内容来源：https://www.wired.com/story/katie-zacharia-was-linked-to-an-ai-rare-earths-startup-its-even-weirder-than-it-sounds/

内容总结：

前白宫新闻秘书凯蒂·扎卡里亚上任仅五天即遭解职。在短暂任期内，她的履历持续引发外界质疑——她曾长期自称律师，最终被迫承认从未通过加州律师资格考试。据《连线》杂志报道，她还曾担任健身多层次营销公司Beachbody的联盟营销人员。

《连线》最新披露了她与一家人工智能稀土矿业公司NRED Intelligent Mining的关系，该公司将前国土安全部部长克里斯蒂·诺姆列为战略顾问。6月24日，当时名为NovaRed Mining的这家加拿大温哥华小型铜金勘探公司发布新闻稿，宣布扎卡里亚加入顾问委员会。新闻稿称，她将为公司董事会提供“战略指导”，推动勘探项目及“新兴人工智能计划”。

然而，她似乎从未在该公司实际任职。当被问及是否仍在董事会时，她称“那是假的”，并将《连线》转介给山姆·阿姆斯特丹——一位“战略营销与媒体对接专业人士”，其客户包括哈萨克斯坦政府及格鲁吉亚、尼日利亚、津巴布韦的政党。阿姆斯特丹表示，该新闻稿“未经扎卡里亚女士批准，也未征得其同意即行发布”，并称虽然曾讨论过她加入公司的事宜，但她实际并未加入。

NRED首席技术官瓦伦丁·赛塔尔利确认曾讨论过相关职位，但“最终未能落实”，并形容“这有点像办了健身卡却从没去锻炼过”。尽管阿姆斯特丹称新闻稿已被撤回，但截至周五，声称扎卡里亚加入公司的新闻稿仍留在NRED网站上，存档版本显示她至少到7月仍被列为管理层成员。赛塔尔利对此回应称网站正在更新中。

诺姆加入这家加拿大矿业公司顾问委员会的消息在加拿大引发强烈不满，因为诺姆此前曾称加拿大为“第51个州”。《环球邮报》当时将NovaRed描述为“一家没有收入的铜金勘探公司”，并指出该公司今年1月仅持有65，689美元现金，公司承认“不足以支付未来12个月的全部预期开支”。

但到了春季，情况发生了变化。NovaRed开始引入与国防领域、MAGA运动及其他国际实体有关联的重量级人物，而非地质学家和技术顾问。本月早些时候，NRED宣布放弃其旗舰Wilmac铜金项目，将全部资源投入开发和商业化其“AI辅助矿产勘探平台”MetalCore。

赛塔尔利对《连线》表示：“我想打造新一代机器人和矿业……我们要把机器人和AI带入全球矿业，乃至地球之外。”

退役美国海军指挥官、现以民主党身份竞选佛罗里达州国会议员的菲尔·埃尔今年早些时候加入NovaRed。他表示自己对矿业和大宗商品一无所知，但对诺姆和“另一位国土安全部发言人”——他回忆是扎卡里亚——被引入顾问委员会一事毫不知情。他说：“据我所知，扎卡里亚和克里斯蒂·诺姆同时加入，完全没有征询过我的意见，就像‘砰’地一下出现了。”埃尔因不愿与诺姆产生关联而辞去了顾问委员会职务。

与此同时，扎卡里亚还在处理其他事务。周四晚，她仍任白宫新闻秘书时，联系《连线》记者建议其去找健身网红珍妮尔·萨默斯了解Beachbody的情况。萨默斯表示对扎卡里亚印象不多，只记得“她一直对我很好，是个热爱健身、相信产品的人”，并否认该公司是“金字塔骗局”，称“那是一种网络营销商业模式”。

扎卡里亚未回应就其解职置评的请求。当被问及对她的离职有何评论时，阿姆斯特丹对《连线》记者说：“哦，这对我来说可是新闻！”

中文翻译：

在被解雇前五天，凯蒂·扎卡里亚刚出任白宫新闻秘书，而她当天大部分时间都在试图解释自己的过往。

在她短暂的任期内，扎卡里亚的简历引发了诸多猜测。最引人注目的是，尽管她声称自己职业生涯的大部分时间都是一名律师，但她最终被迫承认，自己从未真正通过加州律师资格考试。据《连线》杂志报道，她职业经历中的另一个元素是曾担任Beachbody的联盟营销人员——Beachbody是一家健身传销公司。

《连线》杂志现已发现她与一家名为NRED智能采矿的人工智能驱动稀土采矿公司之间关系的新细节，该公司将前国土安全部部长克里斯蒂·诺姆列为其战略顾问。

6月24日，NRED——当时名为NovaRed Mining，一家位于加拿大温哥华的小型铜金勘探公司——发布了一份新闻稿，称扎卡里亚在两个月前卸任国土安全部发言人一职后，将与诺姆一同加入顾问委员会。

根据该新闻稿，在新职位上，扎卡里亚将为NovaRed董事会提供“战略指导”，协助推进勘探项目以及“新兴人工智能计划”。

然而，她似乎从未在那里工作过。周五被问及她是否仍在董事会时，她说：“那是假的”，并将《连线》杂志转介给萨姆·阿姆斯特丹，一位“战略营销和媒体参与专业人士”，其客户曾包括哈萨克斯坦政府以及格鲁吉亚、尼日利亚和津巴布韦的政党。

“那份新闻稿未经扎卡里亚女士批准，是在她不知情的情况下发布的，”阿姆斯特丹说。他的兄弟在该公司网站上被列为NRED管理层成员，他表示自己是以扎卡里亚的朋友和同事身份发言，而非作为其代表。“我知道这些都是事实。”他随即补充说，虽然曾讨论过让她加入公司，但她实际上并未加入。

瓦伦丁·赛塔尔利是NRED的首席技术官，自称正在就任CEO，他证实确实曾讨论过一个职位，但表示“最终未能实现”，并补充道：“这有点像办了健身卡但从来没去锻炼过。”在描述NRED时，赛塔尔利说：“我们全面拥抱机器人和人工智能。”

尽管阿姆斯特丹认为那份新闻稿已被撤回，但截至周五，声称扎卡里亚加入该公司的新闻稿仍留在NRED网站上。其网站的存档版本显示，至少到7月份，扎卡里亚仍被列为管理层成员。

当《连线》杂志就此询问赛塔尔利时，他说网站正在更新中。

扎卡里亚的NovaRed职位是在诺姆的任命公布八天后宣布的。她曾在诺姆手下担任国土安全部负责公共事务的副助理新闻秘书约一个月，据报道与国土安全部事实上的幕僚长科里·莱万多夫斯基关系密切。（她向《每日邮报》否认了任何此类关系。）

诺姆加入一家加拿大矿业公司顾问委员会的消息在加拿大人中引发了强烈抗议，他们指出诺姆过去曾称加拿大为“第51个州”。当时《环球邮报》将NovaRed描述为“一家没有收入的铜金勘探公司”。该报指出，截至1月份，NovaRed仅持有65，689美元现金，公司称这“不足以支付未来12个月的全部预期开支”。

但在春季前后，情况发生了变化。NovaRed开始充实其顾问委员会，但用的不是地质学家和技术顾问——这对一家初级矿业公司来说才是典型做法——而是与国防部门、MAGA及其他国际实体有关系的重要人物。

本月早些时候，NRED宣布将偏离其旗舰项目威尔马克铜金项目，将全部资源投入开发和商业化“MetalCore”，即其“人工智能辅助矿产勘探平台”。

“我想打造新一代机器人和采矿业，”赛塔尔利告诉《连线》杂志。“我们想困在石器时代还是马车时代？不，我们想住在火星上，在太空酒店里消磨时光，在月球上办婚礼派对……我们将把机器人和人工智能带入全球采矿业，并希望扩展到地球之外。”

菲尔·埃尔是一位退役美国海军指挥官，正在佛罗里达州以民主党人身份竞选国会议员，他于今年早些时候被引入NovaRed。“我对采矿一无所知。我对大宗商品一无所知，”埃尔在电话中告诉《连线》杂志。“但我知道我们需要更多铜。我知道我们需要更多关键矿产。”他说，他在该公司只待了几个月，就被NovaRed的公告打了个措手不及——该公告称克里斯蒂·诺姆和“另一位国土安全部发言人”——他记得是扎卡里亚——也被引入了顾问委员会。

“据我所知，（扎卡里亚）和克里斯蒂·诺姆是同时来的，完全没有征求我的意见，就像嘭的一下，就出现了，”埃尔回忆道。

诺姆——她未立即回复置评请求——当时刚监督完明尼阿波利斯那场灾难性的ICE行动，埃尔不想与她有任何关联。“所以我问公司，‘克里斯蒂·诺姆为什么在这里？我没法和她共事，因为她争议太大了。在联邦政府的是非问题上，我们站在不同的立场上，’”埃尔说。

他觉得NovaRed似乎在用像他这样对采矿业了解不多的人来充实团队，这很奇怪。他本以为会有一些地质学家或技术顾问参与其中。然而，其他被聘用的人包括格雷戈里·费敦——他曾“担任阿联酋阿尔穆阿拉王室一系列国际项目的重要顾问”——以及媒体高管李·卡普林，HBO《真探》系列的联合制片人。诺姆加入后不久，埃尔便从顾问委员会辞职了。

在试图澄清自己与NRED关系性质的同时，扎卡里亚还在处理其他事务。周四晚间，当她仍担任白宫新闻秘书时，扎卡里亚联系了一位《连线》杂志记者，建议他们联系一位名叫珍妮尔·萨默斯的健身网红，以获取关于Beachbody的“澄清”——Beachbody是她此前隶属的传销公司，正是萨默斯将她引入其中。

萨默斯说她对扎卡里亚记忆不多——她说她们是在网上认识的——只知道“她一直对我很好，是一个热爱健身、相信这些产品和项目的人。”

“据我回忆，”她补充道，“她并没怎么参与。”萨默斯否认自己参与了“金字塔骗局”——而扎卡里亚正是这样向《连线》杂志描述该公司的。“那是种老派思维，”萨默斯说。“那是一种网络营销商业模式。”

当被问及如何看待扎卡里亚的崛起时，她说：“除了说她一直对我很好之外，我没有什么可评论的。”

扎卡里亚未回复就她被解雇一事置评的请求。当被问及对她被解雇是否有评论时，阿姆斯特丹告诉一位《连线》杂志记者：“嗯，这对我来说可是新闻！”

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英文来源：

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.
Valentin Saitarli, who was NRED’s chief technology officer and says he is onboarding as CEO, confirmed that there were discussions about a role, but said that it “never materialized,” adding, “It was a bit like signing up for a gym but never actually going for a workout.” Describing NRED, Saitarli says, ”We go full robots and AI.”
Despite Amsterdam’s understanding that it had been withdrawn, the press release claiming Zacharia was joining the company remained on NRED’s website as of Friday. An archived version of their website showed Zacharia listed as management as of at least July.
When WIRED asked Saitarli about this, he said that the site was being updated.
Zacharia, whose NovaRed role was announced eight days after Noem’s appointment was announced, worked under Noem as DHS’s deputy assistant press secretary for public affairs for about a month, and was reported to have close ties with de facto DHS chief of staff Corey Lewandowski. (She denied any such ties to The Daily Mail.)
The announcement that Noem was joining the advisory board of a Canadian mining company triggered an outcry among Canadians, who pointed to past statements she made referring to Canada as the “51st state.” At that time The Globe and Mail described NovaRed as “a copper and gold exploration company that generates no revenue.” The paper noted that in January, NoraRed was holding only $65,689 in cash, which the company said “wouldn’t be enough to cover all of its expected expenses for the next 12 months.”
But around the spring, something changed. NovaRed began stacking its advisory board not with geologists and technical consultants—which would be typical for a junior mining company—but with heavy hitters with ties to the defense sector, MAGA, and other international entities.
Earlier this month, NRED announced that it was pivoting away from its flagship Wilmac Copper-Gold Project, and putting all its resources into developing and commercializing “MetalCore,” its “ AI-assisted mineral exploration platform.”
“I want to build a new generation of robotics and mining,” Saitarli tells WIRED. “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.”
Phil Ehr, a retired US Navy commander who is running for Congress as a Democrat in Florida, was brought into NovaRed earlier this year. “I know nothing about mining. I know nothing about commodities,” Ehr tells WIRED in a phone call. “But I do know that we need more copper. I do know that we need more critical minerals.” He had only been at the company for a couple of months when, he said, he was blindsided by NovaRed’s announcement that Kristi Noem and “another DHS spokesperson”—whom he recalls being Zacharia—had also been brought onto the advisory board.
“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,” recalls Ehr.
Noem, who did not immediately reply to requests for comment, was fresh off overseeing the disastrous ICE occupation in Minneapolis, and Ehr didn’t want to be associated with her. “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, in the federal government,” says Ehr.
He thought it was odd that NovaRed seemed to be stacking its ranks with people who, like him, didn’t know very much about the mining industry. He expected some geologists in the mix, or technical consultants. Instead, some of the other people hired 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 series. Ehr resigned from the advisory board not long after Noem joined.
While she was attempting to clarify the nature of her relationship to NRED, Zacharia was also tending to other matters. On Thursday evening, while she still held her position as White House press secretary, Zacharia reached out to a WIRED reporter to suggest they contact fitness influencer named Jenelle Summers for “clarity” on Beachbody, the MLM she was previously affiliated with and which Summer brought her into.
Summers said she didn’t recall much about Zacharia—whom, she said, she met online—other than that “she was always kind to me and someone that was into fitness and believed in the products and programs.”
“To my recollections,” she added, “she didn't do much with it.” Summers rejected the idea that she had been involved in a “pyramid scheme,” which is how Zacharia had characterized the company to WIRED. ”That's kind of old school thinking,” Summers said. “It was a network marketing business model.”
“I don't have any comment on that other than to say she's always been kind to me,” she said when asked what she made of Zacharia’s rise to prominence.
Zacharia did not respond to requests for comment on her firing. When asked if he had comment on her having been let go, Amsterdam told a WIRED reporter, “Well, that’s news to me!”
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