How conflict minerals make it into our phones

Published

3 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

Founder of IRL social media app charged with defrauding investors

Published

3 hours ago

August 27, 2025

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Founder of IRL social media app charged with defrauding investors

Boonchai Wedmakawand | Moment | Getty Images

The founder of the company behind the IRL social media app was charged with defrauding investors of $170 million in the company’s 2021 funding round, the Department of Justice said Wednesday.

A federal grand jury in Oakland federal court indicted Abraham Shafi, 38 of Hawaii, with wire fraud, securities fraud and obstruction in connection with the scheme, the DOJ said.

Shafi was the CEO of Get Together, the parent company of IRL. The company was valued at $1 billion after its 2021 Series C funding round. IRL, which shuttered in June 2023, was a platform for users to organize events and offline activities. It found some traction in 2018, ranking among Apple’s top social apps.

Shafi allegedly spent millions on incentive advertising to boost installs of the app leading up to the Series C while maintaining to investors that the company spent “very little” on getting new users, the DOJ said.

He then concealed the expense by invoicing it to another firm, the DOJ said.

The indictment also alleges that the CEO and his fiancée used investor funds for “luxury hotel stays, luxury clothing, purchases from home furnishing retailers, thousands of dollars for art classes, and hundreds of thousands of dollars for SHAFI’s wedding, including payments for wedding guests’ airfare and luxury hotels.”

YouTube-Fox standoff has high stakes as college football, NFL seasons kick off

Published

3 hours ago

August 27, 2025

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YouTube-Fox standoff has high stakes as college football, NFL seasons kick off

A news ticker outside Fox News headquarters reads: Grand jury votes to indict former President Donald Trump, at the News Corporation building in New York City, U.S., March 31, 2023.

Brendan Mcdermid | Reuters

In less than three days, college football will be showcasing one of its most-highly anticipated week one matchups ever, with top-ranked Texas heading on the road to play reigning national champion and third-ranked Ohio State.

Fox is airing the much-hyped game. YouTube TV subscribers may be out of luck.

Google‘s YouTube said on Monday it may remove channels like Fox Broadcast Network, Fox News and Fox Sports if the company is unable to reach a new agreement with Fox Corp. by 5 p.m. ET on Wednesday. The two sides are still in a standoff, putting YouTube TV customers at risk of missing out on major sporting events and hefty ad dollars in limbo.

For Google, the issue is how much Fox is charging for its content.

“Fox is asking for payments that are far higher than what partners with comparable content offerings receive,” YouTube wrote in its Monday blog post.

YouTube TV has roughly 9.4 million subscribers. Most notably for sports fans, Fox is the home for many upcoming football games, both college and pro. The NFL season begins next week, with Fox set to air games starting on Sunday, Sept. 7

YouTube pays broadcasters like Fox to carry their channels.

In addition to football, Fox shows Major League Baseball games, and the MLB regular season is entering its final stretch. Fox will be airing some playoff games that follow, as well as the World Series, which is scheduled to start in late October.

Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, weighed in on Tuesday.

“Google removing Fox channels from YouTube TV would be a terrible outcome,” he said on X. “Millions of Americans are relying on YouTube to resolve this dispute so they can keep watching the news and sports they want — including this week’s Big Game: Texas @ Ohio State. Get a deal done Google!”

The Texas – Ohio State game has added intrigue as its Arch Manning’s first marquee start as quarterback for the top-ranked Longhorns.

The hefty roster of Fox programs may be enough for sports fans to turn off YouTube TV in favor of other options. One place subscribers could turn to is Fox One, Fox’s standalone streaming service, which just launched last week, ahead of the NFL season. Fox One costs $19.99 per month or $199.99 annually.

The base plan for YouTube TV costs $82.99 per month and includes over 100 live channels and unlimited cloud DVR. If Fox does go offline for an extended period of time, YouTube will give members a $10 credit, the Google company said.

YouTube recently overtook Netflix, which has a market cap of $518 billion, as the top streaming platform in terms of audience engagement.

While YouTube and Fox have set a deadline of Wednesday to reach a deal, it’s common for carriage disputes to result in a deadline extension that would give the parties more time to negotiate.

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Technology

Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year, exec says

Published

4 hours ago

August 27, 2025

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Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year, exec says

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai during the Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, on May 10, 2023.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Google has eliminated more than one-third of its managers overseeing small teams, an executive told employees last week, as the company continues its focus on efficiencies across the organization.

“Right now, we have 35% fewer managers, with fewer direct reports” than at this time a year ago, said Brian Welle, vice president of people analytics and performance, according to audio of an all-hands meeting reviewed by CNBC. “So a lot of fast progress there.”

At the meeting, employees asked Welle and other executives about job security, “internal barriers” and Google’s culture after several recent rounds of layoffs, buyouts and reorganizations.

Welle said the idea is to reduce bureaucracy and run the company more efficiently.

“When we look across our entire leadership population, that’s mangers, directors and VPs, we want them to be a smaller percentage of our overall workforce over time,” he said.

The 35% reduction refers to the number of managers who oversee fewer than three people, according to a person familiar with the matter. Many of those managers stayed with the company as individual contributors, said the person, who asked not to be named because the details are private.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai weighed in at the meeting, reiterating the need for the company “to be more efficient as we scale up so we don’t solve everything with headcount.”

Google eliminated about 6% of its workforce in 2023, and has implemented cuts in various divisions since then. Alphabet finance chief Anat Ashkenazi, who joined the company last year, said in October that she would push cost cuts “a little further.” Google has offered buyouts to employees since January, and the company has slowed hiring, asking employees to do more with less.

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Regarding the buyouts, executives at the town hall said that a total of 10 product areas have presented “Voluntary Exit Program” offers. They’ve applied to U.S.-based employees in search, marketing, hardware and people operations teams this year.

Fiona Cicconi, Google’s chief people officer, said at last week’s meeting that between 3% and 5% of employees on those teams have accepted the buyouts.

“This has been actually quite successful,” she said, adding “I think we can continue it.”

Pichai said the company executed the voluntary buyouts after listening to employees, who said they preferred that route to blanket layoffs.

“It’s a lot of work that’s gone into implementing the VEP program, and I’m glad we’ve done it,” Pichai said. “It gives people agency, and I’m glad to see it’s worked out well.”

‘Wanting a career break’

Cicconi said one of the main reasons employees are taking the buyouts is because they want to take time off from work.

“It’s actually quite interesting to see who’s taking a VEP, and it’s people sort of wanting a career break, sometimes to take care of family members,” she said.

CNBC previously reported that the layoffs hurt morale as the company was downsizing while at the same time issuing blowout earnings and seeing its stock price jump. Alphabet’s shares are up 10% this year after climbing 36% in 2024 and 58% the year prior.

At another point in the town hall, employees asked if Google would consider a policy similar to Meta’s “recharge,” a month-long sabbatical that employees earn after five years at the company.

“We have a lot of leaves, not least our vacation, which is there for exactly that — resting and recharging,” said Alexandra Maddison, Google’s senior director of benefits.

She said the company is not going to offer paid sabbatical.

“We’re very confident that our current offering is competitive,” Maddison said.

Meta didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Other executives jumped in to compare the two companies’ benefits.

“I don’t think they have a VEP at Meta by the way,” Cicconi said.

Pichai then asked, to some laughs from the audience, “Should we incorporate all policies of Meta while we’re at it? Or should we only pick and choose the few policies we like?”