#1914 - Siddharth Kara

Joe Rogan (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience. Thank you very much for coming here, man.

Siddharth Kara (0:15)

Oh, thank you for inviting me, Joe.

Joe Rogan (0:16)

My pleasure. This subject, first of all, the title of your book?

Siddharth Kara (0:20)

Cobalt Red.

Joe Rogan (0:22)

And it is out January?

Siddharth Kara (0:23)

31st.

Joe Rogan (0:24)

31st. And how did you, please detail the journey that you went on to write this book and why it's of concern to you.

Siddharth Kara (0:34)

Yeah, okay. Well, I started traveling to the Congo five years ago. I've been doing research on slavery and child labor for about 20 years, traveling all around the world, documenting slaves and child laborers, human trafficking. And this came across my radar maybe seven years ago. People started talking in the field about cobalt, cobalt's in the batteries, it's in the Congo, the conditions are horrible. And I had no idea, I never heard of this. So I started planning to take trips to get down there. And I took my first trip back in 2018 My plan was, I thought I would try to lay the groundwork to do some academic research. And the things I saw there were so appalling and heart wrenching and urgent that I changed my approach. I thought, people need to know about this. I need to write a book.

And so I started planning more trips and I just kept going back. And the reason this is important, Joe, and we can dig into this, at more depth, throughout the whole history of slavery, I mean, I'm going back centuries, never, never in human history has there been more suffering that generated more profit and was linked to the lives of more people around the world, ever, ever in history, than what's happening in the Congo right now. And the reason I say that is this.

The cobalt that's being mined in the Congo is in every single lithium ion rechargeable battery manufactured in the world today. Every smartphone, every tablet, every laptop, and crucially, every electric vehicle.

So you and I, we can't function on a day-to-day basis without cobalt, and three-fourths of the supply is coming out of the Congo. And it's being mined in appalling, heart-wrenching, dangerous conditions. And so that's why people need to know, because by and large the world doesn't know what's happening in the Congo.

Joe Rogan (2:50)

It's something that people sort of know peripherally, that they call them conflict minerals, and they know that they're coming from an area of the world that's very poor, but I don't think people are aware of how horrible it is. There have been some documentaries that have been done on it, and they're all terrifying.

Siddharth Kara (3:10)

Yeah, so conflict minerals was phase one, and that's actually not cobalt.

Joe Rogan (3:18)

What is it referred to, conflict minerals?

Siddharth Kara (3:20)

Conflict minerals, also called the 3TG minerals, are tin, tungsten, tantalum, and gold.

And those are in the eastern Congo. And that catastrophe started around the year 2000, late 1990s, 2000, shortly after the Rwandan genocide.

The militias moved in, and eastern Congo is sitting on some of the largest reserves in the world of those 3TG minerals, especially tantalum. And those are all used in microprocessors. And you can think back to around the year 2000, mobile phones first started coming out and gaining traction. I still remember my little StarTac flip phone that I had from Motorola. You remember that?

Joe Rogan (4:09)

Sure.

Siddharth Kara (4:11)

And all that supply was coming out of eastern Congo. Militias and warlords were forcing the local population at gunpoint, machete point, to dig this stuff out. And it was flowing up into the formal supply chain into mostly those first generation cell phones. And that became known as conflict minerals. Cobalt started later. Cobalt really took off about 10, 12 years ago. And it's in another part of the country, in the mining provinces in the southeast of the Congo. And Cobalt took off because it was started to be used in lithium ion batteries to maximize their charge and stability.

And it just so happens that the Congo, just as it was sitting on more than half the world's reserves of coltan, and of course a lot of gold and diamonds and other things, is sitting on more Cobalt than the rest of the planet combined.

And it's in a small little patch of the Congo, southeastern corner, a part that used to be called Katanga. And before anybody knew what was happening, Chinese government, Chinese mining companies took control of almost all the big mines and the local population has been displaced, is under duress, and they dig in absolutely subhuman, gut wrenching conditions for a dollar a day, feeding Cobalt up the supply chain into all the phones, all the tablets, and especially electric cars.