Why Greenland's natural resources are nearly impossible to mine (opens in new tab)

>It probably is pretty good for datacenters.

The cooling would be a bonus, but you also can't ignore all the negatives. No power, limited roads, no deep harbour, no skilled support staff, no fiber, no backup fiber, latency, geopolitical uncertainty, thawing permafrost etc

I'd bet the biggest compute in the country is on the US base already...

> You would save a ton on cooling cost

I'm not sure that you would. You might think that cooler ambient temperatures mean less cooling required, but it's really a matter of rapid heat transfer away from chips, which is why electronics in satellites need active cooling, despite the temperature of space being near absolute zero.

If you want to save a ton on cooling costs, wouldn't it be just easier to build those data centers in Alaska? Or if they don't have to be in America, there are lots of options in Northern Europe with better infrastructure than Greenland.

But of course you're right, really it's mostly about map-painting.

There's a theory I heard somewhere recently that part of the reason Trump is so interested in Greenland is due to his lack of understanding of maps.

The Mercator projection (which is how most 2D maps are displayed) makes Greenland appear to be the size of North America. It's large, to be sure (around 25% bigger than Alaska), but it's certainly not continent sized.

Obviously thats no justification for his actions, but found the explanation at least a bit amusing given his other odd misunderstandings (eg thinking people seeking asylum are from an insane asylum, thinking wind mills somehow affect whales, etc. The list goes on and on...)

I don't think the environment being cool is a factor in current data center designs is it? Otherwise, the northern US or Alaska would be candidates. Instead, a lot of the data center boom is in states like Texas or the south.

I think some interviewer with Trump did actually ask him the question you posed and he said something to the effect of "ownership is important" for him _personally_ not necessarily for the _US_ which is the a ridiculous thing to hear from a leader of a country.

Oddly enough your comment uses the same authoritarian techniques of distract and befuddle the audience.

What a worthless pile of bits you've dumped on the world.

>But Trump just looks at that big map and goes "This will be MINE". Is it really about more than that?

It's about breaking up NATO for Putin.

Right, there is potential for energy everywhere, some location specific (hydro, geothermal, solar, wind), and some less so (nuclear, coal, gas). The quickest (shortest lead time) solution is to do what xAI did and use on-site natural gas generators.

It's interesting that at some point datacenters in space also become viable, which sounds absurd, but since the need for FLOPS and power is immediate, space and Greenland have to be far down the list of places to choose to build. Right now you build where the lead time for power capacity of some sort is shortest.

> I also fail to see any strategy.

Also see Venezuela. Oil seems to have been a key part of the aim. However oil companies seem surprised and not entirely keen.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c205dx61x76o

They are button mashing the policy controller

Nobody is talking about how less than 1% of the Epstein files have been released weeks past the deadline after Venezuela, ICE in Minneapolis and Greenland.

the end strategy is controlling trade between europe and china. the NW passage and eventually the arctic ocean will be opening.

the US shares its current control with russia for these new trade routes, but it wants to be able to unilaterally decide what china can do at sea. thus it needs control that isnt shared with russia or europe.

its the same thing with panama, the US needs to recapture control to ensure that china cannot ship through without US permission

It is Putin’s strategy

> While we're at it I also fail to see any strategy.

The word on the street is that it's yet another step to try to keep the Epstein files out of the news.

There's a strategy, but it's a strategy for changing the story away from Epstein, and for satisfying Trump's dictator fantasies.

Apparently the Lauder billionaire mentioned it because he has a mineral water bottling plant and some other insignificant business there. But Trump liked the idea so it’s basically all this is for some spring water.

More consequentially it’s an attempt to destroy NATO so Putin can have his way with Europe.

If I threatened someone until they sold me something that they made very clear they did not want to sell noone would call it "Buying" and we shouldn't either. It would be extorting. Under no circumstances are we buying Greenland at this point, anything that happens is something else.

> It’s not invading, yet. Just buying or psyopping is more likely than fighting NATO.

Threatening to invade (which the Trump administration has been explicitly doing) is about as damaging as invading in the long run, either way we have sent the message loud and clear that the US is no longer a reliable ally and everyone has to shift away from the post-WW2 world order.

The US is on the verge of becoming a pariah within NATO. The Antarctica treaty ain't nothing compared to that.