Why Greenland at All Costs: The Billionaires and the Profiting Network
The Billionaires Hunting for Greenland, And the Network Profiting From America’s Arctic Obsession.
It reveals how a billionaire turned a cocktail-hour suggestion into a geopolitical flash-point, while tech oligarchs position themselves to extract the island’s trillion-dollar resources.
How It All Started On a fog-bound evening in 2018, as the Trump administration careened through its second year, former National Security Adviser John Bolton found himself in the Oval Office, listening to a conversation that would eventually put U.S. allies in a very inconvenient position and thrust this ice-locked island of roughly 56,000 people into the center of Great Power competition. So the whole idea centered on Greenland. It came not from any Pentagon planner or State Department person who deals with Arctic issues. But rather from a man whose expertise is in foundation shades and anti-aging serums. That part seems a bit off at first. But it somehow makes the story different.
According to Bolton’s detailed contemporaneous notes, Ronald Lauder, the 82-year-old heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics empire and a Trump confidant since their youth days, had casually suggested that the United States purchase Greenland from Denmark. Trump, intrigued by the island’s strategic location and untapped mineral wealth, seized on the idea with characteristic zeal. What began as a billionaire’s musing would become official US policy, resurfacing eight years later with renewed intensity and a network of ultra-wealthy investors poised to profit.
The Groomsmen and the Greenland Gambit The relationship between Lauder and Trump extends far beyond casual acquaintance. In the pressure-cooker of 1960s Wharton business classes, the two forged a bond that would weather decades of New York real estate, bankruptcies, and political transformations. Lauder, whose family fortune exceeds stand between $4-6 billion, has been a consistent financial lifeline for Trump’s political aspirations. Federal Election Commission filings reveal a $5 million contribution from Lauder to Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC in 2025 alone, making him one of the president’s most generous benefactors.
Yet Lauder’s influence extends beyond campaign donations. Former Trump officials described him as a “shadow diplomat” who worked outside official channels. A former NSC staffer said Ron would phone the residence and without warning, they’d be pulled into a briefing on something unexpected. Greenland is the perfect example: zero inter-agency review process; one man’s idea became a presidential fixation.
The Man Who Would Be King Of Water and Power Since that fateful Oval Office suggestion, Lauder has executed what Arctic security experts describe as a “classic influence-to-investment pipeline” first shaping policy, then positioning himself to benefit from its implementation.
In 2020, Lauder’s investment vehicle acquired a significant stake in Greenlandic water company, a fledgling freshwater bottling company operating in Greenland’s capital. The company, which has never turned a profit, is co-owned by a senior official Wæver Johansen, and a key party member in Greenland’s governing coalition, a relationship that raises questions about potential conflicts of interest. “You don’t invest in a money-losing water company in a town of 18,000 people unless you’re buying something else,” said Dr. Gabrielle Hossfeld, a specialist in Arctic geopolitics, “In this case, that something else appears to be political access.”
Lauder’s ambitions extend far beyond bottled water. Through Greenland Development Partners, a deliberately opaque consortium registered in Delaware, he is pushing to build a massive hydroelectric facility at Greenland’s largest lake, Tasersiaq, Greenland’s largest freshwater reservoir. The project needs major foreign funding, investment and a stable security climate to protect infrastructure stretching hundreds of miles across the Arctic wilderness.
Publicly, Lauder has shed any pretense of neutrality. In a February 2025 New York Post op-ed, he called for a “trilateral agreement” between the US, Greenland, and Denmark that would “formalize America’s preeminent role in Arctic security.” The article, which was widely spread among Trump supporters, said that China’s and Russia’s expansion in the Arctic required “creative solutions to sovereignty questions,” which is diplomatic code for giving the US greater control.
“This isn’t about security alone,” said a former Danish intelligence officer “It’s about creating the legal and political framework for resource extraction on terms favorable to American investors. The security rhetoric is just the sales pitch for the masses.”
When Our World Ended | FREE with Kindle The Billionaire Consortium: From Silicon Valley to the Ice Sheet Lauder may have planted the seed, but he is far from alone in seeing Greenland’s melting ice as an opportunity rather than a catastrophe. The moment Trump’s interest became public in 2018, a stampede of tech moguls began quietly acquiring stakes in the island’s mineral wealth.
Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Michael Bloomberg, a trinity of tech power, have collectively deployed probably hundred of million dollars through their investment in Kobold Metals, an AI-driven mineral exploration firm that has secured exclusive rights to survey southern Greenland for rare earth elements. Where KoBold Metals got $537 million in its most recent Series C funding round, giving it a value of about $2.96 billion. including the investment by the trio.
The 17 rare-earth elements on the periodic table are essential for everything from F-35 fighters, EVs, wind turbines to iPhones, and China currently controls 85-90% of global processing capacity. “Greenland represents the only non-Chinese source that could realistically come online this decade,” Kobold CEO Kurt House told a mining conference in 2024. “The geopolitics are as valuable as the geology.”
In 2022, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, joined the Kobold syndicate through his venture fund, and his personal wealth is closely linked to the revolution in artificial intelligence. His interest is mainly practical: AI systems depend on large amounts of rare earth magnets, especially for data centers and robotics. “The new Cold War will be won by whoever controls the elements that make AI possible,” Dr. D.L. Marshall said in one of his presentation, likewise, “Whoever controls the elements controls the future” David S. Abraham as cited in an analysis on the geopolitical importance of rare earth metals.
Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder and Trump transition ally, has funded perhaps the most audacious project: Praxis, a startup promising to build a libertarian “charter city” on Greenland’s rugged eastern coast. Internal documents obtained by this publication reveal plans for a settlement of 10,000 residents governed by a “techno-democratic” system free from environmental regulations and traditional democratic oversight. Greenlandic officials, who learned of the project through media reports, have vowed to block it. “This is colonialism with a Silicon Valley accent,” said Aqqaluk Lynge, a former Greenlandic parliament member. “They want our land but not our people.”
Howard Lutnick, currently serving as President Trump’s Commerce Secretary, has the longest record of prior involvement among the individuals considered. As CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, he oversaw the firm’s financing of mining projects in Greenland for more than 30 years, including periods of both commodity upswings and downturns. In his new position, Lutnick leads the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which gives him direct authority to approve or block foreign mining deals. Ethics monitors argue that this setup closely matches what they describe as regulatory capture.I did not receive any text to rewrite. Please paste the text you want revised.
Trump’s Resurgent Crusade and Denmark’s Dilemma Years after his first, abortive attempt to purchase Greenland, Trump has returned to the idea with escalated urgency. In his January 2025 inaugural address, he declared American “ownership and control” of Greenland an “absolute necessity” for national security. The rhetoric has been matched by action: the appointment of a special envoy to Greenland, threats of “very large” tariffs against Denmark.
The Pentagon contractor has been roped into justifying the policy, releasing a classified memo, leaked publication, that warns of Chinese “dual-use” research stations and Russian submarines operating in Greenlandic waters. Yet Danish intelligence sources dispute the severity, describing the Chinese presence as minimal and Russia’s activities as routine.
What has changed since 2018 is the billionaire network’s readiness. Where Trump’s first Greenland push caught investors off-guard, the second is synchronized with a sophisticated influence operation. Lauder, Thiel, and Kobold executives have collectively contributed millions to pro-Trump think tanks crafting Arctic policy. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which is provided personnel for Trump’s second term, explicitly calls for “securing American title to Greenland by purchase or treaty.”
The recently Davos’26 event made it clear that the President is serious about acquiring Greenland by any means.
Greenland’s Reckoning: A People Say No The people whose homeland is being carved up by billionaires and great powers have made their position clear: Greenland is not for sale.
In January 2025, a poll by the Greenlandic newspaper Sermitsiaq revealed that 85% of those surveyed did not support joining the United States. This feeling is strongest among the Inuit, whose people have lived on the island for 4,500 years. Greenland’s prime minister, Múte Bourup Egede, told the Arctic Council that Greenland is not just a real estate asset to be traded. “Our sovereignty is not conditional on America’s mineral needs.”
Conclusion: The Arctic’s New Gold Rush What began as Ronald Lauder’s cocktail-hour suggestion has metastasized into a full-spectrum pressure campaign blending national security theater, predatory investment, and neo-colonial ambition. The network of billionaires, from Lauder’s old-money cosmetics fortune to Thiel’s techno-libertarian dreams, have created a self-reinforcing ecosystem: they fund the politicians who create the policy that enriches their investments.
For Greenland’s 56,000 residents, the stakes could not be higher. Their island sits atop an estimated trillion dollars in mineral wealth and holds strategic value that will only increase as climate change opens Arctic sea lanes. But, as Dr. Hossfeld notes, “The question isn’t whether Greenland has value. It’s whether Greenlanders will be partners or simply inhabitants of a billionaire’s bunker.”
The irony of the “elite safe region” theory is that Greenland is becoming precisely the opposite, a geopolitical tinderbox where American threats against a NATO ally have created an existential crisis for the alliance. If crisis ever did engulf the United States, Greenland would be contested terrain, not a sanctuary. The billionaires’ investments are not hedges against catastrophe, but bets on profit in a warming world where American hegemony is exercised through acquisition rather than alliance.
As Aqqaluk Lynge put it, staring out over Nuuk’s ice-choked harbor: “They talk about security, but they mean extraction. They talk about partnership, but they mean possession. And they wonder why we say no.”
As I was told by Dr. D.L. Marshall, “this is not to support the administration and not a disregard for the Greenlanders decision on the matter, but President Trump will get Greenland like a wrapped gift box.”
Q? – I asked, how can this happen?
NATO cannot defend Greenland against the might of the United States military. There is no point in wasting time on that. There are no forward-basing arrangements, no integrated Arctic air-defense network, and almost no strategic-lift assets pre-positioned north of the Arctic Circle.
The nearest European ports and airfields are two to three days’ sailing or flying time; sealift capacity and aerial refueling are already fully tasked for the Baltic and High North.
High-value aircraft such as surveillance, maritime-patrol, and strike platforms are also deployed elsewhere, leaving the Greenland–Iceland gap at best thinly covered in a crisis.
Washington therefore has two broad options:
a. Outside–in: sideline NATO and the EU as the U.S. puts pressure on Denmark and Greenland to engage in a bilateral process.
b. Outside–in: bring NATO and key European allies to the table from the outset, pinning guarantees in terms of resource access, infrastructure investment, and environmental considerations that protect all parties’ stakes as well as Greenlanders. This creates a win-win for all.
If Denmark and Greenland decline to cooperate, the United States could nonetheless act unilaterally, sending in troops, declaring an interim administrative authority, and imposing sanctions or tariffs on any country or institution interfering with the effort.
The least desirable and perhaps the most dangerous scenario is that pressure is exerted coercively, accentuating divisions between Denmark and Greenland. Such disagreement could lead to protest, which would require U.S. intervention.
