Donald Trump wants to buy Greenland. Mainstream media strives to coat this nonsense in a veneer of rationality by citing Greenland’s rare earth deposits and strategic position vis à vis Russia and China. In the New York Times article announcing Trump’s gambit, Sherri Goodman, a top Beltway expert on strategic issues, asks, “Was it crazy when the U.S. acquired Alaska? Was it crazy when the U.S. built the Panama Canal?”
No, it wasn’t. Secretary of State Seward purchased Alaska in 1867 from the Russian czar. Teddy Roosevelt initiated construction on the Canal in 1904, both eras so alien to our own we might as well be talking about the ice and “canals” on Mars. Goodman also trots out “national security”, the excuse abused to justify countless invasions, coups, assassinations, and violations of human rights. It is not our manifest destiny to control the North Atlantic. Such arguments illustrate the absurdity of seeking to annex Greenland especially as the same day Trump asked Santa for Greenland, he demanded that Santa give us back the Panama Canada. And Canada too. (No joke!). I wonder where in the Arctic Circle Santa’s workshop is located?
Everyone cites rare earth deposits and national security as plausible excuses for what is basically an act of aggression backed by military threat. Yet few (if any) draw the obvious connection between Greenland and the tech powers who will soon accompany Trump into the White House: Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Apple, and Google, not to mention J.D. Vance, the trophy Vice President on Thiel’s shelf.
Rare earths, plentiful but difficult to extract (hence their “rarity”), are critical for a vast range of cutting edge industries: computers, electric vehicles, solar energy, batteries, super-conducting ceramics, magnets used in critical metal alloys, space exploration, and numerous weapons systems. Demand for rare earth elements is soaring. Rare earths even play a growing role in the crypto industry. Corporations and nations are desperately fearful of running out of rare earth metals. In fact, recent shortfalls threaten U.S. weapons production, a situation the military considers “a potential crisis“. Greenland also is rich in coal, natural gas, oil, iron, gold, zinc, lead, and copper. It sort of won the tech-energy resource lottery. Now we want to cash the ticket.
Greenland is an autonomous country within Denmark. It has bluntly rejected Trump’s demands. We don’t know how far Trump is willing to go. With 56,600 citizens, Greenland is no Ukraine. However Denmark, a charter member of NATO, has already increased Greenland’s defense budget in the wake of Trump’s threats. Europe is well aware Trump would like to pull the U.S. out of NATO, or at least reduce our role, and collaborate more with Putin’s Russia. A defensive vacuum in Europe, triggered by the fallout from seizing a NATO nation’s territory, could easily lead to Russian aggression in Europe. Meanwhile, Greenlanders know they are the target of a mining-extraction land-rush that can devastate their island, 25% larger than Alaska, and are trying to steer an environmentally responsible course in exploiting its wealth. The tech, mining, defense, and energy cabals, though, are dying for Trump’s anti-regulatory go-ahead to exploit at will, ushering in a Greenland future of fracking, strip mining, tailing and sludge piles, displaced glaciers and resulting earthquakes, flooding, and a thriving business in eco-horror tourism.
The tech mavens whispering sweet millions and billions in Trump’s ear are different from Trump’s other appointees and congressional allies. Their lapdog behavior—the million-each pledged by “hundred-billionaires” Zuck Musk and Jeff for Trump’s inauguration, even Musk’s quarter of a billion spent buying the election for the Republicans—is a negligible price for the prize they hope to snare. V.P.J.D. Vance’s career has been guided and financed by Thiel. It was Thiel who convinced Trump to “choose” Vance as his running mate. Thiel and his Silicon allies know that Trump is incapable of framing or implementing coherent policies around any issue. Trump does love wielding presidential authority, though, much like a child waving their new laser-saber on Christmas morning. As Trump’s erratic behavior increases, Vance will emerge as a surrogate chief executive guiding Trump to fulfill the interests of his billionaire backers.
Once unthinkable levels of personal wealth and an oligarchic control over advanced technology has led many of tech’s most powerful executives to anoint their own companies as the engines of a new technocratic world order. They envision the most powerful nations and industries beholden to them because they control three key interlocking technologies: A.I., crypto-currency, and space.
Many computer scientists view Artificial Intelligence as not intelligent at all. It is entirely governed by human programs and inputs. The answers or outputs it seeks are strictly pre-defined as are the operations the program must follow. The artificial intelligence charting the folding patterns of evolving proteins cannot compile a simple grocery list. No improvisation, emotion, intention, speculation, skill transfer. Amazingly efficient? Yes. New ideas? Nope. Just a machine.
A.I. enthusiasts, though, argue for a tipping point where massive calculating power becomes a mind that develops its own ideas and even feelings. That A.I. mind would conceive its own goals and set about fulfilling them. It all hinges on the notion that when a system becomes complex enough that the number of exchanges among its parts approaches infinity, behavior and outcomes become unpredictable and ungovernable, much like modern civilization itself.
Self-learning programs already evolve rapidly free of human intervention, but only just so far. No chess program has suddenly decided to play checkers. But A.I. is right now opening new doors in science, industry, social control, predictive algorithms, medicine, and more. Is it only a matter of time before A.I. soars into parts unknown? Computers will likely always be fundamentally stupid, but then so are we in many ways. Smart or dumb, A.I. transmutes data into knowledge with dazzling speed and at times dazzling accuracy.
The stock market agrees. The A.I. index has risen 550% the past six years, almost twice that of NASDAQ and almost three times the Dow. Given the high price-to-earnings ratio of promising tech stocks, every dollar of profit is multiplied into 30, 50, or $100 in wealth contained within shares of stock. But even those valuations, which for Musk approach half a trillion dollars (reportedly), is not the real prize.
The real prize is that all computer functions will be integrated via A.I. Whoever controls A.I. controls a huge swath of global communications, finance, national defense, pharmaceutical development, resource discovery, and technology’s future. And the accelerating development of quantum computing will blow the lid off computational limits by many powers of 10. No wonder tech billionaires believe the future belongs to them.
Crypto is not a mere side-room in the global currency casino. Crypto’s backers intend to challenge the dollar as the standard global currency. For years China, Russia, and the U.S. have been engaged in behind the scenes currency wars in which the dollar is viewed as a teetering, aging champ whose reign is coming to an end. Brazil, India, and other economic powers are hedging bets against the dollar. Crypto masquerades as the savior. The crypto industry spent heavily to defeat anti-crypto politicians this past election, including incumbent Democratic Senators Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown. Trump selected Musk’s “ally” David Sacks to be “Crypto Czar”, quite a position considering Trump’s family has just started its own crypto company, World Liberty Financial. Trump’s nominee for Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, is embedded in the industry. Even Vance reportedly owns $250-500 thousand in BitCoin. Peter Thiel, Vance’s sponsor, is one of the major players in crypto as is Musk. The Teapot Dome Scandal that sank Warren G. Harding a century ago is nothing next to this financial-incest-fest.
Space is once again the new frontier but not as JFK envisioned it. While Bezos and Musk have been building Blue Origins and Space X, the U.S. has been kick-starting a sixth branch of our armed forces, Space Force, another taxpayer-funded windfall for defense and tech. Musk’s charge to cut government programs will likely target his chief competitor—NASA, especially as NASA has already expressed concern over Musk’s overtures to Putin. Starlink, Space X’s privately owned satellite system is a critical part of the U.S. defense system and is relied upon by both Ukraine and Russia to conduct military operations in their war. Space X is also in the business of providing military rocket launch sites and “is set to boom” with Trump’s election. A.I. is a central component of Space Force, and many defense specialists worry that A.I. programs can bypass or confuse human intervention and trigger nuclear war. That risk is growing exponentially as the space race has become an intensive space-arms race between Russia, China, and the U.S., (see Ramin Skibba’s article in the latest issue of Popular Mechanics).
In other words, space is not just about who controls and profits from rockets and satellites. It is about who makes sweeping decisions about national defense not only for the United States but for opposite sides of the same war. A.I. is about the systems that will run every computer-oriented endeavor—finance, medicine, communications, commerce, defense, citizen surveillance. Crypto is about becoming the global currency. All three are the core of a globally integrated technocracy already controlled by a tight cadre of billionaires.
Let us follow Santa back to Greenland. Paul Krugman mused on Christmas Eve that he doubts Trump can find Greenland on the map. But those voices feeding Trump’s imperial dreams as he dozes off at meetings know exactly what they want from Greenland—the world our children and grandchildren will live in. “Sell us Greenland” can replace “Build that wall” as the new mantra du jour. A country that boasts one citizen for every 15 square miles may seem an easy mark, but attempting to seize it will prove a political nightmare and environmental catastrophe.
To read Múte Egede, the territory’s prime minister, response on Greenland not for sale, click here.
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