An appointment that never happened
NovaRed, as the company was then called, announced Zachariah’s appointment on June 24, eight days after it announced Noem’s. The release said Zachariah would advise the board on exploration projects and new AI initiatives.
Sam Amsterdam, a strategic marketing and media-relations specialist who has worked with the governments of Kazakhstan and political parties in Georgia, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, told WIRED the release was published without Zachariah’s permission. He said the two sides had discussed her joining, but she did not. Amsterdam said he was speaking as Zachariah’s friend and colleague, not for the company. His brother is listed in NRED’s leadership.
Valentin Saitarli, then NRED’s chief technology officer and, by his account, moving into the CEO role, also confirmed that the discussions went nowhere. He compared Zachariah’s prospective appointment to signing up for a gym and never showing up.
The announcement was still on NRED’s website on Friday, despite Amsterdam’s belief that it had been withdrawn. An archived version had listed Zachariah among the company’s leaders since at least July. Saitarli said the site was being updated.
A mining company in search of a new identity
NovaRed began as a small Vancouver company exploring for copper and gold. The Globe and Mail described it as having no revenue and reported that it had just $65,689 in cash in January. NovaRed said that would not cover all of its expected expenses over the next 12 months.
Then its public profile began to shift. Instead of the geologists and technical advisers typical of a small mining company, it started bringing in people with ties to defense, MAGA politics and international institutions.
Ehr said he had been at the company for only a couple of months when NovaRed announced Noem and another DHS figure—whom he remembered as Zachariah—as advisers. He said he had not been told about the appointments and that they appeared suddenly, alongside Noem. He later left the advisory board, saying he could not work with her because they disagreed about right and wrong in the federal government.
Earlier this month, NRED said it was abandoning its main Wilmac Copper-Gold project and putting all its resources into MetalCore, an AI platform for mineral exploration. Saitarli described ambitions to bring robotics and AI into mining worldwide and beyond Earth, including life on Mars, hotels in space and weddings on the Moon. He said the company intended to move entirely to robotics and AI.
The gap between the pitch and the record
The company’s shift is striking: it is moving away from a named copper-and-gold project toward an AI platform, while its public roster has drawn attention for political connections rather than mining experience. I think the Zachariah episode makes that gap harder to ignore. The problem is not just that a proposed adviser never joined; it is that the appointment remained on the website after the people involved disputed whether it had happened.
The announcement also sits against a broader record of unsettled claims about Zachariah’s credentials. During her brief White House tenure, she acknowledged that she had not passed California’s bar exam after having long presented herself as a lawyer. WIRED had also reported that she was an affiliate partner at Beachbody, a fitness company using a multilevel-marketing model.
Zachariah later called Beachbody a pyramid scheme. Jenelle Summers, the fitness blogger who introduced her to the company, rejected that description, calling it an outdated view of network marketing. Summers said Zachariah had been kind to her, was interested in fitness and believed in Beachbody’s products and programs, but, as far as she remembered, did little there.
There is a simpler question than whether NRED’s AI ambitions reach Mars: what expertise, product or operating evidence will show that MetalCore is more than a new label for a company still assembling its identity? The announcement supplies grand ambitions and a list of advisers. It leaves that proof out.
Daily AI news
Every day we pick what actually matters in AI and explain it plainly — no hype, no filler. Subscribe if you want to follow where the industry is going.
Only what matters — every day
Follow on X