I just watched Lockheed’s new Lamprey concept and I had the same reaction I get when I see a new AI accelerator roadmap.
Cool. Scary. Impressive.
Then I ask the only question that matters.
Where are the materials?
Lamprey is a modular uncrewed undersea vehicle that can latch onto ships and submarines, ride into the operating area, recharge, then pop off and do work. It is built around stealthy access and sea denial. It can sit on the seabed. It can carry payloads. It can launch drones. It can throw decoys. It can fire a torpedo.
Here is the hardware reality, in plain English:
- It rides in. It attaches to a host vessel and arrives with energy on board.
- It has space. About 24 cubic feet of internal payload volume is the headline number.
- It recharges. Electric power plus a built-in hydro-generator concept for battery top-off.
- It scales. Renderings show up to three twin-tube launchers for six aerial drones total.
- It links the kill chain. The concept video shows it pushing targeting data up to an F-35.
That is the dream. Distributed, sneaky, persistent. A nightmare for anyone trying to protect ports, chokepoints, and sea lanes.
Now the pivot.
None of it happens without the dirt.
You want the AI Revolution. You want the Green Future. Then you need to buy the mines. If you do not invest in the dirt, the tech is dead. Period.
The Hardware Reality. Silver and Copper Are The Choke Points
Lamprey is not just a torpedo with fins. It is a sensor platform. It is a communications platform. It is a battery platform. That means the same mineral inputs as the rest of the modern stack.
Silver. You cannot code your way out of a silver deficit
Silver is the contact metal. The conductor. The paste. The switchgear guts. The high-reliability interconnect story.
And the market is not acting relaxed about it.
Reuters is now pointing to a sixth straight year of structural deficit in silver, with an estimate around 67 million ounces. That is not vibes. That is a recurring hole.
Also, silver just printed a price move that screams tightness and reflexive buying, including an all-time high around late January and violent pullbacks right after.
Where it hits hardware:
- Defense electronics: sensors, RF, power conditioning, connectors
- AI data centers: power distribution, high-current contacts, relays
- Solar and grid: silver remains embedded in PV manufacturing even with thrift and substitution pressure
Bottom line. Silver is a scaling limiter.
Copper. The AI buildout is a copper buildout
Copper is wiring, motors, power rails, busbars, transformers, switchgear, everything.
And the supply chain is acting fragile in real time.
Capstone’s Mantoverde mine in Chile saw production largely halted around a strike that impacted a desalination plant, because modern mining is infrastructure-dependent and brittle.
In Canada, Glencore suspended close to $1 billion in planned investments tied to its Horne smelter situation, with regulation uncertainty and emissions constraints hanging over throughput.
Copper also hit record pricing levels in late January, which is the market yelling “future shortage tax.”
And here is the most telling signal. Big Tech is already looking for ways around copper constraints. Microsoft is exploring high-temperature superconducting cabling concepts to shrink power delivery footprint. That is not a science fair project. That is a response to scale pressure.
Lithium. The battery metal is back in the headlines
Lithium demand is not just EVs anymore. It is grid storage. It is data centers that need firm power. It is industrial policy.
China announced it will phase out battery export VAT rebates, and lithium prices jumped on the news. That is a policy lever directly hitting the input costs of the electrified future.
Zimbabwe’s lithium story also shows the same pattern. More exports, heavy Chinese investment, and a stated plan to stop raw concentrate exports starting 2027 to force local processing. That is upstream leverage building.
Cobalt. If you want high performance batteries, you are in geopolitics
Cobalt is about energy density and thermal stability in many premium chemistries. It is also about concentrated supply.
Reuters is blunt. The U.S. is trying to challenge China’s grip on Africa’s minerals, with copper and cobalt central to the strategy, and the DRC still sitting on the majority share of global cobalt output.
So when you hear “battery supply chain,” translate it correctly.
It is a map. It is ports. It is offtake. It is who writes the checks.
The Tech Dream vs. The Mineral Reality
| Tech Dream | What People Promise | Mineral Reality | What Breaks First |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lamprey-style undersea drone swarms | Persistent sea denial at scale | Silver and copper intensive electronics, lithium battery dependency | Unit cost spikes, production caps, sensor supply delays |
| AI data center explosion | Infinite compute, everywhere | Copper strain, grid gear constraints, silver deficit signals | Power delivery bottlenecks, build delays, cost blowouts |
| Green grid buildout | Fast transmission and storage | Utility capex surging to meet load, upstream metals pressure | Interconnect queues, switchgear wait times, project slippage |
| Battery scale for EVs and storage | Cheap cells forever | Lithium policy shocks, cobalt geopolitics | Input volatility, contract repricing, delayed deployments |
The “L” for the West. We fund apps. China funds dirt
Here is the losing strategy in one line.
We spend billions on R and D and we stall extraction.
Look at the pattern in the news cycle, just from the last few weeks:
- The U.S. is scrambling to re-route African mineral flows with finance and offtake deals, because ownership and processing control are already tilted.
- The U.S. is even talking about speeding deep seabed mining permits, because the conventional pipeline is too slow for the demand curve.
- Major copper infrastructure decisions are frozen by regulation and permitting friction, even when money is on the table.
You cannot ship an AI future on press releases. You ship it on concentrates, refining, and metal.
The Financial Impact. The Bag is not theoretical
Big Tech is lining up a massive spend cycle for AI infrastructure in 2026, with Reuters reporting a planned spending wave on the order of hundreds of billions.
Utilities are lifting multi-year capex plans to serve data center load. Duke put $103 billion on the table across five years.
If minerals and processing do not match that curve, you do not get “slower growth.”
You get stranded capex.
The Bag. What gets vaporized when supply fails
| Failure Mode | What It Does | Who Eats It | Loss Shape |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copper shortage and price spikes | Raises build cost for power and data centers, forces delays | Hyperscalers, utilities, defense primes | Tens of billions in delayed deployments and cost overruns |
| Silver deficit persists | Forces redesign, substitution, higher failure rates in high-reliability systems | Defense electronics, grid gear, PV supply chain | Multi-year procurement crunch, performance tradeoffs |
| Lithium policy shock | Sudden repricing of battery inputs | Storage developers, EV OEMs, data center backup | Contract resets, project deferrals |
| Cobalt leverage tightens | Premium battery chemistries get geopolitical risk premium | Auto, aerospace, defense, storage | Higher BOM, supply rationing in stress events |
The Geopolitical Scoreboard. Who owns the mines vs. who needs the tech
| Block | What They Need | What They Control | The Reality |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | AI scale, grid scale, defense scale | Capital, offtake tools, incentives | Trying to claw back access in Africa instead of owning supply |
| China | Same tech stack, plus export power | Processing dominance, upstream positions in key regions | Uses policy levers that move lithium pricing and supply cadence |
| DRC and African copper belts | Revenue and security | Cobalt and copper leverage | Everyone competes here because the geology is the point |
| Chile and the Americas copper chain | Stable production | Copper feedstock | Labor and infrastructure disruptions hit output fast |
| Japan and allies | Battery supply resilience | Partnerships and anode supply chain deals | Building non-China pathways for battery materials |
The Solution. Stop buying software startups. Buy a mine
This is the binary choice.
Option 1. Fund dirt.
- Buy stakes in producing mines and late-stage projects
- Lock offtake contracts with real penalties
- Build refining and processing inside friendly jurisdictions
- Treat silver, copper, lithium, cobalt like defense inputs, because they are
Option 2. Do not.
- Accept capped production of “future tech”
- Watch costs climb while timelines slip
- Discover, too late, that autonomy and AI are supply chain sports
Lamprey is the metaphor. It hitchhikes because energy is scarce in the operating area.
Your AI future is hitchhiking too.
Write the check for the mines, or cancel the product launch.
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