GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “I realize that the argument”: Richard Nixon, “1970 Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union,” January 22, 1970, American Presidency Project, transcript and video, presidency.ucsb.edu/node/241063.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  superpower was also being questioned: Much ado was made, for example, when it was reported that the Soviet Union had outstripped the U.S. in “National Material Capability,” a composite rating developed by J. David Singer, a political scientist at the University of Michigan. See J. David Singer, as cited in Mark Harrison, “The Soviet Economy, 1917–1991: Its Life and Afterlife,” Independent Review 22, no. 2 (2017): 202–3.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  After a decade of crisis: The price of oil rose by 300 percent around the world and even higher in the U.S. In Washington, there was a fear that oil would be used “as an economic weapon” by rogue states. See Eric Pace, “Arabs Halt Oil to Portugal, Rhodesia and South Africa,” New York Times, November 29, 1973.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  Companies started to look: In the early 1970s, this was one thing that the hawks and the hippies seemed to be aligned on. The confluence of environmental issues and increasing geopolitical uncertainty came to be known as the “energy-environmental balance,” a concept that had at its root the kind of Cold War gamesmanship that had offed Lumumba and led the U.S., the U.S.S.R., and China to support autocratic regimes around the world. According to this theory, competition for resources would intensify as resources became scarcer, and energy would thus need to be conserved and expended with care. As the environmental historian Martin V. Melosi would note a decade later, “Policy makers began to realize that the interplay between energy policy and environmental protection could be the key to the future of both.” See Martin V. Melosi, “Energy and Environment in the United States: The Era of Fossil Fuels,” Environmental Review 11, no. 3 (Autumn 1987): 174.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  In 1881, another French scientist: Kevin Desmond, Gustave Trouvé: French Electrical Genius (1839–1902) (McFarland & Co., 2015), 50.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  first car to drive faster: Petrol cars lagged at 22 percent. Steam-powered cars accounted for the other 40 percent. See Ken W. Purdy et al., “Automobile,” Encyclopedia Britannica, November 2, 2021, britannica.com/technology/automobile. Incidentally, Thomas Edison was obsessed with creating an electric car, and in 1908, he finally launched a successful version whose battery used lithium hydroxide, which prevented the battery’s strength from being diminished by unintended chemical reactions. (Edison “had no clue why it worked, and he probably didn’t care.”) See Seth Fletcher, Bottled Lightning: Superbatteries, Electric Cars, and the New Lithium Economy (Hill and Wang, 2011), 17.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  Even Henry Ford’s wife: “1914 Detroit Electric Model 47 Brougham, Personal Car of Clara Ford,” Henry Ford Museum, thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/209957/.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  U.S. had fallen in love: There were a few notable exceptions to this rule, including electric milk floats in Britain and, in Nazi-occupied France, the Peugeot VLV, a city runabout with a top speed of twenty-one miles an hour.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  prompted by oil shortages: The most popular electric vehicle of the 1970s was the CitiCar, a wedge-shaped car with sliding windows and a top speed of around thirty-eight miles per hour. Until 2012, when the Tesla Model S came along, it was the bestselling electric car of the postwar era. Twenty-three hundred of them were sold between 1974 and 1977. See Máté Petrány, “Florida’s Hopeful EV from the 1970s Is a Fantastic First Car,” Road & Track, November 27, 2017, roadandtrack.com/car-culture/car-design/a13931959/floridas-hopeful-ev-from-the-1970s-is-a-fantastic-first-car/.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  Even Greece produced: Thanos Pappas, “The Story of Enfield Neorio 8000,” Neos Kosmos, March 6, 2018, https://neoskosmos.com/en/2018/03/06/life/technology/the-story-of-enfield-neorio-8000/.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  Aronson became a salesman: Paal Kvamme, “Pioneren utviklet elbil hjemme i garasjen og verdens første stasjonskjede for hurtiglading,” Teknisk Ukeblad, May 30, 2021.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “The energy crisis has turned”: Robert W. Irvin, “The Revival of Electric Vehicles: Passing Fancy or Car of the Future?,” New York Times, April 7, 1974.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  As Aronson’s firm: “New Battery for Electric Cars: U.S. Patent 7,037,620 B2, May 2, 2006, Multi-Cellular Battery with Lead Foam,” Apollo Energy Systems, archived at electricauto.com/_pdfs/new_batt_Ecar_Whitepaper.pdf.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  six fifty-kilowatt: Barry Iseard, author interview, Apollo Energy Systems, May 2022.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  Americans just didn’t want to: U.S.-China Trade Relations and Renewal of China’s Most-Favored-Nation Status, 104th Cong. 132 (1995) (testimony of Robert R. Aronson). In 1974, when he was speaking to the Times, Aronson had only sold around sixty of his cars; he would sell forty more in the next two decades.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  The high-water mark: Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Research, Development, and Demonstration Act, H.R. 8800, 94th Cong. (1975–1976) (enacted); and Electric and Hybrid Vehicle Research, Development, and Demonstration Act, Pub. L. No. 94-413, 90 Stat. 1260 (1976).

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  everyone seemed to be: A year later, Carter established an award to “encourage citizen participation in the national drive toward greater energy efficiency.” See White House Press Office, “President’s Award for Energy Efficiency Announcement of 25 Award Recipients in the Field of Transportation,” press release, July 22, 1980, presidency.ucsb.edu/node/250996.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “capable of providing”: “Small, Battery-Powered Automobile Recently Completed by Toyota Motors,” New York Times, April 12, 1975, 35.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  Chapter 8: Intercalation Station

  Exxon had begun: Kevin Desmond, Innovators in Battery Technology: Profiles of 95 Influential Electrochemists (McFarland, 2016), 238.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  In addition to high-powered: Michael Goodwin, “Exxon’s Innovative Little Offshoots,” New York Times, March 14, 1976.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  at his Exxon lab: Karl Kordesch and Waltraud Taucher-Mautner, “History: Primary Batteries,” in Encyclopedia of Electrochemical Power Sources, ed. Bruno Scrosati et al. (Elsevier, 2009), 561.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  rechargeable carbon fluoride battery: Desmond, Innovators in Battery Technology, 239.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  Whittingham’s early work: Seth Fletcher, Bottled Lightning: Superbatteries, Electric Cars, and the New Lithium Economy (Hill and Wang, 2011), 28.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  But tantalum was too heavy: Desmond, Innovators in Battery Technology, 238.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  work was fast-paced: M. Stanley Whittingham, interview with the author, February 2020.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “it describes the reversible”: M. Stanley Whittingham and Allan J. Jacobson, eds., Intercalation Chemistry (Academic Press, 1982), 1.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  devised a chemical process: Martin B. Dines, Method for Lithiating Metal Chalcogenides and Intercalated Products Thereof, U.S. Patent 3,933,688A, filed September 30, 1974, and issued January 20, 1976, patents.google.com/patent/US3933688A/en.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  created a workable battery: M. Stanley Whittingham, “Lithium Titanium Disulfide Cathodes,” Nature Energy 6, no. 2 (2021): 214, doi.org/10.1038/s41560-020-00765-7.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  Whittingham filed a patent: M. Stanley Whittingham, Chalcogenide Battery, U.S. Patent 4,009,052A, filed April 5, 1976, and issued February 22, 1977. The patent was twice updated before finally being granted in 1977.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  As the philosopher: Ivan Illich, Energy and Equity (Harper & Row, 1974), 3. Illich argued, as in the quote in the epigraph, that society should slow down, lest it become a destructive technocracy. “High speed,” he wrote, “is the critical factor which makes transportation socially destructive. A true choice among political systems and of desirable social relations is possible only where speed is restrained. Participatory democracy demands low energy technology, and free people must travel the road to productive social relations at the speed of a bicycle.”

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  Chapter 9: A Spy in Priest’s Clothing

  John Stockwell was dressed: John Stockwell, In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story (Norton, 1978), 139.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  a rebel named Jonas: This was the British tycoon and corporate raider Roland W. “Tiny” Rowland, who was for many years a go-between for Savimbi and Western governments. When Rowland called on Downing Street to advocate for Savimbi, a civil servant wrote that he was “an old supporter of Savimbi and has invested a good deal of assistance in him.” See “Angola: Howe PS Letter to No. 10 (‘Angola: Call by Mr. Tiny Rowland: 1 August’) [‘Savimbi’s Prospects and Intentions’] [declassified January 2014],” 29 July 1983, PREM 19, Records of the Prime Minister’s Office, U.K. National Archives, Kew, accessed at https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/220839.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  a Scottish entrepreneur had built: Lobito Corridor Investment Promotion Authority, What It Is and Why It Matters, January 2024, 7, https://www.lobitocorridor.org/_files/ugd/9fa7ad_700894b8a8b9427faec094b5fbd0f5fc.pdf. The Belgians would later take over ownership, and the Société Générale de Belgique would nominally own the railroad until 2001.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  Until the late ’60s: Jean Dusausoy, Kolwezi 1977: Un technicien belge dans les mines du Katanga (Éditions Luc Pire, 2018), 26.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “I projected my mind”: Stockwell, In Search of Enemies, 150.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “They wanted Mobutu”: Jean Dusausoy, interview with the author, November 2021.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  Roving work gangs: Central Intelligence Agency National Foreign Assessment Center, “Angola: UNITA vs. the Benguela,” November 30, 1978, declassified December 2, 2004, cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80T00634A000500010013-7.pdf.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “poor guys, lost”: Jean Dusausoy, fact-checking email, March 2025.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “When you knew it”: CIA, “Angola: UNITA vs. the Benguela.”

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  mineral was a small fry: Former Marc Rich & Co. trader, conversation with author, February 2022.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  depths of the freezing London winter: For traders, January in London was “gout season,” as one trader would tell the journalist A. Craig Copetas a few years later, “the time of year when industrial doges discussed the effects of ballooning cobalt prices with struggling African economic ministers over glass after glass of French Grand Cru poured by the waiters at Langan’s Brasserie in Mayfair.” It is a masterful description. See A. C. Copetas, Metal Men: Marc Rich and the 10-Billion-Dollar Scam (Harper & Row, 1985), 17.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  building up its stockpiles: Bernard D. Nossiter, “Soviets Reportedly Bought Up Cobalt Before Zaire Invasion,” Washington Post, May 24, 1978.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  Cobalt may have been niche: Nossiter, “Soviets Reportedly Bought Up Cobalt Before Zaire Invasion.”

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  amounts that the Soviets: Nossiter, “Soviets Reportedly Bought Up Cobalt Before Zaire Invasion.” Moscow’s traders had used such stealth buying strategies before. During the “Great Grain Robbery” of 1973, after a drought in the U.S.S.R., Nikolai Belousov, a Soviet bureaucrat, flew to New York and negotiated private purchases of grain that eventually caused global food prices to shoot up by almost 30 percent.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  The overall market was: Former cobalt trader, interview with the author, May 2023.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  buyers also bargained hard: Former cobalt trader, interview.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  Soviet Union engineered the attack: Erik Kennes and Miles Larmer, The Katangese Gendarmes and War in Central Africa: Fighting Their Way Home (Indiana University Press, 2016), 128.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  several hundred civilians were: George Arthur Forrest, Un siècle de rêves: Ensemble, bâtissons l’avenir (Le Cherche Midi, 2022), 57.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  Those who survived were left: International opinion at the time placed the blame on the Katangese gendarmes for “massacres” of civilians, but the poorly trained Zairean army soldiers were probably responsible, according to Kennes and Larmer, Katangese Gendarmes and War in Central Africa, 138. Jean Dusausoy, who had left Zaire by that point, told me that his community of ex-Gécamines friends blames Zaire’s armed forces for the killings.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  so ineffective at defending: Andrew L. Gulley, “One Hundred Years of Cobalt Production in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” Resources Policy 79 (2022): art. 103007, doi.org/10.1016/j.resourpol.2022.103007.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  was even profitable to fly: Alan Cowell, “Zaire’s Bloody Past Makes Cobalt’s Future Uncertain,” New York Times, August 30, 1981.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  The stockpile reached: Former cobalt trader, interview; and Mark Burton et al., “US Moves to Restore Stockpiling ‘Panic Button’ in EV Metals Fight with China,” Bloomberg, February 19, 2024.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  Some businessmen suggested: Cowell, “Zaire’s Bloody Past Makes Cobalt’s Future Uncertain.”

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  Part 2: Trade and War

  Chapter 10: Putting Out Fires

  New York from New Delhi: “In Memory of Fazil Khan,” Ever Loved, everloved.com/life-of/fazil-khan/obituary/.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “It is an enormous”: Tom Outerbridge, interview with the author, September 2024.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “Keeping batteries out”: Eric Frederickson, interview with the author, September 2024.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  bedeviled lithium-ion batteries: M. Stanley Whittingham, “Nobel Prize in Chemistry Recognizes Lithium Battery Discoveries,” interview by Jenni Doering, Living on Earth, October 25, 2019, loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=19-P13-00043&segmentID=5.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  One early version: Seth Fletcher, Bottled Lightning: Superbatteries, Electric Cars, and the New Lithium Economy (Hill and Wang, 2011), 31.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  Some experimental vehicles used: Joseph T. Kummer and Neill Weber, “A Sodium-Sulfur Secondary Battery,” SAE Transactions 76 (1968): 1003–7, 1023–28, jstor.org/stable/44564986.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  thirty-five years later: Nathalie Pereira et al., “Lithium–Titanium Disulfide Rechargeable Cell Performance After 35 Years of Storage,” Journal of Power Sources 280 (April 2015): 18–22.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  A small solar-powered: Catherine Meyers, “How Some Nobel Prize–Winning Battery Research Weathered the Test of Time,” Inside Science, October 11, 2019, archived May 30, 2024, web.archive.org/web/20240530064822/insidescience.org/news/how-some-nobel-prize-winning-battery-research-weathered-test-time.

  GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT

  “They said to us”: Neela Banerjee, “For Exxon, Hybrid Car Technology Was Another Road Not Taken,” Inside Climate News, October 5, 2016, insideclimatenews.org/news/05102016/exxon-climate-change-hybrid-cars-technology-another-road-not-taken-electric-vehicle-toyota-prius/.