Is this big tech's darkest secret?
Cobalt Red is Siddharth Kara’s devastating exposé of a country ravaged by Western hunger for digital technologies.
I wish I wasn’t writing this review, because I wish this book had never had occasion to be written. It’s a book you can’t unsee. In my case, it has made me think entirely differently about the world I work in — one of well-meaning corporate sustainability initiatives that barely scratch the surface of what’s really going on deep in global supply chains.
I have no critical commentary on this book; instead, consider this review an introduction.
Ever since humans began digging up the earth in search of wealth, mining has had devastating environmental and social consequences. Almost always, working in the mines has been a last resort for those who have no choice but to risk their bodies and their lives to put dinner on the table — and start all over again the next day.
Today, a particularly corrupt class of independent mines known as artisanal mines are exploiting some 45 million people around the world. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), artisanal mining is a key contributor to the supply of cobalt.
We might call cobalt the ‘coal’ of the modern world. Although it is a common component of high-strength alloys used in combustion and jet engines, magnets, and pigments, the high demand for cobalt today is a result of it being a primary component in lithium-ion batteries, found in virtually any device you can recharge — from phones, to laptops, to electric vehicles. Most of the world’s cobalt (70%) is found in the DRC, which means that billions of dollars are created and Western lives enabled by the world’s poorest men, women and children working in devastating conditions for less than $2 a day.
“Our daily lives are powered by a human and environmental catastrophe in the Congo,” says Kara.
The problems with artisanal cobalt mining are so widespread and so dire that there really is no way to capture them without writing an entire book. From displacement due to mine expansion, to children digging 60 meters underground and dying every day in tunnel collapses, to women and girls sexually assaulted by soldiers and guards, to communities exposed to highly toxic concentrations of minerals — the list goes on. Anyone familiar with King Leopold II’s disastrous Congolese exploits around the turn of the 20th century will see hauntingly familiar scenes in this book.
While some of cobalt mining’s problems have received coverage in recent years, the approach from tech companies and EV companies reliant on Congolese cobalt has been to conduct surface-level supply chain reviews and issue bland corporate statements reassuring consumers that their cobalt is sourced from best-practice mines.
Writing on the ground from the Congo, Kara reveals that even the marginally better ‘best practice’ mines do not exist in isolation, and cobalt slips in from all sides of the fence. In truth, once it makes it onto the back of a truck, there is no way to know which cobalt is “clean” and which was scraped up by a sickly child in a tunnel 60 meters below ground.
“As of 2022, there is no such thing as a clean supply chain of cobalt from the Congo,” says Kara. “All cobalt sourced from the DRC is tainted by various degrees of abuse, including slavery, child labor, forced labor, debt bondage, human trafficking, hazardous and toxic working conditions, pathetic wages, injury and death, and incalculable environmental harm.”
The problem is enormous, and it will begin with end users — us, and the tech companies we buy from — demanding better. It will begin with well-meaning teams going beyond bare minimum compliance exercises when reviewing their supply chains.
Kara has done an incredible job with this short but devastating book. This was a dangerous book to research and write, and few could have done it with Kara’s articulate rage and palpable empathy.
Shoutout also to Peter Ganim, whose resonant voice gave gravity and humanity to a book that would have been no small feat to narrate.
Author: Siddharth Kara
About: The exploitation of cobalt miners in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Rating: 5/5
Most powerful quote: “Now you can see—never have the people of Congo benefited from the mines of Congo. We only become poorer.”
Did you read Cobalt Red? Let me know what you thought.
Related reads:
The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives (Ernest Scheyder, 2024)
Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization (Ed Conway, 2023)