Chip Industry Not Ready for U.S. Conflict Minerals Law
IHS has said that only 11.3 percent of a total of 5,994 companies have complied with the requirements of the U.S. Conflict Minerals Law so far.
The new law will go in effect in July 2014 and requires data, declarations, or documentation about the presence of certain minerals in their supply chain.
The law defines conflict minerals as those including gold; columbite-tantalite, used to produce tantalum; cassiterite, used to make tin; and wolframite, which used to produce tungsten. According to the IHS, the minerals are widely used in products ranging from "cellphones to hearing aids, to pacemakers and jet engines." IHS estimates that $93 million worth of tantalum was used in smartphones in 2012 alone.
The new law requires companies to disclose whether they use conflict minerals in their products and what efforts have been made to ensure that the use or purchase of the minerals have not caused and do not contribute to violence and killings. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is especially concerning as it is estimated to hold about $24 trillion worth of minerals, as well as adjacent countries.
The 11.3 percent of companies that have complied so far represent about 17.1 percent of active electronic components on the market, IHS said.
http://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/policy/policy-conflict-minerals.pdf
Why?
Oh wait... that's right... we have an economy based on artificially induced scarcity and monetary gain/profit.
Producing abundance is a big 'no' for the industry (and since we already do, most of it will be destroyed to create artificially induced scarcity - which is done with food for example).
A simple search would easily explain...
anyone see this?
but wow $24 trillion dollar worth of minerals!
A simple search for IHS returns a lot of different information, none of which stands out as to what "IHS" this article is talking about.
They are talking about a company who deals with information.
http://www.ihs.com/
moronic comment is moronic
Yes, the Illuminati is covering up alchemy now.
The last I checked, you can't make matter from nothing. Synthetic materials are still created from real materials. If everyone switched to synthetic materials, the prices of those materials would just rise. Value is a determination set by humans. How rare are the Congo's materials if they have 24 trillion dollars worth? Value is brought on by demand.
Your schizophrenia is showing. You might want to see a doctor about that, or at least get back on your meds.
This is indeed a very serious problem, similar to conflict diamonds. The entire continent of Africa is rife with corruption, and such a profitable industry has no problem paying bribes to all the right people. Tracking down the real source of goods coming out of Africa is nearly impossible. Policing conflict minerals and diamonds comes down to years of hard detective work unraveling the supply chain the major players use.
The only real solution to this problem that I see is to bring Africa (yes, the entire continent) out of poverty. If there weren't so many millions of extremely impoverished people, they wouldn't be so willing to do whatever it takes to feed themselves and their family. Warlords wouldn't have such an easy time setting up and kidnapping people to work the mines. The governments would be better able to protect their people.
As long as Africa is poor, we will have these abuses. All we can do until the problem is actually solved is stick our proverbial fingers in the dike to try to stem the tide a bit.
Are they a country/continenent of 8 and 9 year olds? Why won't they get their 'crap' together and create a state of laws and justice? Who should do that for them? Don't just sit there and talk about eradicating poverty in a country whose people are so base, violent and ignorant, that they'd cut you down if you did indeed try to help them. It's too sad frankly, but it's probably best to let the chips fall where they may, until someone from among them can offer some visionary leadership.
No doubt, global politics is a nasty affair, with a lot of cloak and dagger stuff, and outright violence, but Africa is anything but poor, just base and ignorant. They must lift themselves out of that and take their place among the rest of the civilized world, or ... suffer at the hands of whomever.
Quick, grab your "conflict free" tin foil hat!