Welcome to The Lost Debate, a show for Politically Ecclectics. I'm Robbie Gupta. Every now and then,

I read a book that is just seismic. Last year, it was Apple and China. We had that author on.

It was all about the supply chain in China. And I thought that book was incredible. I'm not alone.

But this year, I think the book people are going to be talking about is this book called

The Elements of Power.

And I interview the author Nicholas Nyarkos.

And this book, I can't even do it justice in a summary, but it talks about all of the different materials that go into,

things like cell phones, batteries, electric vehicles, et cetera, and also the supply chain,

and gets into the incredibly thorny questions of ethics around labor, including child labor in places like Congo,

geopolitical instability, corruption, including child labor, in places like Congo, geopolitical instability, corruption,

issues like balance of power and the increasing role of China and dominance of China in a lot of these areas. And he even gets into the evolution of those technologies. And I think challenges this

view that a move towards electric vehicles and that

kind of battery technology is actually a net win environmentally or for our human rights.

And so this is a pretty sweeping conversation. We only touch the surface of what's in this

book, but we really spend a lot of time on the Congo in

particular, which is where a lot of the mineral wealth that goes into batteries is concentrated,

and actually I think paints a picture of some of the major challenges that arise from our

increased use of this technology. At the end, we get into some solutions, you know,

what you can actually do

about these trends. None of those solutions are easy, but we at least try to be productive about

what you can do with this information. But you're going to love this episode. This is certainly,

I think, a really good way to start the year in the sense of like, I think raising the most

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