In this episode of the podcast, I sit down with the author of the new book, "Cobalt Red" about the horrific conditions in the mines of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and why it's so important to know what's going on in those mines. We talk about the history of slavery and child labor in the mining industry, the impact of conflict minerals like cobalt on the local population, and the dangers of mining in the Congo. This episode is brought to you by LaCie and edited by Annie-Rose Strasser. The opinions expressed in this episode are our own, not those of our companies, and do not necessarily reflect those of any other companies. Thank you for listening and share this with your friends, family, and loved ones. Cheers, Joe and Sarah. Music: "Goodbye Outer Space" by Zapsplat, "Outer Space Warning" by Fountains of Wayne, recorded live at UC Berkley, courtesy of the Human Rights Campaign, produced and produced by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, edited by Rachel Ward, produced by Alex Blumberg. All rights reserved. Used w/ permission from the author and copyright of Cobalt Red, copyright of the book "Cocalt Red." Copyright 2019 by Joe Kogan, LLC. All Rights Reserved. We do not own the rights to any music used in this podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts! or review us a review of this episode on iTunes or wherever else you get your feedback is appreciated. Thank you're listening to this podcast, please be sure to leave us your thoughts and opinions are appreciated. by us in the next episode of this podcast and we'll get a shoutout. -- Thank you! -- thank you, Joe's work is appreciated! -- Sarah's words are very much appreciated, Sarah's music is also appreciated, too! -- Amy's words, too, too. - Thank you, Sarah and Joe's words and Sarah's work will be used in the book is also be heard on the podcast "Crocodoodle" -- by her work is very much so much, thank you very much -- and so much more -- by you can be reached out to me in the world, and we're looking out to all of you, too much thanks to you, Amy's work and all the other people who helped us out there.
00:00:36.000Well, I started traveling to the Congo five years ago.
00:00:41.000I've been doing 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.
00:00:55.000People started talking in the field about cobalt.
00:01:05.000So 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 We're so appalling and heart-wrenching and urgent that I changed my approach.
00:01:29.000I thought, people need to know about this.
00:01:35.000And so I started planning more trips and I just kept going back.
00:01:39.000And 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,
00:02:01.000ever, ever in history, than what's happening in the Congo right now.
00:02:09.000The cobalt that's being mined in the Congo is in every single lithium-ion rechargeable battery manufactured in the world today.
00:02:18.000Every smartphone, every tablet, every laptop, and crucially, every electric vehicle.
00:02:27.000So 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.
00:02:38.000And it's being mined in appalling, heart-wrenching, dangerous conditions.
00:02:44.000And so that's why people need to know, because by and large the world doesn't know what's happening in the Congo.
00:02:50.000It's something that people sort of know peripherally that they call them conflict minerals and they know that they're coming from an area of the world that's very poor.
00:03:02.000But I don't think people are aware of how horrible it is.
00:03:05.000There have been some documentaries that have been done on it and they're all terrifying.
00:03:10.000Yeah, so conflict minerals was phase one, and that's actually not cobalt.
00:03:17.000What does it refer to, conflict minerals?
00:03:20.000So conflict minerals, also called the 3TG minerals, are tin, tungsten, tantalum, and gold.
00:03:32.000And that catastrophe started around the year 2000, late 1990s, 2000, shortly after the Rwandan genocide.
00:03:44.000The militias moved in, and the eastern Congo is sitting on some of the largest reserves in the world of those 3TG minerals, especially tantalum.
00:03:55.000And those are all used in microprocessors.
00:03:57.000And you can think back to, you know, around the year 2000, mobile phones first started coming out and gaining traction.
00:04:04.000I still remember my little StarTac flip phone that I had from Motorola.
00:04:34.000Cobalt really took off about 10, 12 years ago.
00:04:38.000And it's in another part of the country, in the mining provinces in the southeast of the Congo.
00:04:43.000And cobalt took off because it started to be used in lithium-ion batteries to maximize their charge and stability.
00:04:54.000And it just so happens that the Congo, just as it was sitting on more than half the world's reserves of coltan and of course a lot of gold and diamonds and other things, is sitting on more cobalt than the rest of the planet combined.
00:05:09.000And it's in a small little patch of the Congo, southeastern corner, a part that used to be called Katanga.
00:05:16.000And before anybody knew what was happening, Chinese government, Chinese mining companies took control of almost all the big mines.
00:05:25.000The 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,
00:05:41.000all the tablets, and especially electric cars.
00:06:32.000That's what the story is told at the top of the chain.
00:06:35.000This mine, and I can name it, it's called Shabara.
00:06:37.000There's not supposed to be one artisanal miner here, according to the consumer-facing tech companies and EV companies buying this cobalt.
00:06:45.000Lo and behold, I walk into this place and this is what I see.
00:06:49.000There's more than 15,000 human beings crammed into that pit.
00:06:54.000Digging by hand and if you have sound you hear the mallet you hear the shouting you hear the the grunts It's a massive humanity you might expect to see a scene like this So there's a term that gets used,
00:07:33.000That's the story told at the top of the chain.
00:07:36.000And people assume, people I mean the marketing teams at big tech and EV companies assume, well, who's going to go down there?
00:07:44.000And 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.
00:07:56.000There'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.
00:08:10.000And that's the truth that needs to get out there.
00:08:12.000That's the truth people need to understand.
00:08:16.000Because this is a story that goes back generations.
00:08:19.000There's these fictions told at the top of the chain about what conditions are like at the bottom.
00:08:24.000And truth seekers have to go find that truth.
00:08:28.000An enlightened civilization so that people get agitated about it and want to do something about it.
00:08:36.000Let's just make that totally abundantly clear.
00:08:38.000And anyone that claims otherwise is either peddling in falsehoods or is recklessly ignorant of the truth.
00:08:46.000Are 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?
00:10:03.000There are hundreds of other artisanal mining sites scattered in the mining provinces outside of industrial mines.
00:10:10.000There are 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.
00:10:22.000There's copper, cobalt, other things outside as well.
00:10:26.000So there'll be hundreds of sites where there are hundreds of thousands of people across the mining provinces digging.
00:10:34.000All that production is sold right back to the industrial mining companies.
00:10:40.000So it enters their supply chain as well.
00:10:44.000And then so they take what they extract with industrial equipment, artisanal miners inside the mine, artisanal miners including children outside the mine.
00:10:53.000It all gets dumped together into the same batch of acids to process and then flows up the chain.
00:10:59.000And again, no one can reasonably claim that their cobalt Even if they say, that industrial mine, totally clean.
00:11:09.000Don't believe what Siddharth is saying.
00:11:14.000They 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.
00:11:28.000Is there another source of cobalt in the world that's ethically supplied?
00:11:35.000So, 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.
00:11:49.000And then there's like 3% Russia, 3% Australia, 3% Morocco.
00:11:57.000And I don't know what the conditions are there.
00:12:00.000I imagine in Australia, mining follows standards of dignity and decency and labor and sustainability and so on.
00:12:08.000But there's not enough cobalt outside of the Congo to meet demand.
00:12:13.000And 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.
00:12:23.000Each battery pack in an EV requires up to 10 kilograms of refined cobalt.
00:12:30.000That's a thousand times what's required for a smartphone.
00:12:34.000So 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.
00:12:47.000So there's not enough other cobalt out there.
00:12:50.000Even if all the non-Congo cobalt was perfectly sourced, there's not enough other cobalt out there to meet demand.
00:12:56.000These 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.
00:14:25.000And 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,
00:14:44.000not 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,
00:15:05.000When 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?
00:15:16.000So going in, I was expecting to see some child labor, poor working conditions, and probably some poor environmental practices.
00:15:32.000And that first trip hit me like a thunderclap.
00:17:06.000As I interviewed them, the level of injury, broken legs, shattered spines, toxic contamination, cancers, birth defects, what's happening to the people there,
00:17:23.000and then the most heart-wrenching thing of all.
00:17:56.000Every week in the Congo, a tunnel collapses.
00:17:58.000And everyone who's down there, 30, 40, 50 men and boys, boys meaning kids, are buried alive.
00:18:07.000And 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?
00:18:19.000When 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.
00:18:28.000I mean, I can't imagine a more horrid way of dying than being buried alive.
00:18:36.000And they're down there trying to get that dollar or two because that's the difference between eating and surviving and not.
00:18:45.000And that's what I wasn't anticipating, just the level of severity.
00:18:50.000And 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.
00:20:54.000Couldn't go very fast before those things fell apart.
00:20:56.000And then in 1888, this chap Dunlop invents a rubber tire.
00:21:02.000And now the whole car revolution is taking off because you can actually drive those things far and fast.
00:21:08.000And the Congo happened to be sitting on one of the largest rubber tree forests in the world.
00:21:14.000So Leopold deployed this mercenary army to enslave, terrorize and torture the population to get rubber out of the forest to loot.
00:21:27.000Bring it up the chain and turn it into tires.
00:21:30.000And he walked away with billions of dollars doing this.
00:21:33.000But that was the first car revolution that led to horror in the Congo.
00:21:37.000And Conrad was in the Congo in 1890. He saw this.
00:21:40.000That's what inspired Heart of Darkness.
00:21:42.000So now we come across the second car revolution coming to electric vehicles.
00:21:49.000And 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.
00:21:58.000And it's that same thing happening all over again.
00:23:14.000What kind of economy can transform the degradation of innocent impoverished children into shiny phones and cars?
00:23:25.000You know, and we are living lives that are so disconnected yet intimately connected to that horror.
00:23:35.000And 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.
00:23:46.000And if some good comes of it, God willing, there will be some good that comes of this journey.
00:24:18.000These are heavily guarded secrets because there's so much money at stake.
00:24:24.000And one does not just waltz into the Congo's mining provinces and start poking around and asking questions.
00:24:31.000That's a one-way ticket to a very bleak outcome.
00:24:36.000I think, you know, it took me 18 years of other research into slavery and child labor to be ready for this.
00:24:47.000If 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.
00:24:57.000But the most important thing is ground relationships.
00:25:01.000And so I took some time building ground relationships with people who could...
00:25:06.000Guide 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.
00:25:20.000So it's about trust and relationships on the ground, first and foremost.
00:25:26.000And 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.
00:25:38.000I mean, you have every face and facet of...
00:28:24.000Many of them run hotels and guest houses.
00:28:27.000So I could be a guy, Indian guy, looking to get into mineral trading, looking to invest in transportation.
00:28:35.000There'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.
00:28:48.000With colleagues or government officials that I met, I was myself, which is a researcher from America.
00:28:54.000You know, I was upfront about it, and I needed to be.
00:28:58.000There are times when I needed stamps and signatures of government officials to keep myself safe.
00:29:06.000And by that I mean In the scenario, 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.
00:29:25.000On your documentation, so we can show that.
00:29:29.000Because that means 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.
00:29:37.000And that advice saved my life on more than one occasion, having that stamp and signature.
00:29:47.000So with government people, I was who I was.
00:29:52.000When 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.
00:30:16.000So 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 Hokotanga province, old colonial town.
00:30:31.000Now it's the mining capital in the southeastern part of the country.
00:30:34.000So that's where, you know, there's some government buildings.
00:30:39.000And 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,
00:30:54.000their signature and stamp on, it's called engagement de prise en charge, commitment to protect, documentation.
00:31:07.000He said, just go and make the case and try to get that stamp and signature because we'll need that.
00:31:43.000It was two girls, probably 14 and 15, and they each had babies on their backs as they were in this trench digging cobalt.
00:31:56.000And I was walking down the trench to a group of boys.
00:31:59.000One 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.
00:32:12.000And I remembered, like, that was one of the big financial companies that had to be bailed out in the 2008 financial crisis, $150 billion or something.
00:32:21.000And I thought, man, that kind of money here, you know, what a difference it could make.
00:32:26.000Anyway, so I was talking to those kids, and suddenly there was gunshots.
00:32:58.000They call them commandos, various names.
00:33:02.000So 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.
00:33:16.000Like they know that there are people who are trying to figure out what's the truth around here.
00:33:21.000And I looked at my guide, the blood drained from his face, and he very quietly and calmly told them he has a signature.
00:33:33.000And my stuff was all on the dirt at that point.
00:33:37.000I found the folder that had that precious piece of paper under the boot of one of these guys.
00:34:01.000I can't go in presuming to know that world.
00:34:04.000How to navigate it, how to be safe, how not to cause harm inadvertently.
00:34:10.000I mean, all these things go through a researcher's mind.
00:34:14.000But 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.
00:34:25.000How did you get the confidence of these people to let you do this?
00:34:30.000And are there people there that are sympathetic to what you're doing because they want the truth to come out?
00:34:39.000There are, you know, there's not much civil society in the Congo, but there is a small civil society there.
00:34:48.000You 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.
00:35:30.000Or not enough people know to look over there, let alone take an interest and start listening.
00:35:36.000And 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.
00:36:05.000I want to bring those voices to the outside world, but I'm in your hands.
00:36:08.000And 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,
00:36:24.000and then B, bring those voices out of the country to a broader world.
00:36:33.000You 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.
00:36:52.000And so to have a chance to feel that someone will eventually hear you, I think, you know, that's what I came hoping to try and achieve.
00:37:04.000And there were enough guides, enough people, enough locals who trusted me.
00:37:11.000I 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.
00:37:39.000And I think that, you know, as I develop relationships, more and more people, although it's a small number, you know, felt that and felt that kinship with me.
00:37:49.000So 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?
00:38:05.000The big anxiety for everyone up the chain is the truth.
00:38:15.000And so many people are playing their part in suppressing the truth.
00:38:21.000It's not just the marketing departments at consumer-facing tech and EV companies.
00:38:25.000They're doing their part to suppress the truth.
00:38:27.000But 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.
00:38:38.000And they're often going to be – they'll often be on the payroll of a mining company, you know, keep people out.
00:38:44.000Because 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.
00:38:59.000There 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.
00:39:17.000And so people on the ground got more anxious about that.
00:39:21.000So there's a lot of anxiety about journalists, researchers, NGOs kind of coming in and trying to find the truth.
00:39:33.000The level of security, especially in the last few years, has increased significantly to try to keep people out.
00:39:42.000Because 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.
00:39:59.000Eventually, it'll pass some threshold where enough people say, wait a minute, what are you talking about?
00:40:05.000I 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...
00:40:19.000The patch of Congo where these minerals come from, the trees have been clear cut, the rivers have been polluted, the air has been polluted.
00:40:27.000Why is my green choice black and red for them?
00:41:23.000It 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.
00:41:44.000But they don't accept responsibility for them.
00:41:47.000And for some reason, they feel it's okay to treat them and the world around them like trash.
00:41:54.000And 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?
00:42:04.000And that is because it's poor, wretched Africans that no one cares about.
00:42:11.000That's the truth, and that's been the truth for centuries, hasn't it?
00:42:15.000Going 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.
00:42:33.000And the people there are either fit to be brutes or to be moved out of the way.
00:42:41.000That's the only answer to the question why companies that are rolling in profits 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, conditions are pretty bad and that's not acceptable because we claim that we uphold human rights and dignity and sustainability all the way down our supply chain.
00:43:08.000Let's send a few people down there and work on this.
00:43:12.000Has 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?
00:43:25.000I'm not running an EV company, yet I felt somehow responsible for what's happening down there.
00:43:29.000How 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, there are thousands of people in this industrial mine working in like ancient old world miserable conditions.
00:43:57.000How about a reasonable wage so they don't have to bring their kids in to work just to survive?
00:44:03.000How about 8 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?
00:44:16.000Why don't we help electrify this place?
00:44:19.000Do 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?
00:44:36.000You go around in the villages, there's no electricity.
00:44:42.000So the point is, they need to understand it, accept it, Accept responsibility for these people at the bottom of the chain.
00:44:50.000Treat them in the same way that they treat people in headquarters.
00:44:53.000Have you had any conversations with any of these people in tech or in EV vehicles?
00:44:59.000I hope I will be invited to do so maybe after this book comes out and if it gets enough attention.
00:45:09.000I will gladly Gladly engage on solving this problem.
00:45:16.000I am a humble servant to any company that wants to just understand and fix their cobalt supply chain.
00:45:23.000Is there any possibility that the CEOs and the people in upper management are not aware of the scope of this problem?
00:45:32.000It's hard for me to imagine that they're not aware.
00:45:35.000So 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?
00:45:45.000I think some of it is business as usual until someone forces them to think differently.
00:45:55.000I think another part of it is it's easy not to accept responsibility because...
00:46:05.000They'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.
00:46:18.000They're separated by layers and layers of a supply chain.
00:46:23.000I mean, that's how the global economy works.
00:46:25.000So some of it is, well, it's their responsibility.
00:46:30.000And they point the finger downstream, right?
00:46:33.000The battery maker should worry about this.
00:46:35.000And the battery maker will point and say, no, the cobalt refinery should worry about it.
00:46:39.000And the cobalt refinery will say, no, the mining company should worry about it.
00:46:42.000And the mining company will say, no, the Congolese government should worry about it.
00:46:44.000And on down the list until the last finger is pointed at the kid caked in filth in the pit.
00:47:36.000Let's go down and see this is where your cobalt's coming from.
00:47:40.000Now that you've seen the truth, let's fix this problem.
00:47:45.000Because these companies have geniuses who have revolutionized our lives.
00:47:55.000Solving dignity at the bottom of a cobalt supply chain It's a simple proposition relative to the problems they probably solve every day.
00:48:06.000But they would have to address it in mass.
00:48:08.000They would have to address it very publicly.
00:48:10.000They would have to admit to this problem and they'd have to publicly state it and make everyone aware, the consumer aware, that these things that we enjoy that make our lives so convenient, these technological marvels that have revolutionized our world,
00:48:27.000At the bottom of that is slave labor and child labor.
00:48:31.000I think you put your finger on something very important because the first question they would be asked is, well, how long have you known?
00:49:29.000And it's not like this is a new phenomenon, right?
00:49:33.000I mean, riches have been built across the global north on the shoulders of degraded people in the global south for centuries.
00:49:42.000We just like to pretend that that's not the case today when it might be the worst case.
00:49:47.000You 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.
00:50:13.000And we're all created equal and treated equal.
00:50:15.000And, you know, it's the hypocrisy that makes it so much more repugnant.
00:50:20.000You know, back then, it's like, well, they are fit to be slaves.
00:50:52.000Because now we live in a time where you can't legally own another person or exploit them like a slave on any patch of this planet.
00:51:00.000And yet it happens at the bottom of our global economic order more than people realize.
00:51:05.000And what's important about cobalt It's kind of the distillation of centuries of this arc.
00:51:15.000Because, 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.
00:51:31.000The 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.
00:52:17.000Surely we're better than this now, right?
00:52:22.000Haven't we fought enough fights, shed enough blood, and made enough progress that we're better than this, that what we're talking about today can't and shouldn't exist?
00:53:43.000The 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.
00:54:14.000See 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.
00:54:25.000Because the amount of change that they would have to impart would be...
00:54:31.000It's a monumental task to change the structure of how this stuff is acquired.
00:55:22.000So in terms of this particular industry, I mean, there's still lingering problems with the microprocessor, those 3TG conflict minerals in Eastern Congo.
00:55:35.000All of that, none of that's been fixed.
00:55:38.000It just, you know, people lose attention span.
00:55:43.000It's just that you can get those things in a lot of other places.
00:56:07.000Everything 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.
00:56:17.000Do we know everything we need to know about the manufacturing part of this?
00:56:21.000I 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.
00:56:30.000And then it's quickly hush hush and problem solved.
00:56:36.000You know, I've tried a few times to get a visa.
00:56:39.000I'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.
00:56:54.000You know, it doesn't Enter into the calculus, its resource, and feed it up the chain.
00:57:04.000So it stands to reason that similar things with Uyghurs, and there's actually some bipartisan support on the Uyghur issue, but there are possibly massive forced labor camps.
00:57:20.000Relating to electronic manufacturing as well as apparel, solar panels.
00:57:27.000And there's another whole truth there that we don't even have a grasp on.
00:57:35.000So yeah, once you start opening the doors and say, okay, yes, this is a big problem.
00:57:40.000What are the other big problems out there?
00:57:42.000Because 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 wage labor to forced labor,
00:59:01.000And 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.
00:59:12.000And so, especially in the era of a globalized economy, corporations will seek out Shadowy, under-regulated labor markets because they're cheaper.
00:59:26.000And where do you often find things like child labor and slavery and cheap labor in the poor parts of the world?
00:59:33.000And that's why so much of our stuff is made over there.
00:59:37.000One of the things that was highlighted during the pandemic was how dependent we are on things that come from other countries.
00:59:45.000And 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.
00:59:59.000But it seems like we don't have the raw components.
01:00:03.000So 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,
01:00:19.000we are now going to do this all in America, all with unionized labor where they're paid very well and they have benefits.
01:00:26.000Still, you have to deal with the raw components.
01:01:48.000And yeah, so what would happen if Apple, not just to pick on them, but of course they're the big elephant in this conversation, the biggest of them all.
01:01:58.000So what would happen if they just shifted all their manufacturing here?
01:02:04.000Well, they are shifting their manufacturing at least somewhat away from China because of all...
01:04:43.000And yet none of them are accepting adequate responsibility.
01:04:48.000And 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?
01:04:58.000Would require just a fundamental change in the way they operate.
01:05:02.000The 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.
01:05:11.000So, okay, a couple of important things here.
01:05:15.000I don't think it would cost all that much for them to solve this problem very quickly.
01:06:24.000If they need a little more, how much could that really cost?
01:06:27.000And 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.
01:06:38.000It's not going to add up to that much.
01:06:41.000I mean, it would probably add up to what a company like Apple makes in a day.
01:06:47.000And you'd solve huge parts of the problem.
01:06:50.000Not all of it, but a lot of the harm and injury that's being suffered could be avoided with some simple steps.
01:06:56.000Has anyone ever come to Tim Cook and presented him with this evidence and with this information and asked him to comment on it?
01:07:19.000You 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.
01:07:30.000And that would be the end of the discussion, right?
01:07:32.000I mean, but we have to get past that fiction.
01:07:36.000And 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 vacant, vapid response.
01:07:49.000We're aware that there are some problems in the Congo.
01:07:58.000And we have to move past that with truth.
01:08:02.000And then the question is, yeah, will they engage?
01:08:08.000Would 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?
01:08:19.000Will they say, OK, all right, truth accepted, problem acknowledged, help us?
01:10:16.000Chinese companies means Chinese government.
01:10:19.000Glencore has a few more, and then that's it.
01:10:22.000And 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 for the treatment of the Uyghurs and all the issues.
01:11:46.000And while we're there, even if they just hang out in a hotel in Lubumbashi with their teams, They will hear about a tunnel collapse within the first week.
01:12:00.000I'll bring in some kids covered in filth and muck for them to see, digging their cobalt.
01:12:47.000It 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.
01:15:01.000So where there was an agricultural economy, a fishing economy, some other ways to earn a living, you know, it's almost all gone because mining has taken over everything.
01:15:12.000And mining has likely destroyed the environment.
01:15:16.000So, you know, the water, the air, it's all massively contaminated with heavy metals and toxic runoff.
01:15:27.000So they've been pushed to the fringes.
01:15:30.000I 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.
01:15:41.000And 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.
01:15:51.000I mean, that's the mining provinces because the mines just keep growing and growing and people get displaced and pushed to the fringes.
01:15:58.000And 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.
01:17:58.000And 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?
01:18:10.000So, most of the new battery tech that's being developed is going to be for EVs.
01:18:18.000Because that's where the big cobalt demand is, right?
01:18:21.000They have to figure out ways of minimizing or eliminating cobalt for electric vehicles.
01:18:26.000Right now, most of them require up to 10 kilograms of refined cobalt.
01:18:31.000Our smartphones have like 10 grams, so a thousand times less.
01:20:11.000Tesla is already using cobalt-free LFP batteries in half of its new cars produced.
01:20:17.000Yeah, so that's lithium, ferrous phosphate, one of the kinds I mentioned that doesn't use cobalt.
01:20:29.000So you sacrifice a little bit of range, a little bit of power, but they still have a lot of other cars with cobalt.
01:20:36.000Most of the EVs have cobalt in the batteries.
01:20:41.000And then you obviously have this ramped up production across all the major manufacturers.
01:20:45.000That's right, because look, there's probably 22, 24 million EVs on the road in the world right now.
01:20:55.000And if you look at the goals under the Paris Accord, COP26, 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.
01:21:21.000So that's where the demand is coming from.
01:21:24.000And 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's going to disappear.
01:21:36.000And 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 There's no alternative method of batteries that they've...
01:22:49.000And 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.
01:23:10.000Even when you get to the battery component stage and then the phone assembly stage, there's labor issues further up the chain.
01:23:18.000They 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.
01:23:27.000All those problems exist further up the chain.
01:24:25.000But 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,
01:24:41.000even if we did it in America, we still have the material issue.
01:24:46.000Unless there's some sort of a massive technological revolution where they figure out some new source of energy.
01:24:54.000Well, they did have that – what was it?
01:24:55.000The 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.
01:25:05.000But there will continue to be technological advancements.
01:25:13.000There's nothing immediate or on the horizon that would solve these problems today or account for the harms of the past.
01:25:20.000It'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.
01:25:31.000Yeah, that's – I think – You know, that's what really hurts and hits hard when I do the research I do to see the cruelty that we're capable of.
01:25:48.000And the callous disregard, you know, they don't count as much mentality.
01:26:03.000That's why what you're doing is so important.
01:26:05.000Because you are, through your book and through doing something like this podcast, you're giving it a voice that it didn't have before.
01:26:12.000And 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.
01:28:10.000For a parent to relive that day after day, that torture, you know, and I've seen it and I've felt it.
01:28:20.000It'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.
01:28:31.000And when I say we, I mean just our broader economic order.
01:28:36.000You know, there are many people with compassion who care deeply.
01:28:43.000Our civilization writ large is tolerating so much violence against some of the most vulnerable and impoverished people in the world.
01:29:56.000You know, this feeling that we have to just keep absorbing and buying and consuming things, especially in the West, you know, because that feeds profits.
01:31:44.000All they have to do is want to see it.
01:31:46.000It 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,
01:32:02.000every newspaper, on the front page every day.
01:32:20.000Okay, and I say that not just glibly, because 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.
01:32:29.000And after my last trip, I wasn't able to go in 2020 because of the pandemic.
01:32:36.000I got back in 2021, and I was able to see the impact of the pandemic.
01:32:40.000On the people down there, by the way, which is another important thing we should mention.
01:32:45.000But 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,
01:33:06.000I 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?
01:33:13.000So demand for rechargeable gadgets increased, which meant demand for cobalt increased.
01:33:21.000And I was curious, well, what happened down there at the other end of the chain?
01:33:25.000And 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 in the beginning when people didn't know what was going on.
01:33:38.000But it's not like demand for cobalt stopped.
01:33:41.000It actually went up because everyone was buying more stuff to do work from home and school from home.
01:33:47.000So 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.
01:33:58.000Kids were pulled out of school, the ones that were in school, to keep the cobalt flowing.
01:34:03.000And I wrote a little op-ed about it and I had the hardest time placing it in mainstream media.
01:34:22.000And that's another part of this whole thing, right?
01:34:27.000That when you mention, well, why isn't it plastered all over mainstream media?
01:34:32.000Now, 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.
01:34:43.000You know, they don't go to the, they don't pierce to the truth.
01:34:49.000And 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.
01:35:10.000We 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 that day will come for Cobalt.
01:35:44.000It'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.
01:36:49.000And there were a handful of people who came together, they were in London, 1787, and they said, no, this is not okay.
01:36:57.000And they operated on a belief that if the average person, average person is good in their heart, and if they know the truth, They'll do something about it.
01:37:11.000And there were some in the group that were more cynical.
01:38:41.000I 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.
01:39:07.000But it will be forced upon them, I think, by the good people of this world eventually.
01:39:12.000And the other option, which is even more horrific, is that nothing changes.
01:39:17.000I suppose there's always the possibility, you know.
01:39:22.000That 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.
01:40:44.000It doesn't and have suffered and will be left in abject poverty.
01:40:53.000With 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.
01:41:07.000When 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?
01:41:20.000Best case scenario, I believe change comes from the ground up.
01:41:25.000I think power has to be brought along the way.
01:41:29.000Sometimes it's top-down, but usually important advancements in human rights come from the ground up.
01:41:36.000So my hope is enough people read this book, enough people feel it in their 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.
01:42:03.000Now, there'll be another whole set of roadblocks at that point because they'll say, oh, no, we are solving it.
01:42:13.000You know, when the first abolitionists tried to abolish slavery, the slave owners said, okay, yeah, 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.
01:42:29.000When 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.
01:42:57.000And there will have to be much more behind it.
01:42:59.000So 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.
01:43:20.000I don't know how much more we can say on this.
01:43:32.000And 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.
01:43:43.000It appears that Tesla at least is aware of it with their cobalt-free batteries.
01:44:00.000I mean, it didn't have to be this way.
01:44:03.000They could have just set it up right at the beginning and simply done the things they said they were doing.
01:44:12.000If these were American corporations involved in the extraction of cobalt, do you think that things could have been different?
01:44:19.000Do you think that if these were Absolutely.
01:44:23.000An American company anywhere in the world cannot behave the way some of these Chinese companies are behaving.
01:44:32.000There was one American company down there, Freeport-McMoran, had the largest copper-cobalt concession in the Congo.
01:44:41.000They 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.
01:44:57.000Because you see, had at least one American company stayed, if not more, the chain would have felt tighter.
01:45:06.000Because America would be on the ground there.
01:45:30.000We're the other way of doing business.
01:45:31.000I'm not saying our companies are perfect.
01:45:33.000The whole conversation we're having right now is because they have allowed a massive invasion of human rights to persist at the bottom of their chains.
01:46:24.000The 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.
01:46:40.000Is 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?
01:46:52.000Or is all that area completely controlled by Chinese corporations?
01:48:11.000So was there ever an opportunity for American corporations to control?
01:48:16.000I 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?
01:49:30.000And 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?
01:49:45.000Yeah, you know, we're speculating here, right?
01:49:48.000I mean, because one of the things is once you get down into that part of the world, everything just works a little differently.
01:49:56.000But, you know, we have things like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
01:50:00.000We've got certain laws that mean you can't go around bribing people and engaging in shady behavior.
01:50:10.000You 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.
01:50:24.000And 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.
01:50:32.000And 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.
01:51:31.000The world to me, not for me, but for the people I know and I see in my nightmares.
01:51:35.000It means the world that you invited me to come and talk about this because you amplify this story and their truth and their voices to the point where maybe some good can actually start to happen.
01:51:50.000And if that's the outcome, then, you know, we have spent a preciously valuable couple hours together.