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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.

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