Interviews | Economy | East Asia

Cobalt, Congo, and China: Battery Power as Political Power

Insights from Nicholas Niarchos.

Artisanal cobalt miners in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dec. 9, 2020.

The Diplomat author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into U.S. Asia policy. This conversation with Nicholas Niarchos – journalist and author of “The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology, and The Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth” (Penguin Press 2026) – is the 502nd in “The Trans-Pacific View Insight Series.”

Explain the role of critical minerals in fueling geostrategic shifts and shaping global conflicts.

Critical minerals are some of the building blocks of the modern world. In a high-tech, high touch world, we can forget that all our vaunted technology is reliant on critical metals, things like cobalt, lithium and rare earths. Such metals are indispensable for batteries, EVs, renewable power, advanced electronics, and defense systems, and have become as central to state power as oil was in the 20th century.

Often the supply chain for these metals originates in or is controlled by countries that are at odds. For the United States and China, critical metals have become a key battleground, and one where Beijing has often won. It’s what I like to call the critical metals conundrum.

In my new book, “The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth,” I show how this conundrum affects resource‑rich but institutionally fragile states like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as even relatively stable nations like Morocco and Indonesia. The world is being buffeted by the Great Game dynamics that the scramble for critical metals has engendered. The rush for concessions and revenue heightens corruption, fuels local conflict, and reproduces “resource curse” dynamics – armed groups, abusive security forces, and dispossession of communities around mining sites.

In Washington, successive U.S. administrations have woken up to the critical metals conundrum. Recently President Donald J. Trump’s administration has taken an aggressive resource nationalist stance when it comes to metals and other natural resources. Project Vault – a new $12 billion stockpile scheme – was unveiled by Trump, who cast minerals as instruments of national resilience in a world where China has weaponized export controls.

Vice President J.D. Vance addressed a ministerial gathering on critical metals in February in Washington. Vance reported that Trump told him just after the operation to seize Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro: “As much as data centers and technology and all of these incredible things that we’re all working on matter, fundamentally you still have an economy that runs on real things,” he said, “And there is no realer thing than oil – and I would add to that there’s no realer thing than critical minerals.” Vance was adamant that the administration he served would wrest the mineral supply chain out of the hands of adversaries and into Washington’s orbit. “The international market for critical minerals is failing,” he said. “It’s failing to create domestic markets or dignified jobs for our labor forces, and it’s failing to keep our nations safe. Supply chains remain brittle and exceptionally concentrated. Asset and commodity prices are persistently depressed, driven downward by forces beyond any individual country’s control.” He continued, “we intend to build an ironclad network of new industrial supply chains to span the entire nation.”

It remains to be seen if the U.S. can in fact do this, but such aggressive posturing has already fuelled intense geostrategic competition, and even wars for resources in some of the world’s poorest countries, like the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Examine the strategic relevance of cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the global lithium-ion battery industry.

Congo is at the heart of this story. The country supplies roughly 70 percent of the world’s cobalt, and has rich reserves of lithium, gallium, tungsten, gold, tin, and tantalum. Cobalt a mineral that is central to the lithium‑ion battery revolution: It is used in most cellphones and in a great many of our electric vehicles. (The metal is used in the cathode of many lithium‑ion chemistries, stabilizing the battery and allowing for high energy density.) What’s more, the metal has applications for defense and the creation of key industrial alloys.

When I was reporting the book, a Congolese governor told me that his province was the “Saudi Arabia of Cobalt.” That in fact undersold the sheer concentration of world cobalt supply in the country: When you talk about cobalt, you are talking about Congo. Congo’s strategic relevance is twofold. First, the concentration of cobalt reserves and production there means that disruptions – whether from conflict, labor unrest, or political decisions – can ripple through global supply chains and affect everything from consumer electronics to EV deployment targets.

Second, control over Congolese cobalt has become a battleground among foreign corporations and states. Chinese, European, and other actors are vying for long‑term offtake in the country and duking it out for ownership of major industrial mines. Look at the Glencore-Orion deal signed in February: U.S. company Orion was founded in October 2025, and with U.S. government backing took a 40 percent stake in two of Congo’s richest mines.

Congo is absurdly well-stocked in minerals but that this wealth has translated into misery for many and immense profits for a few, making cobalt extraction both a strategic issue for the global battery industry and a locus of profound injustice. The artisanal mining sector – which represents about 20 percent of Congolese cobalt production, and sees people scrabble to mine cobalt and copper in unsafe pits – is far removed from corporate ESG branding. For me, this serves as the most visceral illustration of how cobalt’s global importance sits atop precarious, dangerous, and poorly remunerated labor.

Trump’s decision to build a Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve is partly a hedge against the volatility coming out of Congo, which remains a deeply unstable and governance-poor nation. The reserve is a way to buffer U.S. manufacturers from price spikes or supply disruptions linked to political instability or contract disputes in places like the southern mining region of Katanga. By calling the reserve “like the U.S. petroleum reserve” but for minerals, Trump has acknowledged that chokepoints in Congo can be as destabilizing for the EV and defense base today as Strait of Hormuz disruptions are for oil.

Analyze China’s role in exploiting Congo’s cobalt mines and positioning itself as the producer of 70-90 percent of lithium-ion batteries.

Despite occasional speechifying in Washington, China alone has expended the brainpower and capital to assemble the supply chain for a truly mass‑market electric vehicle industry. In the last 30 years Chinese companies and policy banks moved aggressively into Congolese cobalt and Copperbelt mining while U.S. and European firms retrenched, creating a new version of foreign domination that in some key ways mirrors earlier colonial and postcolonial ventures by Western powers.

Beijing now controls 70 percent of the world’s rare earths mining, some 80 percent of the world’s cobalt supply, and 90 percent of global critical metals processing. When Xi Jinping’s government restricted exports of rare earths during a tariff confrontation last year, it underscored its control of the global supply chain.

In Congo, this dominance is plain for everyone to see. Contemporary Chinese corporations and migrant workers are focused on cobalt and other battery metals. Through acquisitions and joint ventures, Chinese firms have come to dominate many of the big industrial cobalt mines and then ship ore or concentrate to China, where the country has also built a commanding position in refining and cathode production.

This underscored China’s broader position as producer of the overwhelming majority of lithium‑ion batteries. Control over both Congolese supply and midstream processing enables Beijing to set terms for much of the world’s electrification. The result is that Congo sits at the center of a global chessboard where the new global struggle between Beijing and Washington is playing out; Congolese workers and communities, of course, have borne the heaviest costs.

How have leading tech companies, including Apple, Tesla, etc., extracted critical minerals and contributed to the “dirtiest supply chain on earth”?

Despite years of critique, big tech firms still sit atop multi‑tier supply chains that pull cobalt and other minerals from Congolese mines – both industrial and artisanal –where abuses have been documented. They continue to feature China prominently in their supply chains. And studies continue to show child labor, dangerous hand‑dug pits, and serious health risks in the artisanal cobalt mining that feeds into global refineries before reaching cell manufacturers and, ultimately, brand‑name firms

Large tech and auto firms have pledged more stringent audits and traceability, yet they have barely budged from their position atop a chain of extraction that remains violent, opaque, and environmentally destructive. In my book, I follow the cobalt in a smartphone battery back to hand‑dug tunnels in Congo and show how supply chains for electronics remain as opaque as colonial-era supply chains that fed the world with critical materials like rubber and copper.

The demand for cobalt and other metals drives extraction practices on the ground while the public narratives of big tech firms highlight clean energy, sleek design, and corporate responsibility. Audits and certifications are often limited in scope and that corporate pledges – such as Apple’s moves to halt sourcing certain minerals from Congo – do not change the underlying economic or political structures that enable abuses.

What I realized as I delved deeper and deeper into the research for this book is that what we often think of as green technology is built on a bargain in which clean energy in one part of the world is paid for with corruption, pollution, and human suffering in another. The “dirtiest supply chain” is less a single scandal than a systemic pattern: opacity, outsourced responsibility, and a global division of labor that hides the true cost of our devices.

Evaluate the effectiveness of policies and investments from the United States and Europe in the critical minerals competition with China.

Since the end of the Cold War, fewer and fewer U.S. and European companies operated at the sites that critical resources come from; in the last 30 years, Chinese firms were left to occupy the space that Western mining houses and traders once dominated.

And people from the countries where these minerals come from remained shut on the outside.

In my book, I show how the United States and Europe largely slumbered through this period as China grew in influence in Congo and other countries; how they continued to sleep even as Beijing built a vertically integrated battery and EV industry; and how they have only just begun to wake up to the dangers of the supply chain in its current form.

Trump’s moves include Project Vault, Section 232 actions (tariffs), and calls for a “critical minerals trading bloc.” These are the most assertive U.S. attempt yet to counter China’s mineral leverage, but we must not forget that they operate from a position of entrenched dependency. For example, a recent 50,000 ton offtake agreement with Congo’s Gécamines actually originates at the Tenke Fungurume mine, which is controlled by a Chinese company.

The stockpile initiative pairs a $10 billion Export‑Import Bank loan with $2 billion of private finance, and Trump has embraced the Ex‑Im Bank as an industrial policy instrument to “broaden his industrial policy strategies and to compete with nations that depend on government subsidies.”

Coordination with U.S. allies is deepening: the new executive order “makes clear that the United States is not pursuing an America‑only approach,” instead embedding minerals into “a framework of allied cooperation, trade negotiation, and shared supply chain resilience.” European measures under the EU Critical Raw Materials Act, plus EU‑partner country agreements, point in the same direction. The trend appears to be toward diversification, “friend‑shoring” (the shifting of supply chains to friendly nations), and more midstream capacity outside China.

But the problem that the U.S. currently faces is that it lacks sufficient processing capabilities and it remains in second place to China in nearly all aspects of the critical metals supply chain. The near‑term impacts on Beijing’s 70–90 percent share in key segments will be limited.

“We will establish reference prices for critical minerals at each stage of production, pricing that reflects real‑world, fair‑market value,” one senior U.S. official said at a recent forum, referring to an effort to establish price floors and reference prices. These could reshape margins and investment incentives, but only if enough allies sign on to a de facto buyers’ cartel.

What’s more, Trump’s deals with Congo are predicated on U.S. help in vanquishing the M23 rebellion in the east of the country. But the rebels now control key defensive positions, and the poorly-equipped Congolese army is finding it difficult to make headway against them, even as diplomatic pressure is brought to bear on their Rwandan sponsors. (It is hard to imagine U.S. boots on the ground in Congo, so the participation of Congo’s army is key to winning against their enemies.) It is unclear, too, what alliances Rwanda has forged as it has fallen out of U.S. favor, and how those partnerships are shaping the warfare in Congo. In short, Congo is using the U.S. to beat Rwanda, but if the U.S. doesn’t manage to clear the M23, Congo may start to look elsewhere again.

I would say that Trump‑era policies do meaningfully escalate the contest with China. They significantly up the ante financially, diplomatically, and rhetorically. But they do not resolve some of the most important questions that arise from the critical metals conundrum. Safety and environmental standards at the mine face, corruption and the speed at which new non‑Chinese capacity can come online are barely addressed. And what is worse is that they tend to ignore local communities in the mining regions of Congo and other places where critical metals can be found in favor of capital-based élites that have proven themselves to be corrupt over and over again. In this way, crucially, the Trump administration risks repeating the mistakes of the past, and Congolese are right to fear more immiseration at both the hands of their own elites and the hands of leaders sitting in offices thousands of miles away.

The Diplomat is an affiliate of Bookshop.org and will earn a commission if you purchase a book using the link above.

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The Diplomat author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into U.S. Asia policy. This conversation with Nicholas Niarchos – journalist and author of “The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology, and The Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth” (Penguin Press 2026) – is the 502nd in “The Trans-Pacific View Insight Series.”

Explain the role of critical minerals in fueling geostrategic shifts and shaping global conflicts.

Critical minerals are some of the building blocks of the modern world. In a high-tech, high touch world, we can forget that all our vaunted technology is reliant on critical metals, things like cobalt, lithium and rare earths. Such metals are indispensable for batteries, EVs, renewable power, advanced electronics, and defense systems, and have become as central to state power as oil was in the 20th century.

Often the supply chain for these metals originates in or is controlled by countries that are at odds. For the United States and China, critical metals have become a key battleground, and one where Beijing has often won. It’s what I like to call the critical metals conundrum.

In my new book, “The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth,” I show how this conundrum affects resource‑rich but institutionally fragile states like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as even relatively stable nations like Morocco and Indonesia. The world is being buffeted by the Great Game dynamics that the scramble for critical metals has engendered. The rush for concessions and revenue heightens corruption, fuels local conflict, and reproduces “resource curse” dynamics – armed groups, abusive security forces, and dispossession of communities around mining sites.

In Washington, successive U.S. administrations have woken up to the critical metals conundrum. Recently President Donald J. Trump’s administration has taken an aggressive resource nationalist stance when it comes to metals and other natural resources. Project Vault – a new $12 billion stockpile scheme – was unveiled by Trump, who cast minerals as instruments of national resilience in a world where China has weaponized export controls.

Vice President J.D. Vance addressed a ministerial gathering on critical metals in February in Washington. Vance reported that Trump told him just after the operation to seize Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro: “As much as data centers and technology and all of these incredible things that we’re all working on matter, fundamentally you still have an economy that runs on real things,” he said, “And there is no realer thing than oil – and I would add to that there’s no realer thing than critical minerals.” Vance was adamant that the administration he served would wrest the mineral supply chain out of the hands of adversaries and into Washington’s orbit. “The international market for critical minerals is failing,” he said. “It’s failing to create domestic markets or dignified jobs for our labor forces, and it’s failing to keep our nations safe. Supply chains remain brittle and exceptionally concentrated. Asset and commodity prices are persistently depressed, driven downward by forces beyond any individual country’s control.” He continued, “we intend to build an ironclad network of new industrial supply chains to span the entire nation.”

It remains to be seen if the U.S. can in fact do this, but such aggressive posturing has already fuelled intense geostrategic competition, and even wars for resources in some of the world’s poorest countries, like the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Examine the strategic relevance of cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the global lithium-ion battery industry.

Congo is at the heart of this story. The country supplies roughly 70 percent of the world’s cobalt, and has rich reserves of lithium, gallium, tungsten, gold, tin, and tantalum. Cobalt a mineral that is central to the lithium‑ion battery revolution: It is used in most cellphones and in a great many of our electric vehicles. (The metal is used in the cathode of many lithium‑ion chemistries, stabilizing the battery and allowing for high energy density.) What’s more, the metal has applications for defense and the creation of key industrial alloys.

When I was reporting the book, a Congolese governor told me that his province was the “Saudi Arabia of Cobalt.” That in fact undersold the sheer concentration of world cobalt supply in the country: When you talk about cobalt, you are talking about Congo. Congo’s strategic relevance is twofold. First, the concentration of cobalt reserves and production there means that disruptions – whether from conflict, labor unrest, or political decisions – can ripple through global supply chains and affect everything from consumer electronics to EV deployment targets.

Second, control over Congolese cobalt has become a battleground among foreign corporations and states. Chinese, European, and other actors are vying for long‑term offtake in the country and duking it out for ownership of major industrial mines. Look at the Glencore-Orion deal signed in February: U.S. company Orion was founded in October 2025, and with U.S. government backing took a 40 percent stake in two of Congo’s richest mines.

Congo is absurdly well-stocked in minerals but that this wealth has translated into misery for many and immense profits for a few, making cobalt extraction both a strategic issue for the global battery industry and a locus of profound injustice. The artisanal mining sector – which represents about 20 percent of Congolese cobalt production, and sees people scrabble to mine cobalt and copper in unsafe pits – is far removed from corporate ESG branding. For me, this serves as the most visceral illustration of how cobalt’s global importance sits atop precarious, dangerous, and poorly remunerated labor.

Trump’s decision to build a Strategic Critical Minerals Reserve is partly a hedge against the volatility coming out of Congo, which remains a deeply unstable and governance-poor nation. The reserve is a way to buffer U.S. manufacturers from price spikes or supply disruptions linked to political instability or contract disputes in places like the southern mining region of Katanga. By calling the reserve “like the U.S. petroleum reserve” but for minerals, Trump has acknowledged that chokepoints in Congo can be as destabilizing for the EV and defense base today as Strait of Hormuz disruptions are for oil.

Analyze China’s role in exploiting Congo’s cobalt mines and positioning itself as the producer of 70-90 percent of lithium-ion batteries.

Despite occasional speechifying in Washington, China alone has expended the brainpower and capital to assemble the supply chain for a truly mass‑market electric vehicle industry. In the last 30 years Chinese companies and policy banks moved aggressively into Congolese cobalt and Copperbelt mining while U.S. and European firms retrenched, creating a new version of foreign domination that in some key ways mirrors earlier colonial and postcolonial ventures by Western powers.

Beijing now controls 70 percent of the world’s rare earths mining, some 80 percent of the world’s cobalt supply, and 90 percent of global critical metals processing. When Xi Jinping’s government restricted exports of rare earths during a tariff confrontation last year, it underscored its control of the global supply chain.

In Congo, this dominance is plain for everyone to see. Contemporary Chinese corporations and migrant workers are focused on cobalt and other battery metals. Through acquisitions and joint ventures, Chinese firms have come to dominate many of the big industrial cobalt mines and then ship ore or concentrate to China, where the country has also built a commanding position in refining and cathode production.

This underscored China’s broader position as producer of the overwhelming majority of lithium‑ion batteries. Control over both Congolese supply and midstream processing enables Beijing to set terms for much of the world’s electrification. The result is that Congo sits at the center of a global chessboard where the new global struggle between Beijing and Washington is playing out; Congolese workers and communities, of course, have borne the heaviest costs.

How have leading tech companies, including Apple, Tesla, etc., extracted critical minerals and contributed to the “dirtiest supply chain on earth”?

Despite years of critique, big tech firms still sit atop multi‑tier supply chains that pull cobalt and other minerals from Congolese mines – both industrial and artisanal –where abuses have been documented. They continue to feature China prominently in their supply chains. And studies continue to show child labor, dangerous hand‑dug pits, and serious health risks in the artisanal cobalt mining that feeds into global refineries before reaching cell manufacturers and, ultimately, brand‑name firms

Large tech and auto firms have pledged more stringent audits and traceability, yet they have barely budged from their position atop a chain of extraction that remains violent, opaque, and environmentally destructive. In my book, I follow the cobalt in a smartphone battery back to hand‑dug tunnels in Congo and show how supply chains for electronics remain as opaque as colonial-era supply chains that fed the world with critical materials like rubber and copper.

The demand for cobalt and other metals drives extraction practices on the ground while the public narratives of big tech firms highlight clean energy, sleek design, and corporate responsibility. Audits and certifications are often limited in scope and that corporate pledges – such as Apple’s moves to halt sourcing certain minerals from Congo – do not change the underlying economic or political structures that enable abuses.

What I realized as I delved deeper and deeper into the research for this book is that what we often think of as green technology is built on a bargain in which clean energy in one part of the world is paid for with corruption, pollution, and human suffering in another. The “dirtiest supply chain” is less a single scandal than a systemic pattern: opacity, outsourced responsibility, and a global division of labor that hides the true cost of our devices.

Evaluate the effectiveness of policies and investments from the United States and Europe in the critical minerals competition with China.

Since the end of the Cold War, fewer and fewer U.S. and European companies operated at the sites that critical resources come from; in the last 30 years, Chinese firms were left to occupy the space that Western mining houses and traders once dominated.

And people from the countries where these minerals come from remained shut on the outside.

In my book, I show how the United States and Europe largely slumbered through this period as China grew in influence in Congo and other countries; how they continued to sleep even as Beijing built a vertically integrated battery and EV industry; and how they have only just begun to wake up to the dangers of the supply chain in its current form.

Trump’s moves include Project Vault, Section 232 actions (tariffs), and calls for a “critical minerals trading bloc.” These are the most assertive U.S. attempt yet to counter China’s mineral leverage, but we must not forget that they operate from a position of entrenched dependency. For example, a recent 50,000 ton offtake agreement with Congo’s Gécamines actually originates at the Tenke Fungurume mine, which is controlled by a Chinese company.

The stockpile initiative pairs a $10 billion Export‑Import Bank loan with $2 billion of private finance, and Trump has embraced the Ex‑Im Bank as an industrial policy instrument to “broaden his industrial policy strategies and to compete with nations that depend on government subsidies.”

Coordination with U.S. allies is deepening: the new executive order “makes clear that the United States is not pursuing an America‑only approach,” instead embedding minerals into “a framework of allied cooperation, trade negotiation, and shared supply chain resilience.” European measures under the EU Critical Raw Materials Act, plus EU‑partner country agreements, point in the same direction. The trend appears to be toward diversification, “friend‑shoring” (the shifting of supply chains to friendly nations), and more midstream capacity outside China.

But the problem that the U.S. currently faces is that it lacks sufficient processing capabilities and it remains in second place to China in nearly all aspects of the critical metals supply chain. The near‑term impacts on Beijing’s 70–90 percent share in key segments will be limited.

“We will establish reference prices for critical minerals at each stage of production, pricing that reflects real‑world, fair‑market value,” one senior U.S. official said at a recent forum, referring to an effort to establish price floors and reference prices. These could reshape margins and investment incentives, but only if enough allies sign on to a de facto buyers’ cartel.

What’s more, Trump’s deals with Congo are predicated on U.S. help in vanquishing the M23 rebellion in the east of the country. But the rebels now control key defensive positions, and the poorly-equipped Congolese army is finding it difficult to make headway against them, even as diplomatic pressure is brought to bear on their Rwandan sponsors. (It is hard to imagine U.S. boots on the ground in Congo, so the participation of Congo’s army is key to winning against their enemies.) It is unclear, too, what alliances Rwanda has forged as it has fallen out of U.S. favor, and how those partnerships are shaping the warfare in Congo. In short, Congo is using the U.S. to beat Rwanda, but if the U.S. doesn’t manage to clear the M23, Congo may start to look elsewhere again.

I would say that Trump‑era policies do meaningfully escalate the contest with China. They significantly up the ante financially, diplomatically, and rhetorically. But they do not resolve some of the most important questions that arise from the critical metals conundrum. Safety and environmental standards at the mine face, corruption and the speed at which new non‑Chinese capacity can come online are barely addressed. And what is worse is that they tend to ignore local communities in the mining regions of Congo and other places where critical metals can be found in favor of capital-based élites that have proven themselves to be corrupt over and over again. In this way, crucially, the Trump administration risks repeating the mistakes of the past, and Congolese are right to fear more immiseration at both the hands of their own elites and the hands of leaders sitting in offices thousands of miles away.

The Diplomat is an affiliate of Bookshop.org and will earn a commission if you purchase a book using the link above.

Mercy A. Kuo is Senior Contributing Author at The Diplomat.

Africa critical minerals

Critical minerals supply chains

Democratic Republic of Congo

U.S.-China resource competition

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