Nevada is quietly becoming the loudest story in American mining, and this episode makes clear why that matters for markets, national security, and the energy transition—all at once. Think of it as the moment when a long-time value stock finally starts trading like a growth story.
Nevada: Ground Zero for America’s Critical Minerals
While Washington debates supply chains in hearing rooms, Nevada is busy supplying them from the ground up. The state hosts world-class deposits of gold, lithium, copper, tungsten, and antimony—many of them already tied into existing infrastructure rather than speculative PowerPoint geology. That geological abundance is one reason Nevada ranks near the top globally for mining investment attractiveness, second only to Finland in the Fraser Institute’s 2024 survey.
Equally important, Nevada has paired its mineral endowment with a regulatory climate that investors would describe as “firm but not fickle,” earning a top-tier Policy Perception Index score and retaining its place among the world’s most attractive jurisdictions year after year. In a sector where project timelines are measured in decades, that kind of policy consistency might be the rarest resource of all.
Why Critical Minerals Suddenly Feel Like a National Security Issue
The latest podcast from M2i Global titled “Nevada & The Renewed Necessity for Mining with Amanda Hilton” argues that critical minerals are no longer a niche concern for commodity traders but a central pillar of economic and military resilience. From EV batteries and grid-scale storage to advanced semiconductors and defense systems, the U.S. is discovering that its industrial ambitions run directly through a handful of materials often processed far from home. Concentrated refining—particularly for copper and battery metals—creates chokepoints that leave the U.S. exposed to foreign policy risk and supply disruptions.
Nevada steps into this picture as one of the few places where geology, infrastructure, and policy align to support a more domestic, more transparent supply chain. With the U.S. currently operating only a small number of primary copper smelters and exporting hundreds of thousands of tonnes of concentrate for foreign refining, studies focused on Nevada’s copper processing potential have become as strategic as they are technical.
A Regulatory Model Markets Actually Price In
The Fraser Institute’s survey reads like an investor’s scorecard, and Nevada consistently lands near the top on both mineral potential and policy quality. Companies report that Nevada combines clear permitting rules, comparatively predictable timelines, and a tax regime that does not treat capital investment as a moral failing. In the latest rankings, Nevada again scores among the very best jurisdictions worldwide for investment attractiveness, reflecting both high-quality geology and a policy framework that reduces above-ground risk.
Those policy strengths show up in behavior, not just in rankings: Nevada has led U.S. mineral exploration budgets, capturing a dominant share of exploration spending compared with other states. For an industry allergic to uncertainty, a place where regulations are tough but legible is a genuine competitive advantage.
Copper, Lithium, and the New Industrial Backbone
Copper has quietly moved from “old economy metal” to “new economy bottleneck,” with U.S. demand expected to climb as data centers, electrified transport, and renewable generation scale up. A recent Nevada Copper Processing Study highlights that the state is unusually well positioned to close U.S. supply-chain gaps, thanks to existing copper resources, active concentrators, and supportive permitting conditions for new processing facilities. The study also underscores a stark vulnerability: with only two operating primary smelters in the country, the U.S. must send a large volume of copper concentrate overseas for refining, effectively exporting both value and leverage.
Nevada’s favorable environment has encouraged feasibility work on large-scale copper operations, with technical studies confirming that modern open-pit and underground projects in the state can be technically and economically viable at industrial scale. When you overlay that with emerging federal recognition of copper’s critical role—reflected in its inclusion on draft critical-mineral lists—the logic for building a more domestic, Nevada-centered value chain becomes hard for policymakers to ignore.
Leadership at the Intersection of Community, Capital, and Security
M2I Gobal’s Podcast Guest, Amanda Hilton, brings more than two decades of on-the-ground operational experience at Nevada’s Robinson Mine, capped by six years as General Manager—a role that requires equal fluency in geology, labor relations, and community expectations. As a fourth-generation Nevadan who has chaired the Nevada Mining Association’s board and now serves as its 13th president, she has become a prominent voice for consensus-driven, responsible mining in a state that still equates its future with what lies below the surface. Her inclusion in the “Pioneering the Field: Women in Mining” exhibit at the National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum underlines how her career embodies both technical competence and industry change.
Host Alberto Rosende, President and CEO of M2i Global (MTWO), frames these issues through a global resilience lens, emphasizing secure, transparent, and sustainable supply chains as prerequisites for long-term prosperity rather than regulatory buzzwords. With experience across public and private sectors, he treats critical minerals as a systems problem—linking extraction, processing, policy, and geopolitics—rather than as a simple race to permit the next mine. Together, their conversation makes a case that domestic mining is now a national, economic, and military necessity—and that Nevada is where that thesis is being tested in real time.
