Conflict Minerals and Cell Phones

Presto Vivace sends in this story at Slate: "If you are reading this on a smartphone, then you are probably holding in your palm the conflict minerals that have sent the biggest manufacturing trade group in the U.S. into a court battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission. At stake in this battle between the National Association of Manufacturers and the government is whether consumers will know the potentially blood-soaked origins of the products they use every day and who gets to craft rules for multinational corporations—Congress or the business itself. ... These minerals are tantalum (used in cellphones, DVD players, laptops, hard drives, and gaming devices), tungsten, tin, and gold, if they are mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo and surrounding countries including Rwanda, where the mineral trade has fueled bloody conflicts. The rule requiring disclosure of conflict minerals will go into effect in 2014. Congress included it in Dodd-Frank out of concern for what is known as the “resource curse”—the phenomenon wherein poor counties with the greatest natural resources end up with the most corrupt and repressive governments. The money earned from selling the natural resources props up these harsh regimes and funds violence against their citizens and neighbors."

Comments

Oil?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems this should apply to oil, as well...

Re:Oil?

[flayzernax]

And plastics (Dupont) (Union Carbide from back in the day).

People of America you are getting bamboozled and ripped off. You could be making these things yourselves in your own small companies and making 100% of the profit. Yet you are a consumer of some megacorp that borders on monopoly and exports all trade and work oversease. These huge companies make and buy the materials for these things for slave labor cost or less.

If we did it ourselves, it'd be the same cost because it is marked up so much. Yet you would get the profit. Not some rich 1% person living behind so much government force and protection you can never take them on.

You live off the fat of your investments and the trickle down economics of McDonalds.

Re:Oil?

[Yvanhoe]

Not anymore. 2008 was the last year this was true. And consider that this table only shows the added value in dollars, not any kind of intrinsic value: for $1 you can manufacture more things in China than in US.

Re:let the Congo bombing raids begin

[0123456]

So the history of the 21st century will be America going to war for Apple rather than oil?

Makes sense.

Re:let the Congo bombing raids begin

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean going to war for Apple instead of Haliburton... or United Fruit... or pick a large company.

Where does the moral outrage end?

[Nutria]

Why not also China, where manufacturing props up a violent and corrupt dictatorship? What props up equally -- though differently -- corrupt India? The US is pretty violent too, and corrupt, as is Mexico.

Re:Where does the moral outrage end?

[Farmer Tim]

That does it! I'm not buying another thing made on this planet ever again.

Re:Where does the moral outrage end?

[ChrisMaple]

Who's doing a better job of dictatorships? Vote them out with your monetary choices

<sarcasm> That's working really well in the case of North Korea. </sarcasm>

Re:Where does the moral outrage end?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Also once we are through with this planet all the concentrated stuff will be spread out

There might be more rare minerals per volume in a first-world landfill than in a natural deposit, especially for things like gold.

Resource Curse?

[CanHasDIY]

“resource curse”—the phenomenon wherein poor counties with the greatest natural resources end up with the most corrupt and repressive governments.

My ass - that shit is engineered by the people and groups who stand to profit from preventing those people from taking ownership of their national resources.

The De Beers artificial diamond shortages being a prime example.

Re:Resource Curse?

[bluefoxlucid]

The whole statement is ridiculous doublethink. "Poor countries with the greatest natural resources"? In Burkina Faso, you can get gold by sifting tiny, tiny flecks out of dirt. That's not super-rich great natural resources; there's gold in the dirt and it takes a ridiculous amount of effort to get to it, so that's essentially "resource poor".

If these countries had great natural resources, they would be rich as living fuck. Don't tell me that ubiquitous presence of trace elements means "great natural resources", because that's like saying the bits of water you can squeeze from plants in the desert count as "well-hydrated marsh region." Hell, the desert's better off: you can squeeze a cactus. Imagine that water being distributed evenly across the desert as moisture in soil 6 inches under the sand. Water like a raging river, but you have to acquire it by concentrating what is an unending puff of dampness stretched across the vast and endless desert. More water than in the Mississippi, but at least we could stick a bucket into the Mississippi and get something vaguely drinkable.

They're poor for a reason. It's the exact opposite of having great natural resources.

Re:Resource Curse?

[OzPeter]

Add to that list:

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

and

Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq

Conflict Diamonds

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow I expect this is like conflict diamonds. In a war, it's hard for De Beers to keep a strangle hold on diamond mining, so they start a PR campaign against free market diamonds. I wouldn't be surprised if the interests driving this are economic not social welfare.

Re:Not just oil

[0123456]

It's not just oil - will our new Apple products come with the label: "Designed by Apple in a country which undertakes secret rendition, torture and massive online surveillance and privacy invasion."?

"And we're not allowed to tell you whether it's spying on you."

Multilayer ceramic capacitors

[32771]

Nowadays there are MLCCs at 220uF that could replace Tantalum in a number of applications, not to mention Niobium based capacitors that derive their raw materials from Brasil and Canada.

The missing mineral is the one that matters

[dcooper_db9]

This isn't about naturally rare minerals, it's about the one mineral that's rare by design. This is the latest in a long history of disinformation campaigns intended to keep DeBeers' control of the diamond. In fact, diamonds are so common in nature that there are beaches in Africa where they wash up on shore. You could pick them up like seashells if it weren't for the armed guards ready and willing to shoot anyone who tries. If DeBeers ever lost control of the market the value of diamonds would plumet.

When General Electric developed the first artificial diamond DeBeers bought the company. When Israel threatened to dump their cache on the market, DeBeers practically bought the country. They spent billions buying artificial diamonds from the Soviets, just to keep them off the market. In the US, when DeBeers was investigated for antitrust violations they put every employee in their country on a plane and sent them back to Europe. In one night. The next day there was a new person in every US job, and not one of those people could testify about how DeBeers operates. If you ever want to have your life turned upside down, try buying and selling used diamonds. See just how long it takes for DeBeers to shut you down.

DeBeers modus operandi is to back whoever controls a country, as long as they are willing to do business. If not, DeBeers will back a coup. So, if you want to control an African country, step 1 is to gain control over the diamonds. If you want to get rich, step 1 is to take over a country. THAT is why there's so much violence in Africa. The regime that labels "conflict" minerals is just one of the tools DeBeers uses to maintain control. The "conflict" countries are places where more than one group operates. Whatever group is on the outside will smuggle diamonds out, undermining price controls.

The history of the DeBeers cartel is the most fascinating and disturbing story that's rarely told. If you haven't read it I strongly recommend a trip to the local library. Don't wait for Hollywood to tell the story. They're too busy writing a sequel to "Blood Diamonds". On contract of course. The sad truth is that EVERY diamond is a blood diamond.

Re:I heard people die while trying to find them

[ChrisMaple]

My experience is decades old, so I may be wrong, but ... Tantalum electrolytics are used where temperatures are too high for aluminum electrolytics, and where relatively high capacitance and relatively low ESR are needed in a small package. High reliability is also a feature, once (explosive) infant mortality is accounted for.

fairphone

[Anonymous Coward]

This is perhaps the right place to plug the Fairphone ( www.fairphone.com ), an experiment in making electronic products free from conflict minerals and exploitation of workers. It's not a commercial phone manufacturer (they're only making 25.000, at least to start with), it's more a proof of concept and they seem to be pulling it off. Obviously it's relatively easy to source non-conflict minerals when you're only making 25.000 units, not so easy to scale that up under current conditions.

But if every manufacturer were forced to disclose where they sourced their raw materials from, and consumers reacted by avoiding blood minerals, this could actually have effects on the ground: the value of conflict mines would be reduced as fewer manufacturers bought from them, and the incentive to fight over control of said mines would be reduced accordingly. The parties in conflict would have a strong incentive to find peace so they could resume sales--better share profits with your rival that sit on top of a mine that cannot sell anything.

Of course the companies will fight tooth and nail to stop this. In the name of life, liberty and the pursuit of shareholder value. Captcha: "malice". Heh

Tantalum Capacitors

[residents_parking]

Since ceramic got so good, I haven't needed to specify Tantalum in any of my designs for 5 or more years. In my experience, it is mostly inertia / laziness that keeps designers from exploring alternatives.

Like most engineers, I enjoy the challenge when someone says "you have to use tantalum - nothing else will work". True, Y5V Ceramic has highly voltage-dependent capacitance. So what? Often it's ESR and not absolute capacitance you need, anyway.

Re:Tantalum Capacitors

[ebno-10db]

If you need better stability than Y5V, but still need high values in a reasonable size, X5R is good. I haven't used tantalum in 10 years. For electrolytics I find solid electrolyte aluminums are fine for most stuff, and can always be shunted with a ceramic if need be. I've even used these kinds of parts in military designs.

Re:Uses of tantalum?

[ShanghaiBill]

That was my thought as well, tantalum capacitors are used in almost everything.

There are three qualities you want in a capacitor:
1. Cheap
2. Reliable
3. High Capacitance

You can pick any two:
1 & 2 = Ceramic
1 & 3 = Electrolytic
2 & 3 = Tantalum

Re:Uses of tantalum?

[mirix]

ESR can be pretty important factor too, for say, switching power supplies. To move from a normal electrolytic to low ESR electrolytic seems to increase the price a few fold.
Ceramic is low by nature, tantalum is quite lower than electro in general, but lower is more money again.

Then of course in tuned circuits, stability / tolerance / etc is one of the important factors, where you want little drift in capacitance. So something like low-drift ceramic, or silver mica, or film. For bulk caps smoothing a power rail, no one cares of course.

One spot where tantal really shines is cold weather. Electrolytics lose capacity a lot in freezing temperature, tantalum (and some ceramics for that matter) doesn't have this problem (as much, still loses some.).

There's other important things for other tasks that don't really concern me... dissipation factor and stuff like that in high power applications, etc

So.. more than three qualities, anyway, was the cause of my ramble.

Oh yes, tantalum is also much higher (capacitance) density (so smaller). But new ceramics are pretty close in some areas.

Re:let the Congo bombing raids begin

[Decker-Mage]

United Fruit Co. That brings back a historical factoid. In the period 1919 to 1929, the US Marines invaded central and south american countries over 100 times to put down unrest against the company. Things haven't changed much, have they.