Greenland and the Benjamins

(Amended transcript of video)

PBS got hold of a letter over the weekend that showed Donald Trump completely unhinged on the subject of Greenland. He threatened to go to war over not getting a Nobel Peace Prize, and addressed that concern to the president of Norway, a leader who has nothing to do with either the Nobel Peace Prize or Greenland, which is owned by Denmark.

But there’s a method behind the madness. It’s not all about the Benjamins. Trump’s bullying megalomania is driving this narrative, and it might destroy NATO. But the deeper story revolves around the huge profits that billionaires are looking for in Greenland.

So pay attention to a company called Kobold Metals. Michael Bloomberg, Jeff Bezos, Marc Andreessen, and Sam Altman have all invested heavily in Kobold Metals. Now, do these investors like what Trump is doing right now? Probably not, because they don’t need Trump’s embarrassing shenanigans to get concessions from Denmark that would let them overcome certain regulations in Greenland and start mining some of these precious metals that they need for batteries, AI and other purposes.

The point is, Trump wants Greenland not just because it exceeds Alaska in size as a trophy for his presidency. It’s also part of an overall return to an 19th and 18th century imperialist tradition, where big countries and big businessmen use these smaller and weaker countries to extract resources.

The new way they want to do this, ultimately, is through what are called crypto-states. The reason that Trump pardoned the former president of Honduras, who was a drug dealer, was because he and other conservatives in Honduras, plus Peter Thiel (JD Vance’s mentor) and like-minded free-enterprise authoritarians (no longer a contradiction in terms) in the U.S., favor the establishment of an island state off the coast of Honduras that would be backed by non-transparent crypto and free of any regulation by the Honduran government.

The goal now is to do the same with other countries, to create crypto-states attached to the Marshall Islands, Nigeria, Panama (one of the reasons Trump is going after the canal) and Greenland.

These crypto-states would be unregulated, yielding huge profits not just for crypto bros, but for companies trying to extract resources, and for the politicians (and their families) who helped them do so.

So follow the money, not just the madness.

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