Peter Thiel-backed Startup That Wanted to Buy Greenland Is Thrilled That Trump Wants to Buy Greenland

Donald Trump has inspired laughs, jeers, disbelief, and outrage, by proposing that the U.S. bargain Greenland. Nobody rather knows what to deliberation of the president-elect’s proposal. Trump isn’t the lone idiosyncratic who wants to bargain the Danish territory, however. Those successful the technobro-iverse person antecedently expressed involvement successful purchasing the onshore wide and utilizing it for their ain dystopian purposes.

“I went to Greenland to effort to bargain it,” Dryden Brown tweeted successful November. Brown, 28, is the CEO of a institution called Praxis, which is portion of a broader question known arsenic the Network State. I recently wrote astir the Network Staters, who accidental they privation to make a big of privately funded, crypto-friendly countries each astir the world. Zealots of this ideology judge they’re gathering the future, but critics of the question spot it arsenic small much than a bizarre neo-colonial effort to laic assertion to existing countries, re-write their ineligible frameworks, and extract each the wealthiness and resources from them.

Brown really did question to Greenland past twelvemonth to speech to section officials astir perchance buying the territory. He was promptly met with ridicule. “Greenlandic independency requires support by the Danish parliament and a alteration of our constitution,” person Rasmus Jarlov recently tweeted. “I tin warrant you that determination is nary mode we would o.k. independency truthful that you could bargain Greenland.”

Now, however, Brown is each jazzed up astir Trump’s connection and seems to adjacent beryllium taking recognition for it. Following a caller station from Trump connected Truth Social astir buying Greenland, the X relationship belonging to Praxis retweeted the post, commenting merely: “According to plan.” Not agelong afterward, Brown tweeted: “Praxis would similar to enactment Greenland’s improvement by coordinating talent, companies, and superior to assistance unafraid the Arctic, extract captious resources, terraform the onshore with precocious exertion to marque it much habitable, and physique a mythical metropolis successful the North.”

A cardinal fig successful the occurrence of some the Network State question and Donald Trump has been the shadowy tech billionaire Peter Thiel. Pronomos Capital, the task superior steadfast that has been liable for financing overmuch of the movement’s peculiar projects (including Praxis), is financially supported by Thiel. A fig of Thiel associates are besides profoundly intertwined with the movement, including Joe Lonsdale, the co-founder of Thiel’s defence contractor Palantir, and Michael Gibson, the erstwhile vice president of grants astatine the Thiel Foundation, who presently serves arsenic an advisor astatine Pronomos.

At the aforesaid time, Thiel has besides been a notable benefactor to Trump’s governmental career, having helped bankroll his 2016 statesmanlike campaign. Even much weirdly, it would look that Trump has named a Thiel associate, Ken Howery, arsenic ambassador to Denmark, which would enactment him successful a premier presumption to power a Greenland deal—were 1 to really materialize.

So what’s going connected here? Is the caller announcement by Trump someway tied to Brown and his Thiel-backed project? Or is Praxis simply utilizing Trump’s connection arsenic an advertizing accidental for its ain floundering utopia? As is ever the lawsuit with Trump, it’s a small hard to abstracted the information from the bullshit.

One thing’s for sure: Brown’s caller comments astir Greenland truly lone reaffirm the thought that Network Staters are modern-day colonialists. In aggregate posts, helium speaks openly astir the tendency to exploit the territory for Western gain. In 1 caller missive, the young entrepreneur wrote: “It’s huge, but lone has 50k ppl, affluent with earthy resources: uranium, gold, oil, and more, and is simply a captious defence plus successful the Arctic.” In different posts, Brown talked astir utilizing Greenland to signifier “terraforming” truthful that erstwhile it comes clip to physique a nine connected Mars, America volition beryllium ready.