The Stack On Software and Sovereignty · 第 82 页

This is made clear by unpacking and sifting through the hardware on which The Stack depends. Silicon is far from the only important substance required in its manufacturing and maintenance, and the economics of its assembly are far from crystalline. The Stack ’ s need for more exotic elements is intense, and even relatively mundane consumer electronics and Cloud tethers (aka “ phones ” ) contain dozens of different minerals and metals sourced from every continent. Some crucial metals are drawn largely from rich and vulnerable mines in central Africa. In the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), for example, big chunks and little pebbles of tantalum (coltan), cassiterite (tin), wolframite (tungsten), and gold are pulled by hand from cold, sludgy mountain rivers, often by children, and eventually they make their way into the device component supply chain. ²² In 2009 a few mines here produced 13 percent of the world ’ s mined coltan, an inert metal used in ubiquitous tiny capacitors, especially for cell phones. ²³ From this same land, the Belgians took ivory, the Americans cobalt, and now billions of Earthlings everywhere carry little bits of Africa around with them in their pockets. The financial rewards of mining and trading in electronics have contributed to devastating effects in the region, including overlapping civil wars in the DRC and next door in Rwanda (from 1998 to 2003, upward of 5 million people died in the Congolese civil war, making it by one measure the deadliest conflict since World War II). ²⁴ Extraction and export of minerals, both legal and illegal, have been controlled and taxed by competing militias and organized crime; away from the relative stability of the cities, these groups continue to terrorize local populations and use the proceeds of this export trade to finance ongoing wars over local territorial positions. The smoldering conflict is a war partially financed with the manufacturing capital of smart phones and laptops; inevitably, the smooth skin of the device demands gore to feed its gloss. Deforestation in the pursuit of new sources of coltan in remote areas populated by gorillas has also led to an increase in the trade and consumption of bush meat, a quasi-cannibal economy that may also allegorize widespread war crimes in nearby villages. Exported minerals are sent to smelting companies, mostly in China, India, Thailand, and Malaysia, where they are mixed with metals sourced the world over (Australia and Brazil are the other major sources of coltan). More recently, the “ conflict minerals ” cause has taken its place among other Konyisms, but potentially effective legislation has been passed, including in the United States, that requires electronics manufactures to better police their own supply chains. ²⁵

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