Last year, just after Tesla’s board and investors voted down a proposal to hire an outside monitor to ensure the electric vehicle maker’s cobalt suppliers weren’t using child or forced labor at mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Elon Musk pledged to do exactly that – and more.

“I heard a question raised about cobalt mining and you know what? We will do a third-party audit,” the world’s wealthiest person told a raucous, adoring crowd of shareholders at Tesla’s annual meeting in May 2023. “In fact, we’ll put a webcam on the mine. If anybody sees any children, please let us know,” he said, giggling.

But Forbes has learned that a year later, Musk’s promised webcam hasn’t materialized as expected. Rather than a live camera feed, the Kamoto Copper Co. that’s Tesla’s main cobalt source instead posts a single photo of the sprawling mine complex in southern Congo every month, taken by an Airbus satellite orbiting far above the Earth. There are no children to be seen, but that’s because the resolution isn’t nearly sufficient to reveal anything smaller than processing facilities and the scarred landscape of a highly industrialized open-pit mine.

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