Katie Zacharia Was Linked to an AI Rare-Earths Startup. It’s Even Weirder Than It Sounds

Before being fired five days into her stint as White House press secretary, Katie Zacharia spent much of the day attempting to explain her past. Throughout her brief tenure, Zacharia’s resume was the source of much intrigue. Foremost was the fact that despite claiming to be an attorney for much of her career, she never actually passed the California bar, as she was eventually forced to admit. Another element of her professional history, WIRED reported, was a role as an affiliate marketer for Beachbody, a fitness MLM. WIRED has now uncovered new details of her relationship to an AI-powered rare earths mining operation called NRED Intelligent Mining, which counts former Department of Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem as a strategic advisor. On June 24, NRED—then known as NovaRed Mining, a small copper-and-gold exploration company in Vancouver, Canada—issued a release to share that Zacharia, who had left a role as a DHS spokesperson two months before, was joining the advisory board alongside Noem. In her new role, according to the release, Zacharia would provide “strategic guidance” to NovaRed’s board of directors as it advanced exploration projects as well as “emerging artificial intelligence initiatives.” It does not appear, though, that she ever worked there. When asked on Friday whether she was still on the board, she said, “That was fake,” and referred WIRED to Sam Amsterdam, a “strategic marketing and media engagement professional” whose clients have included the government of Kazakhstan and political parties in Georgia, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe. “That release was not approved by Ms. Zacharia and was issued without her consent,” says Amsterdam, whose brother is listed as a member of NRED management on the company’s website and said he was speaking as a friend and colleague of Zacharia, not a representative. “I know all that to be factual.” He quickly added that while there had been discussions of her joining the company, she hadn’t actually done so. Valentin Saitarli, who was NRED’s chief technology officer and says he is onboarding as CEO, confirmed that there were discussions about a role, but said that it “never materialized,” adding, “It was a bit like signing up for a gym but never actually going for a workout.” Describing NRED, Saitarli says, ”We go full robots and AI.” Despite Amsterdam’s understanding that it had been withdrawn, the press release claiming Zacharia was joining the company remained on NRED’s website as of Friday. An archived version of their website showed Zacharia listed as management as of at least July. When WIRED asked Saitarli about this, he said that the site was being updated. Zacharia, whose NovaRed role was announced eight days after Noem’s appointment was announced, worked under Noem as DHS’s deputy assistant press secretary for public affairs for about a month, and was reported to have close ties with de facto DHS chief of staff Corey Lewandowski. (She denied any such ties to The Daily Mail.) The announcement that Noem was joining the advisory board of a Canadian mining company triggered an outcry among Canadians, who pointed to past statements she made referring to Canada as the “51st state.” At that time The Globe and Mail described NovaRed as “a copper and gold exploration company that generates no revenue.” The paper noted that in January, NoraRed was holding only $65,689 in cash, which the company said “wouldn’t be enough to cover all of its expected expenses for the next 12 months.” But around the spring, something changed. NovaRed began stacking its advisory board not with geologists and technical consultants—which would be typical for a junior mining company—but with heavy hitters with ties to the defense sector, MAGA, and other international entities. Earlier this month, NRED announced that it was pivoting away from its flagship Wilmac Copper-Gold Project, and putting all its resources into developing and commercializing “MetalCore,” its “ AI-assisted mineral exploration platform.” “I want to build a new generation of robotics and mining,” Saitarli tells WIRED. “Do we want to get stuck in the Stone Age or horses age? No, we want to live on Mars, spend time in hotels in space, have a wedding party on the moon…We will bring robotics and AI to global mining and beyond our planet, hopefully.” Phil Ehr, a retired US Navy commander who is running for Congress as a Democrat in Florida, was brought into NovaRed earlier this year. “I know nothing about mining. I know nothing about commodities,” Ehr tells WIRED in a phone call. “But I do know that we need more copper. I do know that we need more critical minerals.” He had only been at the company for a couple of months when, he said, he was blindsided by NovaRed’s announcement that Kristi Noem and “another DHS spokesperson”—whom he recalls being Zacharia—had also been brought onto the advisory board. “To the best of my knowledge, [Zacharia] came at the same time as Kristi Noem did without any consultation to me and was just like, boom, there,” recalls Ehr. Noem, who did not immediately reply to requests for comment, was fresh off overseeing the disastrous ICE occupation in Minneapolis, and Ehr didn’t want to be associated with her. “So I asked the company, “Why is Kristi Noem here? I just can't work with her because she is so controversial. We are on different sides of what's right and wrong in, in the federal government,” says Ehr. He thought it was odd that NovaRed seemed to be stacking its ranks with people who, like him, didn’t know very much about the mining industry. He expected some geologists in the mix, or technical consultants. Instead, some of the other people hired included Gregory Fedun, who previously “served as a key advisor to the United Arab Emirates’ Al Mualla Royal Family on a range of international projects,” and media executive Lee Caplin, coproducer of HBO’s True Detective series. Ehr resigned from the advisory board not long after Noem joined. While she was attempting to clarify the nature of her relationship to NRED, Zacharia was also tending to other matters. On Thursday evening, while she still held her position as White House press secretary, Zacharia reached out to a WIRED reporter to suggest they contact fitness influencer named Jenelle Summers for “clarity” on Beachbody, the MLM she was previously affiliated with and which Summer brought her into. Summers said she didn’t recall much about Zacharia—whom, she said, she met online—other than that “she was always kind to me and someone that was into fitness and believed in the products and programs.” “To my recollections,” she added, “she didn't do much with it.” Summers rejected the idea that she had been involved in a “pyramid scheme,” which is how Zacharia had characterized the company to WIRED. ”That's kind of old school thinking,” Summers said. “It was a network marketing business model.” “I don't have any comment on that other than to say she's always been kind to me,” she said when asked what she made of Zacharia’s rise to prominence. Zacharia did not respond to requests for comment on her firing. When asked if he had comment on her having been let go, Amsterdam told a WIRED reporter, “Well, that’s news to me!” [Image text:] HITE HOUSE CHINGTON HITE HOUSE HINGTON