The goal for a majority-EV fleet is not viable with current technology. The material requirements for batteries and components are so vast that a US-only transition would consume every scrap of lithium, copper, graphite, and other key minerals produced globally, leaving none for any other country or industry.

The next major bottleneck for AI, electrification, and defense is not chips, but copper. To meet baseline GDP growth projections—excluding upside from data centers and green energy—the world needs to mine the same amount of copper in the next 18 years as it has in all of human history.

Even before the AI boom, demand for copper was outstripping supply for standard manufacturing and electrification. The addition of massive data centers and EVs creates a long-term supply deficit that is nearly impossible to solve, as bringing new mines online can take over 15 years.

While prices above $10,000/ton are expected to depress Chinese demand, the current supply disruption is so significant that this response is unlikely to restrain the price surge. The supply shock is the dominant market driver, overpowering near-term demand-side resistance.

Daniel Gross's prescient question about copper being mispriced proved correct. The metal hit all-time highs due to AI's physical needs, with a single NVIDIA server rack containing two miles of copper wire. This highlights a critical, non-obvious bottleneck in the AI supply chain.

An AI query consumes 30 times more electrical energy than a standard Google search. As AI becomes ubiquitous, the resulting demand for electricity—and the copper-intensive infrastructure to generate and transmit it—is projected to grow almost infinitely, creating a structural shortage.

The ability to increase copper supply is severely hampered by equipment backlogs. The wait time for essential components like the ring gear for a giant motor has ballooned from 4.5 years to nearly 8 years, and supply contracts now include force majeure clauses for metal shortages.

In an environment of supply chain shortages, investors should favor commodities essential for economic activity over monetary proxies like gold. Copper is critical for building data centers and its value is driven by real demand and scarcity, unlike gold's more abstract story.

The rapid expansion promised by AI firms faces real-world bottlenecks. These include shortages of key commodities like copper, insufficient power grid capacity requiring years to build new plants, and a lack of skilled construction labor, making promised timelines highly unrealistic.