Apple To Release List of Companies That Build Its Products Around the World

mathfeel writes "Indulge me in some post hoc reasoning here: After last week's episode of This American Life 'Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory,' a very interesting show, Apple announced that 'For the first time, Apple has released a list of companies that build its products around the world. In another first, the company also announced that it will allow an independent third party to check on working conditions at those factories, and to make its findings public.' But before you celebrate Apple's gesture (or complain about the potential increase in electronic price): 'It doesn't appear that Apple's partnership with the FLA will increase transparency in this regard either. The FLA will audit 5% of the factories that make Apple products, but like Apple, it will not name which ones it checks or where it finds violations.'"

Comments

Then what?

[betterunixthanunix]

They will check working conditions and...then do what when they find violations? Is there any reason to think that Apple will stop doing business with factories that mistreat workers? Is this going to be another sham like Apple's treatment of the conflict minerals situation (where Steve Jobs basically threw his hands up and said that Apple could do nothing about it)?

Re:Then what?

[jhoegl]

Look, we live in a world now of Capitalism.
There is no give and take where Capitalism and socialism melded together to form a better world for us all.
Instead, it is all about the money and not about those that get trampled on in that endeavor.
So, if you want to placate the masses, you offer empty gestures and convoluted solutions to problems that will never go away in a Capitalistic society.
Dont even think about "voting with your wallet", as there is no competition anymore. Patenting everything from taking a shit to clicking a button took care of that.

Re:Then what?

[UnknowingFool]

You mean this statement:

Yes. We require all of our suppliers to certify in writing that they use conflict few materials. But honestly there is no way for them to be sure. Until someone invents a way to chemically trace minerals from the source mine, it’s a very difficult problem.

Apple can ask their suppliers to use conflict free minerals (which they do). But technically Steve is correct; To guarantee that the minerals were 100% conflict free (indirectly through suppliers' suppliers) is an impossible task that even Dell acknowledged.

The mining of these minerals takes place long before a final product is assembled, making it difficult, if not impossible, to trace the minerals' origins. In addition, many of the minerals are smelted together with recycled metals, and at that point it is virtually impossible to trace the minerals to their source.

The problem is hard enough for conflict free diamonds and each of those gems can be uniquely identified and separated. How do you identify the source of every single particle in a product that is smelted with other materials?

Re:Then what?

[forkfail]

Doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

The world may be royally screwed up; as individuals, we may not have a whole lot of power to do anything about the Way Things Are (tm), but that shouldn't stop us from striving. If nothing else, there is intrinsic value in the attempt. And who knows - enough individuals exerting pressure may, if not radically change the nature of man and the world, at least mitigate the damage of some of the worst that we do.

Re:Then what?

[jhoegl]

I am not saying dont try, I was responding to the current state of affairs that brought us to this point.
Perhaps public pressure will do it, but then again public pressure over 2 years evolved into this retort by Apple.
Perhaps "voting with your wallet" will do it, but then again it will take a long time, an expensive effort, and people caring to make it happen.
Perhaps voting in people that will take these issues seriously will be the ticket, but then again... read above.
So yes, change can happen, but in our ADHD, 30 second outrage world, how long will it take? What will be the key? Perhaps a vendor setting themselves on fire?

Re:Then what?

[gnasher719]

They will check working conditions and...then do what when they find violations? Is there any reason to think that Apple will stop doing business with factories that mistreat workers? Is this going to be another sham like Apple's treatment of the conflict minerals situation (where Steve Jobs basically threw his hands up and said that Apple could do nothing about it)?

1. Apple actually _has_ stopped doing business with companies in the past due to mistreating workers and other reasons. Apple has also in the last year made companies repay $3.3 million in fees that workers paid to agencies to find jobs.

2. The situation with "conflict minerals" is actually a lot more difficult than you think. There are plenty of honest and hard-working communities losing out at the moment because nobody knows what paperwork would have to be filled out to be allowed to buy their products.

Re:Then what?

[betterunixthanunix]

Perhaps "voting with your wallet" will do it, but then again it will take a long time, an expensive effort, and people caring to make it happen.

Unfortunately, nobody cares enough. Did people even reduce their purchases of new electronics when they learned about the conflict minerals situation, or did they forget about the war the minute they saw a new cell phone on the market? Did people stop buying sneakers when they found out that children were being forced to work to produce the shoes? People in America simply do not care about the troubles of other countries, as long as they can continue to live comfortable high-tech lives.

If people were willing to do something like this, we could affect change:

http://library.thinkquest.org/26504/

Re:Then what?

[UnknowingFool]

How about not using tantalum?

That isn't what was asked. Jobs was asked whether they use conflict minerals and he answered truthfully that is impossible to guarantee 100% that they don't as they can only really control a few levels of manufacturing. Your solution to replace tantalum which only addresses one of the many minerals that are in question. That doesn't really solve the whole problem. Also, since the main source of tantalum is Australia which isn't a conflict region, all that really does is take away a legitimate source.

As for Steve Jobs' statement, why not apply it to working conditions as well? After all, Apple must have its factories in other countries, just like they must use conflict metals, so how are they supposed to ensure that the factories are not mistreating workers? Dell does it too, right?

Well, Apple asks that their suppliers follow humane working conditions but can they control every aspect of the supply chain? Can they guarantee that their suppliers' suppliers do the same? No company can and for the record, Dell (and many other companies) uses the same manufacturers as Apple. For instance Foxconn.

Re:Then what?

[gnasher719]

How about not using tantalum?

So what about communities who mine the stuff, doing everything completely by the book. Do you think they should end up in poverty because bad things happened in a completely different place in the world? This problem is destroying honest people's livelihood right now, you want to make it worse?

Re:Then what?

[betterunixthanunix]

The situation with "conflict minerals" is actually a lot more difficult than you think. There are plenty of honest and hard-working communities losing out at the moment because nobody knows what paperwork would have to be filled out to be allowed to buy their products.

1. We do not have to use tantalum. There have always been alternatives, and now there are alternatives that meet or exceed tantalum's characteristics.
2. How much did Apple invest in research on tantalum alternatives, while they were busy "wowing" people with devices built using tantalum (and by extension, financing the war)?
3. The problem with conflict minerals is simple: people are committing war crimes in Africa while fighting over mineral deposits. That is not an acceptable situation and mineral suppliers should be refusing to ship minerals that were obtained in that region; if the mineral suppliers cannot be trusted not to ship central African tantalum, then all the tantalum producers will have to suffer until the conflict in Africa is over.

Really, all of these arguments apply to working conditions. Why does Apply have to make use of factories in countries with poor labor laws? Why not hire some American, Canadian, or European workers to produce electronics? It would eat into profits and drive up prices? So would switching away from tantalum and other conflict minerals.

Re:Then what?

[Guy Harris]

(and all the profit they made on iProducts, which were all made using conflict minerals)

Presumably you're saying that for some reason more than just "they contain tantalum capacitors", as tantalum isn't ipso facto a conflict mineral, unless you're counting Australian rules football and capoeira matches as "conflicts". E.g., perhaps most or all of the tantalum used in capacitors comes from those countries, or perhaps most or all of the tantalum used in capacitors used in Chinese factories comes from those countries, etc..

Re:Then what?

[Guy Harris]

(and all the profit they made on iProducts, which were all made using conflict minerals)

Presumably you're saying that for some reason more than just "they contain tantalum capacitors", as tantalum isn't ipso facto a conflict mineral, unless you're counting Australian rules football and capoeira matches as "conflicts". E.g., perhaps most or all of the tantalum used in capacitors comes from those countries, or perhaps most or all of the tantalum used in capacitors used in Chinese factories comes from those countries, etc..

Actually, in 2009, Australian production dropped significantly ("The Government of Western Australia reported that tantalite production was 105 t of contained tantalum pentoxide (Ta2O5) in 2009 compared with 680 t of contained Ta2O5 in 2008 (Government of Western Australia, Department of Mines and Petroleum, 2010, p. 23)."), due to a mine suspending operation due to market conditions ("Talison Minerals Pty. Ltd. suspended production at the Wodgina Mine, the world’s leading producing operation of tantalum ore, owing to the global financial downturn and greater market share going to central Africa, where tantalum minerals were mined under conditions of armed conflict and human rights abuses [northeastern regions of Congo (Kinshasa)]."). So the chances that the tantalum in a capacitor was conflict tantalum went up substantially in 2009. Dunno what's happened since then. (See the Wikipedia article on coltan for summary tables.)

Re:Then what?

[jo_ham]

Actually yes, in Apple's most recent audit report they mention that they have actually stopped using some suppliers after finding continued violations of their working practices.

Joining the FLA just adds a further layer of third party oversight.

They've been releasing these audits publicly since 2007, but this time (presumably after Steve was out of the picture) they have decided more PR is required in response to all the "suicide iPad factory zomg!" stories.

Like any large company that outsources labour, they are not going to have a spotless record.

The summary, in obvious slashdot fashion, is doing the best it can to make this announcement as negative as possible, but the fact of the matter is the audits themselves being public is not new (although the supplier list is), and that the FLA's role is one of third party auditing and they have access to the whole of Apple's supply chain - that they'll only audit a small percentage each time (of their choosing) is more an indication of their manpower and the vast size of Apple's operations than anything else.

Re:Then what?

[jaymz666]

It conveys the sentiment. Unthinking masses of people who only want to be trendy and follow the herd. Sheeple.

Re:Then what?

[gutnor]

Why not hire some American, Canadian, or European workers to produce electronics? It would eat into profits and drive up prices?

You know, in a free(-ish) market, this is not a choice. You must use the cheapest, most profitable method that is available. The reason is that if you don't, somebody else will, and they will eventually drive you out of business.

The real question is not why Apple do not hire American, it why people do not want to buy american. If the consumer does not care about what/who made his gadget, the condition, moral, social impact, ... then they will get the cheapest possible standard for all those criteria. Consumers drive the show.

Actually, the fact that Apple is even looking at the problem, means that there is pressure coming from the consumer. This is a good thing. Save your energy bashing Apple and use it instead to inform the consumer.

Re:Then what?

[93 Escort Wagon]

It conveys the sentiment. Unthinking masses of people who only want to be trendy and follow the herd. Sheeple.

Problem is, "unthinking" also applies to the one using the Apple/sheeple meme. It's just a knee-jerk response that doesn't add anything to the conversation. It's basically a smug way of stating one's own (perceived) superiority while conveniently ignoring the wider problem - the fact that this is a wider issue that touches most all tech-related companies we do business with, not just Apple.

Re:Then what?

[jo_ham]

It's immature and a sweeping generalisation, but you know that.

In the same way that not all Linux users are unwashed, friendless nerds living off hot pockets, rent-free in their parents' basements, not all Apple users are "sheeple".

To use it as your primary argument just smacks of immaturity and a lack of a real argument.

I really don't mind debating the pros and cons of Apple, and wider technology stories as a whole, but I've got to have something to go on. If you're just going to stand there and tell me I have silly hair then I'm just going to find an adult to talk to instead.

Re:Then what?

[JohnnyMindcrime]

Erm, how about those that queue on a day when nothing new is released but just because it's a new Apple store that's opening?

Sheep queue or cluster together because they are about to get something, like food, for example. The above behaviour is more akin to deranged magpies attracted by something shiny and somewhat insulting to sheep.

Re:Then what?

[JohnnyMindcrime]

No, it does not.

But not recognising that Apple users are pretty much unique in the tech gadget world for queuing outside stores for a new piece of electronic jewelry, and that therefore the OP was making a valid point, does make you a fanboi.

And let me correct you on one thing - the term "credibility" is not a fixed attribute, it is based solely on opinion - therefore something that may seem credible to me may not seem credible to you. And whilst we could argue our difference of opinions ad infinitum, it is unlikely that either of us would change our viewpoint as a result of the other's reasoned argument. Therefore let's not waste time discussing differences in opinion any further.

However, not recognising that level of credibility is based purely on opinion has in itself allowed you to make a sweeping generalisation in assuming everyone else shares your opinion. Thus you paint yourself as a hypocrite also.

Finally, you also suffer from two dimensional blinkered thinking if you believe that someone with whom you do not share the same opinion automatically becomes your enemy. Who was it who said "I may not agree with what you say but I defend your right to say it"?

Clearly, since this is a discussion web site, I defend your right to say what you like on here, but that doesn't mean I necessarily agree with it - and definitely doesn't mean that when I sign off shortly to go to bed that as I fall into slumber I will be plotting the demise of jo_harn. If anything, you also suffer from an inflated ego if you seriously believe I care that much about your opinion in the first place.

So, no, you are not a rabid fanboi. You are a hypocritical rabid fanboi with an over-inflated ego.

Re:Then what?

[PopeRatzo]

I've seen no evidence that Foxconn mistreats their workers

You haven't looked. I would recommend the work of journalist and monologuist Mike Daisey, who currently has a one-man show off-broadway called "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs". In it, he documents his visit to a Chinese Foxconn plant in Shenzhen and describes the unbelievably atrocious working conditions there (including the deaths of many Foxconn workers - not due to suicide - among them a man who dropped dead after working a non-optional 34 hour shift).

In the NPR series This American Life, Ira Glass has a group of investigators, including NYTimes journalist Nicholas Kristof fact-check Daisey's almost unbelievable claims about this factory (that builds iPhones, by the way). After hundreds of interviews with workers and having at least one investigator go undercover there - getting a job, the whole thing - they corroborate his story.

Nicholas Kristof by the way, has written extensively and eloquently about the Foxconn plant and working conditions in Chinese technology factories used by companies like Apple.

I highly recommend that you give a listen to the This American Life episode with and about Daisey. It's easy to find and I've given you more than enough google clues to find it with one search. The first half of the story is part of Daisey's monologue and the second half is about the efforts of Glass, Kristof, etal to corroborate. You can also easily find Kristof's several extensive stories in the NYT online, though they might be behind a paywall.

Take a listen and a look and then come back and tell me if you still have "seen no evidence" that Foxconn mistreats their workers.

One image that sticks in my head for some reason is the dormitories the workers are required to live in. They are 12'x12' windowless rooms with sixteen beds stacked like cordwood, with the space between the stacks of beds so small that a normal-sized American could not move in them. The factory floor and assembly lines are of course monitored by CCTV cameras to make sure there are no unwarranted breaks or work slowdowns, and those same CCTV cameras are in each of the dormitory rooms to monitor the workers in their few off-hours including when they are asleep (the lights stay on).

You have to actually hear the radio show and read the many Kristof stories to get to the really ugly stuff though. On the podcast version of the show (available through iTunes) you also hear an interview with Debby Chan Sze Wan, who was part of an Hong Kong-based investigative team who looked into Foxconn's plants.

Have at it, friend, and then come back and talk to me about the "freedom" that would come from having multi-national corporations operate unregulated and without workers being allowed to organize into unions. And whether the suicides at Foxconn were just examples of workers exercising their "freedom".

Remember, the factories in Shenzhen are models for the manufacturing world.

Apple Should Be Commended

[Anonymous Coward]

Look. Almost EVERY company that makes almost EVERYTHING in your home participates in the awful near-slave manufacturing that goes on in China and other third world countries.

Their motivation aside, Apple is by far one of the best and most responsible manufacturers, simply by doing the (very very) little that they do. Singling out Apple is just Apple hate.

Re:Apple Should Be Commended

[chinakow]

I think that point is not to absolve Apple for their practices because they make a gesture. The point is that we should be looking at the whole of manufacturing industry and condemning them for their collective practices and looking at consumer culture that ignores these practices. Chastise those who perform and those who enable wrong actions. So yes, Apple does something wrong but if we focus on only Apple we are tacitly excusing the same action in Dell and Lenovo and HP, and really, which manufacturer ships more units, HP or Apple?

Re:Apple Should Be Commended

[Telvin_3d]

See, this is why most companies just say 'screw it, ignore the entire mess'

I doubt there is a single person on Slashdot who can honestly say that they don't own a single thing that was produced at some level using what is effectively slave labor. Apple is doing more than 99% of companies do to ensure that their workers are treated properly around the world. Not perfect, but better than most. And the reward for even acknowledging the problem is righteous condemnation from the peanut gallery while companies that brush it under the rug get a pass.

Re:Apple Should Be Commended

[AK Marc]

Chinese slave work? If there was some African country with 95% unemployment and an average wage of $0.50/hr, if someone put a plant there and employed 1,000,000 people at $1/hr, would that be slave work, or an improvement for the workers? Pushing US ideals on everyone doesn't work if they don't share our opinions.

Labour standards

[slackware 3.6]

A foreign country should not be able to sell goods in a country like the US (or any other) unless it follows the labour standards of the country it is selling its goods in.

Re:Labour standards

[Anonymous Coward]

Soooo flip that on end. Does that mean in the US we can follow the labor rules of china if we only sell to them?

And yes I am being a smart ass...

Re:Labour standards

[TheRaven64]

Totally agree. I've proposed this before, and it's really the only solution to the problems of globalism. The US and EU should be imposing import tariffs on anything imported from places with laxer worker rights and environmental protection.

Re:Labour standards

[vakuona]

As a former resident, and still a citizen of a developing country, I will say to you that that is the most protectionist bullshit I have ever heard. Poor countries have _one_ competitive advantage - the ability to charge and work for lower wages (including worse working conditions) than the developed countries. Any form of legislation that forces poor countries to raise conditions is in effect attempting to forcibly remove their competitive advantage and keep their people in perpetual poverty. Western capitalism is still a remarkable agent for development in the developing countries. If China could not sell to other countries, they would not develop. What many (possibly well meaning but ultimately misinformed) people in the west think is exploitation is, well, not too bad actually, compared to the alternatives faced by the people there. The context is that those people have two choices, work for what westerners consider to to be pitiful wages, in what westerners consider to be terrible conditions (and rightly they are from your perspective). But actually, it is an improvement on any other choice they have.

You don't legislate progress like that. People in China (or any other developing country in that situation) are going to become wealthier, and in response, they will begin to demand, of their own accord, better working conditions. Once China exhausts its current essentially limitless labour supply, companies will begin to compete for workers, rather than workers competing for jobs. Things like minimum wage and worker safety standards are fairly recent innovations in the west. It is not fair to impose that on developing countries, because it will stunt their development, and will leave their people worse off.

How many steps?

[vlm]

How many steps?

Like many on /., maybe, I've purchased bare LCD modules. You know the type, HM(whatever it was) protocol, in the olden days you'd have to provide offboard neg voltage to control contrast. Anyway the relevant point is there's about ten companies between my OEM LCD modules and some dude digging stuff outta the ground. One company does nothing but turn purified chemicals into glass. Another company runs the refinery that makes the resin that gets mixed by another company with fiberglass and has a sheet of copper stuck on to it to make bare PCB material. Another mixes ingots of lead and tin (in the past, anyway) and a couple other elements and casts ingots of solder for the wave soldering machine (since replaced by reflow process using paste). I might have a window into the LCD board stuffing assembly plant, but I have no idea whats going on at ye olde tin smelter or the other 99% of the people who built my LCD modules.

I know many apple products are mostly OEM devices. They hardly make their own accelerometers in their own silicon foundries. I'm not sure if its relevant to even bother watching the 1% of the population at the assembly plant... In fact the further you are from final assembly, the worse things seem to be, at least in my factory experience.

Re:How many steps?

[ZigMonty]

Sorta like a pencil, taking it to the extreme.

the FLA

[mlc]

The FLA was formed by the apparel industry as a front to make it look like they were doing something to protect the workers in their factories. Now the electronics industry may be joining, but there's no reason to suspect they'll suddenly gain a new appreciation for something other than PR.

I don't know why ...

[khasim]

Their motivation aside, Apple is by far one of the best and most responsible manufacturers, simply by doing the (very very) little that they do. Singling out Apple is just Apple hate.

I don't know why but that comment reminded me of this cartoon for some reason (NSFW).

http://www.oglaf.com/relief/

Ghandi, Apple Spokesman

[decora]

a few other things that are impossible:

taking egghead computer theories and making them into products for children

ripping out the guts of BSD and putting it into a consumer phone

working out deals with the music industry, a notoriously insular, backwards, conservative, static industry, to distribute its product over a whole new channel and create a new type of industry.

making a 8 inch 'pad' that works like a computer and people will buy

bringing back a nearly bankrupt, listing disaster of a corporation and turning it into one of the biggest companies in the world.

all these things were impossible. all these things were accomplished.

Re:Ghandi, Apple Spokesman

[UnknowingFool]

There is technically impossible and realistically difficult. All these things you mentioned were difficult but achievable through work and determination. Technically can you identify the origin of single particles in a smelt? In the world of Star Trek, all it takes is a tricorder but technically in the real world how do you do so? If you have theories please list them here or better yet, tell Apple and Dell and Panasonic (and all the electronic manufacturers). They would like to know.

Re:Ghandi, Apple Spokesman

[UnknowingFool]

Was there some reason that Apple had to use conflict minerals in the first place? Oh, right, otherwise iProducts would be too big and ugly, or worse yet, Apple would have been forced to do the research that other people did on alternatives.

What? Apple like many other companies probably did not source their materials to the original source. They simply were not required to or may not known. As they identified, it's very hard to tell. They can only control so many levels of manufacturing. You treat it as if Apple and Dell and others made it a choice to get negative PR from using conflict materials. Where they can control it, they won't use such materials but realistically they can't guarantee 100%.

As a side note, do you know where every single food item on your dinner plate came from? Was everything organic or humanely killed/harvested? If you were conscientious, maybe you did. Most people don't know and can't know unless they spend a great deal of time tracking. The farmer where I get my organic tomatoes, can I be sure he didn't use his children to help him harvest them (that's child labor violations!) unless I went out to the farm that day of harvest and personally inspected it. Multiply that by every single food item. I don't have that kind of time.

OK, fine, I will not bash Apple -- if they stopped selling their products for a day, their competitors will just scoop up the lost business, and their competitors are just as guilty. My point is not that Apple is the only guilty company here, it is that they are not some shining star -- they put on a great show about auditing their factories and demanding conflict-free minerals, but at the end of the day those antics accomplish nothing except scrubbing Apple's public image. Why should we care about Apple's public image?

Um, by posting, it seems you care more than you are willing to admit. Apple has stated their position and listed their suppliers. That in itself isn't much of a news item but your stance that Apple should do more when it may be impossible puts Apple in a different class than others.

Interestingly

[Lucas123]

I don't see Anobit on that list of suppliers. And, considering Apple just acquired Anobit for its NAND flash ECC firmware, it makes me wonder why they'd do that without having even used its product first. Or could this list from Apple be only what it's willing to reveal?

Re:Interestingly

[Telvin_3d]

Or it could be that, having acquired Anobit, Apple no longer considers them a separate company. Or perhaps Apple had not been dealing with Anobit directly, but rather through a third party who is on the list. Or that the list was compiled from sources that lag behind actual production by a number of months and Anobit will show up on the next update. Lots of possible reasons without having to stretch for a conspiracy.

Re:Interestingly

[gnasher719]

I don't see Anobit on that list of suppliers. And, considering Apple just acquired Anobit for its NAND flash ECC firmware, it makes me wonder why they'd do that without having even used its product first. Or could this list from Apple be only what it's willing to reveal?

Anobit is an engineering company in Israel. If you are worried about their working conditions, shouldn't you be much more worried about the working conditions of software developers in the US gaming industry? Do you think they are subject to cruel treatment, like having to use Windows on a Dell computer?

Apple Should NOT Be Commended

[taniwha]

Jan 1st the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act came into effect - Apple didn't do this because of This American Life, they've been brought kicking and screaming to this point by the politicians and public opinion in general

Re:a very interesting show

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi everyone, I'm afraid Bonch couldn't be with us today but in his absence I'd just like to assure everyone that Google factories are much much worse than Apple ones - in addition to inhuman working conditions the factory drones have to watch ads all day long, have to give up all their personal info and, worst of all, don't get a seamless experience. That's right, no seamless experience with Google. Hope that clears everything up. Bye.

The Devil's Advocate

[Asmor]

I really enjoyed the This American Life episode mentioned in the summary, and one of the things I found really interesting was the second part.

The first part was all about the terrible conditions the guy found at Foxcon and other manufacturers. The second part was all about what we should take away from this.

The general concensus is that, yeah, these factories are terrible, but they're actually a step up from the abject poverty the 3rd world would otherwise be in. Even more surprising, things are improving. Factories are starting, ever so slowly, to compete with each other for workers, and that means they're easing off on hours and otherwise making incremental improvements to the workers' quality of life.

This isn't to say that we should be okay with how the workers are treated. Simply that, given a choice between no sweatshops or sweatshops as they currently exist, the workers are actually better off with the sweatshops. And sweatshops are really the first step on the ladder of development. The industrialized Western countries went through very similar pains during the industrial revolution. In a few generations, Chinese working conditions might actually look a lot more like turn-of-the-century American working conditions, even without outside pressure.

Re:ask the people you bought it from

[UnknowingFool]

and then, have them ask the people who they bought if from

and then, they ask the people that they bought it from.

The first flaw in your scenario is that it ignores recycling and assumes perfect knowledge. While suppliers may know generally where they get original source material, recyclers have no idea where the original source of their material. At best they know the country of the supply of recycled goods, say the US. They cannot know that every single component in a ton of recycled materials did not come from a conflict source. Some of these conflicts have lasted almost 20 years. Looking at a stack of monitors that came from the US, can you tell which models and companies for the last 20 years have used conflict materials? No one in the world can tell you. Yet you say this is all possible.

what if someone lies?

ahh, well, you get a world wide system of tracking going. its not impossible. its done with fruit. its done with alot of stuff.

Tagging a shipment of fruit is vastly easier than tagging atoms. In a kg of gold (which is one of conflict minerals), there are 3.022E24 molecules of gold. How in the world do you tag that many molecules? That's the crux of the problem. You cannot know the original source of every gold atom as gold is recycled so often.

For the sake of argument we ignore recycling. You expect Apple to personally audit thousands of suppliers? How often? Unless you audit every one of them 24x7 for the rest of their contract, you cannot be sure that they used non-conflict materials each and every time.

I've asked you repeatedly for a technical way to do this. You've responded with nothing but unrealistic and impossible scenarios not based in reality.