The thing I'm thinking about is probably what you just said, which is the kind of Ð maybe they don't feel like it, but kind of the things that are peripheral to the actual physical manufacturing of steel. You've got all the office stuff that's going on and what sort of economies can be found in AI. And I think that Ð They're pretty massive, honestly. Yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunity there, if you want to call it that. Some people don't see it as opportunity. Well, I think so. These can be touchy discussions, depending with whom you're speaking, because it could be directly threatening what they're doing. Of course. But the flip side of that coin is I've never seen a single company in the metals industry that was overstaffed. No, you're not going to. Yeah. And so let's say if AI, if you can hand off, you know, let's say 30 percent of your workload to AI over the course of six months, you're like getting it up to speed on what you're doing. You know, the company would be all too glad to hear like, hey, I actually have more time now to go tackle that. Right. You know, because part of I think in a lot of operating businesses. Growth is so deliberate and operating is automatic. So you just find yourself, regardless of wanting to grow, you get pulled right back into operations. It's like get through the day, get through the day, get through the day. And I think the opportunity really for, I can only speak to the metals industry, the metals industry is, yeah, maybe you're now going to be able to pull your head out of daily ops and go do that growth plan. And get it done because you do have sort of some efficiencies. Yeah, focus on those strategic things because you're right. The steel industry, there's two things. We're not overly staffed. We're very lean and mean. Also, the steel industry is kind of a late adopter, too. So you have a lot of companies that are kind of slow walking this journey with AI because they're either skeptical. They might be comfortable. That guy with the spiral notebook does it just as good as any agent can do it. But I think you're going to find that balance somewhere. But because we're just now getting into the fray. I think it's going to take us a little longer. But no, I absolutely agree, Shep. There are some very good applications for AI in our industry. I just don't think it translates to handling molten steel and moving large-scale equipment. Well, you made a good differentiation between the robotics, the automation, and the AI. And clearly the AI can... feed into the robotics and streamlining how to program it and tell it what to do. But ultimately, when you have things that are thousands of degrees, that are white hot, moving fast, and you're quenching it, you've got all the stuff going on, you want at least a chaperone to make sure that steel is behaving itself. Now, let me step away from the steel industry because we have something in common. in our in our daily lives which is we're both humans and we do see ai and kind of a general kind of you know the the social side of it the business side of it or i'll say the personal side and the business side and if i could ask you to step away from your sma brain for a moment like like what what do you see is just sort of like You know, we have kids and we have like, what do you think of this whole wave? And I'll take everything you say with an asterisk. I'll caveat for you in advance, which is we don't know. Based on what you're kind of seeing, what's just kind of your general sense? My general sense is that AI has enormous potential, but it's got to be reined in and regulated. And I'm very concerned that so much of AI's growth is unfettered. It seems like it's outpaced the government and the politicians' ability to manage it. That's concerning. I'm also concerned about intellectual property because I think AI has the potential to become one of the largest examples of intellectual property theft in the history of the world. Where is all of this information coming from? I mean, there are actual people that wrote the songs. You and I are both big music guys, did the research, invented the product, painted the picture. And yet AI is kind of taking all of that information and making it where some guy in his basement can come pretty close to that level of intelligence or genius in some cases. And that bothers me. There's a really old saying, speed kills. And I think we're getting a new look into what that means, which is AI is very fast. And it's killing the concept of IP in many ways. It is. And the issue is it's happening at such scale that you almost can't even litigate or protect it. No. It is so pervasive. And the frequency, like as we're speaking right now. unknowingly, somebody's writing doing something that is built right on top of something that's totally protected either by copyright, trademark, or other IP. Yeah. And it's a little disconcerting. And it always seems like these things that seem like they are utopian in nature and they're going to really make the world a better place, they morph on you. Think about the internet. oh, man, everyone is going to be connected. You're going to have this access to all this data. It's going to democratize information. Well, nowadays, the Internet seems to be about commoditizing my personal life, monitoring and surveilling me, keeping me out of information that I want to get to. Well, now it's like, oh, God, we're all connected. Yeah, right. So it makes you wonder, you know, we're not Facebook's client. We're Facebook's product. And people forget that. And that holds true for Instagram and X as well. Yeah. I think the part that maybe is also in your comment there is how few people care that we're the product. Right. Like, fine. Yeah. What do you want to know? Yeah. Here's my life. Here's my life. And so you feel sort of an IP concern about it. And what about, you know, things that I... of think about maybe I hit sort of this roadblock mentally is what happens to the concept of Like education, right? You know, education for many years is also when you go to a college and other things, you're also buying connections because connections is not a dirty word. Like we all, life's a team sport and you need to know people to do things in a general sense. You better know what you're doing when you get there. but at least to get the opportunity to maybe do something. Right. But, you know, you think about colleges and other things, it's like, well, I can kind of do all that. Yeah, without this. Without this. So how do you? Well, I think, yeah, we have a dilemma because I think, unfortunately, we have. grown up thinking that you go to high school you go get a four-year degree and you get a job but there are multiple pathways to getting a good job and living a good life and they don't all revolve around going to college it really revolves around education but in the sense of how you educate yourself do you need to go to a four-year school maybe you get an apprenticeship training from a union. Maybe you go to a community college and get an associate's degree or you get a certificate or you get a license. That's what's going to really help people. And also learning how to actually do something. You know, and I'm saying this, but all the liberal arts majors, I have a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's in communications. But a lot of folks get out of college for six years, whatever, and don't really know how to do anything. And a lot of the things that they think they know how to do, guess what? AI can do it. They can write emails. They can perform customer service functions. You know, they can teach. I mean, you name it. So, you know, I would encourage a young person to learn a trade or a skill. I would also encourage them, if they live near a steel mill, to go apply there because you can have a lifelong. good paying job. And at the end of the day, you can see that what you're doing is making your country bigger, better and stronger. Yeah. So you have a good, clear line of sight. It's not vague. But yeah, I think AI is really challenging what education means now. And it's not necessarily a four year college. You know, it could create, you know, the skills gap, you know, which Mike Rowe. you know, maybe wasn't the one to think of this concept, but he's done a good job of bringing it to us. He's been very persistent in this. And AI could kind of force a closure of the skill gap because as it relates to, you know, these trades, because if people want to make more money, it's not going to be maybe with a spreadsheet anymore. Exactly. No, I can guarantee you it's not. In fact, AI, to me, is more of a threat to the legal profession, the insurance profession, you know, customer service profession than it is to the steel profession, because AI can really do that as it is right now without much evolution. And I think that's something that kind of gets lost in the translation there. I think it's important to note that AI can't... fix a roof. AI can't clean your pool. AI can't landscape your yard. AI can't repair a car. These are things they can't do plumbing. They can't fix air conditioners. I think that's important. And talking about the skills gap, Shep, just to show you how perverse things got, you're an 80s guy. I'm kind of a 70s, 80s guy. But when I was in junior high and high school, We had to take a shop class. You had to take auto mechanics. I took home economics so I could learn how to type and cook. But nowadays you've got kids that don't even know how to change a tire on a car. Right. No, that's very real. And it's really scary. And so I think that we need to kind of get back to basics here. And learning a trade, you can have a wonderful, glorious career doing that. Well, you can. And I think there's a lot to be said. Well, not to get too far off topic, but there's also the mental health part of I believe that in a general sense, our happiness resides on the other side of achievement. Yes. You know, that's right. And whenever I have a challenge in front of me, I can say, well, that really stinks. Or I can say, I know when I get through this, I'm going to feel great. Yeah. You know, and so I think the more we sort of smooth and. I don't know if it's a word. But I'm feeling you. I know where you're going with this. The more we're smoothing things, the less opportunity there is to feel kind of this achievement. And you sort of just go into the doldrums of, oh, it's Tuesday again. It's Tuesday again. But that's a little far afield. But you do think in a general sense, AI can. Economize some stuff. At the end of the day, steel is going to have to be made with people in the room. Absolutely. But they're like the sales and the inbound procurement, maybe stuff like that. But you got to have parents around. You got to have parents. That's a great way of putting it. And it will get those parents the data they need to make good decisions. OK, so this is a bit building on top of that is we do have a future case of the steel industry. What does that look like? And my first thought is tying back into our tariff discussion, are tariffs going to persist? Is there going to be a point at which it's like, we're not doing that anymore. And then there's going to be this kind of, okay, well, we just spent the last 10, 15 years adjusting to what was going to be a beneficial market. And now. All those guards are gone. And here we go. Yeah, I think at some point, all tariffs have a shelf life. But it's important for tariffs to stay in place long enough for two things to happen. One, to stop the bad actors from cheating. And number two, to allow all of this investment that's been done to come to fruition. When that time is, I don't know. What's so tenuous about the 232 tariffs, though, Shep, is that that's an executive order. That is not legislation. That's not law. And so if you recall, when Biden won. Oh, it turns markets. Yeah. Everyone thought, oh, wow, well, the first thing he's going to do after inauguration is get rid of these tariffs. Surprise, surprise. He didn't do them because he knew that they needed to stay in place. because we needed to rebalance. We needed to readjust because things were just getting out of control with all of the circumvention, transshipment, subsidies, and all of that. But I think as long as it's done prudently, as long as there's a glide path, as long as there's good signaling of what's coming. The steel industry, the steel supply chain writ large will adapt. I mean, think about it. We've been through every kind of political and economic environment there is. You know, COVID, the financial crisis, wars, and we're still here. I mean, the last 10 years have been like just an accelerator. Yeah. It's been turbulent, to say the least. People were, I think, when Biden got into office, were a little bit bracing for the tariff rollback. Yeah. But you did have, like, sort of the drilling permit piece happen, which is, you know, the OCTG world. Yeah. Was like, ugh. Yeah, they went apoplectic. Yeah, they did. And, you know, that was their lifeblood, right? And so their reaction, I don't know, I can't comment on what was right or wrong, but I do know what the reaction was, which is like, oh, God. Like that's Ð we need those permits happening. Right. So to your point, when the ground can move beneath your feet like that is sort of the Ð that's the whole idea of patents perhaps is it gives you the runway to go commercialize. Exactly. So there is Ð as you're working with municipalities or federal agencies and you're about to throw down a cool $10 billion or more. You do need some level of assurance that when we get this done, the market's going to be there in a recognized way. right. And so are those things that can be done? Can you nail it down that well? You know, if I had a crystal ball, I'd probably be doing something else, Shep. But I can tell you this. I think that the current administration is committed. to making sure that the steel industry succeeds. This is one of the reasons why the tariffs got doubled. This is one of the reasons why they're still in place. This is one of the reasons why they have an inclusions process for the downstream people now and got rid of the exclusions process. So I think it can happen with smart politics and people that truly understand the steel industry. I find intriguing about D.C. is that everybody thinks they understand what the steel industry is all about, but they really don't. I mean, there are people that thought U.S. Steel was still the largest steel company in America. It hasn't been for decades. That's Nucor, okay? Yeah. You had people that thought that the only way to make steel was with iron ore and coking coal. No, you can make it with electricity and recycled steel scrap. So it's all about educating people of what this industry is about and how important it is for our country. And I think if we do that, we can get there. And we say, how important is this country? I think this is one of the most, and it's fine, because you'll sort of like a lot of industries, it's not what people wake up and think about. But like, how important is it to the country? Meaning it's got a GDP part of it, you know, that's the gross domestic product, but also what doesn't get sold out. And then from a just building things perspective and military and all this stuff, like how important is it to have a domestic steel industry? It's absolutely essential. Steel is necessary for our national security. our critical infrastructure, our energy independence. Keep in mind, we're energy independent in the United States. And it's also important for high-end manufacturing. And if you are relying on other countries to supply that steel for your defense applications, for your bridges, airports, and seaports, okay, for your OCTG, and we talked about quality issues a little earlier, for your manufacturers, all of a sudden that makes those industries dependent on a supply chain that might not necessarily be our ally. They could be very adversarial. Steel can be weaponized by selling deficient steel products to put into a battleship, a tank, or munitions. Come on. So it's absolutely critical that we have a strong industry and there's enough capacity and good steel makers to meet all of our domestic demand. And we need to understand that. And we need to do things to support it. You know, to step a little bit to the side, I heard a theory about the reason the Titanic sank. Oh, really? Which is that the steel had not been made to spec. And that the grain structure, like when it, they weren't. saying that the Titanic didn't, they said, yes, it hit an iceberg. Right. Okay. But it was supposed to be able to withstand that. It was supposed to be able to withstand that. The steel itself, but also the bulkhead system was supposed to keep it from spilling over. But apparently there'd been a grain study. on the metal that was making the hull of that boat, and it hadn't been made to specification. Now, you could argue that who knows the intent? They didn't have the PMI technology that we have today. I don't know if they had the electron microscope. When that was made? Not sure. I don't either. But the hardness test with the rock, where you just drop the thing on it, it goes ping, and you're just like, you know what I'm talking about? It's like just the hardness test is like how high it bounces, which seems like there's some uncontrollable variables in that test. It's sort of a thumb in the wind. But that's why it's important. You know, you hear a lot of folks say, well, you know, the steel industry doesn't even employ that many people. Well, that's because we were efficient. That's because our steel industry, unlike China and some European steel industry companies, we're not propped up by the government or subsidized. We let folks fail. We let true M&A take place. So the employment numbers is really not an argument to use when you talk about the industry's impact. The argument you use is how important the products are to keep us safe, keep us energy independent, to keep the wheels of commerce turning. Well, it's so important that you think about industries that the government had to step in and control. You think about electricity, like utilities. It's such a primitive that things that we think of as utilities are dependent on how much metals are have and how well they're made. So it's something that is a utility, which people view as just like an absolute necessity. It is completely dependent. Yes. The lights in this room, like everything around us is the metals industry. It really is. And the more of that that's domestically sourced, you need it. And look, I'm not against imports. I mean, fairly traded imports are fine. There's just there's some things, whether it's certain shapes, sizes or chemical compositions that might not be readily available or have too long a lead times. Fine. Just follow the law and do it fairly. And let me ask you, so do you ever do the interface between the mills and distribution? You know, kind of, sort of. We have a great relationship with the Metal Service Center Institute, Bob Widener, and that group there. In fact, for the last several years, we've had our annual conference together. I'm very aware of the important role that service centers play in making the market efficient. and making sure inventory levels don't get out of whack. They play a very, very important role. You know, the roles are multifold, meaning that mills in general are not in the... They're not in the business of holding steel. No, they're not. In fact, most of our members, some of our members sell as much as 60% of their steel to service centers. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they got to get it out of there. Right. And so that's. Yeah. So when you think about it, maybe from the outside looking in, you're right. Distribution has great importance because it moves it to where I need it. But it's also. Almost a lay down yard to a degree. It's a warehouse. For mills. Yeah. And also has this massively important function of effectively being a bank to a degree. Right. Which is not a good way or bad way, but meaning that for buyers from distributors. Or, you know, they're this middle person who also has to warehouse things, but has probably paid the bill to the mill. So they've placed the bet with what needs to be on the ground. But they're also kind of holding it for when it maybe gets bought. So it plays such a critical role in distribution. I think it's just other distributors, you know, whatever. But like, no, that is such an important link in the chain. Yeah, it gets undervalued and underestimated. Because of that, Shep, what you're seeing is this kind of rash of consolidations in this space now. Really big service centers are getting what other really big service centers are getting. merging. You also see service centers doing something else, which I think is great, and they're doing value -added work onto the steel that they buy, you know, whether it's shaping, cutting, coating, painting, whatever. And I think that that is kind of the wave of the future for the service center industry. Yeah, which is going to be further going up the value curve and trying to... that's really doing is hopefully insulating them against whatever cost they have from the mill is they'll be able to take in because the mill is going to be what the mill is going to be. And so they've got to figure out, okay, how do we make what we're doing as valuable as possible? By having those value-added services, any fluctuations in inputs can hopefully be smoothened out again by whatever value add that they can bring to it. That's right. So the market has organized itself, I think, in a way. that really works well. And it's had the benefit of a very long time to figure this out. Yeah, to develop. And it really is the envy. You would think that the EU, which is pretty sophisticated and you would think would be on par with us, would have a robust service center. They don't. They do not have this kind of ecosystem that we've created in the United States. You know, increasingly countries are looking over here and they're saying, okay, they have all this EAF production. They got the service centers. They got policy where, you know, you got real tariffs in place, not some, you know, myriad of rules and exemptions and, you know, all of that stuff. Man. That's the model. Yeah. Well, they're markedly different in that they're more inclined to be a distributor themselves. They make the metal, they put it on the ground, and they're trying to keep it more vertically integrated in that way and that we'll make it, hold it, and sell it. And you could argue a couple ways there, which is when they can sell directly to the market. Maybe it'll sell it more than they could if they'd gone through distribution. Right. But you may be ignoring a lot of other costs. Yeah, your carrying costs, all of that stuff. Yeah. So mills, you know, in the U.S., I'll say, are designed to make it and get it out the door. That's right. Keep it moving. And I remember when we used to send trucks into the mill, like, they had better be, like, if your truck is not literally in line as this rolls off the mill, like, and we got to put this stuff down. It changes the economics of the deal. Yeah. It's a game of inches and seconds. People don't realize that. No. And it's like very well orchestrated the way this metal gets moved around. Yeah. But so when you look out in the future, you have SMA. What do you see your future looking like with? just staying with mills and doing what you're doing, or do you see a roadmap that informs maybe, like, okay, something that would be additive or complementary to what you guys are doing? Yeah, I would like to see us start to grow our membership to include folks that don't operate melt shops, okay? I think that that's a fertile ground because policy, trade policy, advocacy impacts them too. So I would like to see bringing companies like that into the fold. I also see SMA gradually becoming the go-to source for steel industry data. One of the challenges, we did a strategic plan three years ago, Shep, and one of the things that we found out is that a lot of people are concerned that the data they're getting, whether it's on production, capacity utilization, you name it, just isn't accurate. It's like it's coming out of a black box or it's being imputed. Well, how did they get that data if only about... X number of companies even reported to them. And I think SMA is on the cusp of being able to... more reliable, more accurate data because we represent more steel producers. And it's something that we shied away from for decades. We've been around for about 40 years. But I think the future looks pretty bright for there. So getting people reliable information. Put your finger on exactly what we do, which is our pricing engine is extremely robust and tells people right now at this moment what the strike price is for metal. Okay. Because of the transaction. In their zip code. Right. Yeah. And for how much they're buying. And because that was born really more out of I was a buyer and I've been a seller, which is as a buyer, I kind of know the price already when I call you. Because that's what I do. Right. Like, I know the market. What I need to know is, do you have it in stock? Right. And can you get it to me in the next 24 hours? That's what I'm calling to find out. Okay. Because ultimately, if your price is wrong, I'll actually be like, you need to come down on your price. Yeah, that's not what it is. Yeah. You're actually, I get it. You've got a bad inventory position on this product, and you've had to adjust your pricing. I get it. Right. As time has gone on, the opacity of pricing, which was, I think, a good moat for businesses, is now maybe not what people want. They've never really wanted that, but it's getting to the point where other channels are creating enough transparency. That it's important. Anyway, back to the question, which is what would you guys like to see happen? It would be kind of more participation. More transparency. More transparency. And as of this moment, how accepting, if you went and presented that today, how accepting would that be, do you think? I have a little work to do. Okay, there's work. Yeah. Well, good. The job's not done. The job's not done. Yeah. Well, I think that kind of rounds out our discussion on SMA. And are there other topics that you feel like I just glossed over that are really relevant to what you guys are doing? And how can they find, I mean, people always want to learn more about what's going on. Is there a way people can find you and more about what your company does? Yeah, absolutely. You can find us at www.steelnet .org. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Philip K. Bell. And you can call our office. I'm always, you know, pretty open to sharing ideas with somebody if it's something that makes sense. I think that that's a good way to learn. I call myself a knowledge nomad. So I go anywhere, anytime to learn, and I'll take the information I get from anyone, and then I will decide if it's relevant or not. So I'm always seeking out knowledge. I put it in the AI, and I see if that's something I need to know, or if they were right in the first place. Do you have any shows, speeches, or any talks that are coming up that you're doing? Yeah, yeah, a couple of things. I'll be at the SMU Summit in Atlanta in August on a trade panel as well. Then I'm doing a couple of keynotes this fall, one for the National Slag Association. And another, which I'm really excited about, is the American Women's and Metals Industry, AWMI event in Savannah. It's a great group. These are women that are executives. These are entrepreneurs. These are people that really make our industry go. And I really enjoy that group. And by the way, a group that I've come to talk to more in that group. are a go-getter. Yeah. They are. They are kind of wired a little differently. They are, and it's exciting. You can just feel the energy when you walk into a room with those folks. It's amazing. And I want to be clear. It's not a chip on their shoulder, but it's also there is an element of like, look, this can be done. This can be done. increasingly going to be an important part of your world. That's right. It's not a good old boys network anymore. Yeah. I mean, we're going to show you. Yeah. It's like a welcome energy is how I would say it. That's well put. And I really enjoy that group. Well, good. Well, thank you for coming in today and talking to us. You're welcome, Shep. I appreciate the opportunity to share ideas with you, man. Well, stay tuned. We'll keep them going. Okay. Good. Thanks. Thanks a lot.