Firm Tied to Kristi Noem Named Ex-White House Press Secretary as Adviser; Both Say It Never Happened
An AI mining startup with links to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem listed short-lived White House press secretary Katie Zacharia as an adviser, a claim the company and Zacharia now deny.
Katie Zacharia, who spent a matter of days as White House press secretary before stepping down, was listed as an adviser to an AI-driven rare-earths mining company connected to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. The company has since removed the reference, and both parties say Zacharia never held any role there. The episode leaves open how her name ended up on the roster in the first place.
The venture sits at the intersection of two priorities in Washington: securing domestic supplies of rare-earth elements and applying machine learning to exploration and extraction. Rare earths are essential to magnets, batteries and defense hardware, and the U.S. has spent years trying to reduce its reliance on Chinese processing. Several startups now pitch AI as a way to find deposits faster and cut the cost of pulling them from the ground.
Noem's connection to the company adds a political dimension. She has been a prominent figure in the current administration, and her name on a private venture — even through associates — invites scrutiny over how business and government circles overlap. The firm has not publicly detailed the nature of that link, and it is unclear whether Noem herself holds any stake or title.
For the AI industry, the story is a reminder that mining and materials startups increasingly lean on AI branding to attract investors and government attention. Claims about advisory boards, pilot projects and technical capabilities are often hard to verify from the outside. A single unverified name on a website can raise questions about how carefully such companies manage their public profiles.
Zacharia's tenure in the press secretary role was among the shortest in recent memory, which makes the advisory listing more conspicuous. Neither she nor the company has said who added her name or why it remained online. Representatives for the company did not offer a timeline for when the listing appeared or was taken down.
What to watch is whether the company clarifies its relationship with Noem and how it vets the advisers it publicizes. For anyone evaluating AI mining ventures, the episode is a case study in treating leadership pages as marketing until confirmed. The larger question — whether AI can meaningfully lower the cost of domestic rare-earth production — remains unanswered.