We keep hearing about wars over nickel and cobalt mines, but the pure metal that leaves a smelter still can't go into a battery. It has to pass one more gate first — the one that turns metal into “sulfate salts,” then forms them into precursor and cathode (CAM) powder that can actually be loaded into a battery cell. This is the step “closest to the battery” in the nickel-cobalt chain, it eats the most of a cell's cost, and it's the step China quietly controls at around 85–90% of the whole world.