Trump's Greenland Ambitions: Strategic Necessity or Wild Idea

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1:44Couldn't believe it was possible. I thought the reality show of election 2024 could not be beat. But it turns out that was just season one. And season two is incredible. Like right now, Trump, this is just, I don't know whether this is insane or the smartest thing possible. So we're gonna figure this out right now. Trump just announced that he wants to buy Greenland and so many things to unpack there. The deeper I go, the more of a rabbit hole it became and the deeper I went. But first off, if you remember, Trump tweeted back in 2019 that he wanted to buy Greenland and the prime minister of Denmark said, hey, Greenland is not for sale.

2:31And I'm watching these tweets. I just couldn't believe it. And by the way, this led to me starting a crowdfunding campaign for myself to buy Greenland. More on that in a second. But now it's happened again. Just a few days ago, Trump announced that not only did he want to buy Greenland, but it is an absolute and strategic necessity for the U.S. to own Greenland. So first off, when this first happened in 2019, I couldn't really understand what's happening. Like, did the president of the United States just offer to buy another country on Twitter? And what does the prime minister of Denmark have to do with this?

3:10Why did he even respond? He said it's not for sale. This tiny country in Europe, Denmark, announced Greenland's not for sale. So did I watch an entire negotiation for a country take place? And what does Denmark have to do with this? So first I started digging into that. And what I realized basically surprised me that yes, Greenland is incredibly strategically important and also somewhat of a sad and unusual place for a variety of reasons. So I decided, you know what? I need to buy Greenland. It's better if no country owns Greenland. So first I tried to create a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to buy Greenland and they rejected me.

3:53I think I ended up doing it on GoFundMe and I actually started raising, I explained all the reasons why someone, why I should buy Greenland along with the crowd that would finance it. And then I offered various prizes. So the rewards were any pledge over a dollar, you would get citizenship of Greenland. Any pledges over$100, you would receive one acre of land. And there's something like 800 ,000 square miles of land in Greenland. So there's a lot of acres. All pledges over$10 ,000, you would receive a royal title like a Duke or Earl. And all pledges over$100 ,000, you would receive a national holiday named after you.

4:33So I was already raising like thousands of dollars where people were reposting it everywhere. But then I believe it was GoFundMe. They shut me down. They said, we know you're doing this as a joke and we don't wanna have to pay all the American Express fees or the credit card fees when we return all the money. So they shut me down. So I couldn't buy Greenland myself. But it's very interesting. The same reasons why Trump wanted to buy Greenland in 2019 are the reasons basically why he wants to buy Greenland now. So I'll just focus on right now. Suffice to say, he got busy with COVID. He did not buy Greenland in 2019, but he wants to buy it now.

5:08And I think he's pretty serious. Now, just so you know, it's important to know that the prime minister of Denmark, who is named Mete Fredriksson, she said, absolutely not. Greenland is not for sale and we are very much open for business. That's an interesting thing to include. We are very much open for business. I'll get to that in a second. Also, the premier of Greenland, whose name is Mute Burup Gedi. By the way, Greenland, just so you know, is the population is Inuit, which is what we normally refer to as Eskimos. And all of their words are unpronounceable. But the premier's name is Mute. The capital's name is Nuke.

5:49So it's very, well, the few names that I can't pronounce, they're very kind of easy to pronounce names. But let's get right into, first of all, what did Trump actually say? This is important. Trump wrote on Truth Social, basically a tweet that then got reposted on Twitter, I am pleased to announce Ken Howery as my choice for United States ambassador to the kingdom of Denmark. Ken is a world-renowned entrepreneur, investor, and public servant who served our nation brilliantly during my first term as U.S. ambassador to Sweden, where he led efforts to blah, blah, blah. As a co-founder of PayPal and venture capital fund founders fund, Ken turned American innovation and tech leadership into global success stories and blah, blah, blah.

6:32He said more. But then in the same tweet, he said, for purposes of national security and freedom throughout the world, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity. So first off, very interesting. Ken Howery is a co-founder of PayPal. Who else is a co-founder of PayPal? Elon Musk. So clearly Donald Trump and Elon Musk had a conversation that they said, look, out of all the things we need to do and focus on, we gotta focus on Greenland. Now, in my entire life, I have probably given three thoughts to Greenland. In my first many decades of life, I've barely ever thought of Greenland.

7:18And yet, this is a top priority for the richest man in the world and the president of the United States. And you know what? After digging into it, I agree with him. I do think the U.S. should buy Greenland. And we'll get to that in a second. Second off, it's interesting that Ken Howery is a former partner at Founders Fund. This is Peter Thiel's fund. Peter Thiel supported Trump for president as well. He made a speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016. He's longtime been partners with Elon Musk. So basically, this is not just a fun little tweet. There's very important strategic reasons.

7:51Now, the most important strategic reason is something that happened a few weeks earlier. So Trump's announcement was December 22nd. On December 4th, something happened that was very interesting. I've always been worried about this. China has banned the export of several strategically important minerals to the U.S. in response to the latest round of threats of American tariffs and American restrictions on Chinese chip-making industry. So rare earth minerals, they're called rare earth minerals because as explained, they're rare. China is the biggest source of rare earth minerals. I think Russia might even be second.

8:34We will get to number three in a second. So what are the minerals that they banned, that China's banned sending to the U.S.? gallium, germanium, and something called, I don't know even how to say it, antimony, antimony, I don't know. But gallium and germanium, these are critical for building semiconductors and chips. And we couldn't have a single phone, a single computer. We couldn't have the electric grid without rare earth minerals. And guess what? We get all these rare earth minerals basically from China. And China controls 70 % of the world's supply. And I always wondered to myself, well, you know, we always have all these tensions with China.

9:15We're supposedly in this kind of even colder than the Cold War sort of war with China. There's a cybersecurity war. There's a tariff war. There's tensions around Taiwan. But strategically, the most important thing we get from China, guess what, is our rare earths. Not to mention all of our antidepressants are made in China. And all of our iPhones, of course, are made in China. But the rare earth, I always wonder, what if China just said, hey, we're not going to give you any more rare earth minerals. What are you going to do about it? Well, we have an answer. Two weeks after China did that, Trump says it's an absolute strategic necessity that we get Greenland.

9:51Now, just so you know, there is a history to this. So in World War II, by the way, Denmark has, quote unquote, owned Greenland or had some control over Greenland since the 1700s. And since about 1812, they completely own Greenland. Greenland, of course, has its own premier. They have some autonomy, but Denmark sends$700 million a year to support Greenland. And Greenland's a poor country. The biggest export is fishing and tourism. So the Inuit, the 57 ,000 actual residents of Greenland, do not get any benefit at all from the selling of rare earth minerals, from there's other natural resources in Greenland.

10:37We'll get to those. The Inuit get none of that$700 million. They're basically encouraged to leave their small little villages and go into bigger towns so they can participate in manufacturing and boring and factory work or whatever. If it were its own country, Greenland would by far have the highest suicide rate in the world. And it's something like 83 suicides out of every 100 ,000 people per year, which is really horrible. Like, I don't know what the US is, but Greenland is by far number one. And there's a high rate of alcoholism in Greenland. There's a lot of depression in Greenland because it's cold and most of the time it's dark because it's so north.

11:19But it's interesting though, most of the suicides happen in the summer because of insomnia. So the one time I've been stayed very North, I stayed in Iceland for a while in the middle of the summer, you can't sleep because it's sunny all the time. It's three, four in the morning, the sun is out and it's really hard to sleep. Your body thinks, your circadian rhythms think that it's the middle of the day. So it's really hard to sleep. And so apparently in Greenland in the summer where it's similar, you can't sleep, so many people have insomnia that this increases, that's when the most suicides take place.

11:56So I think it's also a real shame that, you know, here is a country with so many natural resources and Denmark pays them 700 million a year. And just there's only 57 ,000 people in this country. They don't really get any benefit from that. So I think somebody should remove Denmark's control over it just for this reason alone. Let's help these people out who have such a high suicide rate. But more importantly, what does this have to do with China and rare earth? Being an entrepreneur is a 24 seven job. And when you're hiring, you need a partner that works as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn jobs.

12:37When you clock out LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share with your network, get qualified candidates that you can manage all in one place. For one thing there, you can post a job. LinkedIn's new feature can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people. You get qualified candidates at the end of the day. The most important thing to your business is the quality of the candidates. And with LinkedIn, of course, you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72 % of small, medium businesses say using LinkedIn helps them find high quality candidates.

13:10Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash altature. That's linkedin.com slash altature to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. What does this have to do with China and rare earths? Well, the country with the third greatest amount of rare earths is Greenland. And if you go to the UN or the International Trade Organization or whatever, they say, no, no, no, Greenland only accounts for 5 % of the world's rare earth minerals production. The problem is, is that they actually have, you know, under the ground, one third of the world's rare earths.

13:53So just Denmark does not have the financial or technological capability to mine for rare earth minerals in Greenland. Now, you know who does, of course, the U.S. does, and China does. China knows how to do this very well. So Greenland has already said, despite the U.S. and the EU pleading with them not to do this, that it will not restrict Chinese mining of rare earth minerals. There's a company, it's called Greenland Minerals. This is the company that's the biggest company in Greenland mining the rare earths. Now, it's called Greenland Minerals, but guess who the largest shareholder is. It's a company called Shanghai Resources.

14:35Shanghai Resources is based in Beijing. So is this a coincidence? Well, guess what? Guess who the largest shareholder of Shanghai Resources is? Shanghai Resources is public on like the Beijing stock market, which means that the Chinese public owns a good chunk of the company. But the biggest shareholder of Shanghai Resources is, of course, the Chinese government owns over 27%, and then other big companies in China bring it up to over 50%. So China basically is mining, and Denmark has sold the mineral rights and the mining rights to this Shanghai resource, to basically China, instead of selling these rights to the US.

15:14And so China is getting a clamp on all the rare earth minerals out there. And this is not political. It doesn't matter how you feel about Trump or China or whatever. Like, I don't think one country should control the most important and valuable minerals on the planet, particularly minerals that could shut down the electric grid for the entire world. And again, all semiconductors are made with rare earth minerals and so on. Second off, Greenland is the sixth largest producer of, guess what, uranium. Of course, who wants uranium? Everybody in the world wants uranium. Anyone who wants to make a nuclear weapon wants uranium.

15:51uranium. And there's one city or area in Greenland that has all this uranium. It's called Kavanfjeld. I don't know how to say it. K-V-N-E-F-J-E-L-D. If someone could tell me how to say it, I'd be very grateful. And so guess who has the rights to mine all the uranium in Kavanfjeld? Oh, it's a small little company called Shanghai Resources. Once again, our favorite little Chinese mining company. Again, this is not about, oh, don't let China have it so the U.S. control it. Let's just not have one country that really doesn't like the U.S. controlling all the rare earth minerals and all of the uranium.

16:31This is the two most valuable resources on the planet. Second, or another thing, is oil and gas. For 80 years, the U.S. has been dependent on essentially the corruption of Saudi Arabia and OPEC for our oil and gas needs. But now, whether it's, you know, climate change or global warming, the reality is that glaciers in Greenland have been melting. And so guess what? It's easier to drill for oil in Greenland now. And it's estimated 13 % of the world's oil could be in Greenland territory and 30 % of the world's natural gas. So countries like China, Russia, the U.S., of course, are going to be competing for this territory.

17:12So again, Greenland is critical for rare earth minerals, uranium, oil, and gas. Now, let's take a step back. U.S. has tried to buy Greenland before, not only in 2019 with Donald Trump, but all the way back after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and Andrew Johnson took over as presidency back in 65. Andrew Johnson hired a bunch of people to decide, should we buy Greenland? And there were a lot of natural resources in Greenland. So he thought, okay, this could be good. But of course, he was later impeached and Congress didn't like him. So nothing he did went through. But more recently, during World War II, Denmark was taken over by Germany.

17:58Now, technically, Greenland, although it associates politically with the EU because it's owned by Denmark, technically Greenland is part of the North American continent. So Greenland was not taken over by Germany. Why would Germany even take over Greenland? The U.S. took care of Greenland during the five years of World War II, or after Denmark was taken over. And then right after World War II, Harry Truman in 1946 offered $100 million to buy Greenland, but Denmark said, no thanks. Now, there is a history, of course, of the U.S. buying countries. So one example is the purchase of Alaska, which we bought from the United States in 1867 when Andrew Johnson was president.

18:40Andrew Johnson was like our biggest imperialist, but he didn't wanna just attack countries, he was willing to pay. So he purchased Alaska for$7.2 million and the purchase added about 1.5 million square kilometers of land to the U.S. And in 1959, of course, that land became a state, the modern state of Alaska. Or before that, in 1803, the U.S. bought more than 2 million square kilometers of land. Of course, this is when Thomas Jefferson did the Louisiana purchase. The U.S. paid$15 million to France for Louisiana and all that area. So the U.S. has a history of doing this. We haven't really made a major land purchase like that in a long time.

19:20Well, okay, in 1917, the U.S. bought the Danish West Indies, a group of islands in the Caribbean, and that's what's now called the U.S. Virgin Islands. So now, of course, we now see the prime minister of Greenland said, this is absurd. We're not going to do it. The premier of Greenland, again, Mute Burup Eged, he said he made a statement also. He made a statement on Facebook, which is fascinating. By the way, his statement on Facebook only has 499 likes and 125 comments. So he doesn't really have a popular Facebook page. But this is where he made his main announcement on Facebook. He said, Greenland is ours.

20:03We're not for sale. We'll never be for sale. We must not use our years-long struggle for freedom. However, we must continue to be open to cooperation and trade with the whole world, especially with our neighbors. Since all cooperation and trade cannot go through Denmark, all cooperation with us must be based on our values because we must not rave about our country at all times. I don't know what that means. That could be just a mistranslation. There's also a military reason. Greenland is strategically in between Europe, Russia. If Greenland was the 51st state, it would be our closest state to Europe and Russia.

20:34Well, Alaska, I guess, is closer to Russia. And we have a major air force base with bombers that could deliver nuclear missiles. We already have that on Greenland. So it's interesting to see the premier of Greenland's Facebook page, there's various comments. One guy says, US is already keeping you safe. Isn't that correct? And then someone says, why would they want to give up their freedom? People, what does freedom mean? Like when people say, oh, why would they want to give up their freedom? It's not like the US would say, oh, you're the 51st state. Now you're not free anymore. Now you're all the slaves of the US.

21:06Like why would the US do that? This is already a country with the highest depression rate, the highest suicide rate. They're completely impoverished despite their wealth and natural resources. Denmark's not taking care of them. And of course, you know, Denmark's got$120 billion in national debt. Everything's got a price. All the US has to do is say, look, here's$120 billion, which is like pocket change compared to the money we send around the world for different wars. So we'll just pay off your entire national debt. It's like paying off someone's student loan debt. We'll pay off your entire national debt and we'll take Greenland.

21:38So I have a feeling there'll be some negotiations happening. It's also interesting to see how Russia has responded. The Russia response is fascinating. So one top level official in Russia, Mikheyev, I don't know who that is, said, Trump simply says it straight. We are everything and you are nothing. And he says, this is especially interesting because it drives a wedge between him and Europe. It undermines the world architecture and opens up certain opportunities for our foreign policy. If Trump really wants to stop the third world war, the way out is simple, dividing up the world into spheres of influence.

22:14So that's very interesting because what he's saying is, when Trump says he's trying to buy Greenland, he's basically acting like Russia. And he's basically saying that the U.S. could own a good part of the world. And Russia, this sort of justifies Russia's own imperialism by saying Russia also has the right to own a big chunk of the world. Forgetting the fact that, you know, this Ukraine-Russia war, however you feel about it. There's probably a million people dead. It's a horrible war, just tragic on both sides, Russia and Ukraine. And this guy says, this opens up opportunities for our foreign policy.

22:53No, it doesn't. He's trying to work out a commercial deal. He's trying to pay money to Denmark for Greenland. He's not trying to invade Greenland. No one's invading Greenland. But Elena Penina, who's a prominent member of Putin's United Russia Party, and also a member of the Russian state Duma, which is kind of like Congress. She posted her own theory on social media. She says, for Russia, the implementation of Trump's plans for Greenland will have military consequences. The island will become the largest U.S. military base. It already houses the U.S. Thule base, which addresses missile defense gaps.

23:27But now Greenland could again become a key base for U.S. strategic bombers. Could also be logical to deploy land-based medium-range missiles on the island, a reincarnation of the U.S. Armed Forces Iceworm Project from the 1960s, but with a different technical solution. The project involves placing 600 Minutemen missiles shortened to two stages and tunnels in the Greenland ice cap. So she got very technical on the military side. But okay, everybody's just posturing. And the reality is, this is really interesting. This is the second time that Trump has brought up buying Greenland. And now he's doing it with the full force of diplomacy behind him.

24:05Like clearly he and Elon Musk have discussed this. Ken Howery, a former member of the PayPal mafia, is going to be the ambassador to Denmark. So, and it's in conjunction with China banning the export of gallium and germanium and some other minerals, which again is going to affect our ability to make basic chips. So this is potentially responding to a disaster from China. So that's basically it. I hope you're a little bit more educated on what at first almost sounds ridiculous, but in fact is actually very strategically important for not only the U.S., but any country and could change the world economic landscape, particularly if we have more if U.S.

24:48has more control over rare earth minerals for the first time ever. that could be a key thing in our leverage with our relationship against China. It means, don't forget, China makes all our drugs, makes all our phones, makes all our chips, and gives us all the rare earth minerals we use to create our electric grid. So this is a pretty important strategic part of that relationship. Who owns the rare earths? Second, I don't think Denmark treats the Greenland citizens that well if they're all killing themselves. That's kind of horrible. And if they're all depressed alcoholics, that's pretty horrible.