surprise! There is a technological dimension to Donald Trump's big, bold ambition to buy Greenland from Denmark. Ken Howley, nominated by President-elect Trump to be the next ambassador to Japan (and thus the chief facilitator of all deals), is another member of the wealthy corps of tech talent who will serve in the incoming Trump administration.
Howery, who was part of the original “PayPal Mafia” (he was the CFO who helped put it together and sell it to eBay), went on to co-found the storied VC firm Founders Fund with Peter Thiel and others. I did. He is also a close friend of Elon Musk.
Mr. Howery's decades of experience in high-tech investing and M&A have led him to some of the Valley's most difficult deals. Still, Greenland may be his longest destination yet.
Simply put, Denmark and Greenland are not interested in selling. They even feel a little embarrassed by the idea of doing such a thing. “We don't want to be Americans,” Greenlandic Prime Minister Mute Egede said last week.
Howley, who served as ambassador to Sweden in the previous Trump administration, said in this New York Times profile that he was drawn to the job in Denmark because of the long-standing opportunities here. He points out. “Trending real estate deals on behalf of a real estate mogul could attract the kind of attention Mr. Howley desires,” the paper said.
It's not too hard to guess what is drawing Team Trump to Greenland. On the surface, President Trump says it's about geopolitics. “For purposes of national security and freedom around the world, the United States feels that ownership and control of Greenland is absolutely necessary,” he wrote last year.
But…it certainly helps that the Arctic island is believed to have vast and valuable natural reserves of oil and rare earth elements needed to make batteries and other hardware. And it's cold, very cold. As such, it could become a key location for building increasingly hot AI data centers. According to the Trump team's logic, owning Greenland would provide a different kind of security at a time when the United States is looking for ways to further reduce its dependence on countries such as China and Russia for such resources. may result in I don't know if Howley found enough carrots or sticks to move this conversation forward, but it feels eerily like a political drama worth watching on TV.