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A Harvard visiting professor and modern slavery activist exposed the "appalling" cobalt mining industry in the Congo on a recent episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience" that went viral. The video has already racked up over one million views and counting.Siddharth Kara, author of "Cobalt Red: How The Blood of The Congo Powers Our Lives," told podcast host Joe Rogan that there’s no such thing as "clean cobalt.’""That’s all marketing," Kara said. Kara told Rogan that the level of "suffering" of the Congolese people working in cobalt mines was astounding.
Cobalt initially "took off because it was used in lithium-ion batteries to maximize their charge and stability," Kara explained. "And it just so happened that the Congo is sitting on more cobalt than the rest of the planet combined," he added. As a result, the Congo, a country of roughly 90 million people, became the center of a geopolitical conflict over valuable minerals. "Before anyone knew what was happening, [the] Chinese government [and] Chinese mining companies took control of almost all the big mines and the local population has been displaced," Kara said. Subsequently, the Congolese are "under duress." He continued: "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."
