#2556 - Siddharth Kara

Joe Rogan (0:01)

Joe Rogan Podcast, checking out The Joe Rogan Experience. Trained by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

We're up.

Siddharth Kara (0:12)

All right.

Joe Rogan (0:13)

Good to see you, sir.

Siddharth Kara (0:13)

Yeah, good to see you, Joe.

Joe Rogan (0:15)

First of all, thank you very much for everything you've done, and for just, I can't tell you how many people have come up to me and said thank you for shedding light on what's going on in the Congo with the Cobalt stuff. Your book was so important, and the fact that you risked your life to get the kind of footage that you legitimately risked your life. That is a very dangerous part of the world right now, with enormous amounts of resources being pulled out, and insane amounts of money being made.

I think just people like you are rare, so thank you.

Siddharth Kara (0:49)

Man, you're gracious, Joe. You're really gracious. I take that to heart. It means a lot.

Let me just say that the fact that you continue to talk about it, you and I first talked about this, talking to Jamie, it was almost four years ago. Wasn't it really that long ago? It was December 2022

Joe Rogan (1:08)

That's crazy.

Siddharth Kara (1:09)

So here we are September 26, so almost four years ago. And you continue to talk about it now and again, and I think that's meant a lot to me. It's meant a lot to people in the Congo.

It's obvious this has captured your heart, and you're to be commended for that conscience.

Joe Rogan (1:29)

Well, I'm the last talking. You're actually out there going and documenting all this stuff. It's a very strange world that we live in that at the very base of all of the greatest technology, like all this stuff that we have that's so incredible that allows us to find out so much about the world, the base of that, you have slave labor of pulling minerals out of the ground.

Siddharth Kara (1:53)

Yeah, you have slave labor. You have child labor. You have militia run mines. You know, for people who didn't hear our last conversation, go back and hear it, you know, because we walk through it. And I haven't been back to the Congo since Cobalt Red came out, and I knew it would be too dangerous for me to go back. Yeah, definitely don't go back. You know, it's just, my colleague said, pretty soon after Cobalt Red came out, you know, there's a bounty for you. So, I can't go back.

But I've stayed in touch with people there. I continue to get ground research done. And the conditions, they're not much better, you know? And in some ways, they've continued to degrade because the fever for these battery component metals, and it's Cobalt, but it's also the lithium, the nickel, the copper, the tantalum, all the stuff that goes into our smartphones, our tablets. You know, you and I, nobody we know can function without this stuff. And the bottom of the chain is tainted in child labor, slavery, violence, environmental destruction and contamination. And the new fever is the AI data centers.

You know, we're building these as fast as possible to support the AI economy. And they require all the same metals and minerals. So the circuit boards, the servers, the heat sinks, the energy storage, they all require cobalt, copper, tin, tantalum. It's all coming out of Congo.

Joe Rogan (3:36)

It's such a strange aspect of human life that we require that, and that the area is controlled by people that are willing to do this. We don't get much of these rare earth minerals from America, do we?

Siddharth Kara (3:52)

No, no, not much at all. That's why it's almost all in the global south and in particular in the heart of Africa, these deposits.

Joe Rogan (4:00)

Can I ask you, is it because it's not available? There's no ore in America or it hasn't been mined? Like, what is, what are?

Siddharth Kara (4:09)

So it's, it's, the dominating force is that the, the largest and highest grade reserves of these crucial elements and rare earth metals are in central Africa. Lithium extends more broadly to South America. There's not much, there's not much in North America. There's some, but here's the rub. Here's the rub. You can find some lithium in the salt flats out west. You can find some cobalt along the Canadian-North American border. The rub is, we don't want to wreck our environment. Oh, God. Digging the stuff out of the ground.

And then processing it. But we're okay obliterating their environment and polluting it and contaminating it. And I did another study, I told you I can't go back to the Congo, but I have colleagues and we've continued doing research. And I issued a report came out last year called Blood Batteries to the University of Nottingham.