Every rechargeable battery in every phone, laptop, and electric vehicle contains cobalt. Most of the world's cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Kara went there and documented what he found: children as young as six digging in toxic pits, entire communities displaced for mining operations, and a supply chain deliberately designed to be opaque enough that Apple and Tesla can claim ignorance.
The firsthand reporting is harrowing. Kara spent years visiting artisanal mining sites—small-scale operations where workers dig by hand with no safety equipment, no wages (they're paid per bag), and no recourse when tunnels collapse. The descriptions are specific and unflinching. This isn't abstract—it's people with names dying so we can have smartphones.
The strength of the book is its directness. Kara doesn't soften the reality or balance it with corporate perspectives. He treats the human cost as the primary fact and works outward from there. The supply chain chapters trace how cobalt moves from a child's hands in Congo through Chinese-owned processing facilities to the components in your pocket.
The weakness is analytical. Kara is excellent at description but less rigorous when proposing solutions. The policy recommendations are brief and somewhat generic—more transparency, better regulation, traceability standards. Given the geopolitical complexity of Congo's mining sector, this feels insufficient.
For the geopolitical context of why resource extraction concentrates in unstable regions, read any of Zeihan's books. For the technology side—how chips made from these materials reshape global power—try *Chip War*.