Joe Rogan Experience #1914 - Siddharth Kara
Siddharth Kara (guest), Joe Rogan (host), Narrator
In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, featuring Siddharth Kara and Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan Experience #1914 - Siddharth Kara explores exposing Cobalt: The Human Cost Behind Our Phones and EVs Siddharth Kara describes his multi‑year investigation into cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo, revealing widespread child labor, deadly conditions, and what he bluntly calls a modern system of slavery. He explains that roughly three‑quarters of the world’s cobalt—an essential component of lithium‑ion batteries in phones, laptops, and electric vehicles—comes from a small region in Congo dominated by Chinese and multinational mining interests.
Exposing Cobalt: The Human Cost Behind Our Phones and EVs
Siddharth Kara describes his multi‑year investigation into cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo, revealing widespread child labor, deadly conditions, and what he bluntly calls a modern system of slavery. He explains that roughly three‑quarters of the world’s cobalt—an essential component of lithium‑ion batteries in phones, laptops, and electric vehicles—comes from a small region in Congo dominated by Chinese and multinational mining interests.
Contradicting corporate claims of “clean” or responsibly sourced cobalt, Kara recounts first‑hand visits to industrial mines packed with thousands of artisanal miners, including children, working with no safety gear for one or two dollars a day in toxic conditions. He argues that tech and EV companies know or should know these realities, but rely on PR, supply‑chain obfuscation, and economic incentives to avoid meaningful reform.
The conversation situates today’s cobalt rush in a longer history of extractive exploitation in Congo, from King Leopold’s rubber atrocities to today’s green‑technology boom, emphasizing both the continuity of suffering and the hypocrisy of modern human‑rights rhetoric. Kara calls for public pressure on corporations, direct CEO engagement with on‑the‑ground realities, and relatively modest investments that could dramatically improve conditions without derailing profits.
Key Takeaways
There is effectively no such thing as “clean cobalt” today.
Kara contends that all major lithium‑ion supply chains are entangled with Congolese artisanal mining where adults and children dig by hand in dangerous, unregulated conditions, and that corporate assurances of clean sourcing are largely marketing and unverifiable.
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The scale and severity of abuse in Congo’s cobalt mines are unprecedented in modern supply chains.
Hundreds of thousands of people, including tens of thousands of children, work in toxic pits and unsupported tunnels for a dollar or two a day, facing lung disease, cancers, crushed limbs, and frequent mass deaths from tunnel collapses.
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Tech and EV companies bear direct responsibility because their demand created and sustains this system.
Kara argues that the cobalt economy exists solely to feed smartphone, electronics, and EV production; yet companies push accountability down the chain—to refiners, miners, or the Congolese state—rather than owning and fixing the human-rights abuses at the source.
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Meaningful improvements would be relatively cheap compared to corporate profits.
Basic interventions—personal protective equipment, structurally safe excavations instead of hand‑dug tunnels, wages closer to $10 per day, local schools and clinics, and some electrification—would cost a “rounding error” for leading tech/EV firms but drastically reduce harm.
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Obfuscation is maintained through distance, fragmented supply chains, and media capture.
Layers of intermediaries allow CEOs to claim ignorance while PR teams tout audits and codes of conduct; major outlets may also soft‑pedal coverage because the offending companies are major advertisers.
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China now dominates the cobalt pipeline, complicating Western leverage but not absolving it.
Chinese firms control most industrial concessions in southeastern Congo, refine roughly three‑quarters of global cobalt, and lead in battery manufacturing, yet Western brands knowingly rely on this ecosystem rather than building alternative, higher‑standard sourcing.
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Technological alternatives are emerging but do not erase current or past harms.
Cobalt‑reduced or cobalt‑free chemistries (e. ...
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Notable Quotes
““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 than what’s happening in the Congo right now.””
— Siddharth Kara
““There’s no clean cobalt. It’s all marketing. It’s all PR. It’s a fiction.””
— Siddharth Kara
““What kind of economy can transform the degradation of innocent, impoverished children into shiny phones and cars?””
— Siddharth Kara
““If I know what Chinese companies are doing in the Congo, every CEO in Silicon Valley knows it too.””
— Siddharth Kara
““It didn’t have to be this way—and it doesn’t have to stay this way.””
— Siddharth Kara
Questions Answered in This Episode
If major tech and EV companies can fix much of this for a “rounding error,” what concrete obstacles—beyond profit and liability fears—are truly stopping them?
Siddharth Kara describes his multi‑year investigation into cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo, revealing widespread child labor, deadly conditions, and what he bluntly calls a modern system of slavery. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
How should consumers reconcile the benefits of green technology and connectivity with the knowledge that these products are currently built on extreme exploitation?
Contradicting corporate claims of “clean” or responsibly sourced cobalt, Kara recounts first‑hand visits to industrial mines packed with thousands of artisanal miners, including children, working with no safety gear for one or two dollars a day in toxic conditions. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
What mechanisms—boycotts, regulation, shareholder activism, or international law—are most likely to force supply‑chain reform in Congo in the near term?
The conversation situates today’s cobalt rush in a longer history of extractive exploitation in Congo, from King Leopold’s rubber atrocities to today’s green‑technology boom, emphasizing both the continuity of suffering and the hypocrisy of modern human‑rights rhetoric. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
How can any future cobalt‑free or reduced‑cobalt battery technologies be deployed in a way that also addresses restitution and environmental repair for Congolese communities?
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
Given China’s control over Congolese mining and refining, what realistic role can Western governments and companies play in raising labor and environmental standards on the ground?
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Transcript Preview
(drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (instrumental music)
Thank you very much for coming here, man. I really appreciate it.
Oh, thank you for inviting me, Joe.
My pleasure. Um, this subject... First of all, the title of your book?
Cobalt Red.
And it is out January...
31st.
31st.
Yeah.
And how did you... what... please detail the journey that you went on to, to write this book and why it's of concern to you.
Yeah. Okay, well, um, I started traveling to the Congo, um, five years ago. Um, I've been doing research on slavery and child labor for about 20 years, uh, traveling all around the world documenting slaves and child laborers, human trafficking. Um, and this came across my radar, um, maybe seven years ago. Um, people started talking in the field about cobalt, cobalts in the batteries, it's in the Congo, the conditions are horrible, and I had no idea. I never heard of this. Uh, so I started planning t- to take trips to get down there and I took my first trip, um, back in 2018. Um, my plan was I thought I would try to lay the groundwork to do some academic research, um, and the things I saw there were so appalling and heart-wrenching and urgent that, uh, I changed my approach. I thought, um, "People need to know about this. Um, I need to, I need to write a book." Uh, and so I started planning more trips and I just kept going back. And the reason this is important, Joe, um, and we can dig into this, um, in more depth. Um, 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, uh, uh, laptop and crucially, every electric vehicle. Um, 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. Um, and it's being mined in appalling heart-wrenching, dangerous conditions. Um, and so that's why people need to know because, uh, by and large, the world doesn't know what's happening in the Congo.
It's something that people sort of know peripherally that, you know, they call them conflict minerals and, you know, they know that, 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 has been, have been some documentaries that have been done on it and they're all terrifying.
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