The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 26 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 3 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Litinsky predicts a major auto OEM will fail or need bailout by 2027
“I'll bet that in the next five years, we will see a major household name OEM fail or need a bailout due to not, you know, prices went up on them, but lack of access to a material, some kind of critical material.”
Litinsky predicts US taxpayers will profit from DoD deal in five years
“It would not surprise me if when we, five years from now, hopefully we'll do this conference, and Chamath, you'll say to me, Jim, you know, I remember that deal that was the first of its kind that you did with DoD, And the government made money on you. The tax…”
Litinsky: China drove almost all global commodity capacity expansion last decade
“Pretty much all of the incremental steel and aluminum and commodities capacity in the world over the last decade has come online because, you know, China has led the way.”
Litinsky: Rare earth supply chain outside MP Materials is domiciled in China
“So outside of us, this entire supply chain is essentially domiciled in China.”
Litinsky: Glencore and Vale could match market caps in 3-year cash flow
“So, so actually the nickel industry is dominated by essentially Glencore and Valle. Those two businesses, and I'm not, you know, I'm not pitching stocks, but as an investor, you know, we'll see what the next panel, those two businesses right now at today's com…”
Litinsky predicts Tesla or other EV makers will acquire upstream miners
“So what's going to happen is, I think you're going to see maybe an AOL Time Warner moment, and I don't mean it the negative way, but I think you could see a Tesla or someone like that buy upstream Outstream into these industries because ultimately downstream t…”
Litinsky: US mineral reliance on China mirrors Germany's Russian gas dependence
“I think it's a fair analogy to say, That Germany is to Nat gas as we are to China supply chain.”
Litinsky: MP Materials is 100% of the US rare earth industry
“We're a hundred percent of the American industry.”
Litinsky: MP Materials building 10x capacity facility for DoD and Apple
“So we're expanding our facility in Texas for Apple. I'll talk about that in a second, but we're then going to build a Tenex facility to Tenex our capacity with DoD as our a hundred percent offtake partner customer and business partner, because we'll be splitti…”
Litinsky: The future of warfare is physical AI, drones, and robots
“The future of warfare, Is physical AI, right? Robots and drones.”
Litinsky: Coal powers 80% of China's steel and aluminum production
“Interestingly, about 80% of the aluminum and 80, 80% of the steel production in China is done with coal.”
Litinsky: Critical minerals will replace fossil fuels as geopolitical leverage
“When we think about the past of the fossil fuel driving geopolitical gamesmanship and power in the world, the future is about minerals.”
Litinsky warns of a massive looming supply deficit for NdPr rare earths
“This is NDPR. This is the stuff that we make, the input into magnetics. You can see there's a huge deficit that is looming.”
Litinsky predicts the start of a massive physical commodities bull market
“There is going to be a big, beautiful bull market in real stuff, and it is just beginning”
Litinsky: Global electrification requires $200B capex across 50 copper, nickel projects
“Some good source that I utilize estimated that we probably need on the order of 40 to 50 copper and nickel projects over the next couple decades, so call it roughly two hundred billion dollars of capex to satisfy the demand for electrification that we have ove…”
Litinsky: Rare earth magnets are the feedstock to physical AI
“So rare earth magnets are really the feedstock to physical AI.”
Litinsky: Mountain Pass is the best rare earth ore body globally
“It's actually the, really the best rare earth ore body in the world.”
Litinsky: MP Materials needs thousands of new hires for Apple and DOD
“We have 850 employees today at MP. We're gonna hire, when we include what we're building out for Apple coupled with what we're building with DOD, we're gonna need a couple thousand more people easily, not to mention the construction jobs.”
Litinsky: MP Materials' Mountain Pass assets carry a $2B replacement cost
“And so these assets, this is about two billion dollars of replacement costs”
Litinsky: MP Materials generates ~$450M in run-rate EBITDA
“We're now doing approximately four hundred and fifty million of run rate EBITDA today.”
Litinsky: Electrification hardware boom rivals the 1910s automotive industry birth
“This is like, this is the era of, it's as if it's, you know, the 19 teens, and Ford is just out. I mean, there is an entire supply chain, and it's not just EVs, it's wind turbines, it's drones, it's robots, and it needs to be a bunch of real stuff that we all …”
Litinsky: Scaling novel lithium extraction tech to commercial viability takes 5-10 years
“And so there may be, that may be an example of a solution, but that'll take five to 10 years.”
Litinsky: Developing and operationalizing new mining projects takes a decade
“That's a great question, and that's the challenge, is that it takes, to get any of these things, it takes a decade, right?”
Litinsky: Four of top 10 global EV auto OEMs are Chinese
“Four of the top 10 OEMs are Chinese, by global battery electric share.”