A geophysical survey is how we look beneath the surface without digging. It works by measuring physical properties of the ground, gravity, magnetics, electrical resistance, or the way sound waves travel through rock, and turning those measurements into a picture of what lies below. For oil and gas, for water, and increasingly for minerals, the survey is the first step before anyone spends a dollar on a drill bit.

This is the technology at the center of Jim Rickards’s “$150 Trillion Birthright” presentation. Rickards, a former general counsel at Long-Term Capital Management and a best-selling author on currency and geopolitics, runs model Press’s Strategic Intelligence letter. His pitch claims President Trump “opened 650 million acres of federal land containing an estimated $150 trillion in buried minerals,” and that mining companies will be “legally required to find the exact location of these mineral deposits BEFORE they can dig a single hole.” Three companies, he argues, could dominate the discovery technology. Here is what they actually sell.

What a Survey Actually Measures

The workhorse of the industry is the seismic survey. A source, either a vibrating truck on land or an air gun towed behind a ship at sea, sends energy into the ground. Sensors called geophones or hydrophones record the reflections that bounce back from different rock layers. Computers then assemble those echoes into a three-dimensional image of the subsurface, and the resulting data sets are licensed as the industry’s real product, not one-off survey deliverables.

For minerals, other methods come into play: magnetic and gravity surveys, electromagnetic methods, and borehole logging. Each one maps a different physical signature, and together they let an exploration team decide where to drill. It is real, established technology, and it genuinely runs ahead of the drilling budget.

The Three Companies and What They Do

Rickards names three “MDP” picks, short for mineral discovery technology. They are Geospace Technologies, a maker of land and marine seismic equipment with about $116 million in trailing revenue; TGS ASA, the Norwegian energy-data firm formed from the 2023 TGS and PGS merger, which licenses large offshore seismic data sets; and MIND Technology, a maker of offshore seismic hardware under the Seamap brand with about $46 million in annual revenue.

The pitch attaches forecast returns of “1,520% gain potential” to “4,800% gain potential” to these names. Since the tease, the scoreboard is less generous: Geospace is down 73.8%, MIND is down 56.8%, and TGS is up 8.9%. We explained the seafloor side in our deep-sea mining explainer and the broader discovery story in our AI mineral exploration coverage.

What Is Marketing Versus Mechanism

The survey mechanism is genuine, but the category matters. All three companies are oil and gas seismic businesses, and their revenue has tracked energy exploration budgets for decades, not mineral discovery. TGS and MIND both had their moment during the 2010 to 2012 oil bull market and gave most of it back. The ad also claims one pick has institutional ownership of “only 8%,” but our teardown found the real figure near 67%.

The revenue forecast is worth flagging too. The pitch suggests Geospace could grow from $116 million to $1.8 billion in revenue “as soon as next year,” a roughly 15-fold jump with no disclosed driver. That is a promotional number, not a model. We covered the policy and market picture in our rare earth stocks coverage and our critical minerals strategy explainer.

The Non-Seismic Toolbox

Beyond seismic, the geophysical toolkit includes magnetics, gravity, and electromagnetic methods, each of which measures a different physical property of the subsurface. Magnetic surveys map variations in the earth’s field that can mark buried ore bodies, gravity surveys detect density contrasts that outline basins and intrusions, and electromagnetic methods respond to conductive minerals like sulfides. For mineral exploration, these methods often matter more than seismic, because metal deposits can be dense, magnetic, or conductive without producing the clean reflections seismic is best at. That is a quiet but important point about the pitch. The companies being pitched are built around seismic, a technique that dominates oil and gas exploration, and only one of several tools a mineral explorer would actually deploy. The technology is real and valuable, but it is aimed at a different target than the mining land rush the ad describes, and understanding that mismatch is the difference between buying the technology and buying the story. That distinction is why the survey angle deserves a closer look before any decision.

What We Genuinely Like

The pick-and-shovel logic is sound. Surveyors and equipment makers get paid on activity, not on finding anything, which is a lower-risk way to play exploration than a single discovery. The companies are legitimate, established businesses, and a genuine rise in exploration spending would lift all three. The offer behind it is The Situation Report at $1,995 per year with no refunds. The gap between the marketing and the mechanism is the part worth keeping in view.

Ready to see the research? Click here to view the American Birthright presentation.

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