
Scientists can't stay in their ivory tower
In March, over 2,000 researchers, students and supporters gathered across the United States to protest sweeping science and technology budget cuts. The Trump administration's proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 — dubbed by some as a 'skinny' or 'beautiful' budget — proposes a 47% cut to NASA's science budget and a staggering 56% cut to the National Science Foundation (NSF). Funding for climate change research has been virtually eliminated. Unless Congress intervenes, the U.S. faces the most severe science and technology budget cuts in modern history.
In response, scientists across the country are beginning to speak out. NASA employees held peaceful protests opposing the proposed cuts, while nearly 2,000 leading U.S. scientists — including over 30 Nobel laureates and numerous members of the National Academies — signed an open letter warning that the nation's scientific enterprise is being 'decimated' and issued an 'SOS' to the public. The American Association for the Advancement of Science — the world's largest multidisciplinary scientific society — also urged scientists to speak publicly and engage policymakers. As its CEO Sudip Parikh warned, 'If enacted, the FY2026 budget request would end America's global scientific leadership.'
This level of public mobilization by scientists is rare in the U.S., where most academics were trained to stay 'above politics.' But in this moment, they realized something critical: Silence can't protect science.
As a Japanese scientist who has lived in the United States for over two decades, I'm watching this unfold with deep concern — and a sense of deja vu. While Japan's science funding hasn't yet faced cuts on the scale of the U.S., the underlying threats are already present: public disengagement, institutional invisibility and a shrinking voice in policymaking.
In Japan, researchers are often taught that engaging in public debate or policy will jeopardize their credibility. We pride ourselves on being impartial and apolitical. These are admirable traits in scholarship — but dangerous in the public sphere. If scientists don't tell our story — of discovery, impact and public benefit — others will tell it for us. And not everyone has science's best interest in mind.
Already, we see mounting political and societal pressure around AI ethics, environmental policy and gender equity in STEM. These are areas where science should guide the conversation — not respond after the fact.
In the U.S., we're seeing a cultural shift. Scientists are not just publishing papers — they're writing op-eds, organizing briefings with lawmakers and speaking directly to the public. Their message is clear: Science is not separate from society — it serves society.
Japan, too, has ambitions to globalize its research base. Last month, the Cabinet Office launched J-RISE (Japan Research & Innovation for Scientific Excellence) — a ¥100 billion ($673 million) initiative to make Japan the world's most attractive destination for researchers. While the U.S. faces historic cuts to science and technology funding, Japan is signaling its commitment to global scientific leadership.
But there's a paradox: While the Japanese government actively seeks foreign talent, many domestic researchers still hesitate to engage with their own communities or shape the future of science policy.
One institutional tool the U.S. has embraced is the idea of 'Broader Impacts.' Every NSF proposal requires researchers to explain how their work will benefit society — whether through education, outreach or broader societal impacts. Outreach is not a side project; it is baked into the mission of science. This expectation reflects a core reality: Most scientific research is publicly funded and scientists have a responsibility to give back to society. Japan has no such requirement, and as a result, science communication and community connection are often seen as optional — or even overlooked — in Japanese academic culture.
Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to visit Capitol Hill shortly after the Trump administration took office, as a member of the U.S.–Japan Network for the Future, a policy fellowship organized by the Mansfield Foundation and the Japan Foundation. I am honored to be the first scientist ever selected for this program.
Our cohort of scholars and policy practitioners engaged directly with congressional staff and U.S. agencies, gaining insight into how science and policy intersect — and often collide. We recently traveled to Tokyo and Kyushu, where cities like Fukuoka and Kumamoto are transforming into "Japan's Silicon Valley,' driven by the semiconductor industry, government-backed startup accelerators and progressive immigration initiatives. These experiences underscored a critical truth: Science, diplomacy and innovation are inseparable — yet scientists remain largely absent from policymaking circles.
Now is the time for scientists to return to society — not just as experts, but as engaged members of the public we serve. We must listen, communicate and collaborate. In a divided information landscape, science alone will not speak for itself. We must.
Yuko Kakazu, an astrophysicist, is a cohort member of the Mansfield Foundation's U.S.-Japan Network for the Future.
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NHK
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US to withdraw from UNESCO
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Japan Times
12 hours ago
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As Trump courts a more assertive Beijing, China hawks are losing out
In recent years, one of China's biggest requests of U.S. officials has been that the United States relax its strict controls on advanced artificial intelligence chips, measures that were put in place to slow Beijing's technological and military gains. Last week, the Trump administration did just that, as it allowed the world's leader in AI chips, U.S.-based Nvidia, to begin selling a lower-level but still coveted chip known as H20 to China. The move was a dramatic reversal from three months ago, when U.S. President Donald Trump banned China from accessing the H20, while also imposing triple-digit tariffs on Beijing. That set off an economically perilous trade clash, as China retaliated by clamping down on exports of minerals and magnets that are critical to American factories, including automakers and defense manufacturers. China's decision to cut off access to those materials upended the dynamic between the world's largest economies. The Trump administration, which came into office determined to bully China into changing its trade behavior with punishing tariffs, appeared to realize the perils of that approach. Now, the administration has resorted to trying to woo China instead. Officials throughout the government say the Trump administration is putting more aggressive actions on China on hold, while pushing forward with moves that the Chinese will perceive positively. That includes the reversal on the H20 chip. The H20 decision was primarily motivated by top Trump officials who agreed with Nvidia's arguments that selling the chip would be better for American technology leadership than withholding it, people familiar with the move say. But Trump officials have also claimed that it was part of the trade talks. 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U.S. President Donald Trump, hosting a digital assets summit, is joined by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (left), Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (second left) and crypto and AI czar David Sacks (right) at the White House in Washington on March 7. | Haiyun Jiang / The New York Times A person familiar with the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said that the H20 chip was not specifically discussed in meetings between Chinese and U.S. officials in Geneva and London this spring. But the reversal was part of a more recent cadence of warmer actions the United States and China have taken toward each other. For instance, Beijing agreed in recent weeks to block the export of several chemicals used to make fentanyl, an issue Trump has been concerned about. Recent events have underscored the influence that China has over the U.S. economy. When Trump raised tariffs on Chinese exports in April, some top Trump officials thought Beijing would quickly fold, given its recent economic weakness. Instead, Beijing called Trump's bluff by restricting rare earths needed by American makers of cars, military equipment, medical devices and electronics. As the flow of those materials stopped, Trump and other officials began receiving calls from CEOs saying their factories would soon shut down. Ford, Suzuki and other companies shuttered factories because of the lack of supply. Trump and his top advisers were surprised by the threat that Beijing's countermove posed, people familiar with the matter say. That brought the United States back to the negotiating table this spring to strike a fragile trade truce, which Trump officials are now wary of upsetting. That agreement dropped tariffs from a minimum 145% to 30%, with the Chinese agreeing to allow rare earths to flow as freely as before. The administration's caution when it comes to China has been amplified by Trump's desire for an invitation to Beijing later this year. The president, who has been feted on other foreign trips, wants to engage in face-to-face trade negotiations with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, has begun recruiting CEOs for a potential delegation, setting off a competition over who will get to ride in Air Force One, according to people familiar with the plans. Craig Allen, a retired diplomat, said both countries were "clearly preparing for a summit meeting,' adding, "that's bringing forth measures that the other side wants and it's also holding back measures that the other side doesn't want.' "It's like a dance,' Allen said. "One side makes a move, the other side makes a move to correspond to that.' The Commerce Department declined to comment. The White House, the Treasury Department and the Office of the United States Trade Representative did not respond to a request for comment. "The government understands that forcing the world to use foreign competition would only hurt America's economic and national security,' said John Rizzo, a spokesperson for Nvidia. A Chinese bargaining chip Opposition to China has fueled bipartisan action for the past decade. Now, Trump's more hawkish supporters are quietly watching as the president remakes the party's China strategy. Though few are willing to speak out publicly, officials in the Trump administration and in Congress have privately expressed concern that the trade war has given China an opening to finally bring U.S. technology controls onto the negotiating table. Christopher Padilla, a former export control official in the George W. Bush administration, said the fact that the United States was now negotiating over what were supposed to be security restrictions was "a significant accomplishment for the Chinese.' A computer processing chip manufactured by Nvidia on display at a conference about artificial intelligence in San Jose, California, on March 19 | Mike Kai Chen / The New York Times "They've been after this for decades, and now they've succeeded,' he said. "I assume the Chinese are going to demand more concessions on export controls in return for whatever we want next.' Trump was the first to harness the power of U.S. export controls, by targeting Chinese tech giant Huawei and putting global restrictions on American technology in his first term. But the Biden administration expanded those rules. Concerned that China's growing AI capacity would advance its military, Biden officials cracked down on exports of Nvidia chips, seeing them as the most effective choke point over Chinese AI capabilities. Since then, when Chinese officials raised their objections to U.S. technology controls in meetings, U.S. officials had responded by insisting that the measures were national security matters and not up for debate. But in the meeting in Geneva in May, China finally had a powerful counterargument. Beijing insisted that its minerals and magnets, some of which go to fighter jets, drones and weaponry, were a "dual-use' technology that could be used for the military as well as civilian industries, just like AI and chips. It demanded reciprocity: If the United States wanted a steady flow of rare earths, Washington should also be ready to lessen its technology controls. It's not clear exactly what the United States agreed to in Geneva: The White House released a joint statement about the meeting, though more detailed text has not been made public. But when the United States put out an unrelated export control announcement the day after the Geneva summit concluded, China responded angrily, saying the statement "undermined the consensus' the countries had reached. In a notice May 13, the Commerce Department said that using Huawei's AI chips "anywhere in the world' was an export control violation. The notice was directed at other nations considering purchasing Huawei chips, people familiar with the move said, not the Chinese. The announcement appeared to take other parts of the Trump administration by surprise, and within hours, the language in the release was walked back, though no policy changes were made. Bessent and Jamieson Greer, the trade representative, expressed concerns that such moves could damage trade talks with China, people familiar with the incident said. China once again clamped down on rare earth exports. Trying to find its own leverage, the United States responded by restricting exports of semiconductor design software, airplane parts and ethane. The two sides restored their truce in a meeting in London in June. Since then, trade in those products has restarted. But U.S. companies complain that Chinese licenses for rare earth magnets are limited to six months, and that the Chinese government is requesting proprietary information to obtain those shipments. Beijing has also continued to build out its export controls. On July 15, the day after Nvidia said it would be permitted to sell the H20 in China, Chinese officials announced new restrictions on exports of battery technology. The United States has been trying to decrease its dependence on China for rare earths, but there is no quick solution. China has a powerful hold over numerous industries, ranging from pharmaceuticals to solar panels to drones. 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U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at the Group of 20 Summit in Osaka in June 2019. | Erin Schaff / The New York Times Their absence has paved the way for officials like David Sacks, the White House AI czar, who has criticized export controls, to push for tech companies to have freer rein. Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, has gone on a lobbying blitz in Washington, pushing politicians to open China for AI chip sales. Huang has contended that blocking U.S. technology from China has backfired by creating more urgency for China to develop its own technology. He has argued that the Chinese military won't use Nvidia chips, and pushed back against Washington's consensus that China is an adversary, describing it a "competitor' but "not our enemy.' Others have challenged those assertions, pointing to past research that the Chinese military has placed orders for Nvidia chips. Scientific papers published earlier this year also showed Chinese researchers with ties to military universities and a top nuclear weapons lab using Nvidia chips for general research. Rizzo, the Nvidia spokesperson, said in a statement that "non-military papers describing new and beneficial ways to use U.S. technology promote America.' In a letter Friday, John Moolenaar, the Republican chair of the House Select Committee on China, said the H20 chip had aided the rise of the Chinese AI model DeepSeek and would help China develop AI models to compete with American ones. These arguments do not appear to have persuaded the president. In an Oval Office meeting with Huang in July, Trump agreed with Nvidia that keeping American chips out of China would only help Huawei, and decided to reverse the H20 ban. People familiar with Trump's views say he has always viewed export controls more transactionally. In his first term, Trump agreed to roll back U.S. restrictions on ZTE at the urging of Xi. In this term, Trump and his advisers have begun using America's control over AI chips as a source of leverage in negotiations with governments from the Middle East to Asia. With China, Trump has his own long-standing aspirations. He believes that U.S. businesses have been getting ripped off for decades, and that he can be the one to fix it, particularly if he negotiates directly with Xi. His advisers have begun strategizing toward a more substantial trade negotiation with China focused on market opening, as well as the potential visit this fall. This article originally appeared in The New York Times © 2025 The New York Times Company


Japan Times
16 hours ago
- Japan Times
Trump's critical minerals obsession reignites deep-sea mining
The leader of one of the most aggressive seabed mining startups spent years invoking global warming to spark interest in extracting avocado-sized rocks rich in electric-vehicle battery metals from the bottom of the ocean. "We want to help the world transition away from fossil fuels with the smallest possible climate change and environmental impact,' Gerard Barron, the Australian chief executive officer of a company then known as DeepGreen, told a 2019 meeting of the United Nations-affiliated International Seabed Authority, which for a decade has been debating regulations to allow the mining of untouched, biodiverse deep-sea ecosystems in global waters. That's not Barron's pitch anymore. Climate was out and critical minerals were in during an appearance earlier this year before a congressional committee in Washington, DC. His firm, renamed as The Metals Company (TMC), would help "ensure the nation's energy security and industrial competitiveness for generations,' Barron said. "China is close behind.' Barron's new tack is working. In April, President Donald Trump issued an executive order expediting U.S. licensing of seabed mining, departing from international law to unleash what the administration called a "gold rush' to "counter China's growing influence.' The country is set to conduct ISA-sanctioned tests of two seabed mining machines in the Pacific over the next year. Kenny Bolster, Senior Scientist at Viridian Biometals, holds a sample of polymetallic nodules at the Viridian Biometals lab in Pasadena, California on June 25th. | Wolf Image / via Bloomberg China already dominates the critical minerals supply chain on land, and TMC had successfully tapped into the U.S. president's pursuit of China-free metals, expressed as a desire for dominion over Canada and Greenland. The global seabed, TMC repeatedly emphasized as it lobbied politicians and the White House, holds the planet's largest estimated reserves of minerals like cobalt and nickel in the form of black rocks called polymetallic nodules. These cover the Pacific Ocean floor by the billions. In an instant, Trump cleared the way for a race to the abyss to extract nodules, even though seabed mining technology remains under development and commercially unproven. At the ISA's annual meeting in Kingston, Jamaica, delegates on Monday decried Trump's move, with China's representative denouncing the U.S. for "unilateralist hegemonic acts' and attempting to "replace the global standards with U.S. standards.' Within days of Trump's order, Canadian-registered TMC's U.S. subsidiary filed the world's first application to mine the seabed in international waters, including an area it licenses from the ISA. An $85 million investment from a leading Korean metals processor soon followed. Nasdaq-listed TMC's shares, which have periodically languished below a dollar, hit a 52-week high of $8.19 on Thursday. A Silicon Valley startup called Impossible Metals, meanwhile, has applied for a license to explore and possibly mine nodules in U.S. waters off American Samoa, with an aim to raise $1 billion. Then on July 14, a top executive at U.S. defense giant Lockheed Martin told the Financial Times the company is in talks to give seabed miners access to international areas of the Pacific it licenses from the U.S. A Lockheed Martin spokesperson declined to confirm the report but said, "We appreciate the Trump administration's focus on ensuring reliable sources of critical minerals, including the ocean.' On Monday, delegates in Kingston ordered a report on ISA-licensed seabed miners at risk of violating their contracts with the body, a thinly veiled reference to TMC and other companies that might also seek to apply for U.S. licenses to mine in international waters. The Trump-triggered seabed mining boom faces significant hurdles, though. While TMC has told investors it expects to begin mining within a year of receiving a license, the technology to extract minerals from the seabed at depths of four kilometers could be years away from being deployed at scale. Its competitiveness with terrestrial mining is unknown, as is the economic viability of processing and refining seabed minerals amid seesawing metal prices and the growing market share of battery technologies not reliant on nodule metals. The U.S. lacks such metallurgical capacity, and it could take years to bring online in the few countries outside of China with the potential to refine nodule minerals. "Given the rapid evolution of batteries and other relevant technologies, there is great uncertainty about the future demand for critical minerals,' researchers at RAND wrote in a recent report. "A seabed mining industry, as a whole, faces considerable opposition from nations and organizations concerned about the potential negative environmental impacts.' The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Gerard Barron, chief executive of The Metals Company, at Times Square in New York on Sept. 17, 2021. | Ashley Gilbertson / The New York Times The countries that TMC relies on for seabed mining and processing technology are among the ISA's 169 member nations (plus the European Union) that oppose unilateral mining in international waters. Amid such backlash, a Japanese corporation, Pacific Metals Company, that planned to process TMC's nodules has now told investors that it would only "launch operations once the international rules are finalized.' "All those parties have a legal obligation to ensure that deep sea mining only takes place through the ISA,' says Samantha Robb, an Amsterdam-based attorney who specializes in ocean litigation. At the ISA, delegates convened behind closed doors on Friday to debate how to respond to TMC's plans. Barron, who once sat with the delegation of a tiny Pacific island nation that sponsors one of TMC's ISA contracts, has been absent this year but he's weighing in from afar. "Amid some noisy grandstanding coming out of Jamaica this month, this is a good reminder ... the U.S. has every right to pursue seafloor resources in international waters,' he wrote Wednesday on X. In a statement, TMC said it was "on firm legal and regulatory footing,' citing the sizable investments it's recently attracted. The company, however, cautioned investors in a May securities filing that a U.S. mining license wouldn't be recognized internationally, which could affect "logistics, processing and market access' for the seabed minerals TMC mines. 'It's going to take some time' More than a thousand miles southwest of Mexico on a September morning in 2022, a yellow, 80-metric-ton machine slowly rumbled across the seabed on tank-like treads, a plume of sediment billowing behind. During a two-month test for TMC, the 38-foot-long prototype vacuumed up 3,000 metric tons of nodules, sending them through a tube to a specialized surface vessel called the Hidden Gem. TMC hailed the trial as a success. Yet any commercial operations are a ways off, even if the U.S. grants TMC a mining license this year, given technological and legal obstacles that must be overcome. Matthew Lavichant, an intern at Viridian Biometals, plates wells in preparation for conducting a test on samples. | Wolf Image / via Bloomberg Allseas, a Dutch-owned, Swiss-registered offshore engineering and construction company, developed the technology, the world's only working prototype of a nodule mining system. The company supplies the apparatus to TMC and is its second-largest shareholder. To meet TMC's production targets, it must now build a much bigger version capable of harvesting nodules nearly around the clock under crushing pressure far from shore. A U.S. seabed mining license, however, would require TMC to deploy American-built and owned vessels. How the companies would comply with that mandate is unclear. Allseas said in a statement that it would take about two years to engineer the technical systems to support full-scale mining but it won't begin that work "until we are confident that all relevant regulatory conditions are met.' Allseas, which itself owns an ISA-licensed seabed mining company, has come under pressure from Dutch politicians and activists not to provide technology for unilateral mining. A laboratory ball mill used to pulverize polymetallic nodules. A bioreactor that contains polymetallic nodule bits and microbes. | Wolf Image / via Bloomberg TMC says it can't comment while its U.S. mining license application is under review. But in a May 14 securities filing the company said it's "evaluating U.S.-based vessel' options. However, the U.S. hasn't built a specialized seabed mining ship like the Hidden Gem, and only eight U.S. ocean-going bulk cargo carriers — large ships that can hold tens of thousands of pounds of nodules and transport them to shore — are in service. Seven of them are at or near the end of their lifespan, according to a 2024 U.S. Maritime Administration report. Impossible Metals uses a nodule collector, called Eureka, that's designed to hover above the ocean floor, its robotic claws selecting individual nodules that its artificial intelligence program determines aren't inhabited by marine organisms. (Scientists estimate that at least 30% to 40% of deep ocean life in the seabed targeted for mining live on nodules.) The company has delayed a planned trial of the Eureka in an ISA-licensed area of the Pacific until at least 2027 because the technology needs further refinement. And any mining wouldn't happen until at least the early 2030s. Impossible Metals' mining license application is for U.S. waters, not areas controlled by ISA. "That's far less controversial,' said CEO Oliver Gunasekara. "But obviously it's going to take some time.' What it takes to process a nodule In a small lab in Pasadena, California, scientists at an Impossible Metals spinoff called Viridian Biometals are trying to crack a problem about as challenging as pulling nodules out of the abyss: getting the metals out of the nodules. Nodule minerals precipitate out of seawater, forming layers around a piece of whale bone, a shark tooth or another small object at the rate of a few millimeters every million years. Unlike terrestrial minerals, where a couple of different metals might be found together in a deposit, nodules contain nickel, cobalt and copper particles scattered throughout every rock, mostly embedded in a matrix of manganese oxide. A laboratory ball mill used to pulverize polymetallic nodules. A bioreactor that contains polymetallic nodule bits and microbes. | Wolf Image / via Bloomberg "The treatment of materials that contain all four of these elements is not something that is commercially done today,' said Lyle Trytten, a veteran of the metals processing industry and president of Canada-based Trytten Consulting Services. Viridian scientists are tinkering with rock-breathing microbes that oxidize nodules to extract the most valuable metals. On a June afternoon, senior scientist Kenny Bolster opens up what looks like a freezer to reveal stainless steel bioreactors. As microbes inside oxide the manganese bits, they release nickel, cobalt and copper ions into a solution. "All this happens at ambient temperature and pressure, which saves an enormous amount of energy and doesn't produce any toxic waste,' says Viridian CEO Eric Macris. It'll take a few years to assess whether the technology is likely to be commercially feasible. "We love what Viridian is doing but we're just not sure if it will be mature enough when we need it,' says Impossible Metals' Gunasekara. If TMC, Impossible Metals and other companies mine the ocean floor under a U.S. license, then federal law requires the minerals to be processed and refined in America. Aside from Viridian's early efforts, the U.S. has no such capacity. A single facility in the U.S. capable of processing and refining nodules would cost several billion dollars, and could take up to a decade to reach full production, in part due to the complexities of handling an entirely new feedstock, according to Niels Verbaan, director of metallurgy technical services for Swiss testing and certification company SGS. The U.S. tax and spending bill enacted on July 4 allocates $5.5 billion to the Department of Defense for investments in critical minerals supply chains. But the U.S. has suffered a precipitous decline in metallurgical expertise since the 1980s when universities began to eliminate related degree programs. "We are decades behind now, and it's going to be very hard to catch up,' says Corby Anderson, a professor of metallurgical and materials engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. New immigration restrictions will also make it harder to recruit engineering talent from overseas. Samples of polymetallic nodules at the Viridian Biometals lab. Photographer: Alex Welsh/Bloomberg | Samples of polymetallic nodules at the Viridian Biometals lab. Photographer: Alex Welsh/Bloomberg Wolf Image China has invested heavily in the industry and is now in a position to retrofit existing facilities to process nodules or build dedicated new plants. The country processes 74% of the world's cobalt ore, according to a 2024 report from the Wilson Center, a nonpartisan think tank, while 97% of global nickel ore processing capacity lies outside of North America. China also maintains more than 80% of the capacity for refining those metals into advanced EV battery materials. There's few existing facilities outside of China capable of handling nodules, even if a U.S. seabed miner receives permission to use them and the owners are willing to revamp operations, according to industry executives. "These processing plants are not just sitting there idle begging for feed, they're all in use today,' says Trytten. The 'blue whale' in the room TMC has found one overseas metals processor willing to make the switch. Last year, Pacific Metals Company of Japan fed a 2,000-ton pile of nodules collected by TMC in 2022 into an electric-arc furnace to produce 500 tons of a material. In February, it was smelted into a nickel-cobalt-copper alloy. "These process plants are very expensive to build, they're very complicated, they're very risky,' says Jeffrey Donald, TMC's head of onshore development. "So by using an existing asset, existing operators, you're really taking that capital off the front end and you're really de-risking the technology and operations aspect.' The Maersk Launcher, a ship chartered in 2021 by The Metals Company to explore the potential of seabed mining, in Pacific waters near Rosarito, Mexico, June 7, 2021. | Tamir Kalifa / The New York Times In April, Pacific Metals announced it would transition from processing nickel ore to smelting nodules. But it doesn't expect full production to begin until 2029 at the earliest. TMC has also struck a deal with metals giant Korea Zinc, which is assessing the feasibility of refining nodules into battery materials, a process TMC has so far tested only in the lab. Whether nations would be enabling deep-sea mining through commercial relationships with U.S.-licensed seabed mining companies was the subject of whispered conversations among ISA delegates this month as they continued drafting mining regulations. Trump's move to mine in international waters and TMC's defiance of the ISA was, as French ambassador Olivier Guyonvarch alluded, "the blue whale' in the room. The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea prohibits unilateral mining by any country or corporation. It also requires the ISA to administer the global seabed for the benefit of humanity, with any royalties from mining divided among member states. The U.S. never ratified the treaty, though it had generally adhered to its provisions and still participates in ISA proceedings as an observer. Pressure is growing on member states to not supply technology to seabed mining companies the U.S. licenses, process their nodules or buy metals from them, as the treaty mandates ISA countries treat unilateral mining as illegitimate. Thirty-seven ISA countries support a moratorium on seabed mining until its environmental impacts are better understood. "The risks of bypassing the ISA's oversight are not only legal, they are also economic,' ISA Secretary-General Leticia Carvalho said in a statement. "Product lines derived from ventures that violate international law will carry reputational and legal concerns that increase the risk of the investment and can undermine its return.' Pacific Metals appears to have gotten the message. In a recent investor briefing, the company, which did not respond to requests for comment, emphasized that when it comes to nodule processing, it considers "international credibility to be a material issue.'