is totally dependent on China for almost every critical mineral.

A sampling of the soundbites that I found to be the most insightful and entertaining:

"In this country, people think a ham sandwich comes from a refrigerator. People that are highly educated and live in urban centers, they go to the refrigerator, they open it up, they take the ham sandwich out of the refrigerator. There's 30 million pigs a month being slaughtered in a river of blood outside Chicago."