The $100 Trillion Buried Under Federal Land That Nobody’s Talking About
The Financial Times estimates U.S. public lands hold as much as $100 trillion in untapped mineral wealth. Former CIA and Pentagon advisor Jim Rickards says a historic policy shift is now unlocking it for the first time.
Baltimore, MD, May 03, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Beneath millions of acres of federal land across the United States sits what may be the largest concentration of untapped mineral wealth on the planet. According to the Financial Times, those assets could be worth as much as $100 trillion.
To put that figure in perspective, it’s enough to send a check for nearly $300,000 to every single American.
And yet, for decades, virtually none of it has been touched. Permitting timelines stretching up to 10 years, regulatory hurdles, and decades of underinvestment in domestic mining have kept those resources locked in the ground — even as the U.S. became increasingly dependent on foreign nations, particularly China, for the critical minerals that power everything from fighter jets to smartphones to electric vehicles.
According to Jim Rickards’ recent free presentation — an economist, best-selling author, and former advisor to the CIA, the Pentagon, and the White House — that is now changing at a pace most people haven’t begun to grasp.
A Dependency the U.S. Can No Longer Afford
Rickards’s presentation points to a stark reality at the center of this story: after years of neglecting domestic mining, the United States now relies on China for 100% of 15 key minerals. These aren’t obscure commodities. They’re the building blocks of modern technology and national defense.
Without rare earth minerals, the U.S. military can’t fly F-35 fighter jets. Without lithium, there are no electric vehicle batteries. Without these materials, there are no smartphones, laptops, or flat-screen TVs.
“We’re completely dependent on our number one strategic competitor,” Rickards said. “That’s a huge problem for America.”
It’s a vulnerability that Rickards believes has now reached a breaking point — and one that is driving an unprecedented federal response.
From 10 Years to 28 Days
The most dramatic shift, according to Rickards’s presentation, is happening in how quickly mining projects can move from proposal to production. Historically, securing the necessary permits for a new mining operation in the U.S. could take up to a decade. That timeline alone was enough to make the sector uninvestable for most major players.
That has now changed. Through a program called FAST-41, critical mining projects are being granted priority status and fast-tracked through the approval process at speeds that would have been unthinkable even two years ago.
Rickards points to the Thacker Pass lithium project in Nevada, which received its federal permits in just 89 days. And the stated goal, he says, is to push that timeline down even further — to as little as 28 days.
“This is a true game-changer for the industry,” Rickards said. “A lot of big investors want nothing to do with mining projects because it normally could take over a decade for them to see any return. But with these accelerated permits, that entire equation has changed.”
The Government Is Going Beyond Permits — It’s Buying In
What makes the current moment even more unusual, Rickards argues, is that the federal government isn’t just clearing the way for private mining companies — it’s investing directly in them.
In his presentation, he points to the Pentagon’s $400 million investment in MP Materials, a rare earth producer, which made the Department of Defense the company’s largest shareholder. As part of that deal, the government also agreed to purchase the company’s output at a guaranteed floor price.
“The company now basically has a guaranteed buyer for its products,” Rickards said. “The best kind of buyer you can ask for — a buyer with unlimited spending power. The U.S. government.”
That wasn’t an isolated case. Rickards highlights a $35 million federal investment in Trilogy Metals to secure critical mining operations in Alaska, and reports that the administration is planning a direct equity stake in Lithium Americas. A $5 billion mining investment fund is also in the works, designed specifically to take direct stakes in companies mining critical minerals on U.S. soil.
The CEO of the National Mining Association, Rich Nolan, has compared the scale of what’s unfolding to FDR’s New Deal — calling it “the New Deal for minerals.”
A Pattern Rickards Has Seen Before
Rickards, who has spent nearly five decades working at the intersection of government policy and financial markets, says there’s a historical parallel that most people are overlooking.
In the early 2000s, China launched an unprecedented government-backed industrialization effort. The country consumed twice as much steel between 2000 and 2020 as the U.S. did during the entire 20th century. That state-driven demand triggered what economists call a supercycle in natural resources — a sustained, multi-year boom in the value of metals, energy, and raw materials.
Rickards believes the same pattern is now emerging in the United States.
“Throughout history, every single industrialization effort has been powered by natural resources,” Rickards said. “You cannot have an industrial boom without energy from coal, oil, natural gas, or nuclear power. And you cannot have an industrial boom without metals like copper, iron ore, rare earth elements, lithium, and silicon.”
$9 Trillion and Counting
The demand side of the equation is accelerating just as fast. Major corporations have committed nearly $9 trillion in new U.S. manufacturing investment in under a year. Taiwan Semiconductor is investing $100 billion to manufacture advanced chips domestically. Apple has pledged $500 billion for a new advanced manufacturing facility. Nvidia has announced plans to invest as much as $500 billion. Eli Lilly is putting $50 billion toward four new U.S. manufacturing sites.
Rickards’s presentation points to sees all of this feeding directly into the same cycle: more factories, more infrastructure, and more demand for the raw materials that make it all possible — materials that are now, for the first time, being unlocked from beneath federal land at an unprecedented pace.
What $100 Trillion Actually Means
Rickards is careful to frame the scale of what’s at stake. The $100 trillion figure cited by the Financial Times represents the estimated value of mineral assets sitting beneath U.S. public lands — assets that policy changes are now making accessible for the first time.
“I honestly never thought I would see another supercycle in my lifetime,” Rickards said. “But here we are.”
He’s not alone in that assessment. Adam Rozencwajg, who manages a natural resource hedge fund, has called this “the best opportunity that I’ve seen probably in the 150-odd years that we’ve been studying these markets.”
Rickards has published his full analysis and outlook through his research service, which is followed by thousands of readers. He believes the window for understanding what’s unfolding is narrowing quickly — and that most Americans have yet to connect the dots between the policy shifts already underway and what they mean for the economy ahead.
About Jim Rickards and Paradigm Press
Jim Rickards is an economist, best-selling author, and former advisor to the CIA, the Pentagon, and the White House. He has worked at the highest levels of Wall Street and international finance for nearly five decades, playing direct roles in the resolution of the Iran hostage crisis, the creation of the Petrodollar Accord, and the Federal Reserve’s response to the Long-Term Capital Management banking crisis. His work is published by Paradigm Press, an independent financial research firm. The publisher maintains a 4.8-star rating on Google across more than 1,900 public reviews from readers who follow its research and commentary.
CONTACT: Derek Warren Public Relations Manager Paradigm Press Group Email: dwarren@paradigmpressgroup.com
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