The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology, and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth

Lawyers for the government of Congo had filed suit against Apple earlier that year in France and Belgium. (The French case was later dismissed.) "Apple has sold technology," they wrote, "made with minerals sourced from a region whose population is being devastated by grave violations of human rights."

It was not just left-wing activists who were critical. The company had based its supply chain in China, which enraged human rights advocates and hawks alike. The former argued that pollution and abusive labor standards were tolerated by Chinese companies; the latter said that Apple was farming out its supply chain to the U.S.'s chief adversary.

Apple's representatives had long insisted that its batteries were produced virtuously. The company, after all, audited its supply chain to make sure that minerals connected to human-rights abuses did not wind up in its devices. It was true, moreover, that there were many different kinds of lithium-ion batteries, some with more negative externalities than others. And Apple insisted that its cobalt—a metal whose supply chain was one of the dirtiest among all those that went into making the phone—was recycled. A press release touted how much was reused: 100 percent of the cobalt in the iPhone 16 battery and 95 percent of the lithium.

But Apple was not telling the whole truth. It had built a vastly profitable supply chain on the back of cheap extraction from poor countries like Congo and cheap manufacturing, especially in China. Its supply-chain audits only disclosed a limited range of information. The company said it was not buying hand-mined cobalt. But its very own approved smelter list, released that year, included a company, Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, that was involved in some of the worst human-rights abuses—like child labor and wage slavery—in Congo.

A few months after critical metals lawsuits were filed, Apple quietly issued a statement that it would completely halt buying minerals like tin and tantalum from Congo and Rwanda, parties to the conflict in the East. (Other essential minerals like cobalt, which overwhelmingly comes from mines in southern Congo, were not included in this announcement.) "We believe that this statement is a very significant development in the international consensus and the international world of supply chain," Peter Sahlas, one of Congo's lawyers, told me. Still, he said that Apple's announcement was only the beginning. "It doesn't mean that we're going to go away." Other companies needed to be scrutinized, he said. "Apple didn't become a $3 trillion company without using conflict minerals, and we're going to hold them to account for that."

* * *

FOR HALF A DECADE, I have seen the battery transition up close, in some of the places where it has had its greatest effects. In Congo, in Indonesia, and in the Western Sahara, I saw where battery minerals are mined and spoke to people whose lives have been changed by the new energy map. I traveled to France and Germany to see how cars are being produced using lithium-ion batteries, and to Belgium, where the original colonial supply chain was forged. In Japan, I saw where the lithium-ion industry first arose and later collapsed, and in China, I saw where a new one was being built. In London and Switzerland, I spoke to traders of the minerals that make the batteries. In the United States, I learned about how the country has been trying to revamp its mining and battery industries.

I made my first trip to Congo in May 2019. There, I saw firsthand how some of the poorest people toiled in the country's copper-and-cobalt mines, employing techniques that had been abandoned as far back as the 1700s in many other countries. I returned home to news that Elon Musk had raised $2.7 billion for Tesla. Later that year, I visited Congo again. I showed my phone to Ziki, a fifteen-year-old former child miner, and said that the latest smartphone models, which contained some of the metals whose ores he used to dig up, cost upward of $1,000. "I have sadness in my heart when I think of people who buy the minerals," Ziki said. "They make so much money, and we have to stay like this."

On these trips and four additional visits to Congo, I saw mine sites, spoke to child laborers who dug out the minerals, and met with executives who ensured that these lucrative extracts flowed into factories and ultimately into the hands of consumers. I chatted with the politicians and the spies shaping the geopolitics of this new power. As an expert witness, I gave testimony to the United States Congress about just how dangerous this supply chain could be, geopolitically and environmentally.

I was lucky. Some of my friends and colleagues who tried to speak the truth, in Congo especially, were locked up and tortured.