The Third Digital War: Energy and Rare Metals

The digital revolution, energy transition, environmental changes... Politicians, the media, and industrialists — everyone promises us a new world, finally free from oil, pollution, and military tensions. This book, the result of six years of research in dozens of countries, shows us that this is not the case! 

By freeing ourselves from traditional fuels, we are actually falling into a new dependency — a dependency on rare metals. Graphite, cobalt, indium, platinum group metals, tungsten, rare earth elements — these resources have become essential for our new ecological and digital society; they are found in electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, as well as in our smartphones, computers, and other Internet-connected devices. However, the environmental, economic, and geopolitical costs of this dependency may turn out to be even more significant than those that tie us to oil.