The “Congo” Chip
I’ve written previously about how purchases of rare metals used to build electronics helps to fuel Congo’s series of civil conflicts. Under the circumstances, it seems bizarre that AMD has decided to dub a new chip of theirs the “Congo”. David Sullivan remarks at ENOUGH:
Did someone actually think it was a good idea to name a microchip after the Congo? It is, after all, the place where trade in minerals vital to technology like ultra-thin laptops is fueling the deadliest conflict in the world.
Okay, AMD isn’t one of the 21 companies that Enough has contacted about Congo’s conflict minerals, so I can understand that they didn’t get the memo. But apparently Hewlett Packard is one of the laptop manufacturers planning to use the new ‘Congo’ chip technology, and they have been one of the most outspoken companies attempting to address mineral supply chain issues.
Of course at the end of the day what chips get given which names doesn’t really matter. But the endless violence in Congo does matter, and better-understanding the supply chains used by major electronics firms matters to helping contain and curtail the violence. Check out the Come Clean 4 Congo video contest for more on this.
11 Responses to “The “Congo” Chip”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
June 6th, 2009 at 10:07 am
I appreciate the work that groups like ENOUGH do, and I appreciate that Matt is giving this issue some bandwidth.
But at some point, when you’re talking about basically an entire continent that’s held hostage to an unfair, brutal global economic system where people in resource-rich nations have no right to anything approaching the kind of life that people in the nations their resources are being sent to enjoy, don’t statements like this one start to seem a bit thin:
“[B]etter-understanding the supply chains used by major electronics firms matters to helping contain and curtail the violence.”
Mining companies were hiring racist mercenaries to bulldoze African villages and open fire on defenseless civilians long before there were laptops.
June 6th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Maybe it’s named after the river, not either of the countries. And the region has indeed been ‘cursed’ by an abundance of desirable resources. But, yeah, apart from the chip name issue, which I’m sure is just the name cranked out from some marketing team based on some acronym somewhere, sure, it’s a good issue to look into the civil and environmental consequences of the nature of supply chains.
June 6th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Isn’t the violence occurring in the Congo predominately black people killing, torturing, raping, displacing and oppressing other black people? What about that is something the citizens of the United States gives a damn about? Seriously, did we stop Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Pinochet? They were killing Asians, blacks, South Americans vaguely Hispanic. We didn’t give a shit. The Balkans? Sure, we stepped into that. Weren’t those white people we interceded for? Nah, if you’re in Africa you can go to hell. Give us our fricking coltan, we have stuff to build. Dell oughta go ahead and name their next laptop the Laurent Kabila.
June 6th, 2009 at 11:33 am
There are lots of things happening in the Third World for which I think the U.S. and multinational corporations can reasonable be blamed, but I’m not sure this is one of them. The fundamental problem here isn’t that the Congo has minerals that the West needs, it’s that the Congo is in the midst of civil war. If these minerals were in Canada or Australia, it wouldn’t be an issue at all; they’d be extracted under safe conditions by decently-paid workers and sold to the electronics companies at a fair market price. Ideally the same thing should happen here. The reason it doesn’t is that post-colonial Africa has been unable for a variety of reasons to form competent and effective governments.
June 6th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
This would probably be a good time to recommend Gerald Prunier’s book, “Africa’s World War.”
If the details of the Congo conflict don’t appeal to you, then go to the library and read the preface.
June 6th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
It’s not the actual marketing name, but rather the ‘technology’ name which is only used by internet nerds. These chip ’step’ names are often named after rivers ‘Nehalem’, ‘Yukon’, etc. No one outside of nerd websites uses those terms.
June 6th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Perhaps using the name will bring more awareness to problems there. Just a thought….
June 6th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
It’s tone deaf and unfortunate, sure. But… is it as bad as this was? Cause it was pretty astoundingly bad.
June 7th, 2009 at 12:38 am
Your typical Yglesias throwaway irrelevant to anything post.
Sure, everyone’s gonna stop using African minerals because the warlords run the mines.
Right.
Email me when this happens.
Better yet, don’t.
June 7th, 2009 at 2:25 am
Supply and demand. Drugs and diamonds. Interesting. Similar problems but exact opposite solutions?
Legalize drugs on the demand side and end the violence on the supply side.
Make diamonds illegal on the demand side and end the violence on the supply side.
I know, diamonds would just go black market. But hey, we could solve one problem.
June 8th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Uh, guys… this is a development code-name for an upcoming platform (processor, chipset & video). This is a name that consumers will never see. What they’ll see is an “HP Pavillion with an AMD Consensus processor”.