EP 119 — Baker Institute's Ashley Zumwalt-Forbes On Why Critical Minerals Are The Weakest Link In Western Defense Supply Chains

Ashley Zumwalt-Forbes drilled the first unconventional wells in Argentina for ExxonMobil, built a nickel mining company in Western Australia, then served as DOE Deputy Director for Batteries and Critical Materials. Today she advises on critical mineral policy as a Nonresident Fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute and invests across the critical supply chain through her family office, Smoketree Resources.

Ashley lays out a three-step framework for breaking Western dependence on adversarial-controlled supply chains, starting with an allied definition of adversarial capital and ending with import controls on finished goods in defense and semiconductor applications.

Topics discussed:

• How China weaponized copper smelting economics through zero TCRCs
• Why 99% of global crude gallium production sits in China
• A three-step framework for bifurcating critical mineral markets
• Why public markets are rewarding supply chain security stories
• The difference between critical minerals and rare earths
• Why government backstopping alone cannot scale to 60 minerals
• Reimagining smelter revenue models through capacity-based agreements
• Building a mining company from scratch in Western Australia

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