WEBVTT - Fairphone and the Sins of the Tech Industry 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tech stuff, a production from I heart radio. 0:00:11.800 --> 0:00:14.320 Hey there, and welcome to tech stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:14.400 --> 0:00:17.400 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I heart radio, 0:00:17.760 --> 0:00:21.360 and how the Tech Are you? Recently I was invited 0:00:21.400 --> 0:00:24.239 to speak on the radio about the fair phone four, 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:27.920 which is the latest smartphone from fair phone, and in 0:00:27.960 --> 0:00:32.360 the process I realized that this company and this line 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:35.040 of products really opens up the opportunity to talk about 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:39.080 a lot of serious issues in tech, issues that the 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:43.080 fair phone looks to try and avoid and to bring 0:00:43.080 --> 0:00:46.879 attention to. So these are issues like the ethical sourcing 0:00:47.040 --> 0:00:51.960 of materials and labor, sustainability and e waste and also 0:00:52.080 --> 0:00:55.440 repair ability. So I figured today we're gonna talk about 0:00:55.480 --> 0:00:58.520 the fair phone four only a little bit, and how 0:00:58.520 --> 0:01:01.520 it opens the door to talk about these issues in 0:01:01.600 --> 0:01:05.920 tech and why they're important and why they're really complicated. 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:08.680 And I could have started, you know, anywhere, but I 0:01:08.720 --> 0:01:11.160 decided to tackle those in order that I mentioned them. 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:14.679 So I'M gonna start off with ethical sourcing. It is 0:01:14.840 --> 0:01:17.720 very easy for us to be reductive in our thinking 0:01:18.080 --> 0:01:22.080 when we look at any particular electronic device. Consider your 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:25.920 typical smartphone. In fact, let's be specific. Let's say that 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:28.920 we're talking about an iphone. Now I'm going to add 0:01:28.959 --> 0:01:32.680 that apple has, on and off, done some serious work 0:01:32.720 --> 0:01:34.920 to try and make ethical choices when it comes to 0:01:35.080 --> 0:01:39.400 the manufacturing of its devices, particularly in the wake of 0:01:39.440 --> 0:01:44.160 scrutiny that was directed toward apple because there were some 0:01:44.319 --> 0:01:48.640 very high profile tragedies, like worker depths in China related 0:01:48.680 --> 0:01:54.440 to apple production. Um, the company has not maintained a 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:57.520 stellar record like I'll talk about a bit more later, 0:01:57.680 --> 0:02:01.960 but anyway, apple at least has been in the public 0:02:02.040 --> 0:02:04.680 eye for this issue and when you look at an Iphone, 0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:07.360 you might think, oh well, this just this came from apple, 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:10.280 but of course the truth of the matter is that 0:02:10.400 --> 0:02:14.040 it gets far more complex than that. I think there's 0:02:14.080 --> 0:02:16.600 a great way to kind of illustrate this. There's a 0:02:16.680 --> 0:02:20.560 song that's called the guns song and it comes from 0:02:20.560 --> 0:02:24.880 Stephen Sondheim's musical assassins. The musical is about the various 0:02:24.919 --> 0:02:29.720 people who assassinated or attempted to assassinate a U S 0:02:29.760 --> 0:02:33.560 president over the course of the history of the United States. Now, 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:36.720 the character singing this part of the guns song in 0:02:36.800 --> 0:02:41.520 question is Leon Frank Chol Gas, who assassinated President Mckinley 0:02:41.639 --> 0:02:46.440 on September six, N one and Chol Gas sings. Quote. 0:02:47.040 --> 0:02:49.600 It takes a lot of men to make a gun. 0:02:50.320 --> 0:02:53.600 Hundreds many men to make a gun. Men in the 0:02:53.639 --> 0:02:56.160 minds to dig the iron, men in the mills to 0:02:56.280 --> 0:02:59.880 forge the steel, minute machines to turn the barrel, mold 0:02:59.880 --> 0:03:02.680 the trigger, shape the wheel. It takes a lot of 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:07.600 men to make a gun. One Gun. End. Quote, and 0:03:07.720 --> 0:03:10.679 Hill Gods is right. He's pointing out that this one 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:13.320 thing that someone can hold and they can own and 0:03:13.360 --> 0:03:16.280 they can use is actually the product of work from 0:03:16.400 --> 0:03:19.480 hundreds of people. Also, at the end of the song 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:23.000 he makes it a point to say that this production, 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:28.200 this manufacturing process, can cost many lives before the gun 0:03:28.360 --> 0:03:32.360 is ever fired. In other words, this gun effectively killed 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:35.120 people even though it hadn't even been fully built yet, 0:03:35.120 --> 0:03:38.360 because people had died in the making of it. Well, 0:03:38.400 --> 0:03:42.400 the same thing, tragically, is true with our electronics. Our 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:45.280 devices don't magically come out of a big building that 0:03:45.360 --> 0:03:49.920 has computer factory or smartphone manufacturing facility on the side. 0:03:50.680 --> 0:03:53.480 Our electronics are the product of many, many steps in 0:03:53.520 --> 0:04:00.560 a complicated and interconnected supply chain. We saw how dangerous 0:04:00.600 --> 0:04:03.240 the supply chain can be when it was disrupted and 0:04:03.320 --> 0:04:05.560 continues to be disrupted in the wake of the pandemic, 0:04:06.280 --> 0:04:08.640 and it brought a lot more attention to it, but 0:04:09.240 --> 0:04:14.320 it's attention more to how it inconveniences us or how 0:04:14.360 --> 0:04:19.360 it affects businesses less so about the conditions going on 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:23.080 at various points of the supply chain. And there are 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:27.080 many points in that chain where there are big, troubling problems. 0:04:28.240 --> 0:04:32.800 Let's start with raw materials. So our devices rely on 0:04:32.880 --> 0:04:36.279 some materials that we think of as being pretty scarce. 0:04:36.360 --> 0:04:40.560 We call them rare earth elements. Sometimes you will hear 0:04:40.720 --> 0:04:45.840 rare earth minerals or rare earth metals. We frequently will 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:48.000 say rare earth elements just to kind of lump them 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:53.320 all into one category. Now, that's a bit of a misnomer. Actually, 0:04:53.320 --> 0:04:57.000 they're not that rare. It's just it's very hard to 0:04:57.040 --> 0:05:02.760 find a lot of those material eels in a single place. Uh, 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:05.800 it's that you know, you you don't find veins of 0:05:05.920 --> 0:05:10.240 ore of these rare earth elements. You can't just dig 0:05:10.279 --> 0:05:14.160 and say, Oh, I found a vein of whatever. So 0:05:15.120 --> 0:05:17.960 instead what you have to do is gather up huge 0:05:18.240 --> 0:05:24.200 clumps of earth and stone, minerals, and you have to 0:05:24.360 --> 0:05:28.239 treat it so that you can separate the rare earth 0:05:28.320 --> 0:05:32.520 elements from that Earth. So you've got to displace a ton, 0:05:32.920 --> 0:05:36.359 literally literally tons, of earth and then treat it in 0:05:36.440 --> 0:05:39.320 order to get at the stuff that we need in 0:05:39.440 --> 0:05:43.320 order to have them incorporated into our electronics and make 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:47.640 them work. Now, if we were lied on places in 0:05:47.680 --> 0:05:51.880 the world that maintained strict controls when it comes to 0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:55.479 how you can treat workers and how you protect the 0:05:55.600 --> 0:06:00.120 environment in the process of your operations, that amount of 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:05.440 effort and attention would end up translating into higher costs 0:06:05.480 --> 0:06:11.080 and manufacturing. So, for example, we might identify a region 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:14.800 in the United States that could be ideal for mining 0:06:14.880 --> 0:06:18.480 certain rare earth elements that we would use for electronics. 0:06:19.680 --> 0:06:21.920 But if we did that, any operation would have to 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:25.279 follow these strict rules, because that's the law in the 0:06:25.320 --> 0:06:28.320 United States, and those rules would cover stuff like the 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:31.760 environmental impact of the operations. A lot of mining operations 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:35.360 use explosives to blast out deep pits and they also 0:06:35.400 --> 0:06:40.159 tend to rely on enormous pools filled with toxic chemicals, 0:06:40.200 --> 0:06:44.800 and those chemicals leach out the stuff you want from 0:06:44.839 --> 0:06:47.520 everything else and then you dump everything else into a 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:51.080 waste pit, or sometimes you might just have the toxic 0:06:51.160 --> 0:06:54.960 pool become the waste pit over time. So you essentially 0:06:54.960 --> 0:07:00.400 create enormous amounts of soil and rocks that you dump 0:07:00.440 --> 0:07:03.760 into these toxic pools. You let the chemicals do their 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:07.159 work and extract the stuff that's in these teeny tiny 0:07:07.200 --> 0:07:11.800 concentrations within this massive earth and then you generate an 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:15.360 enormous amount of spoil and this is the product of 0:07:15.400 --> 0:07:20.000 your mining. Now that toxic pool is obviously hazardous for 0:07:20.000 --> 0:07:24.080 the environment. We're talking about chemicals that can cause direct 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:27.440 harm if you're exposed to them, or long term harm 0:07:27.480 --> 0:07:30.720 if it gets into things like the water supply. It's 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:33.920 also obviously hazardous for the people who are working at 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:37.120 these operations. Now a lot of this particular kind of 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:41.800 work happens in China, which has a terrible human rights record. 0:07:42.520 --> 0:07:45.040 There is a mine in the Mongolia region of China 0:07:45.080 --> 0:07:48.560 where more than of all the rare earth elements mind 0:07:48.720 --> 0:07:51.960 in the country comes from. So out of all of China, 0:07:52.480 --> 0:07:56.400 one mind accounts for more than of all rare earth 0:07:56.520 --> 0:08:00.200 elements taken out of that country. It's called the by 0:08:00.200 --> 0:08:04.960 an oboe mine. It represents more than the total known 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:09.440 earth rare earth elements in the world and almost half 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:11.840 of all the rare earth elements that we need come 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:14.840 from this one mine. It's been an operation as a 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:18.800 rare earth elements mine since nine before that it was 0:08:18.840 --> 0:08:25.000 an iron mine. Anyway, this extraction process leaves behind lots 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:29.000 of waste. There's toxic wastewater which is filled with stuff 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:32.480 like heavy metals and radioactive materials and other dangerous stuff. 0:08:33.000 --> 0:08:36.160 If that water does get into the water supply, then 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:38.960 you're looking at a really hazardous situation for all the 0:08:39.040 --> 0:08:42.559 people within that region who access that water table. It's 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:47.840 not unusual in areas around these kinds of operations to 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:52.080 see an increase in cancer rates for the populations in 0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:56.280 that region. Uh, it is possible to mine rare earth 0:08:56.360 --> 0:08:59.960 elements more responsibly, but that takes more time, takes more effort. 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:04.560 Thus it's more expensive, and so you have to first 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:07.600 work in a place that takes these things seriously. China 0:09:07.720 --> 0:09:10.160 is not one of those places and a place that 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:14.199 doesn't treat workers as expendable. And for the record, there 0:09:14.200 --> 0:09:17.320 are rare earth element reserves in other parts of the world, 0:09:17.360 --> 0:09:19.760 like the United States, really does have some rare earth 0:09:19.800 --> 0:09:23.760 element deposits, but because of those strict rules about limiting 0:09:23.840 --> 0:09:27.920 environmental damage and mitigating the risk to human populations, including 0:09:27.960 --> 0:09:33.880 the workforce, you don't see them. Those operations happen because 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:36.760 it would be way more expensive. That would either cut 0:09:36.760 --> 0:09:39.920 into the profits of the electronics companies or, more likely, 0:09:40.520 --> 0:09:44.760 result in an increase price to the consumer, or maybe 0:09:45.000 --> 0:09:49.880 both of those things. Anyway, that's just one part of 0:09:49.920 --> 0:09:53.160 the supply chain, the mining process that has a dark side. 0:09:53.160 --> 0:09:58.360 And there are other mining operations that also have a 0:09:58.520 --> 0:10:02.840 truly disturbing dark side. One of those happens in Africa, 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:06.199 specifically in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or the 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:09.640 D R C, and Y'all, I'm gonna warn you this 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:13.439 gets grim now. The first thing you have to understand 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:17.000 is that the D R C has had an incredibly 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:23.000 violent and chaotic past due to things like colonialism, civil war, 0:10:23.640 --> 0:10:28.800 war in nearby nations, rampant government corruption and even more 0:10:28.960 --> 0:10:33.640 rampant exploitation of the natives of the region, and I 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:37.240 do think it's important to understand at least a very 0:10:37.559 --> 0:10:39.640 quick history of the D R C to get a 0:10:39.720 --> 0:10:42.760 context for, as you know, as far as how the 0:10:42.760 --> 0:10:46.800 rest of the world helps perpetuate an ongoing crisis within 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:51.120 this country. So let's get a quick rundown of its history, 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:54.000 and I stress this is the barest bones. I am 0:10:54.000 --> 0:10:56.960 not doing any justice to the Democratic Republic of the 0:10:57.000 --> 0:11:00.680 Congo with this quick history, but I to kind of 0:11:00.720 --> 0:11:04.000 paint a picture of the plight of the people in 0:11:04.000 --> 0:11:07.760 this in this country. So much has happened there, but 0:11:07.880 --> 0:11:11.679 generally speaking, the native peoples of the Democratic Republic of 0:11:11.720 --> 0:11:15.120 the Congo have been the subject of abuse and exploitation 0:11:15.200 --> 0:11:18.240 for about a hundred fifty years. At first it was 0:11:18.320 --> 0:11:22.439 King Leopold of Belgium. He claimed the entire region as 0:11:22.480 --> 0:11:26.520 his own personal property and he sent agents there to 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:31.360 oversee operations that forced locals to work in the rubber 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:36.200 trade or they risked losing life and limb. Literally, there 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:39.800 was a practice for a while where if someone was 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:44.640 resisting the authority of the king, that person might get 0:11:44.679 --> 0:11:49.600 their arm lopped off, absolutely brutal. Then in the early 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:55.679 twentieth century, under intense international pressure, King Leopold would hand 0:11:55.760 --> 0:11:59.480 over the control of the region to the Belgian parliament. 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:04.000 This is where the region became known as the Belgian Congo, 0:12:04.960 --> 0:12:09.520 and at that point very large companies mostly Belgian companies 0:12:10.320 --> 0:12:13.480 replaced Leopold's agents, but the people of the region were 0:12:13.520 --> 0:12:16.679 still oppressed and exploited. It's just now they were exploited 0:12:16.679 --> 0:12:21.680 by these companies as opposed to the king's representatives. Over time, 0:12:21.760 --> 0:12:26.280 folks discovered there were other valuable resources besides rubber in 0:12:26.600 --> 0:12:29.000 the region that would eventually become the D R c. 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:35.280 There was copper, for example. Later on they discovered uranium there. 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:38.880 So as the atomic age advanced, countries like the then 0:12:39.000 --> 0:12:43.440 Soviet Union and the United States became very interested in 0:12:43.480 --> 0:12:47.680 the region, and both the USSR and the USA, as 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:51.440 well as several other first world nations, would start to 0:12:51.559 --> 0:12:55.679 interfere in the region. Some sides would shore up rebel 0:12:55.760 --> 0:13:00.240 forces UH and some sides would shore up dictators. The 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:05.560 United States supported dictators because the so union was funding 0:13:05.880 --> 0:13:08.360 rebel forces, and it was all in an effort to 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:13.040 secure access to those resources. You don't kid yourself in 0:13:13.080 --> 0:13:17.240 thinking that either the USSR or the United States were 0:13:17.240 --> 0:13:19.480 really concerned for the people in the region. They were 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:22.680 concerned for those resources and they would take whatever means 0:13:22.720 --> 0:13:25.800 necessary in order to make sure the other side couldn't 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:28.920 get it. Meanwhile, the people of the nation continued to 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:33.000 Labor under inhumane conditions. Now the region gained independence in 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:36.360 nineteen sixty because Belgium realized that it was not going 0:13:36.440 --> 0:13:38.319 to be able to keep a lid on things much longer. 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:41.439 There was a growing sense of independence in the country. 0:13:41.800 --> 0:13:44.560 Belgium did not have the resources to be able to 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:50.480 suppress that, so there was a move to become a democratic, 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:54.200 independent nation in nineteen sixty. But this opened up opportunities 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:57.960 for other countries to try and install leaders within the 0:13:58.040 --> 0:14:01.120 Congo that would be more in client to trade with 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:05.040 one side versus the other, uh and ultimately it gave 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:08.240 a man named Mobutu the chance to declare himself president 0:14:08.280 --> 0:14:13.960 of the country in nineteen sixty five. Mobutu was incredibly corrupt. 0:14:14.360 --> 0:14:15.880 You could say he was using a lot of the 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:19.480 same tactics as King Leopold and those large companies from 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:23.520 decades earlier, and he was embezzling tons of money in 0:14:23.640 --> 0:14:27.600 order to fund his own private wealth. Things would get 0:14:27.640 --> 0:14:31.040 even more complicated over the following decades. By the nineteen nineties, 0:14:31.120 --> 0:14:34.080 there was a civil war in neighboring Rwanda and a 0:14:34.080 --> 0:14:38.479 genocide in Rwanda, and that ended up leading to conflict 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:41.040 in what would be the D R C at this 0:14:41.080 --> 0:14:43.680 point in history. It was not the DRC yet. They 0:14:43.680 --> 0:14:46.479 had gone from the Belgian Congo to becoming the Republic 0:14:46.560 --> 0:14:51.000 of Zaire under Mobutu. And you know, Mo Bout was 0:14:51.080 --> 0:14:55.200 essentially a dictator who was calling himself a president, someone 0:14:55.240 --> 0:15:00.800 who was running unopposed an election after election, and the 0:15:00.880 --> 0:15:04.320 incredible pressure from the civil war forced him to flee 0:15:04.400 --> 0:15:08.520 the nation. But things did not necessarily get better from there. 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:10.960 I'll talk about it more when we come back after 0:15:11.040 --> 0:15:22.800 this quick break. We're back, all right. We left off 0:15:22.840 --> 0:15:26.960 with Mobutu fleeing what was then called the Republic of Zaire, 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:32.000 and the new leaders of the Congo renamed it the 0:15:32.040 --> 0:15:34.560 Democratic Republic of the Congo. So that's where we get 0:15:34.640 --> 0:15:37.840 its current name. This is a nation that has gone 0:15:37.880 --> 0:15:42.480 under many names over its history, but the corruption within 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:45.600 the region at all levels of government and business, ran 0:15:46.080 --> 0:15:51.360 super deep. It's not like everything magically got better once 0:15:51.400 --> 0:15:56.120 Mobu too was deposed, essentially. And there were pockets in 0:15:56.120 --> 0:15:59.960 the DRC where military rebels were relying on forced labor 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:04.600 are including child labor, to mine for materials like copper 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:09.920 and then later cobalt. Cobalt is incredibly useful in electronics. 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:12.640 That's where we're really going to focus for the rest 0:16:12.680 --> 0:16:16.080 of this conversation. So the armed rebels would sell these 0:16:16.160 --> 0:16:20.480 raw materials to buyers, essentially manufacturing companies, and then they 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:23.520 would use the money they made from selling the raw 0:16:23.560 --> 0:16:26.280 materials to buy weapons and to try and gain more 0:16:26.320 --> 0:16:32.680 control over their various territories. All right, it gets worse. 0:16:33.160 --> 0:16:35.160 The fact that the D R C sits on top 0:16:35.200 --> 0:16:38.360 of deposits of valuable resources means that there's an ongoing 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:41.120 pressure from the rest of the world to get access 0:16:41.160 --> 0:16:44.520 to those raw materials way of the list. On of 0:16:44.560 --> 0:16:48.040 those nations is China. In fact, there are a handful 0:16:48.080 --> 0:16:52.360 of Chinese mining companies that have exclusive rights to specific 0:16:52.400 --> 0:16:56.680 areas within the DRC to mine for cobalt in particular. So, 0:16:56.760 --> 0:16:58.440 like I said, cobalts used in a lot of stuff, 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:02.600 including many types of lithium batteries, and our electronics rely 0:17:02.720 --> 0:17:07.000 on batteries. We know that there's an increased dependence upon batteries. 0:17:07.000 --> 0:17:09.560 In fact, if we want to have a future where 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:14.719 electric vehicles replace internal combustion engine vehicles, we're gonna need 0:17:14.760 --> 0:17:18.680 a lot more batteries. So you've got these areas within 0:17:18.800 --> 0:17:22.480 the D R C where Chinese companies are overseeing dangerous 0:17:22.480 --> 0:17:27.800 mining operations and effectively are in control of those regions 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:30.520 within the D R C. Like you have Chinese companies 0:17:30.520 --> 0:17:35.040 that are essentially ruling parts of the Democratic Republic of 0:17:35.040 --> 0:17:40.399 the Congo. So you've also got these impoverished communities within 0:17:40.440 --> 0:17:42.879 the D R C that are attempting to get at 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:45.520 least a little autonomy to be able to profit from 0:17:45.560 --> 0:17:48.560 their own resources. People who live on land and that 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:52.440 they discover that they have cobalt on their land, they 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:57.160 often find themselves forced off and incapable of profiting off 0:17:57.200 --> 0:18:00.600 their own property. This can actually escalate in to brutal 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:05.440 confrontations with armed police and military. There's a twenty one 0:18:05.440 --> 0:18:08.439 piece in the New Yorker that's titled the Dark Side 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:13.000 of Congo's cobalt rush and I urge you to read it. Uh, 0:18:13.040 --> 0:18:15.280 the piece goes into a lot more detail on the 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:18.320 stuff I'm talking about, but essentially, the people of the 0:18:18.400 --> 0:18:23.680 D R C have had very little agency for multiple generations. 0:18:24.280 --> 0:18:27.680 There are entire towns that have been uprooted and forced 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:32.280 to move, with people scattering all over the place as 0:18:32.280 --> 0:18:36.080 a Chinese mining operation has swooped in to demolish houses 0:18:36.400 --> 0:18:39.399 and turn what was once a town into just a 0:18:39.400 --> 0:18:43.200 bunch of minds. And there's a lack of safety precautions 0:18:43.200 --> 0:18:46.320 in these mining operations, which means the actual people doing 0:18:46.359 --> 0:18:51.560 the mining, many of them children, face life threatening situations regularly, 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:54.600 and the presence of armed police and military, who are 0:18:54.800 --> 0:18:57.760 essentially paid off by the Chinese to keep things in line, 0:18:58.560 --> 0:19:01.080 will often mean that you run the risk of being 0:19:01.240 --> 0:19:05.160 beaten for any kind of resistance to the normal process 0:19:05.200 --> 0:19:08.800 of operations. And, like I said, there's this ongoing issue 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:12.080 of child labor in the region. It's something that has 0:19:12.119 --> 0:19:16.320 gained global attention and occasionally you see companies do something 0:19:16.320 --> 0:19:21.240 about it, like Apple. Apple has now and again attempted 0:19:21.280 --> 0:19:24.879 to address this problem, though the article in The New 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:29.520 Yorker specifically alleges that apple pretty much abandoned any attempts 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:32.120 to be serious about that once the heat was off 0:19:32.160 --> 0:19:35.520 the company. So you know, they made an effort for 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:37.679 a while and then, when people stop paying attention, they 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:40.280 just went back to the old old way. So the 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:43.879 human cost is very high. And keep in mind so 0:19:43.960 --> 0:19:47.080 far we're only talking about raw materials. Let's also talk 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:51.479 about the manufacturing process. See, when we move up the 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:54.920 supply chain, then we have to talk about taking raw 0:19:55.000 --> 0:19:58.640 materials and turning them into components that will later get 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:02.680 assembled into finished products. Now, some of these steps happen 0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:06.520 in places where things aren't too rough, but ultimately it 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:09.480 all goes back to places like China. While your major 0:20:09.520 --> 0:20:13.720 tech companies aren't reliant upon mainland China for microprocessors, because 0:20:13.760 --> 0:20:16.920 that honor tends to go to Taiwan. Taiwan is off 0:20:17.040 --> 0:20:20.000 the coast of China and it is independent of the mainland, 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:24.239 though mainland China disputes that point. But you know, if 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:28.040 you're talking about assembly and packaging, then that's all out 0:20:28.040 --> 0:20:31.480 of China. In fact, these processes usually take place in 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:35.560 different facilities hundreds or thousands of miles apart. So you're 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:39.600 shipping stuff all over Asia just for it to become 0:20:39.600 --> 0:20:42.400 a finished product. You know, it kind of gets back 0:20:42.440 --> 0:20:44.679 to that song from assassins it takes a lot of 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:49.320 men to make a gun. In this case, your iphone 0:20:49.400 --> 0:20:52.080 has traveled the world in some ways before it ever 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:56.080 got to you. Anyway, according to researchers like Henry Young 0:20:56.560 --> 0:20:59.399 of the National University of Singapore, more than half of 0:20:59.440 --> 0:21:04.199 the world's electronics are at some point going through a 0:21:04.240 --> 0:21:08.960 process of manufacturing within China, and the country has a 0:21:08.960 --> 0:21:14.080 reputation for very harsh working conditions, which includes unreasonable punishments 0:21:14.119 --> 0:21:17.280 for even minor offenses. And it was so bad that 0:21:17.320 --> 0:21:20.280 the economic rights institute looked into more than a hundred 0:21:20.320 --> 0:21:25.560 fifty cases between ten and which workers at these kinds 0:21:25.560 --> 0:21:30.359 of facilities committed or attempted to commit suicide. The researchers 0:21:30.359 --> 0:21:35.840 found that low wages, anxiety over job security, a massive 0:21:35.960 --> 0:21:40.320 turnover problem and harsh punishments, as well as a feeling 0:21:40.359 --> 0:21:43.440 that no one in the managerial capacity ever even gave 0:21:43.480 --> 0:21:48.960 a crap about them, all contributed to folks having such 0:21:49.480 --> 0:21:54.520 despondents that they considered suicide. Now this became global news 0:21:54.760 --> 0:21:57.000 when there were actually a string of suicides, more than 0:21:57.040 --> 0:22:00.359 a dozen of them, and a manufacturing company called Fox 0:22:00.440 --> 0:22:04.600 con in and sadly, the reason the world really took 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:08.480 notice is because Fox con is one of Apple's big suppliers. 0:22:08.520 --> 0:22:12.440 It's part of Apple's supply chain. If it hadn't been 0:22:12.480 --> 0:22:15.400 for that connection to apple, I would wager that those 0:22:15.440 --> 0:22:19.280 depths would not have received much coverage outside of China. 0:22:19.440 --> 0:22:23.439 Probably not that much inside of China, and that is 0:22:24.119 --> 0:22:28.280 absolutely unthinkable to me, but it's the it's the truth. Now, 0:22:28.320 --> 0:22:31.440 over the last decade, wages for workers in these facilities 0:22:31.480 --> 0:22:35.280 has slowly improved. The low wages have gotten better over 0:22:35.320 --> 0:22:38.639 the last several years, which has raised the cost of 0:22:38.680 --> 0:22:41.680 doing business in China. So it's a little more expensive 0:22:41.920 --> 0:22:46.359 to have your manufacturing processes operate in China because they're 0:22:46.359 --> 0:22:50.800 paying people more, but because China has such a well 0:22:50.840 --> 0:22:55.880 developed manufacturing infrastructure means it's still the main choice over 0:22:55.960 --> 0:23:00.960 alternatives like Vietnam and India, where you know the Labor 0:23:01.040 --> 0:23:03.920 could be a lot cheaper. Again, you get into real 0:23:03.960 --> 0:23:07.480 problems with all this. But the reason why companies aren't 0:23:07.480 --> 0:23:11.280 necessarily flocking to Vietnam and India for all of their manufacturing. 0:23:11.359 --> 0:23:13.520 Some of them are dipping their toe in that, but 0:23:13.560 --> 0:23:17.240 the reason they're not rushing to it is that these 0:23:17.359 --> 0:23:20.160 these countries have a lack of infrastructure when you compare 0:23:20.240 --> 0:23:24.639 it to China. So there's this kind of balancing act 0:23:24.720 --> 0:23:28.440 that companies are doing, saying well, well, well, we'll continue 0:23:28.440 --> 0:23:31.840 to operate in China while we start to see manufacturing 0:23:32.000 --> 0:23:34.600 infrastructure built out in other nations where we might be 0:23:34.640 --> 0:23:38.400 able to exploit cheaper labor so that our our costs 0:23:38.520 --> 0:23:41.359 come down. But yeah, that's the main reason that the 0:23:41.400 --> 0:23:43.920 world turned to China in the first place. It's because 0:23:43.960 --> 0:23:46.840 the labor costs were so low that it kept the 0:23:46.880 --> 0:23:51.760 overall cost of manufacturing down, and thus it could mean that, 0:23:52.119 --> 0:23:55.040 you know, the consumer sees less expensive electronics. You know, 0:23:55.080 --> 0:23:57.320 they might still be pricey, but they're not as expensive 0:23:57.359 --> 0:24:01.399 as they would be if, you know, we were being 0:24:01.480 --> 0:24:05.680 better stewards of the environment and treating people as human beings. So, yeah, 0:24:05.960 --> 0:24:07.760 it comes at the cost of a lot of lives 0:24:07.760 --> 0:24:11.879 along the way. Financially it might cost less, but the 0:24:12.000 --> 0:24:15.400 social cost is and the environmental cost is very high. 0:24:15.720 --> 0:24:18.359 All right, that's enough. I know that I get on 0:24:18.400 --> 0:24:21.360 a soapbox and it sounds like I'm preaching. We're gonna 0:24:21.640 --> 0:24:24.960 switch our thoughts over to sustainability and recycling. Still gonna 0:24:24.960 --> 0:24:27.040 be a little preachy. Apologized for that. It's just the 0:24:27.040 --> 0:24:29.800 way it works. So, as we've already covered, getting the 0:24:29.880 --> 0:24:33.240 raw materials for our electronics includes a lot of practices 0:24:33.280 --> 0:24:36.200 that are harmful not just to humans but also the environment. 0:24:36.920 --> 0:24:40.680 And meanwhile the Electronics Industry is built upon a practice 0:24:41.400 --> 0:24:46.280 of consume and replace. By that I mean we in 0:24:46.680 --> 0:24:50.320 the developed world our condition to replace our stuff on 0:24:50.359 --> 0:24:55.080 a regular basis. Um computers are they tend to last 0:24:55.119 --> 0:24:57.720 five to eight years if you've taken good care of them. 0:24:57.760 --> 0:25:00.800 That's assuming you don't need to upgrade to a more 0:25:01.440 --> 0:25:04.720 recent system. You know, frequently, like if you're a pro 0:25:04.880 --> 0:25:08.480 Gamer or something, you might be upgrading your system until 0:25:08.680 --> 0:25:10.879 the motherboard can't support anymore and then you swap it 0:25:10.920 --> 0:25:12.960 all out, and so you might be changing your rig 0:25:13.359 --> 0:25:17.000 fairly regularly. People like me, where I'm using a work 0:25:17.000 --> 0:25:20.440 computer to do some pretty light work, I can get 0:25:20.440 --> 0:25:22.600 away with using the same machine for several years in 0:25:22.600 --> 0:25:25.600 a row. But then with smartphones there's this push to 0:25:25.720 --> 0:25:29.200 upgrade every two years or less. You know, we get 0:25:29.240 --> 0:25:32.280 new models with new features every single year and they're 0:25:32.320 --> 0:25:34.679 marketed to us as being a big improvement over the 0:25:34.680 --> 0:25:37.920 stuff that came out the year before. The old contract 0:25:37.960 --> 0:25:41.520