120. Greenland Intelligence Scoop: Trump, Xi, and Putin's Battle for the Arctic

14:34David:Greenland does have a strategic position. It is very important. one of the origins of all of this is that there is from the second world war where they realized that there was this this thing called the greenland iceland uk gap gi uk gap which is where submarines passed through and nazi submarines they were tracking in world war ii were passing through and they realized this is a choke point which is greenland iceland in the uk where if you're going from uh the baltic and the where russia is now but in the past it was the nazis in the Second World War, the submarines coming into the Atlantic, that's where you go through this gap.

15:10David:So there's a strategic issue with that, which people are more worried about now and Russian submarines potentially going through that gap. That is true. That's a thing. And actually, the UK Foreign Secretary last year went to Iceland and talked about building up some of the monitoring capability, which I think was using AI and things to detect Russian submarine activity in that gap so there is a strategic aspect to greenland there and then there's this issue which what we talked about in our previous series of podcasts which is it is important and it has been historically because of its location for space and missiles and it's that thing where if you look at the map and you turn it around a different way you can see greenland's strategic position because the shortest route for missiles or in the in the past bombers to go from the Soviet Union, now Russia, to the continental United States, is over Greenland.

16:05David:It's over the North Pole, not any other route. So that's the strategic reason why Greenland, which is otherwise might seem very remote, is actually quite central when you look at the world in that way. And that goes back to this base that the US does have. This is the one I visited back in 2008. It was Tule, and it's now Putufik Space Base, which is this wild place on the very northern tip of Greenland, really remote with a huge runway that the United States built. We looked at this in the podcast series because this was a really important strategic base because they were running in the Cold War these things called Chrome Dome missions, which was US bombers flying sorties continually from this base, armed with nuclear missiles, because if the Soviet Union attacked, they were ready and already in the air to head over the pole and bomb the Soviet Union.

17:05David:And one of these planes actually crashes and parts of the nuclear weapon, not the actual nuclear core, but the explosives around it, go off. and the parts of the bomb at least go through the ice and into the water. It's a kind of mad story. So I was there in 2008 visiting this crazy base on top of the world, which was absolutely fascinating because it told you about Greenland's strategic position, particularly then it had been the Cold War. And at one point in the Cold War, it had thousands of people there. But it has diminished. I think it's worth saying that it's down to, I think, a couple of hundred people in that base now.

17:45David:And it's still there because it's got a radar warning station. And this is the relevant point, I guess, for what Donald Trump is claiming, is what's there now, and I stood outside it, is this huge radar sentry system, massive, and I've got pictures of it, which monitors activity in space and potentially missile launches and what's going on over the top of the Earth. And I remember when we drove there in a car, the car engine started kind of popping because of the power of the radar. It was kind of weird how intense it was.

18:18Gordon:And you weren't able to do math ever again after that, right?

18:21David:No, exactly. I've never been the same since, David.

18:23Gordon:You've never been the same. You're staring into the dome of the radar for a few minutes straight.

18:30David:Yeah, exactly. The point being, is that if Donald Trump talks about Golden Dome and wanting to build this missile defence system to protect the United States, you could argue that that base has a role to play and is important. but two really important points one is the u.s kind of neglected and let its military base run down over the years and secondly the 1951 treaty with denmark about greenland says the u.s can basically do whatever it wants anyway with that base or militarily on the island they've got the freedom to do it anyway it doesn't require owning greenland to expand that base or to even potentially put more bases in.

19:16David:The US has got a pretty free reign already.

19:18Gordon:That is the nub of it, right? We essentially have military sovereignty over Greenland at this point. Yeah, I mean, with some limits, but effectively a pretty free hand. If we wanted to build more bases in Greenland, we would be able to do that, though. There would be a way to make that happen. So I guess it raises this question of why does Donald Trump want complete and total control of Greenland? What do you think the answer is?

19:49David:That's the thing, because I think up to now you can make the case that Arctic security is a bigger thing. Greenland has a strategic position. Arctic security has been neglected. You can even make the case, which the more hawkish people in the US do, is Denmark capable or willing to spend the money to defend Greenland and to build the kind of bases? And the US might need to build more bases if it wants to build Golden Dome. You can make all of those cases and still say, well, the US could still do that with Danish cooperation without owning the real estate. Could do it through the existing deal or cut a new deal if it felt it needed it.

20:29David:So I think that's where the problem is. If the US had been making a subtler argument about Arctic security and international security and the strategic role of Greenland, I think it could have made a pretty good case as to why the US needs to take a bigger role on Greenland in order to defend it and deal with the Arctic security issues. But it's that issue of the kind of language of ownership and control and acquisition, which I think is where all the obstacles are coming from. And it's this idea that Donald Trump's saying we need complete and total control of Greenland. And if you speak to people, they say, well, he looked at a map in his first term and he basically said, why don't we own that?

21:16David:Why is that Danish? Why does that belong to Denmark over here, this small European country in his mind, and not to us when it's in our hemisphere? And I do think it is as simple as that for a real estate guy, don't you think?

21:27Gordon:I think that's a large part of it. There's a tendency here in the States to kind of take what Trump is doing and then to layer on some strategic rationale. And you could make the case, I suppose, I'm going to talk out of both sides of my mouth here for a second. You could make the case, I suppose, that this is Trump's effort to sort of position the U.S. for what's going to be sort of a decades long competition for influence of the Arctic. And you want to deter adversaries from expanding on Greenland. You want to position yourself for, you know, access to these new sea lanes and access to resources.

22:08Gordon:You want to ensure that the Arctic doesn't become some kind of strategic vacuum where the U.S. doesn't have the same influence that Russia and China might. But I don't think that that's what's going on here. And it does seem like at the end of the day, it might be as simple as this guy wants to add more territory to the United States of America and to say that, you know, he accomplished that.

22:36David:Yeah. Legacy. Legacy building.

22:37Gordon:Because it's hard to, you know, I'm sure we'll talk about this more at the end. It's kind of hard to understand why, if you could position yourself for this conflict or this competition for influence without undermining the Western alliance, in fact, which you probably want unified for this competition, if you could do all of that without having to crack relations with the Europeans or with the Canadians, why not do this the easy way? Why do it that way? And get to the same outcomes. Because in that case, you don't actually own the territory. And that does seem to be a lot of what this is about.

23:17David:Yeah. And I do think he has become slightly fixated with it, looking at it and thinking, I want that. I was listening to, I was at a talk, Fiona Hill, the former Russia advisor in Trump's first term in the National Security Council, was talking at an event just the other day. And she said, it's an interesting phrase. She said, Greenland is to Trump as Ukraine is to Putin. Now, it sounds like an incendiary claim. And I'm not suggesting that Trump is equivalent to Putin or that Trump is going to fight for Greenland in the way Ukraine. But I think her point was actually it's about a fixation that comes into someone's mind.

23:56David:and i think in putin's mind the idea that he had to have ukraine and it couldn't if it was linked to nato or moving close to nato it was an absolute threat to his security he became fixated by that and i think her point is that that is similar to to what uh donald trump is starting to feel or has started to feel with greenland is like i just have to have that because if i don't have it then you know chinese or russians are going to move in and it's going to be a threat to my security. And I do think there is something for all the rationalizations you can do. There's something kind of emotive there, really.

24:32Yeah.

24:33Gordon:It's very Smeagol-esque, isn't it? Yeah. My precious. Well, maybe there, Gordon, with a Lord of the Rings analogy, sort of landing the plane on the fixation that our president seems to have with Greenland. Let's take a break. When we come back, we'll see what the spies are up to. Spring starts at The Home Depot, and we are bringing the heat to your backyard this season. Fire up the flavor with our wide variety of grills for under$300, like the Next Grill 4-Burner Gas Grill that's perfect for hosting your spring cookout. Then set the scene and turn your outdoor space into the go-to spot the patio sets for every budget.

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26:24Gordon:Well, welcome back. As the Arctic allegedly heats up, Gordon, the spies are sure to follow, aren't they? I mean, what kind of competition for influence would this be if we didn't have a whole bunch of intelligence gathering and espionage going on up in the Arctic?

26:41David:yeah i was trying to think i don't think historically there's been like a mi-17 which is like the arctic bureau although there was that james bond film where there was an arctic base i think for one of the baddies i can't remember i think that's the one with the invisible car yeah but anyway so i think i think there is a little bit of history of this but not much i guess that's the point is that the arctic for all its importance you don't really hear that much about human intelligence gathering. I think there's been a lot of signals intelligence gathering and bases up in the Arctic and things like that because you're looking for submarines moving.

27:17David:So there's that kind of technical intelligence which has long been up there, monitoring sub-movements, monitoring military facilities, trying to collect probably communications and stuff like that. So it feels like that's been there. There's been a few signs, I don't know if you've seen much, but of more human espionage of other things going on. So the Russians, I think there was an illegal, one of these deep cover spies that they were running up in Norway, I think, who'd done some work and was a kind of posing as an academic, lecturing on Arctic security, clearly collecting information on that.

27:54David:So the Norwegians have also talked quite a lot about Russian spies on their border, about drone activity. that's kicking up a gear of course we've had these new countries join NATO Sweden and Finland which has also added I think to to Russia's desire to spy up there and to make the the whole Arctic region a bit busier and you hear talk about influence operations about China and Russia perhaps running influence operations to try and work on local populations perhaps to stir them up against, whether it's the Canadians or whoever else. So I think you hear bits about that. So it's definitely picking up, isn't it?

28:39David:I guess the more complicated question is, what are the Americans up to, David?

28:45Gordon:Well, you know who's running a great influence operation to turn large portions of Greenland's population against the United States right now? I think I know who. Who do you think it is? Is it the Russians, Gordon? Whatever influence operation or active measure the Russians may have been running to sort of like sow discord between Greenland and Denmark or the population and the Americans to divide the Western alliance has now been, I would say, overtaken by events. We used to talk about things being OBE inside the CIA. You know, if you were trying to write a piece, it would be OBE if it was just overtaken.

29:25Gordon:I feel like whatever the Russians were doing has now been overtaken by - We'll just stand back and watch. Yeah, exactly. You can just kind of step that down. I mean, there was this interesting Wall Street Journal report that came out, I think, last spring about the US stepping up intelligence gathering efforts regarding Greenland itself, which I think is fascinating. I don't remember. When I was inside the agency, I don't remember there being Greenland analysts. There certainly were analysts who would work on like Denmark and there were, you know, we kind of and I'm going to get some flack from my old comrades, but we kind of had this sense working on what felt like very important topics on the Middle East, you know, Syria, Iran, working on counterterrorism issues, you know, civil war on Iraq, whatever it might be that kind of those were the places where you're writing a lot of PDBs, you're working long hours.

30:23Gordon:and then you had these kind of knife and fork set analysts who were covering the Benelux countries and the politics and economics of Europe and you just kind of thought, I don't know if that's the speed I want to be operating at. But now, if you're the Danish leadership analyst, man, you're busy.

30:43David:I just have this vision of this, the Greenland analyst, so he'd been kind of slumbering in his cubicle at Langley, suddenly being woken up and being like, go brief the president.

30:54Gordon:I mean, this Wall Street Journal article, though, said that the director of national intelligence, the DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, had issued. And I actually thought I'm not familiar with this term. This might be new since I left a collection emphasis message, which sounds kind of weak sauce to intelligence agency heads back in May. They were directed to learn more about Greenland's independence movement and attitudes on American resource extraction on the island. And a collection emphasis message from the DNI sounds like something that the director of any other intel agency might be permitted to throw into their waste paper basket if they so desire.

31:32Gordon:I'm not sure how much Trump is really interacting with the PDB, but I would have to wager that there would have been articles written over the past year for the PDB on Greenland's independence movement, on what the Russians and the Chinese are up to in the Arctic or in Greenland in particular. You know, the other interesting thing here, which is from this Wall Street Journal article also suggests it doesn't say it quite directly, but suggests that some of the spying would be happening against the Danes. And that's, you know, obviously that gets kind of sensitive. But the Danes are different from the Brits, the Canadians, the Five Eyes members.

32:14Gordon:Right. And so the U.S. spies on NATO allies. Right. We do that. We that is not uncommon. So this is something that's happening prior to Trump, even if there's more emphasis on it now.

32:25David:Yeah, I do know that when that report came out in the Wall Street Journal, the Danish foreign minister said just after it that he was concerned about the report telling a news agency, it worries me a lot because we don't spy between friends. And I was thinking to myself, oh, you've got a bit to learn over the Danish foreign minister. Because, I mean, for a start, you never clearly read the Snowden files and the fact that, you know, the US was collecting on Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany cell phones. So there was a bit of me which was like, welcome to reality. But of course, you don't want to talk about it.

32:56David:But I mean, I think that, yeah, there are different aspects of it because some of that collection might be, let's understand what the dynamics are in Greenland. And there's a kind of legitimate bit maybe, which is, are the Chinese buying influence? You know, what's going on? Are the Chinese running influence operations in Greenland? Or are some of those Chinese bids or commercial bids cover for a kind of state activity to gain a foothold in the island? And you could see why - The Chinese never do that, Gordon.

33:25Gordon:The Chinese don't do that, right? They would never. Why would you use a commercial footprint as a foothold for your political influence? Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly.

33:35David:so you could see why there are things that if you're the US you might put at the more legitimate end the next level is you might want to understand the Greenlandic population because you want to influence them yourselves because you're going to run a campaign to try and win them over and then the next stage is are you spying on Denmark and Danish leaders to know what they're doing and is someone collecting on them there's there are different stages of sensitivity and complexity there, but it wasn't clear from that report. And I'm sure no one can confirm it. But all of those are plausible to me.

34:07David:Those are things that people might be interested in.

34:10Gordon:So what do you think happens, Gordon, to NATO or to the Five Eyes, let's say, which I can't believe I'm saying this, but if we take Greenland by force, what happens?

34:26David:Well, I think if the US takes Greenland by force, which to be fair to Donald Trump, he said at Davos they're not going to do, then I think NATO dies as it would have to be reconstituted something else, maybe a European alliance without the US. The trust that the US has got the Europeans back is already declining even without that. But I think that would be the end. So I think that is at the worst case scenario. I think there are kind of previous steps even though which do cause strains in the alliance and do undermine it and I think will play into the intelligence game. And I think for the UK it's pretty tricky, isn't it?

35:07David:Because when Keir Starmer at the start of the week, as this all blew up, not quite literally but nearly after some of those messages, he was there and it was interesting because he gave this press conference in Downing Street. And I did notice quite a few times he was like, this is big, this is important, we've got to stand up for ourselves, all these things. But by the way, maintaining the defense, intelligence and nuclear relationship with the US is important. And there was a kind of sign there, which was these things are important and more to the point, they are quite difficult to disentangle.

35:40David:You don't do that overnight, even if you were thinking about it. so i think there was a sign there it's this is not this is not simple straightforward things don't rush to do anything which does permanent lasting damage to this alliance because it's important to the uk security and i think that was a clear message from him but i don't know what you think i think for instance five eyes so five eyes is us uk australia new zealand and canada now yeah But how does, I mean, you tell me, how does Five Eyes work when the Canadians are worried about what the US are doing? I mean, it becomes a less effective alliance, doesn't it?

36:22David:Because the trust starts to go.

36:24Gordon:I saw a report, I think this was yesterday, I'm not sure if it was credible, but that the Canadians had actually wargamed a US invasion from the South. Did you see this? I didn't see that, no, I didn't see that. Yeah, I shouldn't be spewing that without having double checked that I just I saw it on social media and it seemed to come from like a relatively credible Western reporter. But it's oh, and Becky is saying it was reported. Yeah, it's reported in the Times. So must be true. It must be. Yeah, it probably is true. If I were the Canadians, you might at least give some thought to it or, you know, and then put it out there that you that you did this so that you can show that there's a cost potentially to the US.

37:08David:But in the intelligence world, this is wild, because if you're the Canadians, you'd want to have intelligence on what the chances are that this might happen. But the people that you're worried about are part of the main intelligence alliance on which you rely for all of your intelligence. I mean, it's crazy. And the Five Eyes, we should say, they share a lot of stuff, but not everything. There are points when New Zealand was kind of really on the margins of the alliance. And so there's different groupings within it. It's not as simple as that everything gets shared. And you can see it. You can see it basically becoming less effective and less useful and there being less sharing as there's less trust in that alliance.

37:48Gordon:What are the lines from the report that Becky has copied into the chat here? It's great. Canada's resistance would rely upon insurgency tactics similar to those deployed by the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the fight against the Soviet Union. according to reports. So, I mean, you know, I don't love the thought, Gordon, that I would potentially, I'd get a Stigger missile fired at me, you know, above Toronto as we'd march into Canada. I mean, it's just,

38:12David:it's kind of wild, isn't it? Some of this stuff is wild.

38:14Gordon:The problem inside the intelligence sharing component of this, because as you say, take the US-UK dynamic inside Five Eyes, you rely on us for your nuclear deterrent and unwinding that is really hard.

38:28David:It's a long-term game. Yeah.

38:30Gordon:It's a long-term game. Inside the intelligence sharing components, be they human or SIGINT or otherwise, the problem from the standpoint of the Brits, the Canadians, any non-US member of the Five Eyes, is that the US is responsible for so much of the intelligence that is shared and the resources that get doled out inside this group. Because like the US does things like we pay the OPEX, the operating expenditure for SIGINT installations that the UK runs. And so the problem is that asymmetry. And this is why I think Keir Starmer is making these kind of slightly mealy mouth statements about, you know, what the UK would be able to do is because if we all inside the Five have 100 units of something, but you only contribute 10 of those, I can push you around.

39:26Gordon:Because ultimately, if this thing falls apart, the US gets less, but you guys get a lot less. And that dynamic, I think, is the kind of ugly -

39:37David:That's the ugly dynamic. Once it gets transactional, it's pretty hard. I do think, particularly geography matters. I mean, there are a lot of US bases. When the US intercepted that Shadow Fleet tanker, it did it from UK bases. There are Filingdale's early warning system base, which is in the UK, in Yorkshire, there's Menworth Hill. There is Rammstein in Germany, which is a massive logistics base for the US military. So there are these things -

40:02Gordon:There's SIGGIT installations in Oman, in Cyprus. All around the world, yeah. In Australia, at Pine Gap, right?

40:08David:And all of those would actually, if you withdrew those, would do damage to US capabilities. But the problem is, you're right, it would also signal the blowing up of an alliance, which would do more damage to intelligence partners or to strategic partners. So if you end up in that place, then we're all in a bad way. And I think that is what people are saying is, we do not need to go to that yet. But I suppose last point for me would be no one wants to blow up the relationship quickly. Everyone wants to see if they can make as much of it survives as possible. But you would be mad if you're the UK if you weren't quietly thinking, how do we de-risk this relationship?

40:45David:We spent a long time thinking, how do we de-risk our economic dependencies on China or our relationships on China? You'd be mad if you're in the UK or Europe as well. And you weren't thinking, how do we de-risk in the medium term and maybe quite quietly our dependencies and relationships with the United States just in case we need to go that way? And I think that is not a positive sign for the relationship, but that's what it feels like.

41:11Gordon:That's exactly right. I think that is a great place. Not great, you know what I mean, but that is the place to leave this. Please let us know what you think of emergency episodes like this, because obviously if you've been paying attention to our programming over the past three weeks, we've been deep in what's actually going on today. We are, I think, planning, Gordon, that we will return next week to Kim Philby. Yeah, at last. And the story of the young Kim Philby at last, Britain's greatest trader. But do let us know what you think about these emergency episodes. And I think this issue and the broader dynamic of tension and mistrust inside the Five Eyes and the US-UK relationship is one we're going to keep coming back to.

41:57David:Yeah, I think that's right. We should definitely come back to it. So just a reminder, Kim Philby, hopefully next week, if you want to hear all of those episodes as soon as they drop, do join the Declassified Club at the restisclassified.com. you'll also get access to some great bonus materials, some interviews and a special tape where you get to hear Kim Philby himself talk. But otherwise, we hope you've enjoyed this special emergency session on Greenland. And we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time.