Episode 2494: Samuel George on US-Chinese rivalry for the world's most critical minerals

In late February in DC, I attended the US premiere of the Bertelsmann Foundation of North America produced documentary “Lithium Rising”, a movie about the extraction of essential rare minerals like lithium, nickel and cobalt. Afterwards, I moderated a panel featuring the movie’s director Samuel George, the Biden US Department of Energy Director Giulia Siccardo and Environmental Lawyer JingJing Zhang (the "Erin Brockovich of China"). In post Liberation Day America, of course, the issues addressed in both “Lithium Rising” and our panel discussion - particularly US-Chinese economic rivalry over these essential rare minerals - are even more relevant. Tariffs or not, George’s important new movie uncovers the essential economic and moral rules of today’s rechargeable battery age. FIVE TAKEAWAYS* China dominates the critical minerals supply chain, particularly in refining lithium, cobalt, and nickel - creating a significant vulnerability for the United States and Western countries who rely on these minerals for everything from consumer electronics to military equipment.* Resource extraction creates complex moral dilemmas in communities like those in Nevada, Bolivia, Congo, and Chile, where mining offers economic opportunities but also threatens environment and sacred lands, often dividing local populations.* History appears to be repeating itself with China's approach in Africa mirroring aspects of 19th century European colonialism, building infrastructure that primarily serves to extract resources while local communities remain impoverished.* Battery recycling offers a potential "silver lining" but faces two major challenges: making the process cost-effective compared to new mining, and accumulating enough recycled materials to create a closed-loop system, which could take decades.* The geopolitical competition for these minerals is intensifying, with tariffs and trade wars affecting global supply chains and the livelihoods of workers throughout the system, from miners to manufacturers. FULL TRANSCRIPTAndrew Keen: Hello, everybody. Last year, we did a show on a new book. It was a new book back then called Cobalt Red about the role of cobalt, the mineral in the Congo. We also did a show. The author of the Cobalt Red book is Siddharth Kara, and it won a number of awards. It's the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. We also did a show with Ernest Scheyder, who authored a book, The War Below, Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives. Lithium and cobalt are indeed becoming the critical minerals of our networked age. We've done two books on it, and a couple of months ago, I went to the premiere, a wonderful new film, a nonfiction documentary by my guest Samuel George. He has a new movie out called Lithium Rising and I moderated a panel in Washington DC and I'm thrilled that Samuel George is joining us now. He works with the Bertelsmann Foundation of North America and it's a Bertelsman funded enterprise. Sam, congratulations on the movie. It's quite an achievement. I know you traveled all over the world. You went to Europe, Latin America, a lot of remarkable footage also from Africa. How would you compare the business of writing a book like Cobalt read or the war below about lithium and cobalt and the challenges and opportunities of doing a movie like lithium rising what are the particular challenges for a movie director like yourself.Samuel George: Yeah, Andrew. Well, first of all, I just want to thank you for having me on the program. I appreciate that. And you're right. It is a very different skill set that's required. It's a different set of challenges and also a different set of opportunities. I mean, the beauty of writing, which is something I get a chance to do as well. And I should say we actually do have a long paper coming out of this process that I wrote that will probably be coming out in the next couple months. But the beauty of writing is you need to kind of understand your topic, and if you can really understand your topics, you have the opportunity to explain it. When it comes to filming, if the camera doesn't have it, you don't have it. You might have a sense of something, people might explain things to you in a certain way, but if you don't have it on your camera in a way that's digestible and easy for audience to grasp, it doesn't matter whether you personally understand it or not. So the challenge is really, okay, maybe you understand the issue, but how do you show it? How do you bring your audience to that front line? Because that's the opportunity that you have that you don't necessarily have when you write. And that's to take an audience literally to these remote locations that they've never been and plant their feet right in the ground, whether that be the Atacama in Northern Chile, whether that'd be the red earth of Colwaisy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And that's the beauty of it, but it takes more of making sure you get something not just whether you understand it is almost irrelevant. I mean I guess you do need to understand it but you need to be able to draw it out of a place. It's easier when you're writing to get to some of these difficult places because you don't have to bring 900 pounds of equipment and you can kind of move easier and you're much more discreet. You can get places much easier as you can imagine, where with this, you're carrying all this equipment down. You're obvious from miles away. So you really have to build relationships and get people to get comfortable with you and be willing to speak out. So it's different arts, but it's also different rewards. And the beauty of being able to combine analysis with these visuals is really the draw of what makes documentary so magic because you're really kind of hitting different senses at the same time, visual, audio, and combining it to hopefully make some sort of bigger story.Andrew Keen: Well, speaking, Sam, of audio and visuals, we've got a one minute clip or introduction to the movie. People just listening on this podcast won't get to see your excellent film work, but everybody else will. So let's just have a minute to see what lithium rising is all about. We'll be back in a minute.[Clip plays]Andrew Keen: Here's a saying that says that the natural resources are today's bread and tomorrow's hunger. Great stuff, Sam. That last quote was in Spanish. Maybe you want to translate that to English, because I think, in a sense, it summarizes what lithium rising is about.Samuel George: Right. Well, that's this idea that natural resources in a lot of these places, I mean, you have to take a step back that a lot of these resources, you mentioned the lithium, the cobalt, you can throw nickel into that conversation. And then some of the more traditional ones like copper and silver, a lot are in poor countries. And for centuries, the opportunity to access this has been like a mirage, dangled in front of many of these poor countries as an opportunity to become more wealthy. Yet what we continue to see...