The New York Times published on 20 November 2021 an in depth story titled "A Power Struggle Over Cobalt Rattles the Clean Energy Revolution" by Dionne Searcey, Michael Forsythe, and Eric Lipton.
More than two-thirds of the world's cobalt production comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Cobalt is a key component of batteries for electric vehicles. China and the US are competing for control of the market with China winning for the time being. China's goal is to control the global supply chain from the metals in the ground to the batteries themselves, no matter where they are made.
