Clean Energy, Dirty Mines: The Dark Story of Congo Cobalt

Summary

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Lawless Planet: "Clean Energy, Dirty Mines: The Dark Story of Congo Cobalt"

Host: Zach Goldbaum
Guest: Siddharth Kara (Author, Researcher)
Date Released: January 26, 2026

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Overview

This episode examines the dark underside of the global shift toward clean energy, focusing on the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) pivotal role in mining cobalt, a key component in rechargeable batteries. Host Zach Goldbaum uncovers the environmental devastation, exploitative labor practices, and global corporate interests converging on Congolese cobalt. Through gripping storytelling and firsthand accounts, the episode illustrates how our drive for a green future is inextricably linked with a human rights and environmental disaster at the heart of Africa.

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Key Themes and Discussion Points

The Kolwesi Cobalt Legend & Modern Gold Rush

• A neighborhood discovery: The episode opens with a local legend about a man in Kolwesi who, while digging, discovers exceptionally pure cobalt under his house (00:08).
  • “He notices these bright turquoise streaks in the rock… cobalt is a crucial component in rechargeable batteries. It is super valuable.” (00:16, Zach Goldbaum)
• Artisanal mining frenzy: His find triggers a desperate, dangerous rush by locals digging without equipment or safety, turning residential neighborhoods into hazardous informal mines (01:16–03:55).

Cobalt’s Global Importance

• In everyday devices: Nearly every electronic device, especially those using lithium-ion batteries, contains a piece of Congo (05:16).
• Transition to renewables: Cobalt is core to electric vehicle (EV) batteries and thus the global drive to reduce fossil fuel use.

Colonial Legacy and Ongoing Foreign Control

• Historical context: The DRC’s resource curse is traced to its colonial past, from King Leopold II’s reign of terror to Cold War power struggles over its minerals (06:24–09:08).
• Continued exploitation: Even after independence, resource wealth has stayed in the hands of foreign (and later elite domestic) interests.

The EV Boom and the Modern Cobalt Rush

• Tesla’s Gigafactory: Illustrates contemporary demand with a scene of Elon Musk announcing massive plans for battery production in Nevada, which multiplies cobalt demand (11:04–12:16).
• Exponential growth: “Those batteries require about a thousand times as much refined cobalt as a smartphone.” (12:16, Siddharth Kara)

Artisanal Mining: Reality on the Ground

• Hazardous livelihoods: “It's the most ruinous, hazardous, miserable, dangerous livelihood you can possibly imagine.” (13:52, Siddharth Kara)
• Scale and dangers: Tunnels dug by hand, risk of cave-ins, lack of protective gear, and constant health consequences (14:15–15:50).
• Intermingled supply chains: Artisanal cobalt often gets mixed with industrial output, making it nearly impossible to separate ethically sourced material (17:13).

The Human Toll: Health, Child Labor, and Modern Slavery

• Toxic exposure: “Cobalt is highly toxic to touch and breathe, so there's enormous health consequences, especially for children and pregnant women and babies…” (18:26, Siddharth Kara)
• Child labor’s pervasiveness: Children as young as 9 labor in mines, many carrying babies on their backs (18:43). Lack of schools and extreme poverty leave families with little choice.
• Vivid accounts:
  • “If you're 10 years old and you've got a 20, 30 kilogram sack… it's not hard to lose your footing. I can remember sitting with children who had shattered spines and were paralyzed from the waist down.” (21:36, Siddharth Kara)
  • “The encounters that were most painful for me… are the interviews I conducted with parents who lost a child in a tunnel collapse.” (22:23, Siddharth Kara)
• Trafficking and forced labor: Children are trafficked and forced to work for free, with some sold or controlled by armed groups (24:20–25:25).

Accountability: Tech Giants, Supply Chains, Lawsuits

• Opaque supply chains: Once cobalt enters local markets, it becomes untraceable; companies can plausibly deny links to child labor (23:20–24:35).
• Corporate responses: Companies like Apple, Samsung, Microsoft claim strict supply chain oversight, but activists and researchers say otherwise (19:55–20:27).
• Legal challenges: In 2019, International Rights Advocates filed a lawsuit against Apple, Google, Dell, Microsoft, and Tesla—ultimately dismissed (29:16–31:12).
  • “There are so many ways for tech companies to say, well, I'm going to point the finger at that person and that person and that person.” (31:12, Siddharth Kara)
  • “The last finger gets pointed to the child in the Congo covered in toxic grit and filth and grime, and no one's accepting responsibility for that child.” (31:39, Siddharth Kara)
  • “What is the responsibility of the company at the top of the chain…? The responsibility is 100% theirs.” (32:13, Siddharth Kara)

Who Benefits?

• Economic breakdown: Despite rising global demand, the DRC receives just 14% of the cobalt value chain; most profit goes to foreign companies and corrupt local elites (33:37–34:15).
  • “China dominates mining in the Congo. They control between 70 and 80% of actual industrial cobalt mining.” (34:15, Siddharth Kara)
• Broken promises: Infrastructure deals with China have delivered little to the Congolese people while enriching the elite (34:27).

Environmental Catastrophe

• Landscapes of destruction: Once lush areas now “eradicated, gouged swath of earth. Mines have just swallowed everything. Millions of trees have been clear cut. The air is a brown haze…” (35:36, Zach Goldbaum)
• Negative feedback loop: Deepening poverty, ecological ruin, and child labor each amplify the next (36:23).

The Paradox of “Green” Energy

• Decarbonization at what cost?: Climate solutions from the Global North are built on the suffering of the global South (36:41).
• Recycled cobalt push: Apple and others move to recycled cobalt, which could ironically impoverish artisanal miners further if not paired with economic alternatives (37:02–37:54).
  • “You're not permitted to just cut and run after destroying the place… If we just keep reproducing the same pillage and exploitation… shame on all of us.” (37:54, Siddharth Kara)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On artisanal mining’s reality:
  “Artisanal mining leads you to think it's some kind of quaint activity and rather pleasant… but in short, it means people just scrounging for cobalt with their bare hands and shovels and pickaxes… It's the most ruinous, hazardous, miserable, dangerous livelihood you can possibly imagine.” (13:52, Siddharth Kara)

• On child labor:
  “Yeah, babies strapped to their mother's backs while they're digging for cobalt. And you see this toxic poof rise up every time they hack at the earth. And of course they're breathing it, then their babies are breathing it.” (18:43, Siddharth Kara)

• On supply chain accountability:
  “The ground truth dispels this marketing story that's told at the top of the chain… all of that is going to be classified as industrial production.” (17:13, Siddharth Kara)
  “What is the responsibility of the company at the top of the chain…? The responsibility is 100% theirs.” (32:13, Siddharth Kara)

• On environmental devastation:
  “If you go to Google Earth and zoom in to Kolowesi, you just see an eradicated gouged swath of earth. Mines have just swallowed everything. Millions of trees have been clear cut. The air is a brown haze that burns your eyes and throat.” (35:36, Zach Goldbaum)

• Summary of global injustice:
  “Yeah, we've unleashed a slightly shinier, well packaged version of Leopold's plunder. But it's still a plunder.” (36:52, Siddharth Kara)

• Moral challenge:
  “You're not permitted to just cut and run after destroying the place. You know, that's colonial mentality. We're supposed to have made moral progress... shame on all of us.” (37:54, Siddharth Kara)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

| Timestamp | Segment/Theme | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:08 | Kolwesi cobalt legend and beginning of artisanal mining | | 05:16 | Cobalt in everyday devices and renewable transition | | 06:24 | Colonial history and fight over Congo’s minerals | | 11:04 | Tesla’s Gigafactory announcement and cobalt demand explodes | | 12:16 | Scale of cobalt used in EVs (quote: Siddharth Kara) | | 13:52 | Dangers and reality of artisanal mining | | 17:13 | Supply chain mixing of artisanal and industrial cobalt | | 18:26 | Health effects and child labor in artisanal mining | | 21:36 | Personal stories of child injury and trauma | | 22:23 | Parents grieving child deaths in mining accidents | | 24:20 | Reports and stories of trafficking and forced child labor | | 29:16 | International lawsuit against tech giants | | 31:12 | Systemic legal and moral questions of accountability | | 32:13 | Corporate responsibility for the supply chain | | 33:37 | Who profits from cobalt—China, foreign firms, elites | | 35:36 | Environmental devastation in Kolwesi and the cobalt region | | 36:23 | Negative feedback loop: poverty, environment, child labor | | 37:02 | Tech companies’ push for recycled cobalt and moral complexity | | 37:54 | Expectations for corporate responsibility and moral progress |

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Episode Resources & Further Reading

• The Dark Side of Congo's Cobalt Rush (Nicholas Niarchos, The New Yorker)
• Cobalt: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives (Siddharth Kara)
• Blood Batteries: The Human Rights and Environmental Impacts of Cobalt Mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Siddharth Kara)
• Organizations: International Rights Advocates

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This summary focuses on the main investigative content. Ad breaks and promotional material are omitted.

Transcript

[Zach Goldbaum]

Wondering.

[Narrator/Host]

There's this story that people tell in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the last decade, it's become the stuff of legend, and it goes something like this. In June 2014, a Congolese man who lives in a small residential neighborhood in the city of Kolwesi is digging a hole in his yard. Some say he was digging a new pit toilet for his home. Others say he was digging a well. Either way, the dude's digging, and suddenly, he hits a slab of rock. He bends down to take a look, and he notices these bright turquoise streaks in the rock. It's safe to assume that he recognizes what he's found right away, because most everyone in the area can identify it on sight. It's the mineral cobalt that's a big deal, because cobalt is a crucial component in rechargeable batteries. It is super valuable. And Kulwezi, the city where this guy lives, is a major epicenter for cobalt mining. Half of all known global reserves are.

[Historical Narrator]

Under the busy streets and farmlands of Kolwesi.

[Narrator/Host]

This man's neighborhood, an area named Coosulo, hasn't been mined yet. In fact, he's pretty sure that he's the only person who knows that there's cobalt in. In this part of Kulwesi. And if he's right, he wants to keep it that way. But first, he has to get the cobalt assessed. So he takes a few samples to some mineral traders, who give him incredible news. Turns out that the purity of the ore he's found is almost unheard of. Most of the cobalt found in the Congo is only 1 or 2% grade. His cobalt is 20%. He's living on top of a secret cache of blue gold. So this man decides that he's not going to tell a single soul about his discovery, and he's going to keep digging to conceal what he's doing. He decides to dig inside of his home, which is a risky move, given that he's renting. And it's not long before he realizes that there is more cobalt to be mined down there, and it is just as pure. Over the next few weeks, the man from Casullo digs down deep, about 30ft, just following the kobold. And he's doing wild stuff. At this point, he ends up under other people's homes. He carts the ore out of his home at night to avoid getting caught. And yet, somehow, he still manages to keep things quiet. Until one day, some neighbors hear him clanging around in his home. And the story goes that when the neighbors rush inside to see what's happening. That's when they find it. His DIY cobalt mine. There's an uproar. The man's landlord finds out and they get into an argument. So the guy flees, making off with all of his cobalt, about $10,000 worth, according to his neighbors. From that moment on, it's a digging frenzy. Locals use whatever they have on hand. No safety equipment. They're breathing in toxic dust. They're getting injured. In some versions of the story, the mayor tries to intervene, but gets chased out of the neighborhood. Kasulo becomes ground zero for some of the most dangerous cobalt mining in the world. And it's about to turn this little town in southern Congo into a wasteland. From wondry, I'm zach goldbaum and this is lawless planet. Each week we tell a new story about the true crimes fueling the climate crisis and the people fighting to save the planet or destroy it.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Walking around the cobalt provinces of the Congo is just devastating. The mines have just destroyed the earth. And for what? For cobalt? For batteries.

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[Narrator/Host]

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[Zach Goldbaum]

Imagine that.

[Narrator/Host]

Proud partner of Team USA Restriction Supply select plans only. The device that you're using to listen to this podcast almost certainly has cobalt in it. It's a key ingredient in rechargeable lithium ion batteries. And crucially, it's the reason those batteries don't regularly burst into flames. Cobalt also plays a critical role in the global transition to renewable energy because we need batteries to store the renewable energy we produce and we need them to power electric vehicles. Most of the world's known cobalt reserves are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or drc. And the way cobalt is mined there can be brutal and dangerous, not just for the people doing the mining, but for their land and communities as well as. So if we want to talk about the transition to renewables, we have to talk about what's happening in countless neighborhoods like Cosolo. And as we forge ahead to a green future, it's worth taking a look at the DRC's dark past.

[Historical Narrator]

Retaliation in Katanga After Congolese mutineers had.

[Narrator/Host]

Opened fire on Belgian troops on December 29, 1962, UN fighters fly over an airfield in Central Africa and rain munitions down below.

[Historical Narrator]

Jet planes operating out of this airport knocked out four Katangi fighters caught on the ground and also blasted ammo dumps around Elizabethville.

[Narrator/Host]

The assault is part of Operation Grand Slam.

[Historical Narrator]

It is in this war torn area that the United nations faces a grave challenge to its effectiveness. The United States is giving both moral and material backing to the effort to ensure the Congo a peaceful future.

[Narrator/Host]

Operation Grand Slam was about a lot of things, but perhaps most of all it was about minerals. Who gets to control them and who gets filthy rich because of them. There's actually a long history of this kind of thing in the DRC. Starting in the late 1800s, under the rule of Belgium's King Leopold II, the Congo was brutally exploited for its rubber, ivory, copper and other minerals. Millions of Congolese were killed by disease, famine, forced labor and violence. Leopold's reign of terror ended in 1908, but Congo remained a Belgian colony with its resources and people controlled by European outsiders. But then, in 1960, something major happens.

[Historical Narrator]

The wind of change blowing through the Belgian Congo. And down comes the Belgian flag in Leopoldville. So one more African country becomes a sovereign state.

[Narrator/Host]

The Congo becomes independent, which means its people might finally profit from its vast resources. Except that never actually comes to pass because the Belgians who said they were cool with Congolese independence are lying through their teeth. The Belgians don't want to give up control of the Congo's most valuable mines. So they forge an alliance with the leader of a Congolese province called Katanga, which is home to most of the Congo's mineral wealth. And just 12 days after the Congo gets its freedom back, Belgian mercenaries and mining interests helped Katanga secede. Suddenly, there's a crisis in the Congo. Because Katanga is hugely important for the Congolese economy, the Congo's new Prime Minister asks the UN for help. But the UN isn't too keen to launch an assault on Katanga. So the Prime Minister changes tactics and asks the USSR for help.

[Historical Narrator]

Instead, the Congo demands the early withdrawal of the Belgian troops and threatens to call for Russian aid, which the Soviet has ominously promised.

[Narrator/Host]

This is the height of the Cold War, so naturally this move gets the US's attention. American leaders are worried that if the Congo successfully retakes Katanga with Soviet support, the USSR might then get to control the Congo's mineral wealth, which includes uranium. But ultimately, the USSR never gets to intervene. Before it has a chance, a Congolese army chief named Joseph Mobutu orchestrates a coup and kicks all the Soviets out of the country. The US rewards him by providing his new temporary government with secret funds. But remember, this is about minerals. So even though the Soviets are no longer a threat, in 1962, the 13,000 so called UN peacekeepers launch an assault on the breakaway province of Katanga. This is Operation Grand Slam. And it's a success, at least in the eyes of the West. The DRC is reunited and eventually Mobutu becomes the country's dictator, ruling over the Congo for 32 years, all while making sure the west gets uranium, copper and gold in. This dynamic hasn't stopped because 50 years after operation Grand Slam, another mineral starts to draw the world's attention. Cobalt. And it sets off a new international feeding frenzy. But the Congolese, once again, caught in the middle. It's 2014. September. A crowd has gathered on the steps of the Nevada State Capitol building in Carson City. Spectators, state legislators, and journalists are there to listen to a press conference.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Well, I'd like to start off by just thanking the Nevada legislature. Nevada. Nevada Legislature.

[Narrator/Host]

In case you can't recognize the voice of that generational order, that's Tesla CEO Elon Musk. He's there to announce that the state of Nevada has struck a deal with Tesla to build a huge factory outside of Reno that will be called the Gigafactory.

[Zach Goldbaum]

It's not just going to be the.

[Narrator/Host]

Biggest lithium ion battery factory in the.

[Historical Narrator]

World, but it'll actually be bigger than.

[Zach Goldbaum]

The sum of all lithium ion factories in the world.

[Narrator/Host]

For Tesla, owning the biggest battery factory in the world isn't just about bragging rights. It's also about building capacity and meeting future demand. And it's working. In 2016, the year the Gigafactory came online, Tesla sold about 76,000 EVs. By 2024, that number had jumped to 1.8 million. Long before Tesla's Gigafactory demand for cobalt had already been surging. In the early 2000s, that demand was driven by companies like Apple, Google, Dell and Microsoft. And the exploding market for smartphones and ultra portable laptops. Then around 2012, 2013, 2014, demand explodes. And that is because of electric vehicles.

[Zach Goldbaum]

And those batteries require about a thousand times as much refined cobalt as a smartphone.

[Narrator/Host]

That's Siddharth Kara. He's a lawyer, labor researcher, and the author of the book Cobalt how the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives.

[Zach Goldbaum]

So if you want to push millions upon millions, nay, hundreds of millions of electric vehicles onto the road, you can just start doing the math.

[Narrator/Host]

After the EV boom kicked off, Siddharth wanted to study the impacts of cobalt mining. So he traveled to the country that ended up bearing the brunt of this battery boom. The Congo.

[Zach Goldbaum]

It's important for people to know about 3/4 of the world's supply of cobalt is mined in this small patch of the Congo.

[Narrator/Host]

That small patch that Siddharth is talking about is Katanga, the province that the Belgians wanted to hang onto so desperately that the UN fought a war over. And the place where the guy from the beginning of the episode found high grade cobalt under his house. Katanga is the world's most important source of cobalt and the surge in demand for cobalt. That's why all the people in neighborhoods like Kasulo are digging in their yards and under their homes day in and day out and day out. This is the imbalance at the heart of this story. While Elon Musk was breaking ground in Nevada on his way to becoming the world's first trillionaire, a lot of people in the Congo were breaking ground themselves to earn just a few dollars a day. A lot of the world's cobalt comes from a practice known as artisanal mining.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Artisanal mining leads you to think it's some kind of quaint activity and rather pleasant. Maybe people are baking bread and in a pleasant manner, digging for cobalt. But in short, it means people just scrounging for cobalt with their bare hands and shovels and pickaxes and things. It's the most ruinous, hazardous, miserable, dangerous livelihood you can possibly imagine.

[Narrator/Host]

The first time Siddharth sees artisanal miners digging tunnels, he is overwhelmed. It's 2018, and he's on his first research trip to the Congo, traveling from city to village and mining site to mining site.

[Zach Goldbaum]

I remember that first visit and what I saw. It was like the moral clock had been dialed back to colonial times. There was so much human degradation and misery and suffering taking place at the bottom of supply chains.

[Narrator/Host]

He wants to know how many people are down there, how deep the tunnels go, how do the Diggers breathe underground and haul ore to the surface. But he doesn't actually get to ask all of these questions that keep popping into his head because just as he's about to start interviewing people, his guide tells him that they need to leave because there are commandos patrolling the area and it's not safe. This is the atmosphere that surrounds all of Siddharth's reporting in the Congo. Everywhere he goes, there's a chance he might be stopped by armed guards, police or soldiers. He might be arrested, shaken down for bribes, or worse. But despite the risk, Siddharth is determined to document as much of the cobalt mining supply chain as he can. And it's not long before he's given another opportunity. At one point, Siddharth decides to visit the largest mining concession in the drc. Tenke Fungurume.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Tenke Fungurume is the size of London. So you have to imagine a London sized swath of countryside that's just being mined, chewed up, gouged.

[Narrator/Host]

Tenke Fungurume is an industrial mine jointly operated by a Chinese mining company and the Congolese government. And while he's there, Siddharth sees something that the government and the mining companies do not want him to see. Dozens of artisanal miners digging into the walls of the mine, right out in the open, including in a spot just behind a security checkpoint.

[Zach Goldbaum]

When you go into an industrial mine in the Congo, you see artisanal mining taking place inside the industrial concession.

[Narrator/Host]

Officially, artisanal miners operate independently from the big industrial mines. But Siddharth can see that unauthorized artisanal mining frequently takes place on land owned by large mining corporations. And that's not the only thing he observes. One night, he spends time in a village that has popped up near the mine. The place is full of artisanal miners who were displaced from their homes without compensation when the mine was built. It's also full of guys who zip around the village on motorbikes. He's told that these people are negociant traders. They're independent middlemen who buy the ore from the artisanal miners and take it to the local cobalt marketplace. And at that marketplace, the cobalt gets sold right back to the mining company. So the artisanally mined ore just gets mixed in with the industrial mine cobalt.

[Zach Goldbaum]

The ground truth dispels this marketing story that's told at the top of the chain that, well, there's industrial production and that's my supply. And all these people digging, I don't know where that cobalt's going. It must be going somewhere else. But it's not in my supply chain. All of that is going to be classified as industrial production.

[Narrator/Host]

Many experts agree that as much as 30% of all Congolese cobalt entering the global supply chain comes from artisanal mining. The artisanal miners Siddharth interviews all describe what it's like to mine cobalt in similar terms. They tell them they hate it. They tell them that they're in pain, that they've all been injured in small or big ways. And because there's basically no medical help, these injuries often don't heal correctly or at all. Cave ins are common, and the worst ones can become mass casualty events. Just last November, a bridge at a mining site collapsed because it was overcrowded, and at least 32 people were killed. The miners also tell Siddharth they have persistent coughs and headaches, which isn't surprising because the ore they're mining without protection is extremely dangerous.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Cobalt is highly toxic to touch and breathe, so there's enormous health consequences, especially for children and pregnant women and babies, of which there are hundreds of thousands in these artisanal cobalt mines.

[Narrator/Host]

Sorry to interrupt, but you said there are babies when you say there are babies in the mines.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Yeah, babies strapped to their mother's backs while they're digging for cobalt. And you see this toxic poof rise up every time they hack at the earth. And of course they're breathing it, then their babies are breathing it.

[Narrator/Host]

I've gotta say, that is the part of this story that shocked me the most, because it's not just women taking their babies into these mines. A lot of the people working alongside these women are children themselves. As more and more horrific stories emerged about mining conditions in the Congo, Apple CEO Tim Cook sat down for a podcast interview and finally faced some hard questions from Popstar Dua lipa, my new iPhone 15. Like, can you guarantee that the cobalt that's in that phone has not been mined like using child labor in the drc? Yes, we can. We have an intense level of tracing in our supply chain all the way back to the mine and the smelter to make sure that the labor used is not child labor. Okay. And I think we do a really good job of that.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Okay.

[Narrator/Host]

Amazing. It's a pretty important exchange because it's one of the few times that Tim Cook, or any tech CEO for that matter, has answered this question directly. But according to Siddharth Kara, child labor in the cobalt mines of the Congo is so pervasive that it's impossible to verify Tim Cook's guarantee.

[Zach Goldbaum]

The I did meet children I mean, children will often climb over the industrial mining wall into the mine and, you know, scrounge for enough cobalt for the day. And when I say mining wall, I mean these are 50, 60, 70ft high.

[Narrator/Host]

50, 60, 70 foot mounds of treacherous sloping dirt. In his book, Siddharth describes a conversation he has with one of his guides, Philippe. Philippe has just finished explaining that there are a bunch of artisanal mining sites in the forest near where they are, and Siddharth asks if any children might be digging in that forest. Philippe says, yeah, of course. What else will they do? There are no schools in the village, and each member of the family must earn for the collective to survive. The message is clear. Two adults cannot earn enough from cobalt mining to support a family. Combine that with the fact that school is rarely free or even available in the drc, and it's almost like the system is designed to get children working as soon as possible, and the results of all of this are frequently catastrophic.

[Zach Goldbaum]

If you're 10 years old and you've got a 20, 30 kilogram sack, you're schlepping and you're trying to come down that wall, and you're exhausted and hungry, it's not hard to lose your footing. And so I can remember sitting with children who. Who had shattered spines and were paralyzed from the waist down, and they had wanted to go to school or, you know, play football or be a doctor and help their community, whatever it might be. And of course, the need to survive led them to this horrible outcome.

[Narrator/Host]

Young children often wash and sort minerals with women. But when Siddharth visited mining sites, he saw children as young as 9, 10, and 11 entering mining pits where they faced the same dangers that teenagers and adults do.

[Zach Goldbaum]

The encounters that were most painful for me, most difficult, and have sort of stuck with me and continued to haunt me years later are the interviews I conducted with parents who lost a child in a tunnel collapse.

[Narrator/Host]

Accidents like this are all too common. At one mine alone, Siddharth collected accounts of seven children who had been buried alive.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Any mother anywhere on the planet would be haunted by the thoughts of her son's final moments as he was crushed. This child that she brought into the world and loved and raised was crushed and suffocated by cold, merciless dirt in his final moments. And for what? You know, for what? Because it's a few dollars they might earn, and that's the only way to survive. And that's happening every day, every day in the Congo.

[Narrator/Host]

So if child labor is happening out in the open, then how Are tech companies and car manufacturers able to claim that their supply isn't tainted? The answer seems to be a feature of the supply chain itself. It makes child labor virtually impossible to trace. Take this 2018 CBS Evening News report. In this segment, CBS journalists follow some children around near a mining site. Barely 10 years old, these kids lug heavy sacks of cobalt to be washed in rivers. The videographer actually captures the moment when the children's sacks are loaded onto a bicycle along with dozens of other sacks identical to theirs. Those sacks get transported to a local depot. It's basically a cobalt marketplace. There, they become completely untraceable. The children's cobalt is brought here to this market, where it is bought by a Chinese company for extremely low prices. The reporting team later returns to the depot with a hidden camera to see if the cobalt traders do anything, anything at all, to try and identify child mined cobalt. When we offered to sell a truckload of the mineral, nobody asked us who mined the cobalt. The traders don't investigate shit. Most of the child laborers Siddharth encountered were working for their families. But he heard stories of darker circumstances. One boy told him that if he wanted to learn more about children who dig cobalt, he needed to go to a village named Malele. There are thousands of children there, the boy told him. Many of the children from that place are brought there by sponsors. Siddharth can't find a guy to take him to Malele. He's told it's controlled by militias and impossible to get to. But he soon learns that these so called sponsors are really human traffickers. The sponsors take children often by force and and move them to other villages or even to neighboring provinces so they can work and dig in artisanal mining sites. Later, Siddharth meets a child who confirms this story. His name is Peter. And Peter tells Siddharth that he was taken from his home by members of a militia and brought to a mine near Malele. From there, Peter was sold to a Lebanese man who forced him to dig cobalt. The Lebanese man kept all the money, saying it was repayment. Eventually, Peter was able to escape. But such conversations made Siddharth wonder how many more children were still toiling away in artisanal mines that were too dangerous to see firsthand. In 2016, the Human Rights organization Amnesty International published an extensive report highlighting the rampant child labor in cobalt mining. The report also documented widespread exploitative labor practices in artisanal mines in the drc, including the lack of protective equipment and the often fatal health problems that miners and their families develop. But maybe the Most shocking part of the report was that it called out some of the biggest consumer electronic companies for, quote, failing to conduct adequate human rights, due diligence.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Companies that we know and love like Apple, Samsung, Sony and Microsoft.

[Narrator/Host]

And this is according to a report released today by Amnesty International and African Resources Watch children, including orphans. The authors of the report reached out to each of these companies. Most responded with something along the lines of we take this problem seriously and we aren't aware that any of our, quote, legitimate suppliers use child labor. But Siddharth says that once you do the math, the tech companies denials don't add up.

[Zach Goldbaum]

We tried to give an estimate of, of how many artisanal miners there are, and it's roughly 300,000 or so people digging full time, men, women and children. So there's 300,000 people. We found that about 37% of them work in conditions of forced labor, modern day slavery. So roughly 100,000, and that about 10% were children. So roughly 30,000 kids.

[Narrator/Host]

Those are huge numbers. And when you tally up all the cobalt produced by that army of children.

[Zach Goldbaum]

And forced laborers, we're talking tens of thousands of tons in the year. And tech and EV companies would have you believe that goes nowhere. It does not go into their devices. So it's just that simple arithmetic tells you the story.

[Narrator/Host]

In the end, many of the companies named in the amnesty report said they would do a better job of vetting their COBOL supply chain. One of those was Apple. In 2017, they published a report in which they listed their cobalt suppliers for the first time in a bid to increase transparency in their supply chain. And the move was viewed pretty positively. The report also said that Apple was working on a program that would verify individual artisanal mines to see if the working conditions met Apple's standards. And Apple did in fact participate in a bunch of programs aimed at improving working conditions on the ground. But for some human rights groups, those actions weren't enough. So they took a bold next step to try to hold the world's most powerful tech companies accountable in court. The world's biggest tech companies are being sued over child mining debts in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It's December 2019, and the human rights group International Rights Advocates has just filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of 14 Congolese families whose children were injured or killed while mining cobalt. This is the first time that these companies have faced a lawsuit like this.

[Zach Goldbaum]

They accuse companies like Apple, Google, Dell.

[Narrator/Host]

Microsoft and Tesla from benefiting from child labor to mine cobalt. The suit alleges that Tech companies have been aiding and abetting the use of children to mine cobalt in the Congo and profited from this practice. The suit also claims that these companies had specific knowledge of the abuse and conditions in the mines. In an interview, the executive director of International Rights Advocates tells CBS News, we.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Trace the supply chain back from the.

[Narrator/Host]

Mine where the children were either killed or maimed and have traced it back.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Up to these companies.

[Narrator/Host]

The 14 plaintiffs are anonymous, but their stories and pictures are included in the lawsuit. In one photo, we see a man's crushed legs. His lawyers write that he was working at a mining site that supplies both Apple and Microsoft. The lawyers also write about a boy who was paralyzed from the chest down in a tunnel collapse, as well as others who were killed. Dell said it never knowingly sourced operations using any form of child labor and is currently investigating these allegations. Google, Microsoft and Tesla have not yet replied. In March 2024, five years after the lawsuit was initially filed, a D.C. court rendered its decision. The court ruled that Tesla, Apple, Google, Dell, and Microsoft could not be held liable for their alleged roles and in the use of child labor in cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the court's written decision, a judge basically says that there are many entities responsible for what's happening in the drc, and going after these specific tech companies won't stop their suppliers from using child labor. The lawsuit relied on some of Siddharth Kara's research, and while he was disappointed in the outcome, he wasn't surprised.

[Zach Goldbaum]

My general feeling on these lawsuits is I think it's important to try and pursue strategic litigation. I think demonstrating legal accountability is a real challenge because there's just so many ways for tech companies to say, well, I'm going to point the finger at that person and that person and that person.

[Narrator/Host]

And unfortunately, the longer big tech companies can keep dodging accountability, the more incentive they have to keep the supply chain as opaque as possible.

[Zach Goldbaum]

When you exonerate or sever responsibility at the home of where the demand is being created, you're basically saying no one's responsible if everybody just points their finger downstream. If a tech company says, look, we may have created all this demand, but it's actually, it's the mining company, and the mining company will point their finger. So the last finger gets pointed to the child in the Congo covered in toxic grit and filth and grime, and no one's accepting responsibility for that child.

[Narrator/Host]

But Siddharth is clear on this point.

[Zach Goldbaum]

What is the responsibility of the company at the top of the chain to address and ameliorate violations that take place at the bottom of the chain. The responsibility is 100% theirs.

[Narrator/Host]

Tesla was the only automaker that got named in the class action lawsuit. And at the time, that made sense. But these days, all of the major car companies are making EVs, which is significant because the batteries in electric vehicles require a lot more cobalt than a phone. And you gotta wonder, are any of these profits making their way back to the DRC? According to an Oxfam report released in 2025, for each EV that Tesla sold in 2024, it earned profits of a little more than $3,000, which is about three hundred and twenty one times more than the entire DRC got for supplying all the cobalt that went into making that one car. The DRC as a whole gets just 14% of the cobalt value chain. If that changed and it somehow received the full value of the cobalt it's selling, the country would generate more than $4 billion a year. Instead, most of that money goes to foreign mining companies and the multinational corporations they supply, or into the pockets of corrupt Congolese politicians.

[Zach Goldbaum]

The Congolese government bears responsibility for not equitably allocating mining revenues to its own people, as opposed to being pocketed by the political elite. Corruption is part of the problem. It's what enables this exploitation to take place.

[Narrator/Host]

For example, in 2007, the DRC government cut a deal with China granting them extensive mineral rights in exchange for billions of dollars worth of infrastructure projects. As a result of that deal, By Siddharth's count, 15 of the 19 biggest mining complexes in the Cobalt region are owned or financed by Chinese mining companies.

[Zach Goldbaum]

China dominates mining in the Congo. They control between 70 and 80% of actual industrial cobalt mining in the Congo. They have that supply chain largely locked down.

[Narrator/Host]

But the China story hasn't gone well for the Congolese people, because very few of the infrastructure projects that China promised, roads, schools, hospitals have actually been built. And the ones that have been built have mainly benefited the Congolese elite. For example, in 2022 it came out that the DRC's president founded a private firm that received $300 million over a decade from a Chinese built toll road. Meanwhile, even as demand for cobalt has soared, the Congolese people have actually gotten poorer, which in turn has driven more and more of them to artisanal mining. Forecasts say that the global demand for cobalt could increase sixfold by 2040. DRC's rare resources may be able to save the world from climate catastrophe. But for the people of Colwesi, cobalt Looks like a curse, not a blessing. You might remember Kolwesi from the top of the episode. It's the city where that one guy discovered cobalt under his house. Well, today, Kolwesi is a cautionary tale.

[Zach Goldbaum]

If you go to Google Earth and zoom in to Kolowesi, you just see an eradicated gouged swath of earth. Mines have just swallowed everything. Millions of trees have been clear cut. The air is a brown haze that burns your eyes and throat as you walk around and breathe. Water has been completely contaminated. They dump all their toxic junk in the rivers and lakes.

[Narrator/Host]

And really Kuwenzi is just one example among many. In every area that's been mined, Siddharth noticed the same things.

[Zach Goldbaum]

There are no birds in the sky. It's hard to find green. There are no flowers. You know, the mines have just destroyed the earth.

[Narrator/Host]

The mining industry in the Congo has essentially created a negative feedback loop. Poor environmental conditions, poverty and child labor. Each of these factors amplifies the next.

[Zach Goldbaum]

And that's what's created this human rights and environmental apocalypse.

[Narrator/Host]

Given that the most developed countries are responsible for the bulk of the carbon that's been put in our atmosphere, it just doesn't seem fair that decarbonization would come at this cost.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Yeah, we've unleashed a slightly shinier, well packaged version of Leopold's plunder. But it's still a plunder.

[Narrator/Host]

In 2023, Apple announced that it would exclusively use recycled cobalt within next two years. It says it's closing in on that goal. In September, the company announced that the batteries in all of its latest watches contained 100% recycled cobalt. So there's that. And other companies will probably follow suit down the line. Which is good, right? Because recycling is good. Except taking cobalt mining away from artisanal miners, either by cleaning up the supply chain or by using recycled cobalt. That could also be devastating for miners and their families who live in these areas where cobalt mining is now their only means of earning a living. The tech companies and car companies, they have a responsibility to try not only to clean up this mess, but also care for the people that they've harmed morally.

[Zach Goldbaum]

You're not permitted to just cut and run after destroying the place. You know, that's colonial mentality. We're supposed to have made moral progress. And if we just keep reproducing the same pillage and exploitation and repackage it in better ways and that's the only thing we achieved, then, you know, shame on all of us.

[Narrator/Host]

On the next episode of Lawless Planet, we go back in time to uncover the forgotten story of the worst industrial disaster in US history and the COVID up that made it disappear. There was no sympathy or any attempt to improve the conditions. It was a total disaster denial and a total blame game of the victims themselves. For today's episode we relied heavily on the New Yorker article the Dark side of Congo's Cobalt Rush by Nicholas Niarchos and of course Siddharth Kara's book Cobalt how the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives and Siddharth's report Blood Batteries the Human Rights and Environmental Impacts of Cobalt Mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And make sure you check out Siddharth's latest book, the Zorg. If you're interested in learning more about this issue and helping the people in the conk, check out International Rights Advocates. Lawless Planet is produced and hosted by me, Zach Goldbaum. This episode was written by Ariel Duhem Ross. Our senior producer and senior story editor is Derek John. Senior producer for Wonjury is Andy Herman. Our senior Managing producer is Lata Panya. Our Managing producer is Jake Kleinberg. Our Associate producer is Lexi Piri. Sound design by Kyle Randall. Music by Kenny Kuziak. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Frison Sync Fact checking by Brian Ponyant. Our legal counsel is Deb Droze. Executive producers are Marshall Louie and Jenny LAUER. Beckman for OneDeary. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.