Deep-sea mining: The next frontier for critical minerals
Make Me Smart
Marketplace
4.6 • 5.5K Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rare-earth elements help power our everyday electrical devices, and that’s because most batteries are made with minerals like lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite. As of now, China produces more of these minerals than any other country. But some mining companies are eyeing the deep sea’s floor, says Marketplace contributor Dan Ackerman, because such rare earths form organically way down there. Plus, the ethical concerns that come with this deep-sea mining.
Here’s everything we talked about today:
- “Companies are betting on deep sea mining for critical minerals” from Marketplace Tech
- “New policies may part the waters for ocean mining” from Marketplace Morning Report
- “In the depths of the ocean, a new contest between the US and China emerges” from The Guardian
- “Trump’s New Executive Order Promotes Deep Sea Mining in US and International Waters While Bypassing International Law” from Inside Climate News
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Worried about your future in tech? |
| 0:03.0 | Master new skills. |
| 0:05.0 | Accelerate your team's impact and redefine what's possible with plural site. |
| 0:10.0 | We're more than just another online learning platform. |
| 0:14.0 | We're shattering the skills gap and shaping future generations of technologists. |
| 0:20.0 | Transform your work. Transform your work. |
| 0:22.1 | Transform your team. |
| 0:24.1 | Ready to tap in? |
| 0:25.9 | Visit us at pluralsight.com to learn more. |
| 0:45.7 | Hello everyone. I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us. |
| 0:52.7 | Today, we're getting smarter about deep sea mining, because a lot of change is happening in this fledgling industry. And many, including President Trump, say that it has a lot of change is happening in this fledgling industry. |
| 1:02.7 | And many, including President Trump, say that it has a lot of potential to boost not only the U.S. economy, but also national security. |
| 1:06.9 | My colleague Daniel Ackerman is our resident deep sea mining expert. He's reported a bunch of stories for Marketplace on the ocean mining industry, and he writes a |
| 1:12.0 | newsletter on this topic called Seabed Spotlight. He's here to help us out with Deep Sea Mining 101. |
| 1:19.3 | Dan, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks, Kimberly. So to get us started, what is exactly deep sea mining, |
| 1:26.7 | and why are people so interested in this? |
| 1:30.0 | Well, most of the mined materials that we use in our cars and smartphones, you know, |
| 1:36.3 | come from land. It comes from the rocks and the dirt beneath our feet. And mining all that |
| 1:41.3 | stuff can often mean bad things, like displacing communities to make an open pit mine, or cutting down a rainforest to get at the materials underneath it. |
| 1:52.0 | So deep sea mining is this idea that, you know, maybe we can avoid some of these problems by getting these metals from the bottom of the ocean in a remote area that's far from where |
| 2:02.2 | anyone lives, that doesn't touch anyone's drinking water, not near a rainforest. |
| 2:07.5 | And, you know, there really is a lot of metal down there at the bottom of the ocean that the U.S. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Marketplace, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Marketplace and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.