Global Quest for Critical Minerals - Vlado Vivoda | 2025 Episode 2

[Music] Hello and welcome to I/O thinker, where we explore the world of international relations, one critical issue at a time, a market in Zubkom. The growing importance of critical minerals is reshaping global geopolitics, resource security and international economic relations. As the world accelerates its transition towards clean energy, technologies and advanced manufacturing, the demand for critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt and rare earth elements has searched, raising new challenges for policymakers and industries alike. In this discussion, we will explore the key issues surrounding critical minerals, focusing on supply chain vulnerabilities, geopolitical implications and other strategies needed to ensure secure and sustainable access. My guest today is Dr. Vado Vivoda. Hello? Hi, Martin, how are you? I'm good thanks. Dr. Vado Vivoda is a distinguished scholar and researcher. He is based in Australia, the University of Queensland, Sustainable Mineral's Institute. His work addresses some of the most pressing global challenges, focusing on the geopolitics of critical minerals, sustainable energy policies and the strategic impacts of global energy transitions. Dr. Vivoda has published extensively in leading journals and edited volumes, making significant contributions to understanding the intersection of resource governance and international policy. He's also an editor in chief of resources policy, one of the world's premier journals dedicated to economics and policy dimensions of energy and mineral extraction, production and use. Conversations will be divided into three blogs we will speak about geopolitics, we will speak about the main principles why the critical minerals are important and also will touch something from the international relations theory to get better overview and perspectives on critical minerals. So how to study this conversation, I was thinking about some good questions to ask and let's start with the first one and that's about the rivalries between the United States and China. How do critical minerals shape strategic rivalries? Great question and thank you for inviting me Martin and great to be here. So I think we first before we answer that question it's important to look into what are critical minerals? Why are they critical? Considered critical as opposed to just minerals. So generally this definition as critical minerals makes them so because of the importance for national and economic security or you could include economic security and the national security and also vulnerability of supply chains. So strategic importance obviously sometimes they refer to as strategic minerals as well. Specifically they are essential for advanced technologies, they are essential for our electrification, digitalization for mobile phones for example 20 more than 20 various metals including mobile phones, semiconductors, electric vehicles and also military equipment. So there's electric vehicles for example most of them have a lithium ion battery. That requires about 120 kilograms of lithium to be included so that's a massive one. That's just one example within the electric vehicle that requires significant amount of critical minerals. But yes so it's green energy electric vehicles, a lot of advanced technologies and military military equipment and that there is right and different countries have different minerals that they include in the lists United States for example has at least 50 critical minerals and the list published in 2002 by the US Geological Survey they have their own criteria and other countries have 30 or 40 and it's become very popular now for countries to to publicize these lists of what they consider critical minerals for that particular country and the reasons for this are you know plenty for and so on but I won't get into that now. But to get to your question the reason here is a specific marketing balance if you like and China's dominance in mining and processing of a lot of critical minerals deemed minerals deemed critical by the United States for example. So China accounts for a lot of minerals China accounts for 60 or 70 more than that 70% and more of global production including processing of some of these metals. So this provides it with significant leverage and I was looking at mineral commodity summary annually published by the US Geological Survey recent one just got published last month only a couple of weeks ago and it's it's beautiful for for for all of us who are interested in critical minerals and mining because it just has you know stats hundreds of pages of statistics and analysis of markets of specific minerals what are you use for and so on and so forth. But it came out in and some interesting facts that I've discovered as I was as I was reading this during my my recent trip actually great reading for the airport was that China actually is the largest producer for 30 out of 44 critical minerals for which information was available or estimates could be made within that US Geological Survey critical mineral commodity summary documents. So 30 out of 44 China is the dominant producer. It's a significant leverage significant imbalance if you like in distribution of these minerals or I guess supply chains for these minerals which include refining and processing as well like midstream not just upstream and this gives it significant leverage so I think for 21 metals and minerals that the United States imports is reliant on imports from more than 50% of its demand they come from China so 21. So that's a significant potential strategic bargaining chip for China in the bilateral relationship and if you like in this strategic competition with the United States. So makes the US strategically vulnerable because of the heavily reliance on some of these imports it makes probably European Union and for some of some of the viewership here I think European that would be a lot of I take a viewers from the European Union and I think it actually not think the European Union is even more reliant on China than the United States for a lot of minerals so so there's European raw materials act and and other measures that have followed have aimed to diversify Europe's supply chains as well but Europe is not here focused yet so we can talk about Europe later as well. So China in recent years specifically over the past year let's say there have been there has been an intensification if you like of Chinese restrictions on exports of certain critical minerals if not outright bans as well including minerals like antimony gallium, germanium, rare earths of course very that's usually always at a center stage rare earths but also just in the last week or so Bismuth, Delurium, Indium, Tantalum and I can't forgot sorry but there's a delisco zone so China is increasingly using these metals as a bargaining chip in its yeah in its relationship with the US there is a tariff impose a potential tariff impose on China some sort of a measure against China and China retaliates with with these types of export restrictions or outright bans. Now the US has said is reliant on China and a lot of these metals but the US is also promoted a push to diversify away from China as much as possible. Again, that cannot happen overnight because a lot of these metals require a mine. So I mean take anywhere between 13 and 23 years to develop from discovery to production. So you cannot build these mines immediately. China's dominance really was was created during the the IKSE case. If you like the peak of globalization when there wasn't really much care paid to where things are produced, China really wanted to take taking all these metal processing refining facilities because of I guess more lax environmental regulations or not really or just just doing a trade off right. We'll sacrifice the environment a bit in order to develop this supply chain dominance. So we will end it in this particular situation where you have this disbalance but China certainly is the dominant actor and the United States is playing a catch up game along with its allies and friends. So so this is now where really the situation is here with with regards to this strategic strategic rivalry between China and the US. This was great explanation and I think quite deep to understand many implications of critical minerals but there is one one sector or one field I would like to touch and that's national security. So when you speak about lithium minerals we understand that that's connected to cars, to chips, to some electronics and technologies but how is this connected to national security and why we have so many papers about critical minerals touching national security. Yes a very very good question. Reliance on foreign sources for critical minerals can compromise national security by exposing supply chains to geopolitical tensions. Dependency on on foreign controlled supply chains particularly if it's foreign adversarial, control supply chains creates vulnerabilities potentially in industrial production, defense capabilities and economic resilience. So China's dominance in rare earth refining where it has a share of I think some 90% or so allows it to impose de facto embargoes and seen in past restrictions on Japan as early as 2010 that followed up from the maritime territorial dispute over the D.I.U. was Senka, Kuala Lentz. And N.D.'s disruptions as Japan is the second largest refiner there for rare earths can cripple sectors reliant on these materials such as aerospace, electronics and renewable energy. China's recent export restrictions and I'd write bands on say on antimony, gallium, germanium that are used heavily in semiconductors and military applications have underscored really the risks of these types of dependencies. So these actions by China or anyone else who's the dominant actor there can disrupt manufacturing and defense sectors leading to potentially strategic vulnerabilities if there is simply not country is unable to produce enough materials and products to be then used in potentially wolf fighting or other ways in cyber warfare or this hybrid warfare and so on and so forth. So that's the connection to national security and the papers don't publish yet but I've actually submitted proofs to to the general comparative strategy just last week on this paper looks at defense critical minerals. I think it's does not being much written on that aspect where with a couple of authors, co-authors we identify we actually have a look at the academic literature and identified whatever has been used in wolf fighting or is used in defense so and call them these defense critical minerals and explain why they're important from the US perspective we this be a paper and a US journal in the US perspective and then we address their the shares were played by China and Russia in supplying these metals into the US so what is their share so so it's very interesting so that's but that's just one dimension but but you have potentially you know advanced technologies and so on and if you have a certain production facilities in a country that rely on that refined material to arrive from China and if there's an outright ban of course this can affect national security I mean economic security and you could say her god their national security as well. It's great that you already mentioned a case study of what we can call a weaponizing of critical minerals do you think that that might be sort of a new geopolitical leverage in in the new world order or do you think that the to weaponize critical minerals will basically get back to China in an unpleasant way I think many people are asking okay if China stops to export I don't know lithium to United States maybe United States can use other country like India as a proxy and they can buy lithium from China through that sort of proxy so so I'm interested in how serious is this weaponizing of critical minerals is it sort of hype that we are all talk about or is it a serious matter that we should really consider some more research into it. A good question very very good question and my answer would be depends because we are looking at potentially 50 plus different supply chains 50 plus different minerals and it varies country to country what's considered a critical mineral what's not you know the it's it's it's really varies and depends on whether they can be weaponized or not I mean lithium not so much because that's very well supplied market there's a lot of potential producers but if you're looking at a specific metal where where one country has as a share of I mean with lithium consider for example the Australia supplies almost about 50 just 50 on the 50 percent of of of mind lithium they then gets processed in China so China doesn't really here have a massive kind of leverage because it's still relies on imports of the raw material which then it just processes and sells for actually that produces batteries so so I think that needs to be taken into consideration as well so so look they they can they varies if there is a specific metal that okay very rare why have they been receiving so much hype is probably because they are perhaps the most a weaponizable of these a lot of for example a neo-demium iron boron magnets are strongest commercially available valuable permanent magnets in the world and China really controls most of that market that is magnets going to all sorts of applications from defense to renewable energy to advanced technology your name it's and China here I think has something like 90 plus percent I think already mentioned it share in processing of rare earth elements now they're not particularly rare but we've landed in a situation where China controls this because it wasn't particularly politicized or securitized in the past say 20 years ago the height of globalization so but we've landed in this position where China's just the largest producer and China's realized that they can use this as leverage but there would be some other materials that are metals that are not particularly recognizable particularly if the markets are a bit more balanced I think we've learned from I mean, if we draw some parallels, we say oil and gas. You know, we've learned from these sanctions after sanctions and embargoes and so on, that oil sanctions don't work particularly well because there's a trade, there's play a big role, it gets exported to a third country, then it gets blended with other oil from somewhere else, and then it gets resold as some whatever crude, you know, Russian oil going to India and then getting refined and sold to who knows where it's from. Very difficult to impose and it weaponized really. I guess it's a, it's a little bit easier with some critical minerals just because of the share, the market share of the, of the, was dominant producer. Again, probably that metal is not as important for the global economy as oil. So it would be difficult to kind of draw parallels there, but I guess you can say, you know, weaponizable given that how much attention has been given to these bad governments. Even you just look at the rare earths and how much literature there is out there on, on, on the rare earth elements from the US and in other countries too, words, it's really you see that they are strategically important. So yeah, but weaponizing them, I mean, that's, that's form of economic state craft. And you know, it happens with other commodities, not just metals, and it's always, always happened. And yeah, but the US does it too, you know, US imposes export controls on, on high tech, on semiconductor technologies that rely on critical minerals. Therefore limiting China's access to some key components for AI and defense applications. So, so they can be used either in the kind of initially processed form or in more like end products as well as if you like geopolitical bargaining chips. But back to my initial answer, I would say it really depends, depends on what, what supply chain we're looking at. Nico will be different and cobalt will be different and rare earths, and which will be different and lithium or molybdenum or whatever. I mean, why they're just critical. Generally that involves some sort of a market failure. Otherwise, it's just a mineral is just a commodity, right? But I think these market concentrations, concentrations in these supply chains, and particularly across the value chain, leads to these market failures. And then they need them to be coming critical. But it's very interesting when you dive deeper into into that. And why that's the case for different countries, how they rationalize, including something as a critical mineral or not. And yeah, there's there's overlap, but each critical mineral list is unique as well. So it's really, really depends. This confirms that we should take more nuance approach instead of generalizations and put everything under critical minerals, because this can also cause some market panics in some way. So that's that's that's a good answer. I want to ask the same question, but from the point of international relations theory. That's does economic interdependence in critical mineral supply chain promote cooperation or the opposite among the states. So I think there's a bit of both as a bit of both opportunities and risks here. Definitely promotes can promote cooperation. Because as I alluded to earlier, no country controls the entire supply chain, even China, that is the dominant player without a doubt does not have full control of the entire supply chain. It relies heavily on a lot of imports of raw materials for cobalt, for example, from the Congo lithium from Australia. So some nickel from Indonesia and so on. So so so there is definitely an aspect of cooperation simply impossible to avoid due to that interdependence in supply chains, because no one controls the entire supply chain. But there's also vulnerabilities as as I mentioned already and alluded to earlier with China's near monopoly on refining what processing some of the some of the metals some of the minerals China's I guess significant role in in in that processing critical minerals means that any kind of disruptions due to export controls policy decisions geopolitical tensions or or extreme weather events really. Can have global repercussions so so Chinese actions have prompted a lot of other countries, including the US and and the EU as well reassess their dependencies and and seek diversified supply chains. So there's something called the minimal security partnership established by United led by the United States, but includes European Union, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Australia, India now as well and what that possibly several other countries in Norway that's not in the EU and UK of course. So these countries are kind of often referred to as a native minerals or metals have formed this strategic alliance where that is committed to really diversification away from China of supply chains and promoting I guess greater cooperation within this kind of let's say call it French or in alliance of largely western countries. To promote also responsible supply chain which is something that generally is not done to to a good extent in supply chains control by China where so yeah so so promotion of good environmental social and governance practice. Social responsibility in mining and so on as part of this western kind of alliance the end under the the the the MSP umbrella. So yeah so again back to the question there's a bit of both cooperation yes but also on the ability depending on which aspect we consider and which countries we consider. I'm glad you mentioned the mineral security partnership may I ask is this the official pact or is it based on more informal approach of members because I think some some students maybe some some members of audience they might ask how how powerful is this alliance because sometimes we have sort of pact which is informal. So it is there but almost invisible in actions and sometimes we have more powerful alliances and those are sort of strategically aligned they are making making strategic moves in certain areas so how would you describe this this partnership. So many a couple of years old you know security partnership and it really is that it's it's not. It doesn't have headquarters it's it's it's it's both formal and informal is formal in the sense that there are member states. There are regular meetings and there's something called the MSP forum where other countries participate as well particularly countries let's say of the global south or countries that are. They say third countries that are not close to China and Russia but not necessarily close to the west by the generally mineral rich. These countries are included to to promote discussion and promote so I guess possibilities for for investment financing and and and so on where I guess western countries in particular members being member states would be able to. So I guess French or their supply chain for critical minerals how far this is going I don't know it's difficult to say there are some projects that have been happening as. due to the initiative, but it's important to know it as well that various member states of the MSP have still been pursuing their own independence. Alliances and partnerships with resource-rich countries, UK with Saudi Arabia, for example, the EU has something like, I'll count remember the exact number, but more than 10 strategic partnerships on raw materials. I would actually take it that countries within the EU have specific partnerships too with resource-rich countries. So, I think so far, the MSP has failed to become an umbrella organization for consolidating the Western, if you like Western, plus Japan, Korea. I generally actually consider them Western as well. Approach to critical minerals and diversifying away from China. I think it's not achieved there, not yet, even though I think that that should be prioritized if I was to advise them. Rather than getting bogged down in millions of country-to-country relationships have an overarching strategy where this grouping promotes certain connections and investment financing, good governance in the resource sector and good practice in terms of environmental and social standards. So, there's a bit of work to be done there. It's still quite a, let's say, a soft organization or institution. It needs a bit more, I think it needs a bit more foundation behind it and a bit more structure. So, yeah, yeah, I'll leave it at that. I think you're answerer from the next question, and many people might think about critical minerals as sort of new generation of oil industry. And we know there were some conflicts because of oil in the past, and I think there are still some conflicts on going. Can we have a similar situation with critical minerals that some countries will decide to go in the war with other countries, just because of critical minerals, which basically makes you to think about the United Nations and some sort of international institution that might prevent those conflicts over critical minerals. So, based on your research, are there any discussions behind the scenes, as we say, that might create sort of international institution that overlooks the critical minerals, and maybe it can point to some potential conflicts or potential conflict zones in the world. Right, right. Very good question. I mean, I don't think there's going to be a conflict exclusively over critical minerals access, but we've seen a lot of posturing in recent years, and it's certainly an element. I mean, just look at Trump and Greenland. That's that kind of rhetoric, but that's all about access to critical minerals, because Greenland is very rich in deposits. So, whether there'll be war over it, I don't think so. I don't think we're going to go that way. I don't think it's that significant, but war by other means, though, for sure. I mean, I always remember, you know, resource stopped Japan before WWII going on this expansion down towards daché stindi, so what's now Indonesia, because of access to raw materials, not just fuels, but others too. So, things like that, I guess, happened in the past, and it was not just only about oil. Conflict potentially, yes, in countries of global south, but more isolated, contained within specific areas. I mean, what's happening in Congo now, with Rwanda, and so on. I mean, there's possibilities in Africa that these conflicts would be heavily influenced by control over resources, including civil war potentially in some countries. And you look at the Wagner group, the infamous Wagner group overtaking production of minerals in certain countries in central and northern Africa, where the French used to have a strong presence before. And you see that model of mining using that kind of criminal organization as driving it, not going to be any, yes, G standards, let me tell you, but there is a militarized element around mining, whether we're going to see in our rights, you know, large scale continental or global war. I don't think so, no, but certainly there's an element of conflict in it. Conflict minerals, there's a whole literature on that as well that goes back decades and decades, largely in Africa, conflict diamonds, and so on. So definitely going to remain as part of a part of the reason why certain stakeholders go to war or enter into conflict, not necessarily nation states, but could be nation states as well. Oh, yeah, I would like to add my two cents to what you said, and that's the role of private military contractors. I spoke with few people from Africa and other countries, as you said, usually global south. And when they want to extract some critical minerals, some private companies coming as a security company to certain area, and they are making sure that everybody will sell the property or land, and after that you have a clean area to extract minerals, and this kind of pressure to sell the land, or to sign a contract with companies extracting those minerals. It's many times, it's done under sort of military pressure or threats, and I think this is also those little sparks that can go big bigger and the conflict will emerge. So that's sort of information I have, and I work with when I speak with people. It's very sad because there are no journalists, so usually you don't have any coverage in the Western media or mainstream media. So many things and many interesting developments are also happening behind the scenes, and we have no chance to know about it. Absolutely, yeah. That's my point. Let's go a little bit to state identities, and let's touch how countries, usually from Africa, from Latin America, from the Saudis Asia, how they deal with the fact that many times the Western companies are coming to those countries, and they aiming extracting critical minerals, and they are using that sort of colonial extraction narrative or some sort of a new colonization in a way that they're again coming to our country. They want to extract the minerals, but we get just like a few cents, and they got millions when they sell them. Yeah, yeah. Good question. Important consideration, definitely. And unfortunately, many mineral-rich countries in the global south, Africa, particularly, also, potentially some Latin American states, still operate under those extractive economic models, so that have been inherited from colonial times, where a small elite controls these proceeds from the extractive sector, and the majority of populations really left behind, and there's no proper governance to support, I guess, development, equitable development within a lot of countries, and Chinese, but also Western, to an extent, investments in mining investments in some of these regions in reinforced patterns of dependency and fuel corruption, where, you know, all the materials are exported, and particularly where, you know, value-added processing occurs elsewhere that can be very little in terms of benefits for the purpose. For most of the population of those countries, minus I guess the elites, whether this be economic elites and/or military elites and political and so on. So yeah, certainly still an issue. And there's still, you know, you look at, but everyone talks about, you know, Africa, resurgence of Africa and its critical minerals game, but then you look at how much of exploration budget mining companies have spent in different regions around the world and Africa's share dropped from like 16 to 10% over the past five, 10 years. So shares actually dropped in global exploration spending by mining companies. So obviously a lot of mining companies don't actually, notwithstanding the resource wealth in these countries, particularly those mining companies that have reputations to uphold are not interested in operating in countries where that reputation could be damaged or be jeopardized. And it's just not a, it's just too risky to operate in certain countries. And yeah, they shy away from, they've shyed away from Africa, a lot of African jurisdictions because of that uncertainty. So that's happening too. And I mean, it's a governance issue. It's an endemic issue in a lot of countries with corruption. And it's in companies still operating in that extractivist model rather than adhering really to high standards in terms of environmental, social and governance performance. And based on your research, is it possible to assess if let's say Chinese approach versus Western approach to countries is in principle the same sort of colonial narrative? Or do you think that China is treating those African or other countries better or worse when you compare it to Western companies? Why I ask in this question is because when I read articles in China, in Chinese language, many times they present their activities as sort of mutual cooperation. That is good for the country that Chinese company is involved in particular industries. And we also hear similar narrative from the Western companies in terms of social responsibility and how much they invest in a country. And then when those two are read by students or researchers, sometimes we wonder where is the true who is more right as we can say it in that way. - Yeah, look, I don't think Western companies are all uniformly angels in this aspect. There are examples of good practice, leading practice, Western commanding companies, including Australian, Canadian and others. But there are also examples of not particularly good practice. I think there's no uniformity. It's same applies with the Chinese, although I think the level of performance, particularly if you look at it from the ESG perspective, is lower in general Chinese companies. I mean, you just look at, for example, nickel production in Indonesia, where there's actually makes no logical sense to produce nickel in Indonesia because of the effect it has on the environment and this emissions intensive. The saving you get from nickel being embedded in electric vehicles and batteries and so on is not sufficient to make up for that. Those carbon emissions that are used in processing that nickel in Indonesia by Chinese companies. So they're going ESG example, whereas just it doesn't fit. And importantly, a lot of say Australian and Canadian mining companies, American as well, they have a lot of legal and regulatory obligations to uphold from their whole country that if they engage in some sort of corrupt behavior or human rights abuses in a third country, they could be held liable in court of law in their own home country, like Australia, Canada, US and so on. So there's a lot of that going on. I don't think it's the case with Chinese companies and from what I know, they have, a lot of them have operated just on whatever we just bring our own labor. We don't do anything to train the local population include them in this particular project. And look at community development and so on. There'd be a bucket of money throwing at the elites. And I guess that's how this is masqueraded in China. It said that, yeah, it benefits that country. Of course it benefits certain people. But yeah, that's at least my perspective on this. We mentioned some actors already like states, I mentioned private military contractors, but let's elaborate on this a little bit more. And are there any significant non-state actors? Oh, this is very interesting actually. So NGOs, I would actually say NGOs or outside of the states and multinational mining corporations. NGOs do play a role and interestingly, their role is quite pronounced in, say, global North. And I can give you some examples where, and I'm not saying I'm not going to say that NGOs are, in uniform in how they behave and what they do, but there is a strong anti-mining agenda that a lot of NGOs are pursuing. And that can also be fueled and they can be hijacked also as tools of disinformation and misinformation. As I found in my own research recently on on the other project lithium deposit in Serbia where NGOs have been used by Russia as well to spread misinformation and disinformation against three or tintos potential mine. Essentially nothing's been produced in Serbia for a lithium deposit that could potentially supply up to 90% of Europe's lithium needs. Very interesting. So there have been instances where NGOs from other countries interfere in certain countries where mines are being developed and a campaign against that mine, against spreading sometimes genuine. Other times spreading misinformation and a lot of these NGOs, since some of them actually at least being just ideologically opposed to mining. So they are a very significant influence. And when you look at, and I've spoken to industry participants in Europe in various countries where they've said that some of these organizations are just tools, geopolitical tools by third parties. And they're just used to specifically Russia in this instance. And they used to, by Russia to undermine the energy transition in Europe and Russia just doesn't want Europe to be mining more stuff that would eventually reduce its reliance on Russian energy and fossil fuels. So very interesting how they can be used as tools for this. And other times they are very useful and you're not international, some of the international non-governmental organizations that are there to promote better practice of mining companies, better mining regulation that is more kind of focused towards promoting better environmental and social governance performance by mining companies, regulation in countries that relates to mining and environment and so on that promotes better practice. So there are numerous organizations that actually promote better practice and like the natural resources governance institute, for example, the EITI, Extracted Industry Transparency Initiative. I mean, they're not NGOs, it's such they're more of what called them, international organizations. And another thing that's been very, very useful, at least in the mining sector, has been a, if you like, a growth in industry standards being good forward. not just by the industry to up the level of performance but also by certain international bodies such as International Council for Metals and Mining, ICMM. And then we have this consolidated mining standard initiative that's coming up soon. We've got a tailings standards as well for mine tailings dams on how they should be kept and maintained. So we avoid disasters like we've had in Brazil, for example, with tailings dam collapses, killing hundreds and not thousands of people and destroying villages and towns. So these kinds of industry and broader initiatives that are developing globally are becoming very important in lifting the standard of my performance of mining companies around the world. And I actually there to be applauded in my opinion. Can I come back to the Serbia case when you were speaking about it? And you said that Russia was using some sort of disinformation campaigns. And I know many people speak about it, but because you research the topic, can you tell us one or two examples how this campaign is basically made? How the campaign is set up? Is it like articles in newspapers, social media, or some scientific reports written by sort of fake experts? Or how is it? All the above, all the above. I'll come across, I think it was November last year, there was and I was in Europe at the time. So I actually was kind of embedded there and could really see what's going on. There was an article that came out on politico.eu on a release of a dossier by an FBI agent that included 277 pages of Russian disinformation, misinformation, efforts into undermining the European Union and really into changing into supporting certain political groups in the European Union, but also beyond US as well. And promoting support for Russia in Ukraine, war as well. And it is such a sophisticated campaign that you just get blown away and you see all these elements, all these elements in the case of Serbia. Of Serbia being almost like a battleground, and Russia doesn't want it to get too close to Western Europe, to the Western under its fear of influence and see this as a threat. And yeah, you see all of that. You see websites, you see articles in the news media, you see certain groups that include, but non-violent lists, that include nationalist groups, far-right, in Serbia, supported by Russia. You also see certain academics who have actually written scientific papers that have been published, you know, now actually and be your tinter effectively asked for these articles to be redacted, because they're based, simply based if you look into it and dig a bit deeper. And I've got a paper coming up, coming up on this hopefully, hopefully soon with a colleague that will look at this case of Yadar, and it's a super interesting, probably most exciting paper written and worked on. But yeah, articles that have actually been published that are based on false information. And and and and re-artinto are actually a really pursuing this matter with nature, about a specific article that got published in journal called Scientific Reports, but it's in the Nature's Suite of Journals to take to bring it down written by six Serbian academics that may or may not be influenced by the Russian interests. But yeah, the evidence that they've used in that paper is just simply, uh, actually incorrect, because it's it's it's just makes absolutely no sense a lot of it. Um, yeah, and in response, it's interesting what that has done, the re-artinto have actually responded to that particular issue by going above and beyond what's required of them by by law, they're committed to something called radical transparency, they're going to open up. If that mine ever produces anything, uh, and it's not going to be before at least 2028 and more likely 2032 if things go ahead and given the current situation in Serbia. So who knows. Um, but uh, so radical transparency that members of the community will be able to monitor exactly what's going on in the mind and at any time, they've voluntarily released all of their environmental impact studies assessments done by more than 100 experts. Uh, they were committed to actually meeting the EU battery passport mandate from 2027 that will require, uh, you know, everything to be documented and will supply chain of every single battery that goes saying an electric vehicle sold in the European Union because they know that that lithium will end up in the European Union. So it's a battle, it's a battle from what I've heard re-artinto have released more than 300 media statements to dispute what's been published in newspapers and other media, which is just mind-blowing. But it all started around 2020. So it wasn't prevalent until 2020 and then you can see that things started shifting from around, around 2020, which was also before the Serbian election, and around the time when this, I guess, geopolitical, um, confrontation between the West and Russia and in particular, but also Russia and China started becoming a bit more intensifying, intensifying. The last question for today's interview, and it's good that you are here and you are researching critical minerals. So what would be top-free under-research areas when we speak about critical minerals and international relations that you would like to point our viewers to, or some researchers even to collaborate with you in the future, and you also think that these free areas need more attention from academic community, from researchers. This is a very difficult question and I'm personally working on various several papers. They're looking at different aspects. I think what would benefit from is, and I'm working on a bit of several examples of this like the other case studies looking at a specific project. What a country, but I would say more of a specific project. Studies, and they have been studies published in this, you know, geographical breakdown of research and studies that have been published. If you look at lithium, a large percentage of it is in the lithium triangle in South America, in Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, those three countries, vast majority of papers, but there's lithium elsewhere too. So therefore, you know, what doing this Serbia piece for us has been, you know, has been almost like a gap, there's, you know, there's lithium elsewhere. So maybe country project or region specific studies, but looking beyond those usual suspects, you know, all of us look at China and US and Latin America Australia, but let's look at some a bit less publicized cases and perhaps, you know, another aspect would be to look at specific supply chains for various metals or end products. So again, to give you an example of what I'm working on is a paper on the supply chain of near-demium ion boron magnets that I mentioned earlier. So specifically digging deeper into that supply chain and analyzing geopolitical, geochronomic and technical aspects of this. Because there are 50 plus or so critical minerals, I think there's a lot of space for education for understanding the supply chain in more depth. There is a bias in the literature towards rare earths, towards lithium and perhaps a little bit less nickel cobalt and then so much less for whatever else, gallium, germanium and timony. So there is a lot of potential there doing studies and picking these at first glance, you know, less relevant critical minerals to understand them, to understand the supply chain. They're relevance for modern economies and modern technologies. When I meet people who work for geological surveys of a bit, US, UK, or Australia, or Australia, wherever, I tell them how important their role is in educating the public because we used to think oil and gas markets, and particularly LNG, where complex and difficult to understand what's going on, but here you've got it on steroids. You've got that many metals, that many supply chains to understand, to work out who are the key players, what's it used for, a son and so forth, that definitely a lot of space for digging deeper, diving deeper, digging deeper, part of the pun, diving deeper into some of the less common, less publicized critical minerals, largely beyond our rare earth's lithium-cobalton nickel. But even within those four looking at non-conventional producers, if you're looking at rare earths, looking at Southeast Asia, rather than the usual suspects, or looking at Europe, there are countries in Northern Europe where none of them discovered a lot of freras, and looking at various suspects and complexities there. What are some potential obstacles to production in those countries that haven't mined much in the last decades? That's very interesting to me as well. You're looking at US and EU specifically domestically. What are the issues for that may be obstacles towards revitalization of actual mining operations within EU and US? Great, great project. I think a bit of that is happening now already, but definitely a lot more space for it, given that there are significant deposits in these two countries/blocks. But yeah, so I guess that would be my answer into some of the potential areas, great areas for research. Yeah, so away from the usual suspects with those key metals, away from those key metals, and perhaps looking at some of the importing countries, and what are the challenges and obstacles and opportunities in bringing mining back? You think like? Great, I think, yeah, I like those recommendations. I also think that not many people know that critical minerals has, like you said, 50 elements that you can write about, and it's not only those mainly published in the mainstream media. Anyway, Dr. Buda, many thanks for your insightful thoughts for sharing your research outcomes with us, and also interesting perspectives on critical minerals. It's a fascinating topic to research, and it provides us with the feel that we can go and research from many perspectives, many countries, and also many aspects of international relations theory. So thanks again for being an IOTinker. Very welcome Martin, and thank you so much for inviting me, and if anyone wants to reach out, please Google me and find my email, emails there, LinkedIn, and so on, and feel free to reach out. Great, thank you so much again, and all the best. Many thanks, and see you next time.