The Elements of Power: A Story of War, Technology, and the Dirtiest Supply Chain on Earth

THE CRITICAL METALS CONUNDRUM HAS begun to register in the halls of power. The rush for critical minerals is fueling geostrategic shifts and shaping conflicts around the world. Soon after his inauguration in January 2025, President Donald J. Trump's team began scouring the globe for minerals, from Greenland to Ukraine, even if the people who lived over them were less than willing to countenance signing them over to the U.S.

Then, on a Wednesday in mid-March 2025, Bret Baier, the host of Fox's prime-time Special Report, turned his attention to another mineral-rich nation, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many of the minerals used in lithium-ion batteries exist in gigantic quantities in Congo, but they are hard to access, partly because the country has been racked by near-continuous conflict since 1997 and suffers from deep-seated corruption. Special Report was one of the most popular cable news shows on television, and Trump was known to be a regular viewer. That Wednesday, a special guest appeared on videolink: the president of Congo, Félix Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo.

Dressed in a midnight-blue tunic, Tshisekedi at first looked a little uncomfortable. It was his first time on Fox. But the president soon found his flow as he began to talk about the subterranean wealth of his country and a potential deal with the new U.S. presidential administration. "We have established partnerships with many other countries, and we think the United States of America, given its role and influence around the world, is an important partner to have," Tshisekedi told Baier. He was offering Congo's ores for metals like lithium and cobalt, as well as for tantalum and copper, which are key to other parts of electric devices. China had long controlled his country's natural resource trade, he said, and the U.S. was "waning" in Africa.

Tshisekedi had a problem: A rebel group, supported by Congo's pugnacious neighbor, Rwanda, had seized large areas of his country's East, and his corrupt army and government were ineffective at defending his people. While the sources of the conflict were many, it was partly fueled by a competition for valuable resources. He was turning to Trump to fund his fight using revenues from mining. If the president helped him, Tshisekedi implied, the U.S. would be allowed privileged access to battery minerals. "Whatever deal is made, Tshisekedi wants to make sure that it benefits the DRC," Karl Von Batten, the chairman of the Development Committee of the District of Columbia's Republican Party and one of Tshisekedi's lobbyists in Washington, told me. Tshisekedi wanted, as Von Batten put it, a deal that benefited his population, people who would "not just extract like the Chinese," but mostly he wanted money, weapons, and military might to help fight the invaders. In response, he was promising access to the rudiments of power, and a chance to beat China at its own game.

Trump was looking at foreign policy in transactional terms, a senior Republican official involved in shaping Africa policy told me on a visit to Washington that spring. The official was cautiously optimistic about a deal, but worried that the Congolese, who had a history of backsliding, might be preparing to stab them in the back. The prize was worth investigating, but he was worried that the U.S.'s prime foreign policy adversary, China, was also maneuvering to remain in control of vast swaths of the world's critical minerals. "Let's recognize that Tshisekedi could be just using this to get leverage in another deal with the Chinese," he said.

Trump's administration would end up penning a deal that would increase U.S. investment into Congo. Firms like KoBold, a mining firm backed by the likes of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates—men whose fortunes had been made in tech and were almost as large as Musk's—began eyeing potential deals in Congo for critical metals like lithium. "Under Tshisekedi, Chinese interests have continued to expand in Congo," the official told me. "As much as he purports to be Western-orientated, a question mark remains. It's always in the back of my mind: Are we being played?"

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BATTERY WARS HAD ALREADY CAUSED upheaval around the world, but people who use lithium-ion gizmos have also begun to focus on the detrimental effects at the bottom of the supply chain. When the iPhone 16 was released on September 20, 2024, for example, demonstrators gathered outside Apple Stores in over a dozen cities. Many of them waved Congo's colors—the vivid blue, red, and yellow of the country's flag—in the early-autumn air. They were there to decry what they called a "silent genocide" in Congo, and they accused Apple, a company worth some $2.6 trillion at the time, of profiting off the Congolese, some of the poorest people in the world. Apple was fueling a series of conflicts and condoning child labor, they said. The protesters exhorted would-be Apple buyers: "Don't scroll with bloody hands."