The electric vehicle revolution runs on cobalt, and a devastating new book exposes exactly whose hands dig it out of the ground. “The Elements of Power” by New Yorker journalist Nicolas Niarchos traces the battery supply chain from Congolese mines to Chinese factories to the EVs parked in American driveways, and the picture isn’t pretty.

The Fact: The Democratic Republic of Congo produces over 70% of the world’s cobalt, with Chinese companies controlling 80% of that output through mines and processing facilities.

The Reality: Every lithium-ion battery in every EV, every smartphone, and every laptop contains cobalt likely touched by this supply chain. That includes Tesla, BYD, and every manufacturer claiming “clean energy” credentials.

Who Actually Controls the Cobalt Supply Chain?

The numbers are stark. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, DRC produces 80% of the world’s cobalt, and Chinese state-owned enterprises and policy banks control 80% of that total output. Of the ten largest cobalt mines in the world, nine sit in DRC’s southern Katanga region. Half are owned by Chinese companies. Chinese refineries, which process 60 to 90 percent of global cobalt, rely heavily on DRC ore.

Niarchos, who was detained by Congolese secret police while researching the book, documents how this dominance emerged through calculated strategy. The 2007 Sicomines deal gave Chinese partners mining rights to cobalt and copper in exchange for infrastructure development. Beijing invested while Western companies found the DRC too risky, too unstable, too complicated. The result: China now controls the most critical component of the battery supply chain while Western automakers scramble to find alternatives.

The book centers on an artisanal miner named Odilon Kajumba Kilanga, one of millions working with little more than sharpened steel rods in conditions that would be illegal anywhere in the developed world. Children work as “porteurs” or “ramasseurs,” carrying ore in plastic sacks or picking through slag. There may be hundreds of thousands of them. No one really knows.

What Elon Musk Got Wrong About Webcams and Child Labor

Niarchos uses Tesla CEO Elon Musk to illustrate the disconnect between corporate messaging and ground-level reality. When shareholders raised concerns about child labor in Tesla’s cobalt supply chain, Musk responded by promising to install webcams at mines. For Niarchos, this demonstrates ignorance of how the system actually works.

Children mostly work above ground as carriers and sorters, not in the mechanized mines where cameras might capture them. The cobalt from formal operations gets commingled with artisanal output somewhere between the mine and Chinese refineries. By the time it reaches a Tesla battery, tracing its exact origin becomes nearly impossible.

Forbes reported in 2024 that Musk’s promised webcam never materialized as expected. Instead, Tesla’s main cobalt supplier posts a single satellite photo of the mine monthly, taken from orbit. The company conducts scheduled third-party audits that give mines advance notice, allowing time to clear out any problematic workers before inspectors arrive.

The BYD Story the Book Tells

Perhaps most interesting for EV industry watchers, Niarchos profiles Wang Chuanfu, the founder of BYD, as a case study in how China came to dominate both battery manufacturing and cobalt supply chains. Wang grew up in poverty, lost his parents young, and built BYD by copying Japanese battery technology and driving down costs through labor-intensive manufacturing.

The book describes BYD as emblematic of China’s broader strategy: state-backed corporations willing to operate in unstable regions, supported by government policy and long-term capital that Western investors won’t provide. Small-scale Chinese entrepreneurs work throughout Congo and across Africa, operating what Niarchos compares to the American gold rush.

BYD is now the world’s largest EV manufacturer by sales volume, having surpassed Tesla in global battery-electric vehicle sales in 2025. The company’s vertical integration, including in-house battery production, means its vehicles sit at the end of the same cobalt supply chain Niarchos documents.

What’s Actually Changing?

The Biden administration invested in building an alternative cobalt supply chain, including research into silicon and sodium-based batteries that could reduce cobalt dependence. In June 2025, President Trump oversaw the signature of a peace deal and minerals agreement between Rwanda and Congo, stating that the U.S. would get “a lot of mineral rights” from Congo.

DRC itself has pushed back against Chinese dominance. In February 2025, the country implemented a four-month cobalt export ban, followed by strict quotas, attempting to leverage its 70% market share into better terms. The strategy is risky. China Molybdenum alone produced over 61,000 metric tons of cobalt in the first half of 2025, a 13% increase despite export restrictions.

Some automakers are pursuing alternatives. As EVXL previously reported, GM has unveiled lithium manganese-rich batteries promising 33% higher energy density than Chinese LFP batteries at similar production costs, potentially reducing cobalt dependence. Tesla has expanded its use of lithium iron phosphate batteries, which contain no cobalt, in its mass-market vehicles. But these chemistries involve trade-offs in energy density, weight, and cold-weather performance.

EVXL’s Take

This book arrives at a peculiar moment for the EV industry. Chinese automakers like BYD are capturing market share across Europe while Western manufacturers retreat from EV commitments and write off billions in failed battery investments. The supply chain that Niarchos documents isn’t a distant abstraction. It’s the foundation on which the entire EV transition rests.

The uncomfortable truth is that “clean energy” has never been entirely clean. It’s cleaner than burning fossil fuels, but the cobalt in your EV battery almost certainly passed through a supply chain that includes child labor, environmental destruction, and Chinese state-backed corporations operating in one of the world’s most unstable regions. The U.S. is attempting to build alternatives, but those alternatives are years away from matching the scale and cost-efficiency of what China has already built.

For prospective EV buyers, this doesn’t mean abandoning electric vehicles. Internal combustion engines carry their own ethical baggage, from oil extraction to refinery pollution. But it does mean understanding what you’re actually buying into. The EV industry’s feel-good marketing about saving the planet conveniently omits the Congolese miners making it possible.

We’ve been documenting China’s dominance of critical battery supply chains for years, and Niarchos provides the ground-level reporting that turns statistics into human faces. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand why the battery wars matter, and who’s paying the real price for the energy transition.

“The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth” by Nicolas Niarchos is published by William Collins.

Editorial Note: This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of AI to ensure technical accuracy and archive retrieval. All insights, industry analysis, and perspectives were provided exclusively by Haye Kesteloo and our other EVXL authors, editors, and Youtube partners to ensure the “Human-First” perspective our readers expect.