WEBVTT - Modern Alchemy 0:00:01.240 --> 0:00:05.640 Sleepwalkers is a production of iHeart Media and Unusual Productions. 0:00:07.440 --> 0:00:10.320 We're in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We're in the 0:00:10.360 --> 0:00:14.040 south of the country, in a region that very famous 0:00:14.240 --> 0:00:19.479 for its copper and cobalt reserves. It's an area of 0:00:20.200 --> 0:00:25.479 beautiful expanses of rolling hills peppered with shrubs and trees. 0:00:26.079 --> 0:00:30.000 The grounders dry and dusty, and there are at lease 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:33.520 of dust storms that are whipped up from the minds 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:38.040 that dot the region. That's Nicholas Niakos speaking. He's a 0:00:38.120 --> 0:00:40.440 journalist who recently wrote a piece for The New Yorker 0:00:40.520 --> 0:00:45.479 magazine under the headline the dark Side of Congo's Cobalt Rush. 0:00:45.680 --> 0:00:50.000 I think that often reporters described places as dusty in 0:00:50.080 --> 0:00:53.080 order to give them atmosphere. I try not to do that, 0:00:54.440 --> 0:00:57.320 but you can't really help but notice the dust, because, 0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:01.680 especially in the dry season, nose gets plugged with it, 0:01:01.920 --> 0:01:04.800 and this dust has very very high concentration of heavy 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:09.120 metals and even radioactive material. I wanted to know what 0:01:09.240 --> 0:01:12.880 took Nicholas to dusty Kolwzy, a city of about half 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:15.640 a million people in the mineral rich south of the 0:01:15.680 --> 0:01:19.760 Democratic Republic of Congo. I was interested in working on 0:01:19.840 --> 0:01:24.360 cobalts after reading about some of the shenanigans in the 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:27.759 mining industry, people who have made incredible amounts of money 0:01:27.800 --> 0:01:30.880 in one of the poorest countries of Africa, and that 0:01:30.920 --> 0:01:34.760 really took me to this question of who are the 0:01:34.760 --> 0:01:40.040 people actually doing the mining? And in cool Weazy Nicholas 0:01:40.120 --> 0:01:46.160 met those people, men, women, and in some cases children. 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:53.440 I met this child called Zicki who worked as a 0:01:53.520 --> 0:01:57.920 child miner. He worked from the age of three in 0:01:58.040 --> 0:02:00.400 some of the minds and he had this terrible experience 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:09.840 m hmm. Was talking about how he mutually been beaten. 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:13.480 He was talking about how terrifying going down the minds was, 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:20.320 and at one point I took out my cell phone. 0:02:20.360 --> 0:02:22.400 I said, listen to a new phone like this in 0:02:22.440 --> 0:02:27.359 the US goes for over a thousand dollars. Then he 0:02:27.400 --> 0:02:30.919 said something like, it really pains me to hear that. 0:02:31.600 --> 0:02:39.639 It really hurts me deep down my soul. Don't made 0:02:39.720 --> 0:02:46.519 him sad. I think he thought that the people buying 0:02:46.560 --> 0:02:53.040 these phones didn't understand the suffering of people like him. 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:56.160 In this bonus episode, we look at the relationship between 0:02:56.240 --> 0:03:01.480 cobalt lithium ion batteries and the hidden labor upon which 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:04.600 so much technology that we all live by is built. 0:03:05.720 --> 0:03:16.679 I'm as Veloshin and this is Sleepwalkers. So Carrot's great 0:03:16.680 --> 0:03:19.640 to see you. It's been a long while. Although that 0:03:19.840 --> 0:03:24.079 was a rather bleak and sobering introduction. It definitely was 0:03:24.120 --> 0:03:26.480 a bleak and so we're in introduction. But it's very 0:03:26.520 --> 0:03:30.239 good to be back on Sleepwalkers and to to see 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:33.640 you after all this time. So this is, on the 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:35.920 face of it, a bit of an unusual story for us. 0:03:36.120 --> 0:03:39.880 We don't normally cover mining on Sleepwalkers, and yet there's 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:42.320 this extraordinary story that recently came out in the New 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:45.119 Yorker Full Disclosure, written by a friend of mine, Nicholas, 0:03:45.960 --> 0:03:50.160 and it's about children mining toxic cobalt in the Democratic 0:03:50.160 --> 0:03:53.880 Republic of Congo, and some of this cobalt reportedly ends 0:03:53.960 --> 0:03:57.720 up in the lithium and batteries that power our tesla's well. 0:03:57.800 --> 0:03:59.600 I don't actually have a Tesla, but I do have 0:03:59.640 --> 0:04:02.080 an Efe. I definitely have an iPhone. I've talked a 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:04.440 lot about my iPhone addiction here. I've been very open 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:07.760 and vulnerable about it. Um Actually, to me, this is 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:12.880 a quintessential Sleepwalker story and that we're looking at multiple 0:04:13.000 --> 0:04:18.200 large technology companies touting progress innovation and even in some cases, 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:22.720 like with Tesla, efforts to rely on more sustainable technology. 0:04:22.960 --> 0:04:28.720 But there is a dark underbelly that exposes the limits 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:34.160 of breakneck innovation. But that's sort of the history of innovation. Well, 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:37.520 it's funny you joked about your iPhone addiction. I mean, 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:40.120 of course there's a lot of tech coverage. What are 0:04:40.120 --> 0:04:43.400 these things doing to our children? We see very clearly 0:04:43.440 --> 0:04:46.159 from Nick's reporting what these things are doing to other 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:50.159 people's children. Not everyone's blind to what's going on. According 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:51.880 to the piece in the New Yorker, is actually a 0:04:51.920 --> 0:04:55.440 lawsuit in Washington right now where some attorneys from the 0:04:55.520 --> 0:05:01.039 International Rights advocates are suing Apple, Google, Dell, Microsoft, and 0:05:01.120 --> 0:05:04.920 Tesla for the deaths and injuries of children. And I 0:05:05.000 --> 0:05:07.440 just want to read to you from the complaint. These 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:10.919 boys are working under stone age conditions, for paltry wages 0:05:11.320 --> 0:05:15.760 and at immense personal risk to provide cobalt. The hundreds 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:19.040 of billions of dollars generated by the defendants each year 0:05:19.480 --> 0:05:23.320 would not be possible without cobalt mind in the Democratic 0:05:23.320 --> 0:05:27.200 Republic of Congo. Now, to be clear, this is a complaint, 0:05:27.800 --> 0:05:34.280 not a judgment, but it's absolutely shocking. Absolutely. Our President 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:38.280 Joe Biden recently signed an executive order aimed at addressing 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:41.839 supply chain issues for rare earth minerals that the United 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:44.760 States rely on from other nations. Um. There was actually 0:05:44.760 --> 0:05:47.160 a recent article in the New York Times that said 0:05:47.200 --> 0:05:50.120 that the United States lags far behind other countries in 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:55.160 manufacturing many clean energy technologies, which leaves US heavily reliant 0:05:55.160 --> 0:05:58.839 on imports. I think the Biden administration is rightfully focused 0:05:58.880 --> 0:06:02.039 on the sort of greeny of America, but I think 0:06:02.160 --> 0:06:05.840 that they are probably less preoccupied with what we are 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:08.599 now seeing as a standout human rights issue, and that 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:12.479 that's why I appreciate this article. Nicholas has written, well, 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:14.800 part of it is the greening of America and the 0:06:14.800 --> 0:06:18.360 other part is competition with China. Right, So there's this 0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:21.359 kind of undertone in the piece of a new great 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:25.240 game or a competition for scarce resources. And indeed, many 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:28.039 of the companies that own and operate cobalt mines in 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:32.240 the DRC are Chinese, but the trick is they sell 0:06:32.360 --> 0:06:35.760 to American companies. So you have this kind of hypocrisy 0:06:35.800 --> 0:06:39.160 where American big tech companies love to kind of hold 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:41.760 up China as this threat as to the reason they 0:06:41.800 --> 0:06:44.400 can't be regulated because the U s would fall behind. 0:06:44.880 --> 0:06:47.680 And at the same time, they are using the output 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:51.599 of Chinese companies mining cobalt in the Democratic Republic of 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:55.880 Congo to power some of the most iconic and profitable 0:06:55.920 --> 0:06:58.440 consumer products that we have in this country, from the 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:01.640 iPhone to the Tesla. Yeah. I think what's so interesting 0:07:01.800 --> 0:07:04.360 is like, it's not so much about staying competitive with China, 0:07:04.680 --> 0:07:08.040 it's about staying competitive at all. And I think without China, 0:07:08.720 --> 0:07:13.000 American technology companies don't have a shot at being profitable 0:07:13.040 --> 0:07:15.200 in the way that they are now. And I think 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:17.720 that it is sort of high time that we call 0:07:18.000 --> 0:07:22.520 attention to that when we come back. Nicholas takes us 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:26.560 deep into cobalt mining in the DRC and explains just 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:29.440 how the output of the minds there ends up in 0:07:29.440 --> 0:07:40.720 our pockets in the form of our phones. For decades, 0:07:41.000 --> 0:07:45.240 cobalt has been a crucial industrial element, used in everything 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:50.600 from shipbuilding two airplane engines. In fact, during the Cold War, 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:54.440 there was a proxy conflict in the DRC between the 0:07:54.520 --> 0:07:58.560 US and the Soviet Union, reportedly fueled in part by 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:02.960 competition over co boalt, and demand has not slowed down 0:08:03.400 --> 0:08:06.240 far from it. In the last twelve months alone, the 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:09.720 price of cobalt has doubled, and much of the demand 0:08:10.040 --> 0:08:14.360 is stoked by its use in the manufacturing of lithiumine batteries. 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:20.120 Silicon Valley has become incredibly wealthy through the production of 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:24.480 devices like laptops and cell phones which used lithiumine batteries, 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:29.640 and now electric cars have become part of selicon value. 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:35.000 Cobalt is essentially a safety feature of lithiumine batteries. It 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:38.040 allows you to make the batteries smaller and more powerful 0:08:38.559 --> 0:08:42.000 while reducing the risk of them catching fire, and that's 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:46.320 why it remains crucial to everything from personal electronics to 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:49.640 electric vehicles. The history of the lithia mine and battery 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:52.720 is really interesting. It was developed as a response to 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:57.160 some of the oil crises of the nineteen seventies. Exxon 0:08:57.440 --> 0:09:01.280 was looking for a way to power cars that wasn't 0:09:01.280 --> 0:09:05.840 dependent on oil, so they developed these very sort of 0:09:05.880 --> 0:09:09.520 early type of electric cars, and they had these lithium 0:09:09.640 --> 0:09:13.680 batteries which were liable to overheat and catch fire and 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:17.200 had to be very big. The three inventors of the 0:09:17.520 --> 0:09:20.000 lithium ion battery actually won the Nobel Prize a couple 0:09:20.000 --> 0:09:23.839 of years ago for their work on creating these batteries, 0:09:23.920 --> 0:09:28.679 and the citations noted just how ubiquitous these batteries are 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:32.160 and how they power modern life. Silicon Valley has an 0:09:32.160 --> 0:09:36.839 insatiable appetite for cobalt and lithium ion batteries play a 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:39.800 key role in much of the wonder of modern life. 0:09:40.960 --> 0:09:43.240 But why did it have to be mined in such 0:09:43.360 --> 0:09:47.520 deplorable conditions? So you really need to make a distinction 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:51.600 between two types of mining. There's artisanal mining, which is 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:55.719 responsible for about ten to the supply chain, and then 0:09:55.760 --> 0:10:01.120 the rest is industrially mined by large companies. Artisal miners 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:06.360 are people who come and mine the cobalt in essentially 0:10:06.360 --> 0:10:11.160 stone edge conditions. They use chisels that they sharpen, often 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:15.800 by hand, and they go down very very deep mind shafts, 0:10:15.880 --> 0:10:19.800 and the shafts that they build are often not reinforced 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:23.960 properly or in very sandy soil, which leads to the 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:27.280 shafts collapsing. So this in French is known as an 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:32.319 eb or a can And there are these terrifying stories 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:36.200 of Ed Boulmont which kill you up to seventy people 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:40.560 working in these very very deep shafts. So to be clear, 0:10:41.000 --> 0:10:44.960 the majority of cobalt mining does take place in industrial minds, 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:48.280 which have much better safety conditions than the so called 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:53.319 artisanal or unofficial minds. According to Nicholas, it's in these 0:10:53.440 --> 0:10:57.960 artisanal minds that child labor is most prevalent. I spoke 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:01.200 to children who said to me that they've been working 0:11:01.240 --> 0:11:04.120 as young as three, and I really didn't believe this, 0:11:04.600 --> 0:11:09.120 and a Catholic charity that works with the children actually 0:11:09.200 --> 0:11:12.800 confirmed that the very youngest children sought through the rejected 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:16.560 pile of material that larger mining companies will cast off 0:11:16.640 --> 0:11:20.680 to pick out the high quality cobalt from the lower 0:11:20.760 --> 0:11:24.560 quality or The obvious question is just how much of 0:11:24.559 --> 0:11:27.920 the cobalt that's mind or sorted by children ends up 0:11:27.960 --> 0:11:31.640 in products that many of us use every day. It's 0:11:31.720 --> 0:11:34.480 very difficult to know what makes its way to big 0:11:34.520 --> 0:11:38.080 companies like Apple. There are still large companies that buy 0:11:38.200 --> 0:11:44.440 from artisanal sources, and that seems to filter into the 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:49.400 supply chain and often through smelters and sort of mixing 0:11:49.480 --> 0:11:52.840 up of products. It will end up in people's phones 0:11:53.760 --> 0:11:58.480 and potentially in people's car batteries. And while companies like 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:03.360 Apple have made efforts to stop that happening, there's still 0:12:03.600 --> 0:12:08.280 a lot of evidence to suggest that children are mining cobalt. 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:11.640 I went to a mind called Cassulo, which is directly 0:12:11.880 --> 0:12:15.800 in Apple supply chain, and that mine, I have to say, 0:12:16.000 --> 0:12:19.080 they had erected a wall and they were trying to 0:12:19.160 --> 0:12:22.280 keep children out. However, I spoke to some miners and 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:25.600 they said that children still make an effort to get in, 0:12:25.640 --> 0:12:28.840 and still do get in, and still do manage to 0:12:28.880 --> 0:12:33.040 mind cobalt. There So the question you have to ask 0:12:33.080 --> 0:12:36.560 yourself is why are the children mining? A big part 0:12:36.559 --> 0:12:39.520 of the answer is clearly that the political will doesn't 0:12:39.520 --> 0:12:43.680 exist to stop children from mining cobalt. The brutal backdrop 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:46.400 to all of this is the cobalt itself is a 0:12:46.440 --> 0:12:50.559 byproduct of copper mining, which was a key activity of 0:12:50.640 --> 0:12:55.400 the Belgian colonialists in Congo. This country has now been 0:12:55.440 --> 0:13:00.440 exploited for centuries with very little concern for the welfare 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:05.080 of the local population. As Nicholas explains, the so called 0:13:05.440 --> 0:13:09.480 great game continues to this day. I think China is 0:13:10.000 --> 0:13:13.720 key to this story. The Chinese attitude has been to 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:18.040 buy up as much of the cobalt supply as possible, 0:13:18.440 --> 0:13:22.200 and according to Nicholas, the Chinese presence in and around 0:13:22.240 --> 0:13:25.559 Calway is palpable. The moment you step foot off the 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:32.320 plane so you arrive in the airport is oppressively hot. 0:13:33.000 --> 0:13:37.559 You are jostled around. If you don't have a fixer 0:13:37.800 --> 0:13:40.400 lined up at the airport, you're pushed to the back 0:13:40.440 --> 0:13:44.720 of a customs line as everybody everybody else's shuttled in 0:13:44.760 --> 0:13:48.440 front of you. There are at least a hundred of 0:13:48.440 --> 0:13:53.040 people shouting in Mandarin at Congolese officials who don't understand them, 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:56.400 who are shouting back in French and Swahili. The airport 0:13:56.520 --> 0:14:01.320 is a pretty intense experience. One consequent of the effective 0:14:01.440 --> 0:14:05.439 Chinese ownership of cobalt mining has been to obscure the 0:14:05.480 --> 0:14:10.480 supply chain. In some cases, even when intentioned US companies 0:14:10.640 --> 0:14:13.600 simply cannot verify the source of the cobalt they're buying. 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:19.600 But as Nicholas explains, there is another more directly threatening 0:14:19.600 --> 0:14:23.200 potential consequence. So this is something that I think that 0:14:23.240 --> 0:14:27.680 Silicon Valley needs to look at very very carefully, because 0:14:28.400 --> 0:14:30.960 they believe that they will always be able to bind 0:14:31.000 --> 0:14:35.040 batteries from China. But if China suddenly banned the export 0:14:35.040 --> 0:14:38.680 of Lathian iron batteries in order to favor its own companies, 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:43.080 then Silicon Valley would be left without a source of 0:14:43.080 --> 0:14:46.080 power for their devices, and China would be allowed to 0:14:46.120 --> 0:14:50.600 dominate in terms of production of technological apparatus. And that 0:14:51.280 --> 0:14:54.640 is very scary to people who are concerned about human 0:14:54.720 --> 0:14:58.040 rights and government interference, because the Chinese government doesn't have 0:14:58.240 --> 0:15:01.680 a great record of a allowing people privacy on their devices. 0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:05.360 As so often a situation that today appears to be 0:15:05.400 --> 0:15:10.880 somebody else's problem, maybe our own problem tomorrow. But Nicholas 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:13.200 told me he went to Kolwayzy because he wanted to 0:15:13.200 --> 0:15:17.440 better understand the lives of cobalt miners, and it is 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:21.880 their fate that centralled his reporting. So there had been 0:15:21.960 --> 0:15:26.280 this terrible cave in when a group of artisanal miners 0:15:27.720 --> 0:15:31.280 more than forty but perhaps many many more people died. 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:35.040 And so somebody mentioned that they knew one of the 0:15:35.040 --> 0:15:38.920 widows of these miners, and I was taken to see 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:44.040 her along a dirt road, and you arrive in this 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:50.720 town of one two room shacks, bran Juan, and I 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:55.360 was taken to the backyard, and I sat there interviewing 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:58.920 this woman who was telling me about her husband who 0:15:59.000 --> 0:16:02.560 died and what an amazing man he'd been, and you know, 0:16:02.600 --> 0:16:06.320 how he'd supported that their family, and how his profession 0:16:06.480 --> 0:16:10.040 was to be an artisanal minor. And then I looked 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:13.920 behind me and I noticed that there were some sort 0:16:13.960 --> 0:16:16.320 of shallow troughs in the ground behind her house. And 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:19.240 I said, what are these holes in the ground and 0:16:19.280 --> 0:16:25.160 she said, and we were digging recently, myself and my sons, 0:16:25.200 --> 0:16:29.600 in order to look for minerals. And we took a 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:33.160 little walk around that area, and everybody in their backyard 0:16:33.200 --> 0:16:37.080 had been digging to look for copper and gulbalt. And 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:40.320 I think that really sums it up for me. I 0:16:40.360 --> 0:16:43.840 asked her, I said, you've seen how dangerous this activity is. 0:16:44.320 --> 0:16:46.880 She explained it to me in this way, which was 0:16:47.320 --> 0:16:49.840 that they just don't have anything to live on. They 0:16:49.840 --> 0:16:52.240 need to survive, and this is the only way that 0:16:52.280 --> 0:16:54.400 they can survive. They need to have some sort of 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:58.640 economic activity to get by, and there's absolutely no other 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:02.720 work to be done there. And that I think is 0:17:02.840 --> 0:17:05.640 the crux of this entire story, is that this kind 0:17:05.680 --> 0:17:08.480 of gray rock street with blue that's pulled out of 0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:11.920 the ground in a part of the world that's very 0:17:11.960 --> 0:17:14.520 far away from the rest of us, is sort of 0:17:14.560 --> 0:17:19.640 transformed by a modern alchemy into this gadget with lots 0:17:19.640 --> 0:17:23.439 of bells and whistles, And in the meantime, the people 0:17:23.520 --> 0:17:27.480 who have originally dug up the gray rock are left 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:32.840 with very, very little when we come back. Nicholas talks 0:17:32.880 --> 0:17:35.600 about the response to his reporting from some of the 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:39.879 Silicon Valley companies who rely on cobalt, and about the 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:50.880 status of the lawsuit against those companies. Throughout Sleepwalkers, it's 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:54.720 become clear that Silicon Valley often prefers not to think 0:17:54.760 --> 0:17:59.440 about the human collateral of innovation, whether it's the uncompensated 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:04.479 translates whose work powers AHI translation, or the victims of 0:18:04.640 --> 0:18:09.399 over zealous risk assessment algorithms. So I was curious to 0:18:09.480 --> 0:18:13.480 hear from Nicholas how companies like Apple and Tesla had 0:18:13.520 --> 0:18:17.000 responded to his reporting. I tried to speak to some 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:20.280 of the tech companies that were involved in this, and 0:18:20.320 --> 0:18:23.200 they refused to speak to me on the record. Again, 0:18:23.400 --> 0:18:27.000 I do think that Apple is trying to address these issues. 0:18:27.320 --> 0:18:29.760 Do you think Tesla is trying to address these issues. 0:18:30.440 --> 0:18:33.600 They've joined groups like the Fair Cobalt Alliance, which have 0:18:33.800 --> 0:18:37.200 tried to improve conditions in some of the minds and 0:18:37.400 --> 0:18:40.800 have tried to clean up the supply chain and remove 0:18:41.080 --> 0:18:44.240 child mind cobalts from the supply chain. But yeah, they're 0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:47.880 not very good about speaking about it publicly, and that's problematic. 0:18:48.560 --> 0:18:51.399 I asked if there was anything beyond the obvious pr 0:18:51.480 --> 0:18:55.600 and commercial imperatives that was driving Silicon Valley to continue 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:59.600 sweeping cobalt mining out of the carpet. This issue of 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:04.600 supply eye chains is something that a lot of pure 0:19:04.680 --> 0:19:08.240 tech people probably don't want to think about because they 0:19:08.280 --> 0:19:13.119 are involved in solving problems of a different type. But 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:18.320 without thinking about the raw fundaments of what goes into 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:22.040 powering that technology and creating that technology, I don't think 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:27.480 that we can properly feel unconflicted about all the benefits 0:19:27.640 --> 0:19:30.000 that computers and electric cars and so on bring to 0:19:30.560 --> 0:19:33.760 our lives in the nearer term. I wanted to know 0:19:33.880 --> 0:19:37.400 about the status of the lawsuit being brought by international 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:41.960 rights advocates and what it might achieve. This lawsuit is 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:44.240 very important, and I think that if it gets to 0:19:44.280 --> 0:19:46.800 the point of discovery, I think that we will learn 0:19:46.800 --> 0:19:51.320 a lot about how Silicon Valley thinks about their supply chain. Currently, 0:19:51.600 --> 0:19:55.240 the defendants of Father to dismiss the lawsuit and we'll 0:19:55.280 --> 0:19:57.840 see how that goes. But I do think that it's 0:19:57.840 --> 0:20:01.879 an important lawsuit and that through it we may be 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:04.359 able to learn a great deal more about this quite 0:20:04.359 --> 0:20:08.800 obscure industry. It is the magic of the product form 0:20:09.040 --> 0:20:12.919 to disguise its own ingredients. And there's no doubt that 0:20:12.960 --> 0:20:17.800 between personal computers, cell phones, and electric vehicles, the Lithia 0:20:17.840 --> 0:20:22.119 Mind battery has enabled tremendous good in the world. The 0:20:22.160 --> 0:20:25.720 batteries inventors, after all, one a Nobel Prize for their research, 0:20:25.800 --> 0:20:30.359 which quote laid the foundation of a wireless, fossil fuel 0:20:30.440 --> 0:20:35.440 free society. But as the human stories of cobalt mining 0:20:35.480 --> 0:20:39.920 remind us, that innovation comes with the price. I want 0:20:39.920 --> 0:20:43.000 people to understand how their choices matter, and I think 0:20:43.000 --> 0:20:47.280 that there's a tendency to look at devices as disposable. 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:51.760 And I think on a very basic level, if you're 0:20:51.800 --> 0:20:54.719 thinking about just throwing away your phone or buying a 0:20:54.720 --> 0:20:57.520 new laptop or something like that, just just think about 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:01.840 where that's coming from. This will will become a political 0:21:01.880 --> 0:21:05.120 issue at some point and if there are ballot measures 0:21:05.240 --> 0:21:08.560 or politicians who stand on these issues. I think it's 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:13.160 important for people to understand the history of this material 0:21:13.600 --> 0:21:17.359 and how political change can affect this very brutal cycle. 0:21:22.240 --> 0:21:26.320 Sleepwalkers is hosted by me osvil Noshin and Carrot Price. 0:21:27.240 --> 0:21:32.320 It's executive produced by me and Julian Weller is the 0:21:32.400 --> 0:21:37.120 senior producer, and this episode was produced by Ryan Kayloth.