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

by Nicolas Niarchos

How we became addicted to a supply chain that wreaks havoc across the globe.

Epic, shocking, and deeply reported, The Elements of Power tells the story of the war for the global supply of battery metals – essential for the decarbonization of our economies – and the terrible, bloody human cost of this badly misunderstood industry.

Congo is rich. Swaths of the war-torn African country lack basic infrastructure, and, after many decades of colonial occupation, its people are officially among the poorest in the world. But hidden beneath the soil are vast quantities of cobalt, lithium, copper, tin, tantalum, tungsten, and other treasures. Recently, this veritable periodic table of resources has become extremely valuable because these metals are essential for the global “energy transition”—the plan for wealthy nations to wean themselves off fossil fuels by shifting to sustainable forms of energy, such as solar and wind. The race to electrify the world’s economy has begun, and China has a considerable head start. From Indonesia to South America to Central Africa, Beijing has invested in mines and infrastructure for decades. But the U.S. has begun fighting back with massive investments of its own, as well as sanctions and disruptive tariffs.

In this rush for green energy, the world has become utterly reliant on resources unearthed far away and willfully blind to the terrible political, environmental, and social consequences of their extraction. If the Democratic Republic of the Congo possesses such riches, why are its children routinely descending deep into treacherous mines to dig with the most rudimentary of tools, or in some cases their bare hands? Why are Indonesia’s seas and skies being polluted in a rush for battery metals? Why is the Western Sahara, a source for phosphates, still being treated like a colony? Who must pay the price for progress?

With unparalleled, original reporting, Nicolas Niarchos reveals how the scramble to control these metals and their production is overturning the world order, just as the global race to drill for oil shaped the twentieth century. Exploring the advent of the lithium-ion battery and tracing the supply chain for its production, Niarchos tells the story both of the people driving these tectonic changes and those whose lives are being upended. He reveals the true, devastating consequences of our best intentions and helps us prepare for an uncertain future. If you have ever used a smartphone or driven an electric vehicle, you are implicated.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Business, War, History, Economics, Technology

480 pages, Hardcover

Published January 20, 2026

Reviews

[Katie Cosby · Rating 5 out of 5]

fuck King Leopold

[Tiago · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book talks about topics that I barely knew anything about. Primarily, the extraction of elements required to make batteries.

It’s an impressive account of hundreds of years of history from locations mostly in Africa and India that today provide almost all the critical mining for batteries. It covers geopolitical history, strategies from countries colonizing or dominating the regions, the technological advances, the sociopolitical impacts, and much much more.

It’s mega comprehensive and detailed.

I just found slow and dragging. I went through because I wanted to learn what the book had to teach, which was a lot. But it wasn’t a pleasant reading.

[Lorraine Fletcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sprawling and detailed research account of the history of lithium ion batteries and the exploited communities providing the materials to create them. The overarching argument of exploitation is something you learn straight away, and is one clearly evidenced and reiterated across explorations of not only the Congo, but Indonesia and the Western Sahara as well as other communities. At its heart, this is a very human book that tries to capture the stories of individuals as well as document the deals of mega-corps.

I enjoyed the breadth and detailed insight of each chapter, and found the length compelling enough to not overwhelm me with sheer information. However, for me, some of the more technical sections about battery development and trade deals did run a little dry - there are only so many abbreviations I can commit to memory, and without much of a reference point on the specifics, I often found myself glazing over the more dense sections. I’m sure to a more experienced and astute researcher these areas would be full of juicy takeaways, but I personally struggled to always find the connections between an individual company take-over and the wider arc of the narrative.

As it was, I was both excited to read this book at every pick-up, while being quite quick to put it down again. It does get incredibly dense in places but it is, nonetheless, incredibly interesting. I particularly enjoyed the first-hand accounts of Niarchos’ reporting and found many of the anecdotes harrowing, portrayed in a simple yet very engaging prose.

I did hope for some more accessible takeaways from this book, but overall I think it’s still an important read for anyone interested in the path of exploitation used in battery production. Reading this straight after Alexander Clapp’s ‘Waste Wars’, I am now very acutely aware of the murky history and likely violence that has led the materials from the very phone I type this on to my hands today. Niarchos, at the very end, does briefly allude to a potential solution (or, at least, improvement) to the batteries we use - changing to a sulphur/sodium ore, which can be formed from power plant waste, instead of the much rarer lithium - but, as this is a very new and underdeveloped area of research, I can understand why it was only offered as more of a footnote to the book. I would have loved a little more investigation into what individual or business-level consumers could do to mitigate the current problems, but I suppose that might be another book entirely.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book covers much of the same shameful story of artisanal mining in Congo that is in "Cobalt Red." I thought that "Cobalt Red" was a stronger book because it is told with more personal stories and with more compassion so that the reader can feel the depth of the tragedy in his bones. This one has a broader historical perspective, more of a view from 20,000 feet, and so it provides additional information and updates the story of the other book, which it cites as one of its sources. Anyone who is interested in a complete understanding of this problem should read both books, but if you just want a sense of the problem and don't have the patience for two books, read "Cobalt Red." This book also devotes a lot of space to the parallel story of mining in Indonesia, which is also bad, but which for a variety of reasons unrelated to any altruism on the part of the companies that control the exploitation, is a bit less horrid than the mining in Congo. This book would have lost little if the Indonesia material had been omitted and saved for another book.

I'd be willing to bet that at some point in my lifetime battery designers will discover a different way to make better, cheaper batteries with more plentiful materials. Then the mining companies in Congo will fold, but instead of an improvement in living standards we will probably see a general economic collapse in which the poor people will suffer even more. A land rich in natural resources should be a place of bounty for its residents, but somehow it rarely seems to work that way in practice.

[Tony Tost · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well-researched, but often feels like a performance of that research. The author's default of NPR moralism causes him to never quite land on any true insights insights beyond "isn't this a pity." There are like a thousand names here, many that resemble each other, and Niarchos only manages to make like six of them feel like people other than just names. There's a killer article lurking inside this dense book.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Extremely well written, but not a subject that will be interesting to everyone. Corruption, exploitation, greed, power, manipulation, torture, and so much more - and all for the production of batteries. The energy crisis is much more complicated than I thought before listening to this book.

[mirabilos]

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