Every hyperscaler capex dollar touches crushed stone, cement, and structural steel before it touches a single GPU. Today's three picks sit on the supply side of that build-out, and all three trade at multiples that still reflect a pre-AI world.

One runs a continent-scale aggregates position, one dominates cement across the Americas, and one just watched its core commodity get added to the US critical minerals list.

AI MEETS STABILITY

One little-known company sits at the intersection of AI, energy, and defense — three of the biggest investment themes in America right now.

Whitney Tilson says it may be one of the safest ways to play the AI boom, and notes that one famous investor reportedly put roughly half his fund into the business.

He’s revealing the company name and ticker free of charge.

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Japan is burning through inventories to keep its EV and chipmaking lines running.

Korean defense firms have started routing rare earth shipments through Russia to get around Beijing's export curbs. Both stories broke last week, and they tell you exactly where this is heading.

China's October 2025 controls covered every meaningful medium and heavy rare earth in the value chain. Implementation was suspended until November 2026, meaning the enforcement window opens in roughly ten weeks.

The Pentagon is not waiting, and neither should you. It just signed $2.03 billion in conditional loan commitments across Sila Technologies, Niron Magnetics, and Australia's Sunrise Energy Metals.

Add the $400 million equity check into an Australian rare earth mine and the $3 billion Trump minerals package from August 8, and Washington has now written more critical minerals equity checks in five weeks than in the previous five years combined.

Mark November 2026 on your calendar as the enforcement date to trade around.

A MINING.COM study you should file away: a one- to two-year processing delay on 25% to 50% of the 18,000-tonne planned rare earth magnet pipeline defers between 4,500 and 18,000 capacity-years of magnet output.

That is the actual scale of the exposure.

Your takeaway: You want to be positioned in the picks-and-shovels layer supporting this reshoring, not chasing the crowded rare earth names Washington has already backed.

Federal capital always drags private capital behind it, and the multiplier hits infrastructure, aggregates, and processing well before it reaches magnet makers.

LME zinc closed the week ending August 7 up 1.8% while nickel was the only base metal in the red. Then this week's Economic Times print confirmed refined zinc demand at 14 million tonnes for 2026 against production of 13.99 million tonnes.

A 19,000-tonne deficit is small on paper. It is enormous when you remember zinc inventories at LME warehouses have been draining for eighteen straight months.

Meanwhile, three-month LME copper is trading around $14,170 per tonne ($6.43/lb) and approaching this year's earlier record. The tom-next spread blew out to a $75-per-tonne premium, which is what physical squeezes look like in real time.

US July unwrought copper imports dropped 11.5% year on year to 425,000 tonnes as Chinese buyers pulled forward inventory ahead of tariff clarity. If you trade copper, the level to beat is that prior record high.

Here is the piece that matters for your positioning: RBC Capital Markets published a note yesterday flagging that mining equities remain cautious even as the physical squeeze intensifies. That is your window.

Your takeaway: When copper is trading within a quarter of its record and the equity indexes still price miners for a $3.50 copper world, you are being handed a gift.

Focus on producers with volume growth and low all-in sustaining costs (AISC), because operating leverage on a $6.43 copper deck is not linear; it is exponential.

The Minerals Administration opened a Proposed Leasing Notice covering federal waters off the Northern Mariana Islands on Monday.

NOAA simultaneously kicked off environmental review for The Metals Company's USA-B license area. Two separate seabed moves in 48 hours put TMC on your radar as the environmental review timeline unfolds.

Six African nations now back the precautionary pause at the International Seabed Authority, and Kenya just took its first Council seat.

Treat the split as permanent: multilateral process on one track, US unilateral action on a completely separate track under the Deep Seabed Hard Mineral Resources Act of 1980.

Trump's April executive order told NOAA to expedite; NOAA is expediting, and you now have two regulatory timelines to track instead of one.

The strategic logic writes itself. Polymetallic nodules contain nickel, copper, manganese, and cobalt in ratios that map almost perfectly to grid and battery demand.

If you cannot import it and cannot mine enough of it on land inside NATO borders, you go get it off the seafloor.

Your takeaway: Seabed mining is now a live 2027 catalyst rather than a 2030s hypothetical. You do not need to bet on the specific operators to benefit.

Watch for supporting infrastructure names: subsea equipment, port logistics, and processing capacity in Pacific-facing US territories.

SAFE STOCKS CRACKING

The first half of 2026 may have felt stable, but two powerful forces are now colliding.

AI is reshaping entire industries, while global trade and political alliances are becoming more fragile.

One analyst calls it The Age of Chaos.

And he believes many “safe” household-name stocks could be at risk, while a new group of companies may be positioned to lead the next market cycle.

In a free presentation, he reveals the specific stocks he believes investors should consider selling, plus the names he believes could thrive as this new era unfolds.

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Martin Marietta Materials (NYSE: MLM)

You cannot pour a data center foundation, a transmission tower footing, or a semiconductor fab pad without crushed stone, sand, and gravel. Martin Marietta is one of exactly two operators with continent-scale aggregates positions in the right basins.

The company raised full-year guidance on its last earnings print, pricing power is running double-digit year-over-year in Sun Belt markets, and the $250 billion Bank of America critical infrastructure initiative announced August 12 flows straight into aggregate demand.

Data center construction alone is projected to consume more aggregates through 2028 than the entire US highway program from 2015-2020. You are getting quasi-monopoly economics in the physical layer of the AI buildout.

Every hyperscaler capex announcement is a Martin Marietta tailwind, and few investors connect the two.

CEMEX (NYSE: CX)

CEMEX gives you the same infrastructure exposure with a completely different setup.

The Mexican giant runs the largest cement platform in the Americas, sells into both the US Sun Belt reshoring boom and the Latin American critical minerals buildout the Inter-American Development Bank is now financing, and trades at a single-digit EV/EBITDA multiple.

Peso volatility has kept generalist funds away, which is your edge.

The company has spent three years cleaning up its balance sheet and is now generating enough free cash flow to fund both dividends and capacity expansion in Texas and Florida simultaneously.

If you believe Latin America is finally going to keep more of its critical mineral value chain onshore rather than shipping raw ore to Asia, CEMEX is the pick and shovel that sells into every processing facility, every road, and every port expansion that requires.

Core Natural Resources (NYSE: CNR)

Metallurgical coal was formally added to the US critical minerals list in the August 7 White House minerals announcement. That single classification change unlocked federal capital access, permitting acceleration, and Defense Production Act eligibility for domestic met coal producers.

Core Natural Resources, the entity formed from the Consol-Arch merger, is now the largest US-listed met coal pure play with the deepest reserves in the Appalachian basin.

Steel is not going away; Indian steel demand is entering a multi-decade expansion per the BHP outlook, and every reshoring project Washington finances requires structural steel that requires met coal.

You are buying an unloved commodity with brand-new strategic status at a valuation that still reflects the old regulatory regime. That gap closes.

AI WARNING ISSUED

AI insider Keith Kaplan says the next phase of the AI boom could punish investors who are still crowded into the biggest names.

After spending more than $17 million on AI research, he says there’s one move investors should consider before August 31 — and it doesn’t involve Nvidia, SpaceX, or Microsoft.

Metal Trend Exploration Focus

The physical buildout underneath AI is now the dominant demand driver across every commodity you follow. Copper for the wire, aggregates for the pads, cement for the shells, met coal for the steel, rare earths for the magnets, and uranium for the baseload.

Wall Street keeps trying to trade this one commodity at a time. You should trade it as one integrated build-out because every hyperscaler capex dollar touches all seven of those markets simultaneously.

The names that supply the physical layer, and trade at multiples that still reflect a pre-AI world, are where the asymmetric setups live for the next twelve months.

— Noah Zelvis, Resource Brief