The elements of power, p.40
The Elements of Power, page 40
My good friend Henry Steel first introduced me to the world of mining and provided key insight during the reporting: He also went to bat for me when I was imprisoned. Thanks to Jon Lee Anderson for passing the message on and Ben Taub for helping get in touch with my family.
Many people helped during my detention, and I’d like to thank them all. On Capitol Hill, Representative Chris Smith was essential in pushing for my release. The U.S. Embassy and State Department did incredible work. I’d like to thank Ambassador Michael Hammer and Molly Phee. Claire Sheldon, your appearance in the offices of the ANR with food will always be in my mind. Carol Cox, your words of encouragement on the way to the airport will always be lodged in my mind. D. D. and J. D., your help will always be remembered. Richard Golub and Milos Ivkovic. Victoria Dreesmann and Senator Chris Dodd. Thank you, too, to Piero Tozzi and all the staff of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, who allowed me to brief Congress (at length, sorry!) on a topic close to my heart.
Don Guttenplan at The Nation published a piece on Indonesia that helped form the basis for my reporting on that part of the world in this book. Thanks also to Katrina vanden Heuvel, Christopher Shay, and Sarah Baum. At The New York Review of Books, thanks to Emily Greenhouse, Andrew Katzenstein, Ratik Asokan, and Max Nelson for letting me explore the world of battery-metals mining in an essay. At Granta, Tom Meaney, Tom Bolger, and Josie Mitchell helped bring Manono to the page.
Benoit Nyemba Basali, your help on my first trip to Congo was invaluable. Hans and Dany got me from Kamina to Manono on their bikes, Major helped me cross the Lualaba on his canoe, and Gaston Ntambo Nkulu got me out of there. I learned that au Congo, la route est toujours bonne. AVZ welcomed me to their facility, as did MMG and KCC: For this I thank them. Aigle at COMAKAT showed me around the mine site his firm had occupied at Kawama, as did SAEMAPE at Kasulo.
Thank you to Nima Elbagir, Erik Kennes, Clarissa Ward, Jonathan Rosen, Arnaud Froger, the Association Congolaise pour l’Accès à la Justice, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and the International Federation of Journalists for helping raise the alarm about Jeef’s detention. At the ANR, I would like to thank Emmanuel, Papy, and Thierry, and everyone else who took pity on me during my hour of need. Patrick Masengo Kalasa, I hope your ordeal ends soon.
In Congo, I’d like to thank AFREWATCH, PODEFIP, Bon Pasteur, Schadrack Mukad Mway End Naw, Sister Catherine Mutindi, Steve Wembi, Vital Kamungu, Charles Tolchard, Mick Brown, and Jean Luc Kayoko, may he rest in peace. Still I Rise is an incredible organization: Thanks for allowing me in to speak to your students. And so many more people in Congo who inspired me every day with their acts of kindness—thank you.
In Indonesia, Richaldo Hariandja was a wonderful and thoughtful guide. Andreas Harsono, Sadam, Winwin, Upi, and Rabul provided vital assists. In Idaho, Brad Barnett, Richard Williams, Tom Carter, and of course Sam Ash, who welcomed me for the best tri-tip in the Silver Valley. In the Western Sahara, thanks to Mouloud Said, María Carrión, Mohamedsalem Werad, Hamahuallah Mohammed, Takween Mohamed Hajietou, and the late Ahmed Boukhari. In Japan, Peter Sayn Wittgenstein, Yurina Roche, Christopher Ax, Marc Luetten, Jeffrey Char, and Louis Chihara.
Several journalists and researchers provided me with essential insights—Hugh Kinsella Cunningham served his regularly with lashings of wit. N’oublie pas ton Go-Pass, mon ami, c’est très important. Oz Woloshyn gave wise insights into early drafts and reporting plans. William Clowes, Emmet Livingstone, Michael Kavanagh, Giulia Paravicini, Rory Randall, Isaac Arnsdorf, Giles Clarke, Jacob Kushner, Valerie Hopkins, John Dell’Osso, Gabriel Bourdon-Fattal, and Adelle Hollmer all spent time listening to my questions and giving advice. Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, merci. Luis Aleman, Jennifer Fendrick, Joseph Mulala Nguramo, Milain Fayulu, J. S., M. B., P. T. M. H., D. W., Harry Mossop, Heyrick Bond-Gunning, Matthieu Bos, thanks all for your help along the way. Thanks to Charlie Watenphul for patiently listening to all my questions too. And to Omar Hilale, who was kind with his time in New York all those years ago.
Several people let me write at their homes along the way: Marilena and Alexandros Kedros, ευχαριστώ, especially for taking me in right after my detention. Grazie, Stefania Biondo and Giacomo Nurra, for your many kindnesses and letting me occupy your apartment and office. Thanks, too, to Christos, Seb, Olympia and J. C., Ike, Nikolai, Tassilo, Caspar and Sasha, Jacob, Jake, Paul, Jay, Zach, Lucas Z., Pippa B., Lucas W., Martin P., Juan S-C., Hugh M., Amber Bell, Anne Fadiman, Sanford Padwe, Judith Matloff, Walt Bogdanich, Moira Fradinger, John McKay, and of course my family writ large.
Thank you to the conferences that welcomed me for my reporting: the Battery Show, DRC Mining Week, and the Cobalt Conference. Thanks especially to Marina Demidova for all your help. And thanks to the New Energy Industry Development Conference, and I’m sorry circumstances did not permit me to attend. My thanks to the Mudd Library at Princeton, the École communal de Dalhem, and the State Archives of Belgium.
To the people who read early drafts of this book and gave me valuable insights, endless gratitude. Thank you, Shirley Meng, Andrew Gulley, Patrick Alley, and Paola Subacchi.
My penultimate thanks go out to the two people who passed my letters to the U.S. Embassy. Without you, I still might be languishing in captivity. I owe a great deal to the kindness of you strangers.
And finally, to my wife, Malù, who dealt with my mad hours and strange trips. Thank you and t.a.b.s.t.f.
Note on Sources
This book relies on hundreds of interviews and conversations conducted over six years over the phone and in person in the United States, Belgium, the United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, Germany, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, Kenya, Indonesia, Algeria, the Western Sahara, Mauritania, Morocco, China, and Japan. Some of the people I spoke to requested to speak anonymously: If they had a compelling reason to do so, I agreed to not reveal their names.
I have also relied on written sources to corroborate the information that was given to me. I waded through archives and thousands of pages of court documents, some of which, like the Gertner-Gertler arbitration, were not public. I lost some of the documents I had on my computer when it was confiscated by the Congolese police, and it took a while to reassemble my reporting, but luckily I had backed up many of my interviews and notes. I still have the diary I took in match-ash during my days in the Kinshasa detention site.
A book like this rests on the shoulders of giants, and I have indicated where I have learned facts and quoted from texts in the endnotes. Seth Fletcher’s Bottled Lightning and Charles Murray’s Long Hard Road are indispensable histories of the lithium-ion battery. Henry Sanderson’s Volt Rush was an excellent meditation on the necessities and exigencies of critical-metals mining. Ernest Scheyder’s The War Below helped me through questions around metals mining in the U.S. Siddharth Kara’s Cobalt Red raised awareness at a vital time. Howard French’s China’s Second Continent is a wonderful book and a great guide to China in Africa. I only read Vince Beiser’s Power Metal as I was finishing final proofs of this book, but it helped refocus my work. Lukasz Bednarski’s Lithium also was a guide to the white metal. Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost remains a masterwork. The World for Sale by Jack Farchy and Javier Blas taught me about the world of commodities trading. Tom Burgis’s The Looting Machine remains a master class on corruption. The work of Michela Wrong has also been a guide as I have worked in Central Africa. David Van Reybrouck’s Congo and Revolusi are two of my favorite books I have ever read and signposted me on the history of both Congo and Indonesia.
The work of several journalists was invaluable as I researched this story. Michael J. Kavanagh and Will Clowes at Bloomberg; Daniel Balint-Kurti at several places; Aaron Ross at Reuters; Eric Lipton and Dionne Searcey at The New York Times; and Andrew Maykuth at The Philadelphia Inquirer all come to mind.
Several parts of this book are based on reporting in various different magazines. The kernel of this book was “Buried Dreams,” a long New Yorker piece published in 2021. Other scenes are based on “Dirty Nickel, Clean Power: Making the Ocean Bleed Red,” a 2023 piece for The Nation, and “Power Metals,” a piece for Granta.
While I thank everyone involved in helping me with this book, any and all errors in it are my own.
Notes
Introduction: The New Power
For the iPhone 17 Air: Johanna Romero, “This iPhone 17 Air Leak Suggests You May Not Have to Worry About It Having Horrific Battery Life,” PhoneArena, March 6, 2025, phonearena.com/news/this-iphone-17-air-leak-suggests-you-may-not-have-to-worry-about-it-having-horrific-battery-life_id168270/.
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not for nothing: Brian Menell, interview with the author, November 2023.
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70 to 90 percent: Varun Sivaram, Noah Gordon, and Daniel Helmeci, Winning the Battery Race: How the United States Can Leapfrog China to Dominate Next-Generation Battery Technologies, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 21, 2024, carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/10/winning-the-battery-race-how-the-united-states-can-leapfrog-china-to-dominate-next-generation-battery-technologies?lang=en/.
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an outrageous $288 million: Trisha Thadani, Clara Ence Morse, and Maeve Reston, “Elon Musk Donated $288 Million in 2024 Election, Final Tally Shows,” Washington Post, January 31, 2025, washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/31/elon-musk-trump-donor-2024-election.
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a 2023 shareholder meeting: Elon Musk, “Tesla 2023 Annual Shareholder Meeting,” speech, Austin, TX, May 16, 2023.
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Tesla provided only: Alan Ohnsman, “Elon Musk’s Laughable New Solution to Tesla’s Child Labor Worries,” Forbes, July 2, 2024, forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2024/07/02/elon-musks-laughable-new-solution-to-teslas-child-labor-worries/.
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Then, on a Wednesday: Special Report, aired March 19, 2025, on Fox News.
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Tshisekedi had a problem: The rebels, who belonged to a group called the March 23 movement, or M23, and the Alliance Fleuve Congo were both proxies for Rwandan interests in the region and harbored grievances based on years of discrimination and venal national politics. They were profiting from metals too: The M23 had seized mines and were funding their rebellion with them. In one area alone, they were collecting at least $800,000 a month from mining and taxing minerals in transit by the end of 2024. See: United Nations, “Letter Dated 27 December 2024 from the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo Addressed to the President of the Security Council,” UN Document S/2024/969, p. 14, https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n24/373/37/pdf/n2437337.pdf.
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Karl Von Batten: Karl Von Batten, interview with the author, March 2025.
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“Are we being played?”: Senior congressional official, interview with the author, March 2025.
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Peter Sahlas, one of: Peter Sahlas, interview with the author, January 2025.
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Elon Musk had raised $2.7 billion: “Tesla’s Performance Gives Elon Musk Much to Think About,” Economist, June 15, 2019.
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tried to go back: In mid-2023, I registered for a Shanghai conference on lithium-ion batteries and hoped to meet battery makers there. I applied for my visa in New York, in person, but the lady behind the desk said that there was a problem with my application. I was later told that I needed to sit for an interview if I wanted to travel to China. I agreed to an interview and dialed in to a Zoom meeting. During the meeting, a lady from the consulate who identified herself as “Madam Bai” asked me pointed questions about what I thought of China, and what I thought of trade embargoes. She told me that protectionist U.S. policy was an obstacle to progress, especially with regard to green technology that could be used to slow climate change. I told her—truthfully—that it was remarkable what China had done to create a thriving battery industry. Seeming satisfied, Madam Bai said she would send my application to Beijing to be approved. Weeks passed with no response, and the visa never came.
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the Pentagon focus: Securing Defense-Critical Supply Chains: An Action Plan Developed in Response to President Biden’s Executive Order 14017 (Department of Defense, February 2022), 10, apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1163223.pdf.
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one former Defense Department: Matthew D. Zolnowski, interview with the author, May 2024.
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A tourist in London: “42% of the City Buses Registered in Europe in 2023 Are Zero Emission,” Sustainable Bus, February 14, 2024, sustainable-bus.com/news/electric-bus-market-2023-registrations-man-solaris-yutong-wrightbus/.
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“It’s always going to be”: Melissa Sanderson, author interview, August 2023.
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forty million electric: Coral Davenport and James Ewing, “Can Trump Really Slam the Brakes on Electric Vehicles?,” New York Times, May 27, 2024.
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they were set to grow: “Electric Vehicle Sales Headed for Record Year but Growth Slowdown Puts Climate Targets at Risk, According to BloombergNEF Report,” BloombergNEF, June 12, 2024, about.bnef.com/blog/electric-vehicle-sales-headed-for-record-year-but-growth-slowdown-puts-climate-targets-at-risk-according-to-bloombergnef-report/.
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longtime EV skeptic: David Shepardson, “Trump Says He Would Consider Ending $7,500 Electric Vehicle Credit,” Reuters, August 19, 2024; and Todd Lassa, “Trump Plans to Nix Biden’s EV Tax Credits—and Why It’s Good for Musk,” Autoweek, November 21, 2024.
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Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook: Yang Jie, “Building Apple Products Has Become a Side Hustle for China’s Biggest EV Maker,” Wall Street Journal, December 2, 2024, wsj.com/tech/building-apple-products-has-become-a-side-hustle-for-chinas-biggest-ev-maker-f26e251c.
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“Last night Teslas”: “Wieder brennen Teslas auf Berlins Straßen,” Kontrapolis, June 19, 2024, kontrapolis.info/13354/.
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the “real villains”: Ashleigh Fields, “Musk: Trump Will ‘Go After’ People ‘Pushing the Lies’ About Tesla,” The Hill, March 28, 2025, https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5219374-elon-musk-donald-trump-response-tesla-vandalism/.
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If you count: Shannon Osaka, “The ‘Greenest’ Car in America Might Surprise You,” Washington Post, February 29, 2024; André Thomas, “Automobile: L’hybride rechargeable serait moins polluante que l’électrique, assure une étude,” Ouest France, October 22, 2022, ouest-france.fr/economie/automobile/automobile-l-hybride-rechargeable-serait-moins-polluante-que-l-electrique-assure-une-etude-c33e1b94-4f97-11ed-9919-8fbf073b2344.
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That’s to say: Paul Lienert, “US Consumers Keep Vehicles for a Record 12.5 Years on Average—S&P,” Reuters, May 15, 2023.
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Part 1: Fundaments
“When Katanga is hurt”: Conor Cruise O’Brien, To Katanga and Back: A UN Case History (Simon & Schuster, 1962), 261.
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Chapter 1: A Bend in the Lufilian Arc
“The worst souvenir”: Odilon Kajumba Kilanga, interview with the author, conducted by Jeef Kazadi Kamwanga in Kolwezi, 2024. Because I had been banned from Congo, I sent questions to Kazadi, who conducted the interview with Kajumba in Kolwezi.
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“I would never accept”: Kajumba, interview.
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children might be: AFREWATCH, “361 000 enfants dans les mines de cuivre et cobalt de Haut Katanga et Lualaba en 2024: La société civile émet une réserve au chiffre de l’UNICEF et demande les informations complémentaires,” press release, June 1, 2024, afrewatch.org/communique-de-presse-n01-06-2024-361-000-enfants-dans-les-mines-de-cuivre-et-cobalt-de-haut-katanga-et-lualaba-en-2024-la-societe-emet-une-reserve-au-chiffre-de-lunicef-et/.
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exposure to dust: Dr. Billy Mukong, interview with the author, March 2022. He also blamed a traditional practice in which women eat soil in order to quell menstrual bleeding. In Kolwezi, he said, the practice is very unsafe, not only because so much of the soil has been contaminated from years of mining but also because of the sheer volume of metals that are naturally present in the soil.
