I misunderstood then due to the examples. As child porn is recognizeable.

But cobalt is just cobalt. You have no way of telling where it came from. Humans have faces, fingerprints and genes that allow us to have documentation that yes this person is a citizen and not an illegal immigrant, so you cannot use documentation for one person to slip by another that easily.

There is no such thing for cobalt. A document that states this 20 tons of cobalt is not dug up by kids applies just as well to a 20 tons that actually was dug up by kids.

That issue was with blood diamonds. A semilegit mine sold it’s own diamonds and blood diamonds as it’s own.

you're getting lost in the example and losing the idea.

The idea is this: You forcibly change the demand to change the behavior of the producer. And there are plenty of examples of us doing this as a society (successfully).

In the successful cases it is easy for the demand to recognize what they are getting. Employer just has to demand passport and they can avoid hiring illegals. Just looking at the person is enough. Same with child porn. Same with anything else where we have curbed demand side.

How would you say Microsoft is able to recognize where the cobalt came from?

I can’t really see any way here that would not be a de facto ban for the whole material.

The same way we do it with other resources of this type. And yes, we do this with other resources. Oil & gas, medical marijuana, diamonds, et al.

This is a solved problem. What you and other people are arguing is that it's not solved perfectly.

I don't really give a shit if it's solved perfectly. If we go from say 66% of cobalt being bloody down to 33% of cobalt being bloody. That's a win. We can, over time, learn and adjust to bring it down even further.

Perfect is the enemy of good.

Plus in most cases they are not using it directly themselves. They are several hops away in the chain, using a part that may contain the wrong type of cobalt.