Ken Howery: The tech mogul at the heart of Trump’s Greenland ambition
a surprise! Donald Trump’s big, bold ambition to buy Greenland from Denmark has a technical angle. Ken Howery, chosen by US President-elect Trump to be the next ambassador to the country (and thus the key broker of any deal), is another part of the wealthy class of tech workers who will pass through the incoming Trump administration.
Howery was part of the original “PayPal Mafia” (he was the CFO who helped put it together and sell it to eBay), and Howery then co-founded the famous venture capital firm’s Founders Fund with Peter Thiel and others. He is also a close friend of Elon Musk.
Howery’s decades of experience in technology investing and mergers and acquisitions has brought him close to some of the toughest deals in the Valley. However, Greenland may be his longest chance yet.
Simply put, Denmark and Greenland are not interested in selling. Even they are a little confused by the idea of doing so. “We don’t want to become Americans,” said Greenland’s Prime Minister Moti Egedi He said last week.
Howery was ambassador to Sweden in the previous Trump administration, however This profile Howery points out in The New York Times that it was the long odds here that attracted him to the job in Denmark: “The challenge of working on one of the most complex real estate transactions on behalf of a real estate mogul is one that could bring Mr. Howery the kind of attention he prefers.
It’s not hard to guess what attracts the Trump team to Greenland. Ostensibly, Trump said it was a matter of geopolitics: “For the purposes of national security and freedom throughout the world, the United States of America feels that ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” he wrote last year.
But…it’s good to think that the Arctic island has huge and valuable natural reserves of oil and rare earth elements, which are necessary for the manufacture of batteries and other devices. And it’s cold – very cold. This could make it a potential prime location for the construction of frenetic AI data centers. At a time when the United States is looking for ways to become less dependent on countries like China and Russia for such resources, owning Greenland, according to the Trump team’s logic, could lead to security of a different kind. Whether Howery finds enough carrots — or sticks — to start this conversation, it’s as weird as these things get A TV-worthy political drama.
