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.