Katie Zacharia's Fake AI Mining Board Seat and the Anatomy of NRED

By Marcus Bennett

Katie Zacharia says the June 24 press release announcing her appointment to the advisory board of an AI-powered rare earths mining company was fabricated. "That was fake," she told WIRED on Friday, five days before her firing as White House press secretary. The release, issued by a company then called NovaRed Mining, claimed she would provide "strategic guidance" to the board on exploration projects and "emerging artificial intelligence initiatives." It remained live on the company's website as of Friday, and an archived version of the site listed Zacharia as management as of at least July.

The episode is the strangest chapter yet in the short, contested professional history of a press secretary whose résumé already included an admitted failure to pass the California bar despite years of presenting herself as an attorney, and, as WIRED reported, a stint as an affiliate marketer for Beachbody, a fitness multi-level marketing company. It also opens a window onto NRED Intelligent Mining, a venture that pivoted this month from copper and gold exploration to an "AI-assisted mineral exploration platform" while stacking its advisory board with political and media figures rather than geologists.

What actually happened on June 24?

NovaRed Mining, a small copper-and-gold exploration company based in Vancouver, Canada, issued a release on June 24 announcing two advisory board appointments: Katie Zacharia, who had left a role as Department of Homeland Security spokesperson roughly two months earlier, and former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. Zacharia's announcement came eight days after Noem's.

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, spoke to WIRED as what he described as a friend and colleague of Zacharia, not as a company representative. His brother is listed as a member of NRED management on the company's website.

"That release was not approved by Ms. Zacharia and was issued without her consent," Amsterdam said. "I know all that to be factual." He added that while discussions about her joining the company had taken place, she had not actually done so.

Valentin Saitarli, who was NRED's chief technology officer and says he is onboarding as CEO, confirmed the talks but said a role "never materialized." He offered a summary: "It was a bit like signing up for a gym but never actually going for a workout." Asked why Zacharia still appeared on the company's website, Saitarli said the site was being updated.

Who is NRED, and what are its finances?

The Globe and Mail, covering the Canadian backlash to Noem's appointment, described NovaRed at the time as "a copper and gold exploration company that generates no revenue." In January, the paper reported, the company held only $65,689 in cash, an amount the company itself said "wouldn't be enough to cover all of its expected expenses for the next 12 months."

Noem's appointment triggered an outcry among Canadians, who pointed to her past statements referring to Canada as the "51st state."

Around the spring, the company's recruitment strategy shifted. Rather than adding geologists or technical consultants, the typical hires for a junior mining company, NovaRed stacked its advisory board with figures tied to the defense sector, MAGA politics, and international entities. Earlier this month, NRED announced it was abandoning its flagship Wilmac Copper-Gold Project entirely and directing all resources toward developing and commercializing "MetalCore," its AI-assisted mineral exploration platform.

"We go full robots and AI," Saitarli said in describing the company. His ambitions extend well beyond terrestrial mining: "I want to build a new generation of robotics and mining. Do we want to get stuck in the Stone Age or horses age? No, we want to live on Mars, spend time in hotels in space, have a wedding party on the moon…We will bring robotics and AI to global mining and beyond our planet, hopefully."

Why did one advisor resign?

Phil Ehr, a retired US Navy commander now running for Congress as a Democrat in Florida, joined NovaRed's advisory board earlier this year. He is candid about his lack of industry credentials. "I know nothing about mining. I know nothing about commodities," Ehr told WIRED by phone. "But I do know that we need more copper. I do know that we need more critical minerals."

Within a couple of months, he said, the Noem and Zacharia announcements blindsided him. "To the best of my knowledge, [Zacharia] came at the same time as Kristi Noem did without any consultation to me and was just like, boom, there," Ehr recalls.

Noem, who did not immediately reply to requests for comment, had just overseen the ICE operation in Minneapolis, which WIRED characterizes as disastrous. Ehr wanted out. "So I asked the company, 'Why is Kristi Noem here? I just can't work with her because she is so controversial. We are on different sides of what's right and wrong in the federal government,'" he said. He resigned from the advisory board not long after Noem joined.

The other appointments struck him as similarly untethered from the mining industry. They included Gregory Fedun, who previously "served as a key advisor to the United Arab Emirates' Al Mualla Royal Family on a range of international projects," and media executive Lee Caplin, coproducer of HBO's True Detective.

What was Zacharia's connection to DHS leadership?

Zacharia worked under Noem at DHS as deputy assistant press secretary for public affairs for about a month. She was reported to have close ties with de facto DHS chief of staff Corey Lewandowski, a claim she denied to The Daily Mail.

The timeline matters for the stakes of the story. Zacharia left her DHS spokesperson role roughly two months before the June 24 NovaRed release, then served five days as White House press secretary before being fired. Throughout that brief tenure, she spent considerable effort explaining her past, including the bar admission and the Beachbody affiliation. Her name appearing, apparently without consent, on the advisory board of a revenue-less Canadian mining company pivoting to AI adds a documented instance of phantom credentials to a résumé already under scrutiny, and it raises questions about who at NRED authorized and benefited from the announcement.

What about the Beachbody thread?

On Thursday evening, while still White House press secretary, Zacharia contacted a WIRED reporter and suggested they reach out to fitness influencer Jenelle Summers for "clarity" on Beachbody, the MLM Zacharia had previously been affiliated with and which Summers had brought her into.

Summers, who said she met Zacharia online, recalled little about her. "She was always kind to me and someone that was into fitness and believed in the products and programs," Summers said. "To my recollections, she didn't do much with it."

Summers rejected Zacharia's characterization of Beachbody to WIRED as a "pyramid scheme." "That's kind of old school thinking," Summers said. "It was a network marketing business model." Asked what she made of Zacharia's rise to prominence, Summers said: "I don't have any comment on that other than to say she's always been kind to me."

What remains unresolved?

Zacharia did not respond to requests for comment on her firing. Amsterdam, told of her dismissal, replied: "Well, that's news to me!"

The release naming her to NRED's advisory board stayed online through Friday despite Amsterdam's assertion that it had been withdrawn. Saitarli's promised website update has not been independently verified, and no one at the company has explained who issued the June 24 release or why Zacharia appeared as management in archived versions of the site from at least July. NRED, with $65,689 in cash as of January, no revenue, no flagship project, and a board light on mining expertise, is now betting everything on MetalCore, its AI mineral exploration platform, and on claims of robotics ambitions reaching to the moon.