#2556 - Siddharth Kara

What It Covers

Researcher Siddharth Kara returns to discuss ongoing cobalt and lithium mining atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where 300,000 people including 30,000 children mine daily in slave-like conditions supplying global tech and EV supply chains. Kara also covers his new book on the Zong slave ship and its role in sparking the first abolition movement.

Key Questions Answered

• •Congo Mining Scale: On any given day, approximately 300,000 people mine cobalt and related battery metals in the DRC using bare hands, pickaxes, and shovels. Over 37% work in conditions classified as absolute slavery, and roughly 30,000 are children. These numbers come from Kara's 2024 Blood Batteries report, which used prevalence sampling across all active artisanal mining sites in the southeastern copper belt region.
• •Environmental Contamination Data: Kara's Blood Batteries report used time-lapse satellite imagery to document 40–60% forest loss in the DRC copper belt since the battery metal boom began. Water testing in Kolwezi found heavy metal concentrations between 10 and 950 times the WHO's maximum recommended safety limits, covering lead, cobalt, copper, uranium, and chromium — rendering local water sources effectively unusable for human consumption.
• •Supply Chain Accountability Gap: Every major tech and EV company lists mines in the DRC's copper belt in their supply chain disclosure documents, including sites Kara documented using 15,000 artisanal workers classified as "industrial" operations. Switching battery chemistry from cobalt to lithium iron phosphate does not resolve the problem — one of the world's largest lithium deposits, near Manono, DRC, began shipping under Chinese state mining control in mid-2025 under identical conditions.
• •Consumer Leverage Point: Kara identifies phone and tablet upgrade cycles as the most direct consumer lever. Each unnecessary annual upgrade increases demand-side pressure on cobalt and lithium extraction. Keeping a functioning device rather than replacing it on a manufacturer's schedule reduces individual contribution to extraction demand. For EVs, the calculus is different — the choice is binary between purchase or non-purchase, not upgrade frequency.
• •Chinese Nuclear Stockpile Theory: Ground-level sources in the DRC report that Chinese state-run mining companies have been shipping uranium alongside copper and cobalt in the same transport vehicles for approximately 15 years. Western intelligence agencies have been investigating how China expanded its nuclear warhead stockpile rapidly despite having no domestic uranium supply and no confirmed external source — this DRC pipeline is the leading hypothesis among counterintelligence analysts.
• •Zong Insurance Case as Historical Turning Point: In 1781, the captain of the Dutch slave ship Zong threw 130–140 living Africans overboard to reduce water consumption after becoming lost at sea. The ship's owner filed an insurance claim for the lost "cargo." The subsequent retrial, pushed by abolitionist Granville Sharp, introduced the legal concept of universal human rights in a British court for the first time, directly catalyzing the 12-person Anglican abolitionist meeting in 1787 that launched the formal abolition movement.
• •British Slave Owner Compensation Loan: When Britain abolished slavery in 1833, the government paid £20,000,000 — equivalent to 40% of the entire national budget — directly to slave owners as compensation for lost property. The government financed this through a loan that British taxpayers continued repaying until 2015. No compensation was directed to formerly enslaved people or their descendants, a fact largely unknown to the British public during the 182 years of repayment.