How conflict minerals make it into our phones

Published

2 years ago

February 15, 2023

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Tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold. All of these minerals are found in our electronics and all are considered conflict minerals, due to their potential origin in the Democratic Republic of Congo. While the African country contains an estimated $24 trillion in untapped mineral resources, it remains mired in poverty and violence, and mining these four metals can help fund armed conflict in the region.

But the metals are integral to consumer electronics. In a smartphone, for example, tin is used to solder metal components together, while tantalum is used in capacitors, which store electrical energy. Tungsten is used in the components that make a phone vibrate, and gold is used in circuit board connectors.

In the past decade, African countries, intergovernmental organizations and companies have ramped up their efforts to clean up mineral supply chains. But consumers still can’t be sure if the minerals in their electronics are fully conflict-free, or if the mines where they originated are dangerous, environmentally destructive, or use child labor.

“The whole process is muddied,” says Oluwole Ojewale, the Regional Organized Crime Observatory coordinator for Central Africa at the Institute for Security Studies in Dakar, Senegal.

That’s largely because in the DRC and surrounding countries, hundreds of thousands of people work in the informal mining sector, toiling away using hand tools in what are known as artisanal and small-scale mines. This type of mining can be hazardous and difficult to regulate, but it’s also one of the few sources of income available to some of the world’s poorest men and women.

So while companies like Apple, Microsoft, Intel and Tesla put out extensive reports on conflict minerals every year, usually stating that there is no reason to believe the minerals they source help to support armed groups, corruption and instability at mine sites means there are no guarantees.

Apple, Intel and Tesla did not reply to requests for comment, while a Microsoft spokesperson stated, “Microsoft remains committed to responsible and ethical sourcing and takes this issue very seriously.”

“You have the international market that has these perfect standards,” explains Joanne Lebert, the executive director at IMPACT, a nongovernmental organization focused on improving natural resource governance in areas where security and human rights are at risk.

“They want perfect environmental conditions. They want all the development factors taken in, like gender equality and anti-corruption and this and that. They want the perfect package, but that’s not the situation on the ground,” Lebert said.

The situation on the ground

Artisanal miners in the South Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo mining cassiterite, the primary ore of tin.

GRIFF TAPPER/AFP via Getty Images

Only about 2% of the world’s tin, tungsten and gold comes from the DRC and surrounding countries, so mining these minerals doesn’t usually help fund armed conflict. But 67% of the world’s tantalum comes from the DRC and Rwanda. And the eastern DRC, where these minerals are found, is mired in violence stemming from historical tensions between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups.

After the Second Congo War ended in 2003, a transitional government was unable to contain armed groups who perpetrated violence against civilians, thus giving rise to self-defense militias. Today, rampant poverty, corruption, and institutional chaos continues to drive many Congolese to join one of the over 120 armed groups operating in the eastern DRC.

“Before the artisanal miners can access the coltan mines or other places, they have to pay taxes to the armed group,” Ojewale said. Coltan is the metallic ore from which tantalum is extracted.

Beyond taxation, these groups fully take over some mines, either extracting the ore themselves or using forced labor, purchasing arms with the proceeds. And conditions in artisanal mines can be quite dangerous.

“I think in the past four or five years, every year we’ve had people being buried underground,” said Nicolas Kyalangalilwa, a pastor and civil society leader in Bukavu, a city in the eastern DRC. “So, it is a very dangerous job, both from a security side, from a financial stability side, from a health and safety side.”

Such conditions also apply to other minerals found in the DRC, like cobalt, which is surging in demand due to its importance in batteries for electric vehicles. Around 70% of the world’s cobalt is mined in the relatively safer southern DRC. It may not be benefiting armed groups, but there are still concerns over working conditions and the use of child labor.

Efforts to trace minerals

With the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010, U.S. companies are required to disclose their use of conflict minerals.

“If you’re a big company, you’re a name brand, you’re consumer-facing, you can easily spend a million on this,” explained Chris Bayer, principal investigator at the nonprofit International Development. “And the big brands that we all know, they would spend a lot more.”

This has given rise to a web of organizations working to trace and verify supply chains. For example, Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, Intel, Samsung and hundreds of other companies are members of the Responsible Minerals Initiative, which maintains a list of smelters and refiners that have undergone an independent audit to ensure that they’re sourcing responsibly. In its most recent conflict minerals report, Apple said it has removed 163 smelters and refiners from its supply chain since 2009, including 12 in 2021.

Then there are the organizations actually doing on-the-ground tracing and due diligence at mine sites. The International Tin Supply Chain Initiative is the main player in the DRC and surrounding region, working in over 2,000 mines. The organization trains government agents to tag and seal bags that come from registered mines. But no system is foolproof, and if agents are corrupt, they might accept minerals from outside, unregistered mines and tag them anyway.

“You also have the issue where the agents were actually selling the tag to other mines,” says Guillaume de Brier, a natural resources researcher at the International Peace Information Service. “At the end, even when the system was working, those minerals were melted with the minerals from other mines.”

Ultimately, it’s just really hard to stop bad actors in the system. But experts say the answer is not boycotting minerals from the DRC or from artisanal and small-scale mines overall.

A woman in the South Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo breaks stones that contain cassiterite, the primary ore of tin.

Tom Stoddart/Getty Images

“If we recognize, for example, that artisanal mining is the most important rural, non-farming activity, employing tens of millions throughout Africa, generally, 30 to 40 percent of which are women, making sure that we’re decriminalizing that and recognizing that as legitimate is the first step to supporting them,” Lebert of IMPACT said.

Lasting change will likely only come when the DRC stabilizes.

“Ultimately the conditions that we see on the ground or the human rights issues that are of concern to us all are very much linked to governance, poverty,” Lebert said. “We need to get at these more systemic issues if we want to see lasting changes in supply chains, not just de-risking in the short or medium term for a company’s benefit.”

Watch the video to learn more about why it’s so difficult to rid the supply chain of conflict minerals.

Technology

Google agrees to pay Texas $1.4 billion data privacy settlement

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2 days ago

May 9, 2025

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Google agrees to pay Texas .4 billion data privacy settlement

A Google corporate logo hangs above the entrance to the company’s office at St. John’s Terminal in New York City on March 11, 2025.

Gary Hershorn | Corbis News | Getty Images

Google agreed to pay nearly $1.4 billion to the state of Texas to settle allegations of violating the data privacy rights of state residents, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Friday.

Paxton sued Google in 2022 for allegedly unlawfully tracking and collecting the private data of users.

The attorney general said the settlement, which covers allegations in two separate lawsuits against the search engine and app giant, dwarfed all past settlements by other states with Google for similar data privacy violations.

Google’s settlement comes nearly 10 months after Paxton obtained a $1.4 billion settlement for Texas from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to resolve claims of unauthorized use of biometric data by users of those popular social media platforms.

“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law,” Paxton said in a statement on Friday.

“For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won,” said Paxton.

“This $1.375 billion settlement is a major win for Texans’ privacy and tells companies that they will pay for abusing our trust.”

Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said the company did not admit any wrongdoing or liability in the settlement, which involves allegations related to the Chrome browser’s incognito setting, disclosures related to location history on the Google Maps app, and biometric claims related to Google Photo.

Castaneda said Google does not have to make any changes to products in connection with the settlement and that all of the policy changes that the company made in connection with the allegations were previously announced or implemented.

“This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed,” Castaneda said.

“We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.”

Technology

Virtual chronic care company Omada Health files for IPO

Published

2 days ago

May 9, 2025

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Virtual chronic care company Omada Health files for IPO

Omada Health smart devices in use.

Courtesy: Omada Health

Virtual care company Omada Health filed for an IPO on Friday, the latest digital health company that’s signaled its intent to hit the public markets despite a turbulent economy.

Founded in 2012, Omada offers virtual care programs to support patients with chronic conditions like prediabetes, diabetes and hypertension. The company describes its approach as a “between-visit care model” that is complementary to the broader health-care ecosystem, according to its prospectus.

Revenue increased 57% in the first quarter to $55 million, up from $35.1 million during the same period last year, the filing said. The San Francisco-based company generated $169.8 million in revenue during 2024, up 38% from $122.8 million the previous year.

Omada’s net loss narrowed to $9.4 million during its first quarter from $19 million during the same period last year. It reported a net loss of $47.1 million in 2024, compared to a $67.5 million net loss during 2023.

The IPO market has been largely dormant across the tech sector for the past three years, and within digital health, it’s been almost completely dead. After President Donald Trump announced a sweeping tariff policy that plunged U.S. markets into turmoil last month, taking a company public is an even riskier endeavor. Online lender Klarna delayed its long-anticipated IPO, as did ticket marketplace StubHub.

But Omada Health isn’t the first digital health company to file for its public market debut this year. Virtual physical therapy startup Hinge Health filed its prospectus in March, and provided an update with its first-quarter earnings on Monday, a signal to investors that it’s looking to forge ahead.

Omada contracts with employers, and the company said it works with more than 2,000 customers and supports 679,000 members as of March 31. More than 156 million Americans suffer from at least one chronic condition, so there is a significant market opportunity, according to the company’s filing.

In 2022, Omada announced a $192 million funding round that pushed its valuation above $1 billion. U.S. Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Fidelity’s FMR LLC are the largest outside shareholders in the company, each owning between 9% and 10% of the stock.

“To our prospective shareholders, thank you for learning more about Omada. I invite you join our journey,” Omada co-founder and CEO Sean Duffy said in the filing. “In front of us is a unique chance to build a promising and successful business while truly changing lives.”

WATCH: The IPO market is likely to pick up near Labor Day, says FirstMark’s Rick Heitzmann

Technology

Google would need to shift up to 2,000 employees for antitrust remedies, search head says

Published

2 days ago

May 9, 2025

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Google would need to shift up to 2,000 employees for antitrust remedies, search head says

Liz Reid, vice president, search, Google speaks during an event in New Delhi on December 19, 2022.

Sajjad Hussain | AFP | Getty Images

Testimony in Google‘s antitrust search remedies trial that wrapped hearings Friday shows how the company is calculating possible changes proposed by the Department of Justice.

Google head of search Liz Reid testified in court Tuesday that the company would need to divert between 1,000 and 2,000 employees, roughly 20% of Google’s search organization, to carry out some of the proposed remedies, a source with knowledge of the proceedings confirmed.

The testimony comes during the final days of the remedies trial, which will determine what penalties should be taken against Google after a judge last year ruled the company has held an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search.

The DOJ, which filed the original antitrust suit and proposed remedies, asked the judge to force Google to share its data used for generating search results, such as click data. It also asked for the company to remove the use of “compelled syndication,” which refers to the practice of making certain deals with companies to ensure its search engine remains the default choice in browsers and smartphones.