In this week's edition of Let's Talk Energy, Metallium CEO Michael Walshe and Rystad Energy's Jeff Dickerson joined Noah to dig into the increasingly contentious world of critical minerals. These materials, and particularly rare earth elements, have vaulted to the forefront of the growing intersection between energy and security, forcing the West to reckon with China’s almost complete dominance of a sector that is the building block for everything from renewable power generation and batteries to computer chips and radar systems. Read a Q&A excerpt from the episode below, and listen or watch the full conversation here - The AI arms race has a critical minerals problem

Noah Brenner: How did China come to dominate the critical minerals sector — and why does that matter? 

Jeff Dickerson: "China's broad critical mineral dominance provides major economic leverage over other countries. This has slowly taken place over decades — it didn't happen overnight. But we've been kind of like the frogs in the boiling pot. Really since 2023, but particularly over the last year or so, the situation has become quite dire and evolved from economic competition to economic warfare and now, looking at Iran and Venezuela, proxy resource wars." 

Noah Brenner: If China has such dominance, why keep prices low rather than ratchet them up? 

Jeff Dickerson: "From China's perspective, it's more important to achieve your strategic objectives by not only cornering the market but also eliminating competition. The competition, from their perspective, is any competing mine, smelter, or anything else that would limit their ability to use this consolidation of capacity as geopolitical leverage." 

Noah Brenner: Can the West compete — or does it need to leapfrog to an entirely new approach? 

Michael Walshe: "We'd be foolish trying to simply replicate what China does and thinking it'll be economic. They've spent so much capital building up the vertical integration of all their industries, and the margins between each step are razor thin. Some of their projects don't even need to make a margin — the way I've heard it put is that they don't play by free market capitalism. They have state capitalism, or what some call neo-mercantilism, where the government is fine not making a return on equity as long as they achieve strategic dominance." 

Noah Brenner: Does the world appreciate how precarious this situation is — or are we like the Strait of Hormuz, where everyone saw the danger but didn't price it in? 

Michael Walshe: "Personally, I do think the world is pretty much oblivious to this critical metals story and how fundamental it is to all modern life. AI is one of the most energy-intensive technologies humans have ever developed. And I think there's a real lack of understanding between all these AI projections and data centre projections and the actual raw materials required to make that a reality." 

Noah Brenner: Can you give us a concrete example of how exposed the West really is right now? 

Jeff Dickerson: "Yttrium is used in manufacturing gas-fired turbines. Turbine blades require a thermal barrier coating — and that coating is yttrium-stabilised zirconia. There is no functional commercial replacement at scale. Without it, turbine blades would melt at peak performance. And those turbines are the primary power source being built at data centre sites. GE Vernova raised the flag at the end of last year that this could become an issue. They mentioned some runway into 2026, but stockpiles are dwindling. In February and March, Reuters reported that executives from two suppliers said they would no longer be able to supply yttrium-stabilised zirconia, due to an inability to access yttrium." 

Noah Brenner: What does success actually look like — and what's the one idea people should take away from this episode? 

Michael Walshe: "The chokepoint with critical metals is not the ore body, it's the processing. The West owns a significant amount of resources in the ground, but it really lacks strategic control if the conversion capacity sits offshore. It's not the upstream product that can be used in an end application — it's the refined material. And if that sits offshore, countries that hold that end product can really have leverage over the West. The next arms race is really an AI race — and to compete, you have to have the critical metals and the processing capacity onshore." 

Listen or watch the full conversation here - The AI arms race has a critical minerals problem

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