The Dark Side of Congo’s Cobalt Rush

It baffles me that &quot;poor people being mistreated by large corporations&quot; is such a non-story for American media, while &quot;poor people being mistreated by large corporations that make EVs or iPhones&quot; is such a recurring theme, to the extent that it seems it&#x27;s the iPhones or the EVs that are the issue, rather than the mistreatment.<p>The optimistic take is that the author is trying to motivate the people who already care about &quot;saving the planet&quot; to also care about exploited workers, though I would have hoped for more constructive suggestions on how to help if that was the case.<p>The pessimistic take is that this is just a long form essay version of a YouTube thumbnail with a shocked face on it, randomly pressing emotional buttons to attract attention and using any random psychological lever that seems to work.<p>If this article interested you, I&#x27;d recommend the 2011 documentary, Empire of Dust about Chinese engineers working to build roads in the Congo for their mines in this area. Fascinating look at the human side of this from both the Chinese and Congolese perspective:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt2148945&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;m.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt2148945&#x2F;</a><p>&gt; Lao Yang and Eddy both work for a company called CREC (Chinese Railway Engineering Company). They have just set up camp near the remote mining town of Kolwezi in the Katanga province of the RDC. The goal of the company i..

The phrase &quot;Congo&#x27;s Cobalt Rush&quot; seems to presage mostly dark side to me.

If you&#x27;re interested in learning a little more about the Congo&#x27;s history, I highly recommend Michela Wrong&#x27;s book <i>In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu&#x27;s Congo</i>. Ignore the sensationalized title and apparently cliche reference to <i>Heart of Darkness</i>, the writing is much smarter than that. She wrote it shortly after Mobutu&#x27;s death in 1997, after living in the country for several years. You might also know her from a more recent book about Paul Kagame [1].<p>Perhaps surprisingly, the least sympathetic characters post-independence in <i>In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz</i> might be the World Bank and IMF employees.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Do_Not_Disturb_(book)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Do_Not_Disturb_(book)</a>

I think it&#x27;s worth pointing out that at least for EV batteries, this is a trade-off. Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries don&#x27;t contain cobalt or nickel. We could be building cars with LFP cells, they just would be heavier and&#x2F;or have shorter range.<p>LFP is getting better. I think recent cells tend to be in the 150 Wh&#x2F;kg ballpark, which isn&#x27;t bad. In the short term I expect we&#x27;ll probably see LFP in trucks and busses and low and medium-end EVs. Or maybe some new battery technology will come along and the whole trade-off will be moot.<p>(I think Tesla is already using or planning to use LFP cells from CATL in some of their model 3s. I&#x27;m not sure if that&#x27;s just for the China market or if they&#x27;re going to use LFP for US models.)

This isn&#x27;t a dark side. It&#x27;s the other side of the same coin and we try to tuck it away, keep it under the rug, hide it from light.

Guns, Money, and Cellphones (June 11, 2001):<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20010813152613&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thestandard.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;0,1902,26784,00.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20010813152613&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thesta...</a><p>The article is split into 5 pages, but is worth reading, if only to see how little anything has changed in the 20 years this has been a well-known issue.

Funny factoid, if you have an EV, you might be unknowingly using Cuban cobalt, especially if the EV came with claims of &quot;conflict minerals free.&quot;<p>US is somehow closing eyes on that, despite Cuba being sanctioned to the brim by them themselves.

The dark side of modern prosperity is that it exists through exploitation of the poor. The EU is planning to make their own chip fabs to reduce dependency on Asia, but all that means is they will have to increase exploitation of South America and Africa.<p>We will happily exploit them and corrupt their governments, but reject &quot;economical refugees&quot; despite us being a major reason of their problems.

The uranium that built the first atomic bombs is said to have come from a Congolese mine.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;future&#x2F;article&#x2F;20200803-the-forgotten-mine-that-built-the-atomic-bomb" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;future&#x2F;article&#x2F;20200803-the-forgotten-mi...</a>

&gt;To be scared, you must first have means. - Odilon Kajumba Kilanga (a poor Congolese miner)<p>That&#x27;s so sad.

Timely to note that Tesla is eliminating cobalt from battery production.

I think a good definition of Capitalism is displacing the cost of negative externalities in time and space as far away as possible from your profit centre.

Weren&#x27;t we supposed to stop using darkness to mean something bad? Like not having blacklists anymore.