About
Hi, I'm the person behind The Strata Memo. I'm an MBA student, and before business school I worked in consulting. I built this site because I wanted a project where I could show, not just say, how I work: pick a question that matters, find the evidence, and make it easy for someone else to check.
Where I'm coming from
Consulting taught me to start with the decision someone has to make, to structure a messy problem, and to be exact about what a number does and does not say. The MBA is where I'm pairing that with strategy, operations and policy. Critical minerals sit at the point where all three meet: who digs it, who refines it, which country can switch it off, and what a government can do about it.
What this site says about how I work
- Evidence before opinion. Every claim links to a primary or government page and quotes it word for word. If the quote does not check, the claim does not ship.
- Honest about uncertainty. Where sources disagree (the 2025 tungsten tariff is 25% in the USTR notice and 50% in a USGS chapter) the page says so. Gaps are shown as gaps.
- Free sources and plain tools. No paid data, a static site, and AI used as a labeled assistant that has to show its evidence.
- Built to be read. A mineral map, fact sheets, a bottleneck matrix and a dated export-controls timeline, so a busy reader can get the answer in a minute and dig deeper if they want.
What I'm curious about next
Where the bottlenecks really are (refining and processing more than mining), how tariffs and export controls change who supplies the U.S., and which public funding actually turns into a plant. If one of these interests you, or you work on something nearby, I'd like to talk.
Feedback is welcome
I'm open to feedback on the site: what is unclear, what is missing, which source I should add, or which chart you would draw differently. Corrections to any fact are especially welcome; each one has a source to check against.
About this site
The Strata Memo is a free, source-linked tracker of U.S. federal policy, funding and awards for the 60 minerals on the USGS 2025 List of Critical Minerals, with a fact sheet for each mineral. It is a pilot. Every item and every number links to its original source, and each panel names its source.
How it is made
Data comes from free public sources only: the Federal Register, Grants.gov, USAspending, Regulations.gov, the Department of Energy, the Development Finance Corporation, USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries, the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. International Trade Commission. A model reads each federal item against a published rubric and must quote the passage that shows the link to critical minerals; the quote is checked word for word against the item. Tags are AI-generated and can be wrong. The full method, and its limits, are on the methodology page.
Data and photo licenses
| What | Source | License or terms |
|---|---|---|
| Supply, production, reserves, import reliance | USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 data release | Public domain |
| Element properties | NIH PubChem periodic table | Public domain |
| Tariff rates and trade by country | USITC Harmonized Tariff Schedule; U.S. Census Bureau International Trade API | U.S. government data |
| Federal items and awards | Federal Register, Grants.gov, USAspending, Regulations.gov, DOE, DFC | U.S. government data; each item links to its original |
| Fun facts and composition lines | Our own words from Wikipedia plus an independent second source | Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA |
| Mineral photos | Wikimedia Commons, one photo per mineral | CC0, public domain, CC BY, CC BY-SA or Free Art License; the author and license are on each fact sheet |
How to cite
Each panel names its source; full citations with a copy button are in the source register on the methodology page. To cite this site as the compiler, give the page title, the page address and the date you retrieved it, and name the underlying source as well. Figures are as of the date each panel states.