Donald Trump begins the third stage of taking over Greenland
The silence around this highly controversial topic will be temporary, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen warned last week. “It all seems distant at the moment,” she told the Danish parliament. “Maybe some people feel we can breathe a sigh of relief. But I believe we can't.” The people of Greenland still live in fear of a US takeover, Frederiksen added. “Imagine,” she said, “that the strongest superpower in the world talked about you as something that could be bought—as something that could be owned, something that had to be had.”
She stressed that Denmark would support the autonomously governed island in deciding its own future. “We will not allow threats and intimidation to coerce us into doing something that is clearly wrong.”
Frederiksen's extremely strong words are not accidental. A few days earlier, the Senate approved a new US ambassador to Denmark, whom Trump entrusted with the task of “conquering” Greenland. By nominating Ken Howery as ambassador in December 2024, the president had already set the tone: “Ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” he wrote on Truth Social at the time. “Ken will do a fantastic job representing the interests of the United States.”
Trump clearly sees Howery as the ideal intermediary to negotiate such an agreement — something, it's worth noting, that the governments of Denmark and Greenland have categorically ruled out .
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Howery, 49, is not only a seasoned diplomat — he served as ambassador to Sweden during Trump's first term — but also a successful businessman. His net worth is estimated at over one billion euros. He is considered a classic conservative rather than a MAGA ideologue, but according to the New York Times, he donated $1 million to Donald Trump's presidential campaign. According to insiders quoted in the report, he said he was interested in the position primarily because of his plans for Greenland.
Close ties to Thiel and Musk
But Howery's ties to certain circles in Silicon Valley are likely to be of greater concern. In 1998, together with technology entrepreneur Peter Thiel, he founded the PayPal payment service and a few years later the venture capital company Founders Found. He also maintains a close relationship with Elon Musk, who also helped found PayPal, and has invested in his companies including Neuralink and xAI. Musk congratulated him on his nomination, saying: “Congratulations! Help America get Greenland.”
This is worth mentioning because many liberal tech entrepreneurs promote a utopia in which Greenland plays a key role: the development of the so-called charter cities where new technologies, such as autonomous cars or artificial intelligence, can be developed without any government regulations. The sparsely populated and remote island is repeatedly mentioned as a possible location for this purpose.
Dryden Brown, founder of the “Praxis” project, which aims to speed up the construction of such cities, traveled to Greenland last year to (unsuccessfully) negotiate the purchase of land. Due to difficult weather conditions, Greenland is a potential site for the trial colonization of Mars, which Elon Musk plans to achieve by 2050, Brown concluded. “We need to build a prototype of Terminus (Musk's name for the planned settlement on Mars – ed. ) on Earth before we go to Mars,” he wrote on the X platform.
One of the most prominent supporters of “Praxis” is Peter Thiel, who invested in the project through the venture capital firm Pronomos. According to Reuters reports, future ambassador Howery is also not against this idea. After Howery's nomination, the “Praxis” X account wrote: “As planned.” It is unclear to what extent Trump himself supports the project. However, during the campaign he pledged to support the development of card cities around the world. The news of Howery's confirmation as ambassador resonated in Denmark because it followed a series of disturbing revelations. This summer, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. government had ordered its intelligence agencies to step up espionage activities in Greenland. According to anonymous informants, they are to collect information about the independence movement and identify people sympathetic to Trump's annexation plans.
“The directive is one of the first concrete steps by the Trump administration to fulfill the president's oft-stated desire to take over Greenland,” the report says. In late August, an investigation by Danish broadcaster Danske Radio (DR) revealed further details. According to the report, at least three US citizens linked to Trump and his administration are involved in covert operations aimed at influencing Greenland.
One person in Greenland tried to compile a list of supporters and opponents of the United States taking over the island. The person also allegedly encouraged Greenlanders to report incidents that could shed a negative light on Denmark – particularly colonial-era crimes that continue to strain relations between Copenhagen and Greenland.
According to anonymous sources, who DR says come from the Danish government and government agencies, as well as from Greenland and the United States, two other people, allegedly previously working for Trump, allegedly tried to establish contacts in politics, business and among the civilian population. The aim of the “infiltration” is to “cause internal conflicts”, says one of the sources.
Following the publication of the report, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen summoned the chargé d'affaires of the US Embassy in Copenhagen. “Any attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of the Kingdom is obviously unacceptable,” he said. If these activities were officially organized, “it violates all international rules.”
In response to the request, the U.S. embassy in Copenhagen said only that “the U.S. government does not control or direct the activities of private individuals.” In any case, the incidents are part of a broader plan that Danish government circles are observing from Trump regarding Greenland. According to the plan, three phases are expected: First, Trump launched a “grooming” offensive by sending his son, Donald Trump Jr., to Nuuk earlier this year.
The pressure was then publicly increased. In March, Vice President J.D. Vance visited the American base in Pituffik, Greenland, and sharply criticized the government in Copenhagen. Now the third phase of the strategy has begun – infiltration and targeted influence on the people of Greenland. The lack of immediate new progress is in no way a sign of relief. On the contrary, the approach is now more subtle, says a report by Danish radio DR. “We may be experiencing the calm before the storm,” says one source.
Other reports from recent weeks also point to this. The Danish daily Politiken revealed that employees of the US Embassy in Copenhagen and the US Consulate in Nuuk were ordered to disclose all communications with President Trump from October 2024 to January 2025. According to reports, the order came directly from the State Department in Washington. Rufus Gifford, former US ambassador in Copenhagen, told Politiken that the process resembled a “purge”.
The Danish government is determined to prevent any attempts to polarize the island's society. Shortly after the espionage allegations came to light, Prime Minister Frederiksen apologized for the forced sterilization of many Greenlandic women and girls in the 1960s and 1970s. “I would like to apologize on behalf of Denmark for the spiraling scandal,” Frederiksen said. It was the first public statement of its kind since the scandal became public in 2017 — and an admission of guilt that many Greenlandic women had long been waiting for.
