Much is being made about “critical minerals” these days. The energy transition—electric vehicles, solar and wind power—will make enormous demands on our supply chains. Big Tech’s obsession with AI and data centers will all also fuel more demand, and this industry is already insatiable. Everyday Americans use more energy and buy more stuff every year.

The usual response to the demand for more minerals (like copper, cobalt, nickel, rare earths, etc.) is to build more mines. The United States is rich in natural resources but the mining industry has left a legacy of pollution and degradation and thus it has engendered mistrust from the public. It’s hard to build a new mine these days. The response by our autocratic regime is a predictable one: cut oversight and regulations and “fast-track” new projects. And throw some money around.

But what if there is another way?

A mine is a big hole in the ground. A lot of material gets moved and has to be dumped on site. The ore gets processed and the “waste” rock gets dumped on site. Some of this material is underwater in ponds. The dams holding back these ponds can break and cause catastrophes, like this one in Brazil (Brumadinho) in 2019 that killed nearly 300 people:

There are tailings ponds all over the world, many with dams just waiting to fail. There are piles and piles of waste rock and tailings all over the world. The thing is, this stuff isn’t waste. It’s processed rock. It contains, albeit in lower concentrations, the very minerals that were being mined in the first place.

A new study from the Colorado School of Mines suggests that 90% of our country’s “critical minerals” needs could be met by mining tailings piles. This would be easy mining. No new holes to dig. The material you want to work is already on the surface and has already gone through a preliminary sorting.

We have the world’s most valuable garbage. When we ship our garbage overseas, poor people there go through it for valuable stuff so they can eke out a living. At some point, we have to stop thinking about waste, garbage, refuse, and trash. These things don’t really exist! They are just resources that have yet to be returned to the system.

Miners should be required to process their tailings and waste rock before they are allowed to dig new mines. Old mines should be rehabilitated before building new ones. Public policy (i.e. government investment) should be directed toward “enhanced recovery” and the exploitation of what we used to think of as leftovers.

The modern metal industry, particularly steel, copper, and aluminum, depends on recycling. Scrap is critical to the production cycle. There are incentives in place to recover used metal. This kind of thing needs to be ubiquitous. It is especially necessary in the tech sector with its toxic obsolescence/upgrade cycle. We throw away functional tech just because it gets “old” and not because it doesn’t work anymore. Silicon Valley depends on voracious consumer demand for fancier, shinier, and prettier stuff every year.

The study I mentioned is in Science and is by Elizabeth A. Holley, et. al. Here’s the abstract:

The US has sufficient geological endowment in active metal mines to reduce the nation’s dependence on critical mineral imports. Demand is increasing for cobalt, nickel, rare earth elements, tellurium, germanium, and other materials used in energy production, semiconductors, and defense. This study uses a statistical evaluation of new geochemical datasets to quantify the critical minerals that are mined annually in US ores but go unrecovered. Ninety percent recovery of by-products from existing domestic metal mining operations could meet nearly all US critical mineral needs; one percent recovery would substantially reduce import reliance for most elements evaluated. Policies and technological advancements can enable by-product recovery, which is a resource-efficient approach to critical mineral supply that reduces waste, impact, and geopolitical risk.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adw8997

Sitting on the patio at twilight there were sleek, black birds overhead, dashing about erratically. In silhouette they resembled accipiters with their long, pointed wings These birds were more slender though, and they moved more like flycatchers or even butterflies. Accipiters like Cooper’s hawks fly in straight lines or in smooth, aerodynamic arcs. This handful of birds seemed like they were chasing insects.

And that’s what Common nighthawks (Cordeiles minor) eat! Flying insects. Lots of them. Nighthawks are classified with Whip-poor-will’s and other Nightjars in the avian family Caprimulgidae in the order Caprimulgiformes. The Latin root “capri-” means “goat” and these are the Goatsuckers.

Why are they called that? It seems they have rather large mouth openings and ancient people believed their nocturnal habits included sucking milk from she-goats. Modern people believe a lot of crazy shit, too.

The nighthawks danced around a bit, darting to-and-for in search of prey. By the time it got dark they were long gone. I guess they need light to see like the rest of us!

Edward Hopper was thinking of night-time predators when he painted his masterpiece:

“Nighthawks” is at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Normally I am one to get excited about new technologies. But with AI the story is different. I am hostile to the entire field. I get sick to my stomach every time I hear or see “AI.”

Why?

I think Stephen Diehl has summed it up perfectly:

. . . the backlash against artificial intelligence, especially within circles sensitive to economic inequality and corporate overreach, is not a random or irrational phenomenon. It is an entirely predictable consequence of a decade scarred by tech disappointments and malfeasance, amplified by the unsettling ideologies and political stances of AI’s leading figures. The industry’s penchant for reality-bending hyperbole, coupled with legitimate concerns about intellectual property, data privacy, and job security, has created an environment where distrust is and should be the default position.

Diehl is a computer scientist who writes a lot about public policy.

The sad part about all this is that large language models and neural networks are really cool tools with some very interesting and important applications. But they are kind of like table saws—only useful to a small number of people. The “average joe” is not going to benefit from most of this stuff.

Diehl adds:

. . . the core reasons for the backlash are deeply rooted in the industry’s own presentation and practices. By cultivating an image characterized by unlikeable leaders, bizarre eschatological pronouncements, anti-democratic leanings, and ethically questionable methods, the AI industry has largely engineered its own public relations problem. It should not wonder why it faces skepticism and hostility; it is, in many ways, a backlash of its own making.

I’m old enough to have lived through many boom-and-bust cycles and seen lots of hype and failure. Right now, our Tech Bro Overlords are still living on the spectacular success of the iPhone. That wave has crested, but everyone is still riding it. There is no new killer app or killer piece of tech that will have the impact of the iPhone. Silicon Valley peaked out with that one. They desperately want to get back to that place of cultural and economic hegemony that the smartphone market produced.

But it ain’t happening. These guys are high on their own supply and clinging to their mythology about the transformative nature of their products. But there is no there, there, and no amount of hype is going to change that.

Make America Dumb has succeeded. In another act of ideological madness the head of the HHS (I can hardly bring myself to type his name) has cancelled funding for mRNA vaccine research. This is MADness: another act of impossible stupidity and cruelty, founded entirely on deliberate ignorance, fear-mongering, and a callous dismissal of years of hard work by thousands of dedicated people.

The anti-vaccine crowd has never been known for any kind of consistency or coherence in their world-view. This is an unfortunate consequence of the pseudo-spiritual woo-woo that became mainstream in the 70s and soon replaced any sort of intellectual rigor when it came to health and disease, nutrition, and fitness.

Criticism of the medical establishment and Big Pharma is certainly warranted. Things could be a lot better. But substituting hippy bullshit for actual research is just plain stupid.

mRNA vaccines are part of the movement toward more targeted, more personalized medical interventions called immunotherapy. Even the crystal-gazers want a better immune system! Well, this is how you get there. Cutting off funding for life-saving science because you are pandering to the dumbest bloc of voters in the country is morally reprehensible. That man is scum, and his boss is the Scumbag-in-Chief.

Thank you, anti-vaxxers! Your mentally bankrupt “philosophy” is going to bite you (and the rest of us) in the ass! Once you start down the road of trashing legitimate intellectual endeavors—like cancer studies—and the places where they are done—like universities—you will find it hard to recover. The people who do this work will go somewhere else. The companies that partner with these institutions will lose intellectual capital and their businesses will suffer. And the people like us who might benefit someday from quality scientific work will never see those fruits because the trees will have been ripped out by the roots.

This is how you Make America Dumb. This is MADness.