The Joe Rogan Experience - #1914 - Siddharth Kara

Episode Date: December 22, 2022

Siddharth Kara is an author and expert on modern-day slavery, human trafficking, and child labor. Look for his new book, "Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives," on January 31, 2023. https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/beacons-of-excellence/rights-lab/our-team/siddharth-kara/index.aspx

The Joe Rogan Experience. Showing by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Thank you very much for coming here, man. I really appreciate it. Oh, thank you for inviting me, Joe. My pleasure. This subject, first of all, the title of your book? Cobalt Red.

And it is out January... 31st. 31st. And how did you, please detail the journey that you went on to write this book and why it's of concern to you. Yeah. Okay. Well, I started traveling to the Congo five years ago. I've been doing research on slavery and child labor for about 20 years, traveling all around the world research on slavery and child labor for about 20 years, traveling all around the world, documenting slaves and child laborers, human trafficking. And this came across my radar maybe seven years ago. People started talking in the field about

cobalt. Cobalt's in the batteries. It's in the Congo. The conditions are horrible. And I had no idea. I'd never heard of this. So I started planning to take trips to get down there. And I took my first trip back in 2018. My plan was I thought I would try to lay the groundwork to do some academic research. And the things I saw there were so appalling and heart-wrenching and urgent that I changed my approach. I thought people need to know about this. I need to write a book.

And so I started planning more trips and I just kept going back. And the reason this is important, Joe, and we can dig into this in more depth, throughout the whole history of slavery, I mean, I'm going back centuries, never, never in human history has there been more suffering that generated more profit and was linked to the lives of more people around the world, ever, ever in history than what's happening in the Congo right now. And the reason I say that is this. The cobalt that's being mined in the Congo is in every single lithium ion rechargeable battery manufactured in the world today. Every smartphone, every tablet, every laptop, and crucially, every electric vehicle. So you and I, we can't function on a day-to-day basis without cobalt,

and three-fourths of the supply is coming out of the Congo. And it's being mined in appalling, heart-wrenching, dangerous conditions. And so that's why people need to know, because by and large, the world doesn't know what's happening in the Congo. It's something that people sort of know peripherally, that, you know, that they call them conflict minerals. And, you know, they know that they're coming from an area of the world that's very poor. But I don't think people are aware of how horrible it is. There have been some documentaries that have been done on it, and they're all terrifying. Yeah, so conflict minerals was phase one,

and that's actually not cobalt. What does it refer to, conflict minerals? So conflict minerals, also called the 3TG minerals, are tin, tungsten, tantalum, and gold. And those are in the eastern Congo. And that catastrophe started around the year 2000, late 1990s, 2000, shortly after the Rwandan genocide. 2000, shortly after the Rwandan genocide. The militias moved in, and eastern Congo is sitting on some of the largest reserves in the world of those 3TG minerals, especially tantalum. And those are all used in microprocessors. And you can think back to, you know, around the year 2000, mobile phones first started coming out and gaining traction. I still remember my little StarTAC flip phone that I had from Motorola.

You remember that? And all that supply was coming out of eastern Congo. Militias and warlords were forcing the local population at gunpoint, machete point, to dig this stuff out. And it was flowing up into the formal supply chain into mostly those first generation cell phones. And that became known as conflict minerals. Cobalt started later. Cobalt really took off about 10, 12 years ago. And it's in another part of the country, in the mining provinces in the southeast of the Congo. And cobalt took off because it started to be used in lithium-ion batteries to maximize their charge and stability.

And it just so happens that the Congo, just as it was sitting on more than half the world's reserves of coal tan and, of course, a lot of gold and diamonds and other things, is sitting on more cobalt than the rest of the planet combined and it's in a small little patch of the congo southeastern corner a part that used to be called katanga and uh before anybody knew what was happening chinese government chinese mining companies took control of almost all the big mines. And the local population has been displaced, is under duress.

And they dig in absolutely subhuman, gut-wrenching conditions for a dollar a day, feeding cobalt up the supply chain into all the phones, all the tablets, and especially electric cars. And we're looking at a video now. Jamie, is this the minds? This is video. I think so. This is so crazy to see. This is the bottom of the supply chain of your iPhone, of your Tesla, of your Samsung.

I mean, I'm just naming those companies. It's all of them, right? All of them mean, I'm just naming those companies. It's all of them, right? All of them. We're not just picking on them. And here's what you need to know, Joe, about this video. I was the first outsider to get into this mine. And that's why it's just a really short video that I was able to take. This is an industrial cobalt mine where there's not supposed to be one artisanal miner. Now that's the term used for people who are just digging by hand as opposed to tractors and excavators. There's not supposed to be one here. That's what the story is told at the top of the chain. This mine, and I can name it, it's called Shabara. There's not supposed to be one artisanal miner here, according to the

consumer-facing tech companies and EV companies buying this cobalt. Lo and behold, I walk into this place, and this is what I see. There's more than 15,000 human beings crammed into that pit, digging by hand. And if you have sound, you hear the mallets, you hear the shouting, you hear the grunts. It's a mass of humanity. You might expect to see a scene like this. So, there's a term that gets used, clean cobalt. There's no clean cobalt.

It's not real. No. It's all marketing. It's all PR. It's a fiction. Just like that place. There's not supposed to be any artisanal mining there. It's all done industrially. That's the story told at the top of the chain. And people assume, people, I mean, the marketing teams at big tech and EV companies assume, well, who's going to go down there and actually walk into the place and grab a video that shows, no, it's actually all raw human force that is clanking that cobalt out of the ground. So there's no clean cobalt. There's not a single company on planet Earth that makes a device that has a rechargeable battery in it that can reliably and justifiably claim

that their cobalt isn't coming from sources like that. And that's the truth that needs to get out there. That's the truth people need to understand because this is a story that goes back generations. There's these fictions told at the top of the chain about what conditions are like at the bottom. And truth seekers have to go find that truth and enlighten civilization so that people get agitated about it and want to do something about it. So there's no clean cobalt. Let's just make

that totally abundantly clear. And anyone that claims otherwise is either peddling in falsehoods or is recklessly ignorant of the truth. Are there any industrialized cobalt mines that use machinery and don't use slavery and don't use child labor and don't use these people that live in unimaginable poverty? I've never seen one. And I've been to almost all the major industrial cobalt mines. Here's why I say that. Number one, they all or almost all will have scenes like that on them. Thousands of individuals clanking away for a dollar or two a day. Okay. They don't have safety equipment, all that stuff that cobalt's toxic, toxic to breathe. They're breathing it in all day.

No masks, no masks, no gloves, no half those guys are in flip flops. All right. So almost all the industrial mines will have scenes like that. So that's number one. They'll say there are no artisanal miners there, no children there. And if you like zoom in, you'll see that amongst that sea of humanity, there are thousands of kids, teenage boys in this case, because that requires a certain amount of force to clank away in that pit. Number two, there are hundreds of other artisanal mining sites scattered in the mining provinces outside of industrial mines. The artisanal miners in the industrial mines and then just on the other side of the fence,

there'll be a sea of humanity digging there as well, because it's not like at the fence, the ore body stops. There's copper, cobalt, other things outside as well. So there'll be hundreds of sites where there are hundreds of thousands of people across the mining provinces digging. All that production is sold right back to the industrial mining companies. So it enters their supply chain as well. And then so they take what they extract with industrial equipment, artisanal miners inside the mine, artisanal miners, including children outside the mine. It all gets dumped together into the same batch of acids to process and then flows up the chain. Again, no one can reasonably claim that their cobalt, even if they say that industrial mine, totally clean.

Don't believe what Siddharth is saying. That's a made up fake video. They can't demonstrate reliably that all the other cobalt being dug up by kids in thousands of sites across the mining provinces isn't also flowing into their supply chain. Is there another source of cobalt in the world that's ethically supplied? So last year, so 2021 is the last year there's data, about 72%, almost three-fourths of the world's supply of cobalt came out of a small patch of the Congo. And then there's like 3% Russia, 3% Australia, 3% Morocco, you know, there's everyone else is 3%. And I don't know what the conditions are there. I imagine in Australia, mining follows standards of dignity and decency and labor and sustainability and so on. But there's not enough cobalt outside of the Congo to meet demand.

And demand projections are four, five, six hundred percent increase in cobalt demand in the next decade or two, primarily being driven by adoption of electric vehicles. Each battery pack in an EV requires up to 10 kilograms of refined cobalt. That's a thousand times what's required for a smartphone. So huge demand as the world transitions from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles, which is a net good thing, except for the people in the Congo. So there's not enough other cobalt out there. Even if all the non-Congo cobalt was perfectly sourced, there's not enough other cobalt out there to meet demand. These companies that we talked about that use all this stuff, whether it's electric vehicle companies or cell phone manufacturers,

obviously they're aware of this. Yes, no question. They have to be. Have they made any attempts to mitigate this in any way? The truth, Joe, is no, not sufficient efforts. Most of what is done is PR statements, marketing. All these companies will say we have zero tolerance policies on child labor. We ensure standards of dignity and human rights for every member of our supply chain down to the mining level. They'll all say this, down to the mining level. And they say it.

And they may throw some money at the odd NGO or coalition or alliance that's meant to be working on these things. Nothing's actually happening on the ground. And that's what my book will demonstrate. As I take the reader on the journey from place to place, mind to mind. There's this fiction that exists outside of the Congo of what companies are doing and what the conditions are like. And then there's the reality. Underneath those layers of obfuscation, there's the reality. There's the truth on the ground.

And not one company, not one business alliance, not one entity up the chain is doing remotely enough to ensure that the dignity and human rights of the people of the Congo, not to mention the environment, because although mining companies are just polluting and clear-cutting forests to build and expand mines, they're not doing nearly enough to respect the people and earth of the Congo while we outside enjoy our, you know, renewable gadget-driven lifestyles. side enjoy our, you know, renewable gadget-driven lifestyles. When you first started researching this book and when you first were aware of this issue, what was the difference between your initial perception versus what you found? So going in, I was expecting to see some child labor, poor working conditions, and probably some poor environmental practices.

And that first trip hit me like a thunderclap. And I've seen a lot, okay? I mean, I've done research in more than 50 countries in the grit and the grime and the misery and the sub, the underbelly of humanity. And it hit me like a thunderclap because the scale was beyond anything I would have imagined. There are hundreds of thousands of people, tens of thousands of children, caked in toxic grime and filth, digging this vital mineral out of the ground in medieval conditions. It's like going back in time. You know, you imagine what mining was like three or four hundred years ago, or the early days of coal mining. It's that bad and worse because we're supposed to be living in this enlightened era. So the scale of it shocked me. The severity shocked me.

To see kids up to their shoulders caked in this filth and grime and toxic. I mean, to see teenagers walking around with babies on their back, all inhaling this toxic cobalt dust, to see them barely scraping by on a dollar a day, two dollars a day. And then as I interviewed these workers, I use the term worker. They're not workers at all. They're oppressed, degraded slaves. As I interviewed them, the level of injury, broken legs, shattered spines, toxic contamination, cancers, birth defects, what's happening to the people there. And then the most heart-wrenching thing of all, there's probably 10,000 to 15,000 tunnels. I think I even sent you guys one or two videos of what these tunnels look like. The artisanal miners will dig tunnels 30, 40 meters down to get to some of the higher grade deposits.

And they don't have supports, rock bolts, ventilation shafts, anything like that. And those tunnels collapse. Every week in the Congo, a tunnel collapses. And everyone who's down there, 30, 40, 50 men and boys, boys meaning kids, are buried alive. And when I started hearing those stories and I heard them on my first trip, it just ripped me apart because I thought this is the bottom of trillion dollar supply chains. When I plug in my smartphone, I don't have an electric car, but if I did, when I plug that in, I'm plugging in that level of suffering and death. I mean, I can't imagine a more horrid way of dying than

being buried alive. And they're down there trying to get that dollar or two because that's the difference between eating and surviving and not. And that's what I wasn't anticipating, just the level of severity. And if your listeners are familiar with what it was like in colonial Africa and in the Congo during the Belgian times, I mean, I thought I was back in King Leopold's regime where there's just utter disregard for the humanity of the people in the Congo. All that matters is the loot. All that matters is the loot, the resource. Get it out, make money, and to hell with the population, to hell with the people. They're either an efficient slave labor force or they're just in the way. But there's loot in the dirt.

And we need that loot. And that's the dynamic down there. This must have been so difficult for you to grasp and to report on. And just to, what was it like for you to just experience this? Joe, it's, you know, I haven't actually, this is the first time I'm talking about it, like in any sort of extended way. I mean, I wrote my book. Much of the pandemic was me just, was me writing. And that was hard, you know, because there's a lot I had to relive. I take the reader on a journey.

You know, in college, we all read Heart of Darkness, Conrad. And that's the first Belgian horror, a Congo horror, you know, was for rubber. horror, you know, was for rubber. And I'm going to answer your question, but there's a painfully powerful bit of history here that people need to know. So Leopold got his hands on the Congo in 1885, personal property. He owned the whole thing as personal property, King Leopold of the Belgians. And the car, Benz invented the car, 1885, internal combustion engine. It had steel-clad wooden wheels, couldn't go very fast before those things fell apart. And then in 1888, this chap Dunlop invents a rubber tire. And now the whole car revolution is taking off because you can actually

drive those things far and fast. And the Congo happened to be sitting on one of the largest rubber tree forests in the world. So Leopold deployed this mercenary army to enslave, terrorize, and torture the population to get rubber out of the forest, the loot, bring it up the chain and turn it into tires. And he walked away with billions of dollars doing this. But that was the first car revolution that led to horror in the Congo. And Conrad was in the Congo in 1890. He saw this.

That's what inspired Heart of Darkness. So now we come across the second car revolution coming to electric vehicles. And wouldn't you know it that once again, the Congo is sitting on more of this necessary, crucial mineral, cobalt, than the rest of the world combined. And it's that same thing happening all over again. Latest chapter. all over again. Latest chapter. And bearing witness to that and knowing what came before, right, that this isn't just one isolated thing. Oh, new problem, let's fix it. That it's been happening for generations to the people in that part of the world, in the heart of Africa. Having that in mind and bearing witness to that has been just devastating.

And as I said, I've not really been talking about it. I've kind of feared having to talk about it because there are memories that I've kept really deep down, except when I wrote. So I structured my book a bit like Heart of Darkness. You know, you go up river to find Kurtz, and Kurtz reveals a certain truth. There's one road in the mining provinces that goes up road, and I take the reader up that road to an event that I think reveals the truth. And it just gets darker and bleaker as you travel up road. And the things I saw and the things i've seen man they just they hurt they hurt because i know it's like what kind of economy can transform the degradation

of innocent impoverished children into shiny phones and cars. You know, and we are living lives that are so disconnected, yet intimately connected to that horror. And it's just been, look, if what I do can give voice to what's happening there, to the people living there who are otherwise crying into an abyss, then it's all worth it to me. And if some good comes of it, God willing, there will be some good that comes of this journey. It'll be worth it to me. But yeah, to answer your question, it's taken a toll. I can't even imagine. And when you first started doing this, how did you gain access? How did you get in there? and how much resistance did you experience in trying to report on this?

It seems like it would be a very dangerous thing for you to do because the consequences of this information getting out there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. These are heavily guarded secrets because there's so much money at stake. guarded secrets because there's so much money at stake. And one does not just waltz into the Congo's mining provinces and start poking around and asking questions. That's a one-way ticket to a very bleak outcome. I think, you know, it took me 18 years of other research into slavery and child labor to be ready for this. If I had come across this in year one or five or whatever, I'd have botched it up or not even known how to go about it. But the most important thing is ground relationships.

and so I took some time building ground relationships with people who could guide me safely get me into mining areas safely who I could put my life in their hands and know that they were going to use good judgment so it's about trust and relationships on the ground, first and foremost. And then, you know, through those relationships, I was able to get deep into the mining areas, mines that are controlled by militias, mines that are controlled by the Republican Guard. I mean, you have every face and facet of gigantic industrial mines. They're as big as a European city. And then just swaths of open terrain that are being dug up by local villagers. You know, you have everything down there.

But the ones that are most heavily guarded, the big mines, you know, some of them I never got into. Try as I might, I could never get. I mean, there's always, they're called FARDC, the big mines, you know, some of them I never got into. Tries I might. I could never get. I mean, there's always, they're called FARDC, the army down there, and they're just guys with Kalashnikovs. There'll be 50 of them at the entranceway. And I never got in, but I would talk to the people who worked there

back in their villages. And some of the industrial mines I did get into, and, of course, the open terrain artisanal sites I could get to. But it's all about I had to be very careful. Fortunately, there are a good number of Indians in the Congo, so I could blend in and didn't really stick out. So that helped in my movements in the mining provinces. I traveled very lean. Oftentimes we'd have to move in a hurry from one place to another, one village to another. Everything I was willing to leave behind, I had my passport velcroed to my calf muscle. You know, like if we had to go in a hurry and once or twice we did, that I needed that.

Like everything else is expendable, but you don't want to get stuck in the Congo without, you know, your documents. I mean, the number of checkpoints, I said there's just one road, and that thing is so heavily guarded. And the number of checkpoints, just pull up, let me see your documents, let me see this, let me see that. Go through your bags, go through your stuff, and then move along. Eventually you might have to offer someone, they call it a cold drink. If you give me a cold drink, I can go through. First time someone said that to me, I said, now where the hell do we get a cold drink out here?

We're in the middle of nowhere. No, no, cold drink means payage, toll. That's interesting, euphemism. Yeah, so I had to rely on local contacts to get around and use my own experience and judgment about how far to push and when not to push. experience, and judgment about how far to push and when not to push. What did you use as an excuse to be there? So, yeah, I had a range of cover stories. When I'd go into mining areas, you know, as I mentioned, there's some Indians down there.

Some of them are mineral traders. Some of them are laborers. Many of them run hotels and guest houses. So I could be a guy, Indian guy, looking to get into mineral trading, looking to invest in transportation. There's so much need, need meaning industrial need to get trucks and transport, all this stuff that's coming out of the ground, out of the country and up the supply chain. With colleagues or government officials that I met, I was myself, which is a researcher from America. You know, I was upfront about it, and I needed to be. There are times when I needed stamps and signatures of government officials and signatures of government officials to keep myself safe.

And by that I mean in the worst possible scenarios where I'm in a remote mine and there's some guys with Kalashnikovs and machetes coming after me, one of the first things my guide said is we need to get the stamp and signature of someone from the governor's office on your documentation so we can show that because that means you're you've got permission you're under the watchful eye of the governor and so they can't kill you they're just going to send you away and that that advice saved my life on more than one occasion, having that stamp and signature. And so with government people, I was who I was. With NGOs, I was who I was. When I got into mining areas, you know, to get access or to get into cobalt marketplaces,

I would maybe be a mineral trader or some investor or someone looking to help transport minerals. But, yeah, those are my stories. So as you entered into this world, were you aware that you needed all these signatures? How did you go about getting them? No, I had no idea. So one of my guides on my first trip, before we went into the cobalt, you know, into the mining areas,

you land into a town called Lubumbashi, which is the head of a province called Hokotonga province, old colonial town. Now it's the mining capital in the southeastern part of the country. So that's where, you know, there's some government buildings. And as I talked through my plan, what I wanted to try to achieve, what I wanted to try to see. My very first guide said, okay, we need to go and just, you have to explain this to someone in the governor's office and hope that they'll give you your signature, their signature and stamp on, it's called engagement de prise en charge, commitment to protect.

Documentation. He said, just go and make the case and try to get that stamp and signature because we'll need that. We may need that. If you want to go into these places, that will save your life. He was right. On that very first trip, I was in a mining area north of a town called Kambov. Kids everywhere. We had done our sort of recon that it was clear of militias that day. You know, there was always planning when I went into these areas, pre-planning to minimize risk. And I was talking to some kids. It was two girls. They were probably 14 and 15.

And they each had babies on their backs as they were in this trench digging cobalt. And I was walking down the trench to a group of boys. This one boy has a T-shirt that said AIG. And I thought to myself, first of all, that there's an AIG T-shirt out here, you know, blew my mind. And I remembered, like, that was one of the big financial companies that had to be bailed out in the 2008 financial crisis. I don't know, $150 billion or something. And I thought, man, that kind of money here, you know, what a difference it could make. Anyway, so I was talking to those kids and suddenly there was gunshots. And they knew what was happening. They all jumped into a trench. And I turned around,

it was me and my guide. And there's a pack of guys with Kalashnikovs, machetes running at us. And they operate, these militias operate in little units. There'll be a guy, you know, the head of the group. And then there's maybe, you know, 10, 15 guys. They call them militia, they call them commandos, various names. So they started coming at us and immediately started roughing me up, grabbed my backpack, threw my stuff on the ground, started kicking us around, demanded to see my phone to see if I was taking photos. Like they know that there are people who are trying to figure out what's the truth around here. And I looked at my guide, the blood drained from his face and he very quietly and calmly

told them he has a signature and my stuff was all on the dirt at that point I found the folder that had that precious piece of paper under the boot of one of these guys I pulled it out showed it to the

commando's leader. That kind of calmed them down enough that they let us, you know, walk out of there. But it would have gone the other way. But my guide knew, you know, that's what I mean. Like it's about those ground relationships. People know their world. I can't go in presuming to know that world, how to navigate it, how to be safe, how not to cause harm inadvertently. I mean, all these things go through a researcher's mind. But he knew that we might need that. And it turns out on that day, man, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation, I think, if I hadn't followed his advice. How did you get the confidence of these people to let you do this? And are there people there that are sympathetic to what you're doing because they want the truth to come out? You said it.

There are, you know, there's not much civil society in the Congo, but there is a small civil society there. You know, local activists, little NGOs, they have to be very careful in how they operate so they don't get on the wrong side of the wrong officials, especially the mining sector. Mining is everything to Congo. 70, 80 percent of the government's budget is coming from mining. So I just speak from the heart. I want to find a way to help you amplify your voices because no one's listening. No one even knows to look over there, or not enough people know to look over there,

let alone take an interest and start listening. And I'm here to help bridge the gap, to form some connective tissue between the whole world out there that cannot function without you and the truth that you're experiencing. And that's why I'm here. So I'm in your hands. You tell me what to do. I'll do it. You tell me how to stay safe. That's what I'll do. I'd like to see the truth. I'd like to talk to people. I want to bring those voices to the outside world. But I'm in your hands. And I think just speaking from the heart and conveying my genuine interest above all to do no harm and to try and.

A, shine light in this heart of darkness, and then B, bring those voices out of the country to a broader world. And that's what they want. You know, the worst feeling in the world or one of the worst feelings in the world has to be to be in the midst of immense suffering and feel that no one can see you. No one can hear you, no one even cares. I mean, to cry into silence. And so to have a chance to feel that someone will eventually hear you, I think that's what I came hoping to try and achieve. And there were enough guides, enough people, enough locals who trusted me. I mean, I had to trust them, but the more important trust went from them to me

because I could be someone who was reckless, who was careless, who was after his own thing, who was in it for me, and could cause so much more harm or just take from them and leave. And that's not me. And I think that, you know, as I developed relationships, more and more people, although it's a small number, you know, felt that and felt that kinship with me. So when these commandos came in and they were shooting guns and screaming at you, were they concerned that you were there to expose the conditions? That's right.

That's right. You know, the big anxiety for everyone up the chain is the truth. Wow. And so many people are playing their part in suppressing the truth. You know, it's not just the marketing departments at consumer facing tech and EV companies. They're doing their part to suppress the truth. But it's all the way down to little commando units and militias that have their stake in this game and they want to suppress the truth. And they're often going to be they'll often be on the payroll of a mining company, you know, keep people out. Because what happened was, you know, just like I first heard about this, probably back in 2015, it took me a couple of years to figure it out and then get in there, you know, in 2018. You know, journalists have been

down there. There have been some journalists who've gotten in there and there have been some stories written, especially around 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, those few years. You know, people were getting in there and getting a little piece of it and coming out and writing a story. And so people on the ground got more anxious about that. So there's a lot of anxiety about journalists, researchers, NGOs kind of coming in and trying to find the truth. And so there's the level of security, especially in the last few years, has increased significantly to try to keep people out. Because the minute, to try to keep people out.

Because the minute, you know, once the voices of the people of the Congo start emerging and a book or a documentary or stories get written, there'll be a critical mass, right? Eventually, it'll pass some threshold where enough people say, wait a minute, what are you talking about? What's going on here? I don't want to feel that when I plug in my phone, there's some kid in the Congo dying for it, or that here I am trying to make a green choice buying this electric car, but the patch

of Congo where these minerals come from, the trees have been clear cut, the rivers have been polluted, the air has been polluted. Why is my green choice black and red for them? That doesn't seem right. So no one up the chain wants that day to arrive, or they want to postpone it as long as possible. I think it's inevitable that eventually the companies atop the cobalt chain will have to accept the truth and then respond to it. But they want to push that out as far as possible because, well, for reasons I don't actually understand. And I'll tell you that candidly, Joe. I don't understand why these companies, because as we as we agreed, they all know what's happening down there. That's why they've got their marketing departments on it. They all know what's happening down there. Why is it that they just don't want to solve the problem? It's not complicated. It would probably cost them a rounding error on their balance sheet

to just invest in treating those people with the same respect and dignity as the people in corporate headquarters. They're all part of the same chain. It's not that the cobalt goes to the moon. It goes to these companies. So they're linked. But they don't accept responsibility for them. And for some reason, they feel it's okay to treat them and the world around them like trash. And I think deep down inside, no one will ever come out and admit it. But I think there's only one answer to the question, why haven't they fixed the problem yet? And that is because it's poor, wretched Africans that no one cares about. That's the truth. And that's been the truth for centuries, hasn't it? Going back to the slave trade, going back to the colonization of Africa,

it's embedded in the framework and structure of a global economy that, again, it's about the loot and the money. And the people there are either fit to be brutes or to be moved out of the way. That's the only answer to the question why companies that are rolling in profits beyond beyond measure wouldn't say hey hey the bottom of this supply chain like this thing that's in our batteries that we really really need um the conditions are pretty bad and that that's not acceptable because we claim that we uphold human rights and dignity and sustainability all the way down our supply chain. Let's send a few people down there and work on this. Has one CEO of any of these companies ever stepped foot at the bottom of their own supply chain to see

for themselves what's happening there? I mean, why is it that I had to go? I'm not running a tech company. I'm not running an EV company, yet I felt somehow responsible for what's happening there? I mean, why is it that I had to go? I'm not running a tech company. I'm not running an EV company, yet I felt somehow responsible for what's happening down there. How come they don't feel responsible enough to take a trip, one trip on their private jet down there to see for themselves, oh, wait a minute. are thousands of people in this industrial mind working in like ancient old world miserable conditions. Let's do something about that. How about some PPE for everybody? How about a reasonable wage so they don't have to bring their kids in to work just to survive? How about eight hours a day instead of 12? How about we invest in some schools and some public health clinics while we're here so that kids can go to school? Why don't we help electrify this place? Do you know that that part of the Congo that is home to more of the most crucial mineral for rechargeable energy than the rest of the planet combined doesn't even have electricity.

You go around in the villages, there's just, there's no electricity. I mean, we can go on and on, right? So the point is they need to understand it, accept it, accept responsibility for these people at the bottom of the chain, treat them in the same way that they treat people in headquarters. Have you had any conversations with any of these people in tech or in EV vehicles? I hope I will be invited to do so maybe after this book comes out. And if it gets enough attention, I will gladly, gladly engage on solving this problem. I am a humble servant to any company that wants to just understand and fix their cobalt supply chain. understand and fix their cobalt supply chain. Is there any possibility that the CEOs and the people in upper management are not aware of the scope of this problem? It's hard for me to imagine that they're not aware. So do you think it's just a convenient

ignorance or is it a diffusion of responsibility because they came into this company when all this already existed? Yeah, interesting question. I think some of it is business as usual until someone forces them to think differently. I think another part of it is it's easy not to accept responsibility because they're so far away and there's so many levels in the supply chain between toxic pit in the Congo and shiny showroom in New York and London and Beijing, right? They're separated by layers and layers of a supply chain. I mean, that's how the global economy works.

So some of it is, well, it's their responsibility. They point the finger downstream, right? The battery maker should worry about this. And the battery maker will point and say, no, the cobalt refinery should worry about it. And the cobalt refinery will say, no, the mining company should worry about it. And the mining company will say,

no, the Congolese government should worry about it. And on down the list until the last finger is pointed at the kid caked in filth in the pit. So no one's accepting responsibility. I think, look, I think let's be charitable and say maybe the CEOs of these companies aren't completely aware of the scale and severity. I certainly wasn't when I first went there. It wasn't my business to know it. But OK, let's say maybe they are not aware of the absolute scale and severity of it, although they should be. All right. Now that the truth is out, let's see, are they willing to actually work on this problem? And I will, any CEO wants to go

see what the bottom of their cobalt supply chain looks like. I will take them. I will take them. Come with me. We'll fly economy or I'll go in your jet. We'll go comfortably. Either way, I will take you. Let's, let's go down and see this is where your cobalt's coming from. Now that you've seen the truth, let's fix this problem. Because these companies have geniuses who have revolutionized our lives. Solving dignity at the bottom of a cobalt supply chain is a simple proposition relative to the problems they probably solve every day. But they would have to address it en masse. They would have to address it very publicly. we enjoy that make our lives so convenient, these technological marvels that have revolutionized

our world, at the bottom of that is slave labor and child labor. I think you put your finger on something very important because the first question they would be asked is, well, how long have you known? Right. Right. And that's the problem. That's the problem that's the problem and so to admit it would be to admit guilt in at least some way yeah or willful ignorance or a pretending that they don't

know yeah that's right all of the above plus a callous disregard for their fellow human being you know that because it's not shoved in their face it's not that's right that's right because they show up at cupertino and they're in this beautiful industrialized building and everything's technologically magnificent. Isn't it fascinating the riches that stand atop the shoulders of some of the poorest and most degraded people in the world? It's bizarre, but it speaks to the human condition. It speaks to what we are. We're so complicated and twisted. Yeah.

Yeah, we are. And it's not like this is a new phenomenon, right? I mean, riches have been built across the global north on the shoulders of degraded people in the global south for centuries. Right. We just like to pretend that that's not the case today when it might be the worst case. You know, the interesting thing is, in some ways, this truth that we're talking about is uglier and more violent and harmful than slavery in the 1700s, because we claim to live in a time

when everyone has equal human rights. And we're all created equal and treated equal, and it's the hypocrisy that makes it so much more repugnant. Back then, it's like, well, they are fit to be slaves. And it was the way of things. And that doesn't excuse it. You know, but the violence had some kind of mental and social, even religious justification centuries ago. And it took a band of enlightened people to say, no, that's not right. and abolitionists fought and fought and fought and won freedom for slaves in the world or did they you know because now we live

in a time where you can't legally own another person or exploit them like a slave any on any patch of this planet and yet and yet it happens at the bottom of our global economic order more than people realize. And what's important about cobalt is it's kind of the distillation of centuries of this arc. Because as I said, there's never been a single example of worse suffering that generates more money and touches the lives of more people around the world than this right here. The intense hypocrisy of this age we're living in, especially in this country, where we're so focused on social justice and we're so focused on equality and treating people with kindness and dignity and the fact that we're talking about this and communicating on this on devices that were constructed by slaves. Yeah, that's right.

I mean, that's so insane. It's so hard to admit. Yeah. It's so hard to even – I believe every word you're saying. But there's a part of my mind that doesn't want to accept it. I understand. That it could be possibly that fucked up. That's right.

Like that we're capable of it. Right. You know, and it's surely we're better than this now. Right. I mean, haven't we haven't we fought enough fights, shed enough blood, um, uh, and made enough progress, you know, that, that we're better than this, that this, what we're talking about today can't and shouldn't exist. It shouldn't be possible. Um, but the fact that it is, uh, it speaks to that how little has actually changed in some ways.

And the fact that a small handful of brave journalists are bringing this to light in light of so many problems that we know about in the world that get all of our attention in the news every day. This is one of the most horrific. Yes. And it's very, very difficult to get information about it. By design. I mean, by design, you know, and it's been that way. And it always starts with a handful, though, Joe. I mean, great change starts with a handful of people who stand up and say, this won't, I can't tolerate this.

We shouldn't tolerate it. Humanity should be better than this. And if they're lucky and persistent enough, you know, they build a social movement that can achieve some progress. We see this throughout history, the history of human rights. can achieve some progress. We see this throughout history, the history of human rights. Starts with some small group of people who want to see something change, something important change, and build a movement around it. But it starts with truth. It has to start with truth. It can't, the dispelling the fictions that power tells, tells us so that things can stay the same.

It always starts with shining light into that darkness and bringing ground truth out into the world. That truth is so horrific, though. You could see how it would be human nature for the people involved in it to try to suppress it and ignore it and to try to figure out a way to keep this information from getting out because the amount of change that they would have to impart would be it's a monumental task to change the structure of how this stuff is is acquired it's i i you know, intellectually, I can understand the reluctance to acknowledge it, because, yes, it's. It makes you question how these companies have been operating for years.

Right. And what else do we not know? What else do we not know? There's going to be other problems. And the minute you acknowledge one, people will inevitably ask, well, wait a minute, what else do I need to know now? What other problems do you think could possibly exist? Oh, man. So in terms of this particular industry, I mean, there's still lingering problems with the microprocessor, those 3TG conflict minerals in eastern Congo. All of that, none of that's been fixed. It's just, you know, people lose attention span. people lose attention span. It's just that you can get those things in a lot of other places, gold especially, tantalum, tungsten. You can get those things in a lot of other places. So it's possible to actually redirect and kind of clean up a supply chain. And I imagine much of that work has been done. But do we know everything we need to know about how lithium is being pulled out of the ground? Because that's the other crucial component to these

batteries, be it human rights or environmental sustainability. Do we know everything we need to know about the manufacturing part of this? I mean, you hear stories every once in a while, you know, these facilities in China, and they've got kids in there, and they're working 22 hours a day, and they're not being paid that well. And then it's quickly hush hush and problem solved. Don't worry about it. I can't get into China. You know, I've tried a few times to get a visa, just I've not succeeded as of yet. But I'd love to go poking around in some of those factories and get a sense of what's really happening. Because I know from what I've not succeeded as of yet, but I'd love to go poking around in some of those factories and get a sense of what's really happening. Because I know from what I've seen on the ground in the Congo with Chinese mining companies, human rights is an afterthought.

You know, it doesn't enter into the calculus. It's resource and feed it up the chain. So it stands to reason that similar things with Uyghurs, you know, and there's actually some bipartisan support on the Uyghur issue. But, you know, there are possibly massive forced labor camps relating to electronic manufacturing as well as apparel, solar panels. And there's another whole truth there that we don't even have a grasp on. So, yeah, once you start opening the doors and say, OK, yes, this is a big problem. What are the other big problems out there? Because people will start looking.

What are the other big problems out there? Because people will start looking and then suddenly the bottom end of much of the global economic order is revealed to be tainted with an array of problematic labor conditions from child labor to sweatshop labor to penny labor, to forced labor, labor abuse. Why is everything so cheap? Right. Right? Why is everything, number one, made over there, and then number two, so cheap? That's the – see, the logic of slavery wasn't ever really about cruelty for cruelty's sake. I mean, cruelty and violence and racism were all a part of it. But the logic of it was economic. That throughout history, for any business you might run, one of the highest cost components, if not the highest cost component, is labor. So producers have always tried to think,

how do we bring down labor costs? How do we bring down labor costs so we can make more money? And slavery became the extreme of that. Okay, let's nullify labor costs. Let's nullify it. And so that logic, that impulse that drove so much of the world economy for centuries, it's not like it just went away because we wrote on paper that it's gone away. And so, especially in the era of a globalized economy, you know, corporations will seek out shadowy,

under-regulated labor markets because they're cheaper. And where do you often find things like child labor and slavery and cheap labor in the poor parts of the world? And that's why so much of our stuff is made over there. One of the things that was highlighted during the pandemic was how dependent we are on things that come from other countries. And there has been some discussion about constructing things in America and building things in America and having things made here under conditions that are controlled by our labor rules and the ethics and morals that we operate under.

But it seems like we don't have the raw components. So even if that's the case, just the raw components, like if they decided to manufacture all of the cell phones that Apple makes, if they said, look, we have to come to grips with the fact that it's inhumane, the conditions these people work under in these plants where they build the phones, we are now going to do this all in America, all with unionized labor where they're paid very well and they have benefits. Still, you have to deal with the raw components.

That's right. That's exactly right. There's no way around it. There's no way around it. And why does Apple not do that? Well, Apple is one of the richest companies that's ever existed, which is insane when you think about the profit. Literally all comes, it's all batteries.

Everything they make has batteries. Everything. Everything. Every last piece of everything has cobalt in that battery, and they all have rechargeable batteries, right? And they make money hand over fist. More money than anyone, any company, maybe ever. And the companies all have at their forefront social justice and ethics and morals. Read their press statements.

Yeah. Read their press statements. Every quarterly statement, every 10K, you know, we're proud to uphold human rights standards throughout our supply chain. They all say always down to the mining level. They know in the back of their head there's people who know the truth. So they put it out there, you know, and all of our suppliers participate in audits, that there's no forced labor, no child labor, and so on. So they all say that. And yeah, so what would happen if Apple, and not just to pick on them, but of course,

the big elephant in this conversation, the biggest of them all. So what would happen if they just shifted all their manufacturing here? Well, they are shifting their manufacturing at least somewhat away from China because of all... Because of the supply chain risks. Yes. And all the problems they're having at the facilities themselves where they're having riots and protests and shutting down production. And so they're realizing that that's an issue.

That's right. But that's just economics. That's right. But that's just economics. That's economic. And a lot of that shifted to India, which still has a lower wage labor market. But why isn't it all built here? Right. Why is it? I mean, they're here. Right.

And they reap immense profits. It's because of the profit. Right. You'd actually have to pay people here. But they have. And is it also part of the problem that corporations have to exist on the structure of constantly increasing revenue every year? And shareholder value. Yes.

Shareholder value. Everything comes down to shareholder value, right? That's what drives their stock price. That's what drives their market cap. It's shareholder value. And what's that? That's your profits divided by the number of shares outstanding, right? Roughly speaking. And what's profits? Well, it's revenues minus costs. Oh, costs. Labor. And so we're back to

that same thing. And so, okay, we can pay people in America, you know, 25 bucks an hour plus benefits and a 401k and time off and all of this business. Or we can pay the people over there three bucks an hour and no 401k. Right? So that's what drives. But as you rightfully noted, what about the raw materials? Because there's not enough of that here, there, or anywhere else. A lot of that is in sub-Saharan Africa, in the southern hemisphere. And so you'd still have to get cobalt and other things out of Africa. And so what I'm saying is that's their chain.

You see, the blood for cobalt economy only exists because Apple, Samsung, Tesla, all the legacy car makers, all the tech companies, they have demand for cobalt. And that creates this value chain. And the bottom of the value chain is the blood and misery we're talking about. So it only exists because of their demand for it. So aren't they responsible to fix the problem? It seems like they absolutely should be. It seems like it. And yet, none of them are accepting adequate responsibility. And do you think that part of that is because of what we talked about before with profits and the obligation they have to their shareholders to do something like this would require just a fundamental change in the way they operate? The only thing that I

could think of that would somehow or another shift this is some sort of a technological innovation that allowed them to create batteries with some new technology. So, okay, it's a couple of important things here. I don't think it would cost all that much for them to solve this problem very quickly. Have you run numbers? I mean, let's look at what's the source of the harm, okay? It's peasants and kids digging in unsafe conditions for a dollar to a day, suffering injury, toxic contamination, and death. So how do we address those harms? What's the low-hanging fruit? All right. PPE.

Gloves, hard hats, masks, goggles, whatever. How much can that possibly cost? A decent wage so that parents don't have to bring their kids in to work just to survive. All right. Instead of a dollar or two a day, people in that part of the world can probably reasonably survive on $10 a day. A day, not an hour, a day. That's not going to add up to too much. Then you don't have artisanal tunnel digging. Let the excavators do it. Use proper heavy equipment. Well, there's equipment down there. If they need a little more, how much could that really cost? And you go down the list of these

things that would help solve a lot of the harms. And then you add in a few things like invest in the local community that we avail of, like build some schools, some public health clinics and so on. It's not going to add up to that much. I mean, it would probably add up to what a company like Apple makes in a day. And you'd solve huge parts of the problem, not all of it, but a lot of the harm and injury that's being suffered could be avoided with some simple steps. Has anyone ever come to Tim Cook and presented him with this evidence and with this information and asked him to comment on it? I don't know. That's a really good question. I would love the opportunity to present it to him and ask him to comment on it. It probably wouldn't get to him. You probably wouldn't

get past the PR department and the CSR team that would say, no, we're, you know, Apple's very aware and our supply chain is clean and we have independent audits and so on. And that would be the end of the discussion, right? I mean, but we have to get past that fiction. And I hope that some of what I'm doing and what others no doubt will do after my book comes out will move us past that, you know, just that vacant, vapid response that we're aware that there are some problems in the Congo. It's a poor country. Our supply chain is audited and everything is, you know, is A-OK right as rain. And we have to move past that with truth.

And then the question is, yeah, will they engage? Would Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Elon, the rest of these and all of them, I don't know the names of all the CEOs or the ones that come off the top of my head, but will they engage on it? Will they say, okay, all right, truth accepted, problem acknowledged, help us. Help us. And I and many others, I'm sure, would be only so happy. And look, it should start with a trip. They just need to go and see for themselves. But they can't, right? Like how much resistance would they experience? I mean, you're talking about going in there with where there's commandos and

Kalashnikovs guarding these secrets. Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. No, I mean, I'm not even giving them an excuse. I'm just sort of identifying the scope of what would be involved, because this would somehow impede on profits. And a lot of these companies are run by Chinese corporations as well. Yes. Yeah. No question. No question. That's a big part of the problem. And we don't have to mince our words. We don't have to mince our words about it. They are a big part of the problem.

Their government, their companies, the way they do business is a big part of the problem. But everybody knows it. Our tech companies and EV companies, they know who they're in business with. They're not oblivious to how business is done in China and by Chinese companies on the ground in the Congo. Part of the problem is there's not even one U.S. mining company in the Congo. To maybe show by a better example of how to do things, that's part of the problem. It's almost completely China plus Glencore and one or two other companies, maybe a Canadian one. But it's all, you know, last time I was there, there are 19 major industrial copper cobalt complexes.

Fifteen are run by Chinese companies. Chinese companies means Chinese government. Glencore has a few more. And then that's it. has a few more and then and then that's it and then you're dealing with the same issues because these companies these corporations are largely controlled by the government of china which is also responsible for the forced labor camps and absolutely the treatment of the uyghurs and well we have to decide you know i mean we meaning american companies have to decide you know what's what's the threshold?

At what point do they have to make decisions around their corporate moral record? You know, they know what's happening in China and with Chinese companies in other parts of the world. If I know it, they all know it, right? But there's just so much money at stake. There's an anxiety about, you know, saying, well, we really need things to be done better. They just say it. Don't worry. You know, everything's audited. Everything's OK. They just keep saying it and saying it and saying it. And all right. So, um, could CEOs get down there? All right. Yes. I take the point. That would be a little challenge. I could get them somewhere. We can, if I can do it and I'm, you know, I've average intelligence and average means and resources. Um, you know, we can get some people down there to see some truth. All right. And then I'll go the rest of the way.

I'll go the rest of the way. And while we're there, while we're there, even if they just hang out in a hotel in Lubumbashi with their teams, you know, they will hear about a tunnel collapse within the first week. I'll bring in some kids covered in filth and muck for them to see, digging their cobalt. How about talk to some families? We'll just go to a few villages. Or I'll bring them to the hotel. Just talk to some families. Let them tell you the truth.

You know, yeah, they can't go running around militia mines. Fair enough. But they can still get in country and see the truth and hear the truth. I can arrange it for them. Their own teams could probably arrange it for them. Right. It just needs to be something they want to do, that they care enough about the bottom of their chain. They created this chain. No one put a gun to their head and said, put cobalt in the battery. No one forced them to do it. That just so happens that helps the battery maintain thermal stability and have maximum energy density, which means you don't have to plug your stuff in as often, and your car can have a longer range, electric car. That's why cobalt's so precious. And you mentioned alternate tech. No question, people are working on cobalt-free batteries because of the conversation we're having right now. How much headway is being made in that direction?

There's progress, for sure. For sure. Because even if it weren't coming out of a war-torn country through child labor and misery and so on, it's expensive. And even from trying to reduce the cost of a battery cell, people are working on cobalt-free chemistries. And there are options out there. What are those options? So there's things called solid-state batteries. There are formulations that either use much less cobalt. There's some lithium iron phosphate is another formulation that doesn't have cobalt. And you sacrifice something, right? Maybe a little bit of power, maybe a little bit of range,

maybe a little bit of thermal stability. Nothing's ready to replace cobalt entirely. But there are batteries that work and work relatively well without cobalt. But that doesn't... Let's say you stop using cobalt entirely tomorrow. What about all the harm that's been done up until today? Do we just forget about it? Right. And what happens to those people if they do stop mining cobalt? What happens to those people? And there's an economy that, even though it's a horrible economy, the way they get money for food is dependent right now.

And you're talking about hundreds of thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands of people. And you're talking about hundreds of thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands of people. And the reason they're so dependent on those couple of dollars a day from cobalt is because the mines took over everything. I mean, millions of trees have been clear cut. Arable land has just been wiped out. So where there was an agricultural economy, fishing economy, some other ways to earn a living, you know, it's almost all gone because mining has taken over everything.

And mining has likely destroyed the environment. Destroyed the environment. So, you know, the water, the air, it's all massively contaminated with heavy metals and toxic runoff. So they've been pushed to the fringes. I mean, the number of villages I would go to, and then a year later, that village was gone because the nearby mine got bigger, and those people get displaced. And so there's one Congolese person told me, I'll never forget his words. He said, soon there's going to be no place left in Congo for Congolese people. I mean, that's the mining provinces because the mines just keep growing and growing and people get displaced and pushed to the

fringes. And then as a consequence, there's almost nothing left to do but dig because it's also a way to make sure you get a dollar or two in your pocket that day. It's the only way to make sure. And that's the difference between survival and oblivion. And we're only talking about survival. We're never talking about people making enough money to escape that life. No. It's not possible.

No, no, no, no. They're always at the precipice. I mean, there's nothing like saving money. You have a family working, two parents, three kids, four kids, whatever it might be, in the aggregate maybe getting $5, $6 for the day. That's just base survival income, you know, just enough to have some food and a hut and some clothes now and again. And again, no electricity, very little education. No, I mean, Congo has a 9% electrification rate and about 0.3% or 0.4% in rural areas.

So like, you know, take out the big cities and it's like there's just no electricity. Maybe 20% of people have access to sanitation. Child mortality is 11th or 10th worst in the world. You know, life expectancy is very short. And in the mining provinces, of course, there's so much toxic runoff from the mining companies that fish stocks, animal, it's all contaminated. Agricultural land is contaminated. So people suffer cancers. They suffer kidney ailments. They suffer hard metal lung disease from breathing in toxic cobalt dust all day. That includes the babies that are on their mother's backs, acute dermatitis.

I mean, the list goes on and on and on of all this injury and suffering that's at the bottom of this chain. And when you're talking about these alternatives, like solid state batteries and all these different alternatives, how far off are they from implementing those into the devices that we have? So most of the new battery tech that's being developed is going to be for EVs, because that's where the big cobalt demand is, right? They have to figure out ways of minimizing or eliminating cobalt for electric vehicles. Right now, most of them require up to 10 kilograms of refined cobalt. Our smartphones

have like 10 grams, so a thousand times less. Can that be recycled? Can old EVs, can they extract the cobalt? Great question. Right now, the recycling tech, as I understand it, doesn't produce a sufficient grade to put back into an EV battery. You see, for a car, you need a couple of things. Number one, you need a high level of energy density. That's so you have longer driving range. I mean, imagine you're a consumer. You're thinking, I've got my gas car. Do I want to buy an electric car?

Oh, what's the first thing you think about? Do I have to plug it in three times a day? So you want to have a lot of range. You also think, well, now is this going to have some kind of weak little engine and I can't even get going on the highway and so on. So it needs to have power, right, to compete with an internal combustion V8 power engine. And then it needs to be stable because you don't want that battery catching on fire because it's overheating or exploding, right? That's the other worry. So those – cobalt solves all those problems. And there are, there is new battery tech that will minimize or eliminate cobalt

that addresses most of those. It may not be as, give you the same range. It may not give you as much power, but it's perfectly doable for probably mass, mass consumer, but it's still, and I think Tesla actually has some non-cobalt batteries on the market now in some of their cars. They're working hard to transition. Here it is. Tesla is already using cobalt-free LFP batteries in half of its new cars produced. Yeah. So that's lithium ferrous phosphate. One of the times of... Yeah, iron phosphate, ferrous phosphate. One of the kinds I mentioned that doesn't use cobalt. So you sacrifice a little bit of range, a little bit of power, but they still have a lot of other cars with cobalt.

Most of the EVs have cobalt in the batteries. And then you obviously have this ramped up production across all the major manufacturers that's right because look it's you know um there's probably 22 24 million evs on the road in the world right now and if you look at the the goals under paris uh the paris accord cop 26 you know what what they're forecasting to try to meet climate sustainability goals. You need something like 200 to 300 million EVs on the road by the end of this decade, seven, eight years out. So you need a 10 to 15-fold increase. So that's where the demand is coming from. And there's going to be cobalt in those batteries through the end of the decade and probably for decades to come.

Even if some manufacturers use alternate formulations, it's not like cobalt is going to disappear. And it's still going to be in the phones and all because for phones and tablets and laptops, you don't have the same need for that power and energy density that you need with a car. So cobalt is going to stay in our gadgets and gizmos for a long time to come. There's no alternative method of batteries that they've come up with? Yeah, it's a good question. I'm not sure people are even really working on non-cobalt batteries for smartphones and tablets. Maybe they are. It's more the EV sector because that's where what people realize is there's just not enough cobalt left to meet demand. to figure out, like we had a conversation recently, we were trying to figure out what's the most ethical phone to buy. Like, is there a phone that's ethical to buy?

But it doesn't seem like there's any answer. It seems like at the very least, I don't think any phone is manufactured in America. Is that correct? No, no. They're all made, mostly China. You know, there's probably Nokia's, of course. I don't know if they're made in – most of it's manufactured in Asia. And so even with just construction, there's no companies that are manufacturing or putting together a phone that is even constructed without the use of extremely cheap labor.

No, quite right. That's right. You know, as you work up the chain, it's not like the problems of extremely cheap labor. No, quite right. That's right. You know, as you work up the chain, it's not like the problems are solved. Right. You know, even when you get to the battery component stage and then the phone assembly stage, there's labor issues further up the chain. They might not be as horrific as what's happening in the Congo, but there's still overworked penny wage, cheap labor, forced labor, low wage labor. All those problems exist further up the chain. That's why, I mean, it's all assembled over there for a reason. Yeah.

And it comes down to increasing shareholder value and, you know, stock option value. And, yeah, to be fair, pension fund value, 401k value. I mean, you know, people want their retirement accounts to continue growing as well. And so, you know, there's this phrase, the double bottom line, right, that we can't just have companies running on a single bottom line, which is earnings per share, net profit. That there's another bottom line relating to sustainability and human rights and so on that needs to be incorporated. And right now it's still it's incorporated in terms of verbiage, but not so much action. It's incorporated in terms of verbiage, but not so much action. But even the really confusing thing to me is that even if we decided like we are willing to pay more money to have a phone that's constructed and manufactured with ethics and morals and that we align with here in America, even if we did it in America, we still have the material issue.

You still have that issue. And unless there's some sort of a massive technological revolution where they figure out some new source of energy. Well, they did have that, what was it, the fission fusion, where they actually created energy a week or two ago. And that, I'm sure, is many, many years away from being put in phones and all. But they'll be, you know, that I'm sure is many, many years away from being put in phones and all. But there will continue to be technological advancements. There's nothing immediate or on the horizon that would solve these problems today or account for the harms of the past. It's such a damning indictment on the worst case scenario of human beings, of what we're capable of, what kind of horrors we're capable. Yeah, that's – I think that we're capable of and the callous disregard, you know, they don't count as much mentality.

They don't have a voice. They definitely don't have a voice. And voice is everything. Everything. And voice is everything. Everything. Voice, I mean... That's why what you're doing is so important, because you are, through your book and through doing something like this podcast, you're giving it a voice that it didn't have before. And even to me, someone who was aware of it, who's seen documentaries on the horrific conditions, like the facilities that manufacture the phones and even the cobalt mines. You're explaining it in a way that's undeniable.

Well, it's, yeah, it's voice, voice is everything. I hope my book amplifies the voices of the Congolese people. It's written around their voices, their truth. I'm trying to be an invisible pass-through or conduit as much as I can. It's hard to keep my emotions out of it entirely. It's impossible. It's impossible. I'm at the verge of crying through this whole podcast. And this podcast, Joe, you've amplified their voices immeasurably in this moment right now. I mean, probably more than my book ever will.

You know, millions more people listen to you than will likely read my book. But it all adds up. You know, you've made such a powerful choice in bringing me here today. I'm grateful for it on behalf of the people in the Congo who are crying out every day. I think of them every day. I mean, I have the towns in my little, you know, on my phone. I check the weather there. I try to just stay connected even when I'm far away because I think of them constantly.

I mean, there are faces that I see. There are mothers I met, oh, man, just pounding their chests in torture because a child was buried alive. I mean, can you imagine as a parent thinking through that? You know, what was my son's final thoughts buried beneath the cold, merciless dirt digging for cobalt because we needed that dollar? Like, what were's final thoughts buried beneath the cold, merciless dirt, digging for cobalt because we needed that dollar? Like, what were his final thoughts?

For a parent to relive that day after day, that torture, you know, and I've seen it and I felt it. It's so painful and that we're capable of this as a species, as a civilization, you know, that we're capable of tolerating this or looking the other way. And when I say we, I mean just our broader economic order. You know, there are many people with compassion who care deeply. care deeply. But our civilization writ large is tolerating so much violence against some of the most vulnerable and impoverished people in the world. And for what? For our convenience, for money? Well, not only that, there's so much of what we already have that's good enough, but yet we have this constant desire

for technological innovation that requires more and more and more. Yeah. The phones that we have five years ago are more than sufficient to operate our lives. That's right. And haven't we been made fools of to be made to think

we have to keep getting the newest everything? It's so bizarre. It's such a bizarre desire think we have to keep getting the newest everything. It's so bizarre. It's such a bizarre desire that we have. But it seems to be a part of human beings. This constant thirst for technological innovation. Yeah. And improvement. I've got the newest one.

Did you get the newest one? Right. You know, someone sold us that mentality and we labor under it and keep consuming and consuming as a result. And that consumption feeds down the chain because it has to be met. And I think it's been done to us. This feeling that we have to just keep absorbing and buying and consuming things, especially in the West, you know, because that feeds profits. Yeah. When you were over there and you had all these people that aided you in this investigation, what can be done to protect those people? Because I got to imagine

when this information comes out, they're going to try to figure out how you got access. Yes. So I thought I have thought and continue to think very carefully about that. You know, one one thing is I I will never, you know, reveal the names or identities of the people who helped me ever. you know, reveal the names or identities of the people who helped me ever. And I was very careful about when I went around to see who else is looking, right? Because if the wrong person sees me with this person, that could be a problem down the road. Was your identity ever revealed? Was there ever a situation where people knew what you were doing when you were in trouble or in danger? Yeah, many times. I mean, yeah, it's, there's a very thin margin between pushing to find the truth and then putting people at risk. And when in doubt, I erred on the side of not putting people at risk.

Well, it seems like what was exposed just by watching the video that you took is just so undeniable. It's utterly undeniable. The truth is right there. undeniable. The truth is right there. All they have to do is want to see it. It seems so bizarre that it takes a person like you to write a book and to go over there and risk your life and then to come on a podcast and discuss it and to write a book and distribute that book, that this isn't something that's on every major news channel, every newspaper, on the front page every day. Like, look what we're doing. Like, look at the harm we're causing. Look at what we're worried. There's so many things that we're worried about in this country that could be considered trivial in comparison.

Who buys the ads on a lot of those major news channels? Yeah. Okay. And I say that not just glibly because I, after I came back from one of my trips, you know, I've written a few op eds along the way just talking about what I've seen. And after my last trip, I wasn't able to go in 2020 because of the pandemic. I got back in 2021 and I was able to see the impact of the pandemic on the people down there, by the way, which is another important thing we should mention. make on the people down there, by the way, which is another important thing we should mention. But I was writing up an op-ed, and the point of it was that, you know, we relied more than ever on our rechargeable devices during lockdowns and so on in order to continue our jobs and education, right? I mean, a lot of

people did online school, especially in the first part of the pandemic during the lockdowns, work from home, all that, right? So demand for rechargeable gadgets increased, which meant demand for cobalt increased. And I was curious, well, what happened down there at the other end of the chain? increased. And I was curious, well, what happened down there at the other end of the chain? And when I finally got back down there, what I saw was a lot of the big mining companies also shuttered for weeks and months, especially in the beginning, especially the beginning when people didn't know what was going on. But it's not like demand for cobalt stopped. It actually went up because everyone was buying more stuff to do work from home and school from home. So there was massive pressure pushing the peasant population

into the trenches and pits to keep the cobalt flowing. And they got sick and they got unwell and their income certainly didn't improve. Kids were pulled out of school, the ones that were in school, to keep the cobalt flowing. And I wrote a little op-ed about it, and I had the hardest time placing it in mainstream media. How so? What was told to me by a couple of journalist colleagues off the record was, you're coming at companies that buy too much advertising. Jesus. And that's another part of this whole thing, right?

That when you mentioned, well, why isn't it plastered all over mainstream media? Now, to be fair, there's been some journalism on it, some newspaper articles, some stories, and some mainstream media has been down there to do the odd story, but they only go to a point. to do the odd story, but they only go to a point. You know, they don't go to the, they don't pierce to the truth. And that's something I had to contend with that I didn't think I would. And I had to sort of in the end kind of tweak and dial back my op-ed, and I got it placed up on CNN website last December after that last trip I took. But it should be everywhere.

We should be talking about it the same way years ago everyone was talking about sweatshops and Nike and, you know, that got a lot of attention and then blood diamonds and we all talked about that and we talk about it when it punches through, you know, and gets to enough people and gets coverage. And so that day will come for a cobalt. It's coming soon. I'm going to keep pushing until it comes. And then I'm going to stand back and let people deal with this and solve these problems, people meaning these companies. And if they want help, I'm here. It's also this undeniable feeling that history will not be kind to this era when we look back at this and about how people have conveniently ignored this or willfully tried to not just ignore the truth but cover it. Yeah, you know, that's something. It's just that it's the tragedy

on top of the tragedy that it didn't have to be this way. And it doesn't have to be this way. It just takes accepting responsibility. And I know we've talked about why that may be problematic and lead to some blowback and whatnot. But you know what? One day it's going to happen. It will have to happen. People are going to demand that it happens once they learn the truth. You know, the very first abolitionists back in the late 1700s, they lived in a time where slavery was okay. Everybody had slaves. It's the way things were. And there were a handful of people who came together. They were in London, 1787. And they said, no, this is not okay. And they operated on a belief that if the average person, that if the average person,

average person is good in their heart, and if they know the truth, they'll do something about it. And there were some in the group that were more cynical, and they're like, oh, what are you talking about? People are self-interested. They don't want things disrupted. Power definitely doesn't want things disrupted.

And there was this ideological tussle. But in the end, they were right. They brought the truth out. People cared. Enough people cared, and things had to change. And they did change, at least on paper. Now, the legacies of how slavery has persisted and so on, that's another conversation. But the first movement succeeded because of this idea, bring the truth. That first Congo horror, same thing.

The first human rights movement of the 20th century was shine light into the heart of darkness in the Congo. And there were people who went down there and they gathered testimonies and they gathered data and they brought it to the world. And power said, no, no, no, it's a fiction. Don't believe what they're saying. This is nonsense. Everything's fine down there. We're saving these people. They're working well and they're happy.

And they kept coming at it with truth and truth. And then finally things changed. Leopold's regime was brought down in that case. And the same thing will happen today. It's just a question of when. And when enough people hear about it, and especially because it touches their lives, right? Every single day, you can't send a tweet, you can't check your email, you can't check Instagram, you can't do social media, you can't function. I mean, 99.9% of the people who are probably going to listen to

us have this conversation will do so on a gadget that has cobalt in the battery. You know, so it touches all of our lives. And when enough people know that truth, they're going to say, no, not tolerable. And then these companies are going to have to account for all of it. So they might as well get started. I hope, I wish they would, but it will be forced upon them, I think, by the good people of this world eventually. And the other option, which is even more horrific, is that nothing changes. I suppose there's always the possibility, you know. That they'll continue to operate as they do now and ignore this,

and hopefully this won't get amplified to the point where there's a public outrage. I think that's their hope, you know, that just kick the can, keep kicking it downfield. That is crazy. it downfield. That is crazy. And, you know, put out our PR statements and say that we're doing good things and working on it. And it's not in my supply chain. This is the thing, you see. They all say, OK, there's problems there, but it's not in my supply chain. It's in the other guy's supply chain. And they're all saying that. And you think, well, if it's a nobody supply chain, where's all that cobalt going? But I think the practice they've been operating under all this time is keep it shrouded, keep business going, keep the story suppressed, keep attention elsewhere, and just keep it going until we figure out something else, some other tech. We don't need COBOL.

We find some other alternative, and then we won't have to deal with it. In which case, it still doesn't make up for the fact that those people that were involved in this are still captured by it. That's right. It doesn't, and have suffered, and will be left in abject poverty with a destroyed environment, a contaminated environment, and the sudden loss of what meager income they were able to generate, now living in a place where there's just nothing left. When you wrote this book and when you decided to do podcasts and discuss this,

what do you believe to be the best case scenario for how it's received? Best case scenario, I believe change comes from the ground up. I think power has to be brought along the way. Sometimes it's top hearts, feel connected to those kids in the Congo, the brothers and sisters in the Congo, feel that they are all part of the same chain and demand that the corporations atop the cobalt value chain solve the problem. Now, there'll be another whole set of roadblocks at that point because they'll say oh no we are solving it don't worry don't worry and and so they'll they'll have to be a push there's always has to be a push. You know when the first abolitionists tried to abolish slavery

the slave owners said okay yeah we've we've implemented some changes and conditions now in the plantations in the West Indies are not so bad so don't worry about it just get back to your daily lives. And so you have to keep pushing. You have to keep pushing truth. When the truth seekers brought light about what was happening in Leopold's Congo, he said, no, no, no. My soldiers aren't chopping off hands when they don't meet their quota. Those are wild boars.

He actually said this. Those are wild boar accidents. And so they have to just keep coming at it, keep coming at it. And the same will happen now. This is the first salvo. This will be the first book on this topic. This is probably the first podcast on this topic. This is the first salvo. And there will have to be much more behind it. So my hope, my dream is that this will stir the outrage of enough people that they will not stop until the degradation of poor Congolese people at the bottom of this supply chain is resolved. I don't know how much more we can say on this.

Well, we've talked it out. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I mean, it is what it is. It's right in front of our face. And now this information is going to get to the people at Samsung and at Apple and at Tesla and all these companies that are involved in this. It appears that Tesla at least is aware of it with their cobalt-free batteries. But this is, I mean, it's undeniably horrific. And it's impossible to imagine that it was allowed to get to this position.

That's the thing, Joe. I mean, it didn't have to be this way. Joe. I mean, it didn't have to be this way. They could have just set it up right at the beginning and simply done the things they said they were doing. If these were American corporations involved in the extraction of cobalt, do you think that things could have been different? Do you think that if these were... Absolutely. No, no, no. Look, you can't, an American company anywhere in the world cannot behave the way some of these Chinese companies are behaving. And, you know, there was one American company down there, Freeport-McMoran had the largest copper-cobalt concession

in the Congo. They sold it to a Chinese company in 2006 for $2.65 billion. And with that left the only American presence in the mining provinces of the Congo. And it's been a downward spiral since then. Because you see, had at least one American company stayed, if not more, the chain would have felt tighter. Because America would be on the ground there. Right now, they just think, no, no, problem is way over there. These Chinese companies, talk to them. It's their responsibility to do things right. And if an American company had stayed there, yeah, it would have been different.

I do fundamentally believe that and we need to have a presence there it was we're the we're the other way of doing business i'm not saying our companies are perfect the whole conversation we're having right now is because they have allowed a massive human invasion of human rights to persist at the bottom of their chains but it would have made a difference. I do believe that. And there needs to be more ground presence by American companies in the Congo. But yeah, look, there will need to be more conversations about this. I mean, you, me, and Tim Cook should have a nice sit down. Or you, me, and Elon should have a nice sit down or you, me and Elon should have a nice sit down and

just let's solve this problem. Let's accept the truth. Let's solve this problem. I am a humble servant to any CEO that wants to solve this problem. I just want to see those faces that are etched in my mind and burned in my heart. The scenes I've witnessed, the testimonies of horror that I've heard, and that will be amplified by the book, by this podcast, and hopefully by other media as the story gets out there. I just want that pain to be closed. Is there any potential for a Western company, an American company, or any company that operates under a much higher example of ethics and morals entering into this space? Or is all that area completely controlled by Chinese corporate? It's controlled. China has 70 to 80 percent of the production of copper-cobalt ore coming out of the Congo.

Glencore is the only other behemoth down there. And they are from? A Swiss-UK company. And do they operate differently? They're, you know, they've got their own checkered past. They're under investigation by the U.S. and U.K. and Swiss governments for corruption, bribery, fraud in the Congo, as well as other places. I think they paid some fines for it. A lot of artisanal cobalt flows into their supply chain as well, based on what I've seen on the ground. But China has 70 to 80 percent of the production of raw copper cobalt ore. They produced last year 75% of the world's supply of refined cobalt.

And two of the top five biggest battery manufacturers in the world are Chinese companies. The biggest one, CATL, has a one-third market share by itself of all the batteries and all the cars and gadgets and gizmos. So they control it. And that's part of the problem. So was there ever an opportunity for American corporations to control? I mean, when they realized that cobalt was such an integral part of this technological age that we live in right now, was there an opportunity for them to go in and implement their own standards and extract cobalt in a more ethical way? Yeah, they realized it too late. China saw it.

They signed a big deal with the Congolese government in 2009, which opened the door to Chinese mining companies. So this is early ages of smartphones. Yeah, they saw it. They saw it way back. I mean, the world, they cornered the cobalt market before the world knew what was going on.

And Freeport was there. They left in 2006. Unfortunately, I actually talked to an executive over there who was one of the people running that concession. And the way he explained it, they were on the wrong end of some oil and gas investments, and they had to cut debt. And so this sale was one of the ways they did it. But ever since then, there's been no U.S. presence. It's almost all Chinese companies. They cornered the market early on.

And even if there was, would they be able to operate in a competitive environment, given the fact that they do have to abide by their shareholders and this philosophy of continuing to increase revenue every quarter? Yeah. You know, we're speculating here, right? I mean, because one of the things is once you get down into that part of the world, everything just works a little differently. But, you know, we have things like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. We've got certain laws that mean you can't go around bribing people and engaging in shady behavior. And I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but, you know, someone brings to light that your mining company has, in this case, a U.S. company, child labor. You know, someone's going to order up a congressional hearing on it and there's going to be heat and then journalists are going to jump on it.

a congressional hearing on it. And there's going to be heat and then journalists are going to jump on it. And it's just harder to get away with it for as long and as severely as companies from other countries have gotten away with it.

And the only reason the top of the chain companies, which are based here, have gotten away with it is because they're another degree or two removed from the bottom. But this is the fundamental truth. The entire value chain only exists because of their demand for this substance. It wouldn't exist. No one forced anybody to

put cobalt in the battery. So they created the demand and they have to start with the solutions. This is probably one of the heaviest podcasts I've ever done, but listen, no, don't apologize. Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you for your bravery and what you've done in exposing this and in going there. It's very hard to accept, but I think that this information, this is the first step. And as you said, the first salvo. Well, it means the world to me, Joe. The world to me, not for me, but for the people I know and I see in my nightmares.

It means the world that you invited me to come and talk about this. because you amplify the story and their truth and their voices to the point where maybe some good can actually start to happen. And if that's the outcome, man, then, you know, we have spent a preciously valuable couple hours together. Well, I hope that is the case. And so once again, your book is available January 31st. It's called Cobalt Red, How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. Thank you very much.

Thank you for everything. Thank you, Jim. Really, really appreciate what you've done. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Bye, everybody. Bye.