If you think supply chain disruptions were just a pandemic thing, mining billionaire Robert Friedland has some uncomfortable news: they're the new normal. And the materials shortages we're staring down make chip shortages look quaint.
Friedland, the legendary founder of Ivanhoe Mines (IVPAF), has been making the rounds with an increasingly urgent message about critical minerals. The world wants electrification, artificial intelligence, and stronger national security. What it doesn't have is enough copper, scandium, and other essential materials to make any of that happen at scale.
Speaking recently with Bloomberg, Friedland described a global economy undergoing "profound structural change" as geopolitics forces countries to rethink how they source everything.
"We are living in very interesting times as the world continues to vulcanize into competing economic groups," he said, predicting that "critical raw materials will remain at the center of our consciousness for decades."
The core problem, according to Friedland, is that globalization trained everyone to run lean supply chains with minimal inventory. That just-in-time model worked beautifully when trade was frictionless. Now? Not so much.
"As we move from a just-in-time global economy to a just-in-case economy, some of these raw materials will take on nearly infinite value," Friedland warned. Translation: countries are going to start hoarding the minerals they absolutely need, and currencies will weaken against those materials.
Scandium's Breakout Year
Friedland's latest venture, Sunrise Energy Metals (SREMF), just delivered one of 2025's wildest performances. The Australian miner, where Friedland serves as co-chair, rocketed 3,400% after drawing interest from the US government and landing an option agreement with Lockheed Martin.
What's the fuss about? Sunrise controls the Syerston project in New South Wales, home to what's considered the world's largest and highest-grade scandium deposit under development. Scandium strengthens aluminum alloys dramatically, making it invaluable for aerospace and defense applications.
For Friedland, Syerston represents the blueprint for how Western nations should rebuild their supply chains: mined in stable democracies, refined domestically in the United States, and integrated directly into advanced manufacturing and defense production.
Copper's Impossible Math
But if you think scandium is the real story, Friedland would tell you to zoom out. Copper is where the arithmetic gets truly frightening.
"We're consuming 30 million tons of copper per year, only 4 million tons of which is recycled. That means, to maintain 3% GDP growth, with no electrification, we have to mine the same amount of copper in the next 18 years as we mined in the last 10,000 years," he told attendees at the Energy Business Summit.
Read that again. Ten thousand years of mining needs to happen in less than two decades. And that's before accounting for electric vehicles, data centers, or grid infrastructure.
"You people have no idea whatsoever what we're facing. You're dreaming. Since 1900, the energy to produce copper, the energy you need to make copper is 16-fold up," Friedland said.
The problem isn't just volume. It's that remaining copper deposits have lower ore grades, higher extraction costs, and longer development timelines. Simple economics doesn't solve this one.
Friedland's prescription involves deploying advanced exploration technologies, high-pulse electrical processing, and energy-efficient recovery methods to unlock deposits faster while cutting emissions. Without major technological leaps, he argues, the energy transition and AI expansion will slam headfirst into geological reality.
In other words: the materials crunch isn't coming. It's already here. And just-in-case is the only strategy left.