Trump’s Secret Planes Are Mapping Your Property

Yesterday, a rusted old combine was quietly sitting in a field in Iowa just as the sun started dipping behind a couple grain silos in the distance. 

That’s when a small shadow quickly passed by. 

This wasn’t some hawk on a mission to find a meal. It was a small, fixed-wing aircraft — low, white, and unsettlingly precise — moving in slow, deliberate sweeps across the harvested fields of Eastern Iowa. 

But something about this plane was a little… off. 

It was flying a little too straight to be crop dusting the field this late in the evening, and it was flying way too low for commercial routes. 

However, the most peculiar part of this unusual sight what was mounted behind its tail. It was a long, rigid boom — a “stinger” — extending like a steel spear pointed at the soil itself.

The stinger wasn’t a camera, mind you. Nor was it any sort of spraying system. 

No, the stinger on this small nondescript white plane carried something far more technical — magnetic and radiometric sensors capable of reading the geological structure of the Earth without disturbing a single inch of soil. 

When flown in meticulous parallel passes, these instruments build a three-dimensional image of the bedrock — density, radiation signatures, magnetic properties — the kind of subsurface map America hasn’t needed in peacetime for generations.

You see, this plane wasn’t conducting an agricultural survey. 

It was a mission of resource reconnaissance being executed by the U.S. Geological survey, and is a part of the USGS’ Earth MRI initiative to utilize airborne geophysics to the rural Midwest. 

After performing similar passes from all over the country, from the Ozarks and Mountain West, all the way north in Alaska’s mineral belts, the USGS is acting on President Trump’s orders to widen the federal push to identify deposits of strategic metals. 

The list of targets reads like the periodic table’s blacklist:

• Barite for drilling.
• Cobalt for defense batteries.
• Gallium and germanium for semiconductors.
• Indium for touchscreens and thin-film solar.
• Zinc for industrial coatings and alloys.

Rare earth elements for magnets used in missiles, radar, jet engines, and the AI compute infrastructure powering the next industrial era.

The United States hasn’t studied farmland this way since the country minted the idea of manifest destiny and sent prospectors west with shovels. Except now, the prospectors are flying grid patterns a few hundred feet above the ground, and the stakes stretch far beyond a single stream bed or gold vein.

Trump’s Planes Found Something. He’s Not Talking.

Look, the reason why these USGS planes are surveying critical mineral potential in Iowa isn't because President Trump suddenly developed an academic interest in Midwestern bedrock.

It’s because countries like China are already so far ahead of the game, that the U.S. is now scrambling to secure its own domestic supply of strategic resources. 

For years, Beijing treated critical minerals not as commodities, but as instruments of leverage. 

You could say they’ve been quite successful. 

After all, today China refines roughly 90% of the world's rare earths, 70% of EV battery materials, and the overwhelming majority of the gallium and germanium essential to semiconductor manufacturing. 

Those aren’t negotiating positions, dear reader — the Chinese have become the gatekeepers to global supply. 

You know just as well as I do how Beijing wields that control, too. 

When China restricted gallium shipments earlier this year in response to U.S. export controls on high-end chips, it was a reminder that supply chains are not supply chains — they are power lines, and someone always controls the breaker.

Remember, this is happening during a time when demand is ramping-up in a major way. AI data centers that consume power and materials like new-age steel mills, and chip fabs are popping up in Arizona, Ohio, Texas, and New York. 

So why the planes?  Well, you can legislate incentives for miners to develop their projects, but you can’t legislate these critical minerals into existence.

The aircraft over Iowa are not future-facing curiosity. Like I said, they’re a tactical reconnaissance in a resource chess match that is no longer hypothetical or distant.

This is no longer about whether the U.S. can build the factories of the future — but whether it can feed them.

Chips, EVs, AI infrastructure, missile guidance, grid storage — all collapse into vulnerability the moment a foreign supplier decides that yesterday’s handshake is no longer tomorrow’s shipment.

That’s why the Earth MRI grid patterns over Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Alaska, and the Mountain West are not symbolic. 

Think of it as a form of triage, and a national attempt to close a gap that has been widening for more than a generation.

But while the federal government surveys for potential deposits and waits on permitting, feasibility, and infrastructure, a quieter development is taking shape — one that doesn’t require a single aerial pass to validate its value.

Because here’s the best part…

A few elite U.S. miners aren’t searching for resources under speculation — they already hold them.

Trump’s Flood of Cash Pour Into the U.S. Mining Sector

Love him or hate him, Trump’s USGS isn’t just mapping bedrock — it’s buying into it. 

In 2025 alone, government agencies have deployed over US$1 billion in equity investments and direct funding into critical-minerals and mining firms. 

The Department of Energy (DOE) just announced up to US$134 million available to support domestic processing of rare-earth elements from unconventional sources, including mine tailings and e-waste — a serious signal that America wants its supply chain from ground to factory. 

At the same time, the government has taken equity stakes in firms with existing critical-minerals projects. 

You’ve probably seen the 5% stake the U.S. announced in Lithium Americas, or the investment we’re pumping into MP Materials to help break our critical mineral dependence on China. 

These moves aren’t aimed at speculative geology — they back companies that already know what’s under their feet, have defined resource studies, and are advancing toward production.

And as President Trump funnels more capital into extraction, processing, refining, and infrastructure, the real winners will be those miners with proven deposits and production pathways. 

So, while survey planes continue scouring the Midwest for more resources, individual investors like us don’t have to sit around and wait for Iowa’s results.

The opportunity is already mapped — and the companies positioned to supply the next era of American industry won’t be flying under Wall Street’s radar for long.