Your phone contains 40 milligrams of tantalum.
Before it was in your hand, it was in the dirt. For forty thousand years, the Batwa, Hunde, Hema, and Banyamulenge lived on that dirt.
Beneath them lies the world's cobalt, coltan, and gold.
Tech monopolies and foreign states outsource the slaughter. Rwanda arms the M23 militia. The Congolese state hires mercenaries. They burn the farms. They trap seven million people in displacement camps.
Militias force locals into pits at gunpoint. Trucks haul the coltan to Rwanda. Gold flies to Dubai. The blood is washed away. The minerals enter Western supply chains to build our electronics.
The profits buy combat drones. The weapons ship back to the Congo. The war continues. The state remains broken. The minerals stay cheap.