It's been quite a year so far...
The regime kidnapped the president of another country and took control of their resources. There's a list of reasons why. They don't just want the oil. They want all the other raw materials and rare earth metals, too. Doing so helps prop up the dollar as the world's reserve currency. And yes, it was about power.
It's not hard to see Venezuela as a warm-up operation for future conquests. The regime has already set its gaze on Greenland. Again, there's a list of reasons. They view Greenland as strategically important, but they also want the vast mineral resources that the climate crisis will make available as the country's ice melts, not to mention arable land. Greenland also has significant amounts of oil and natural gas. All of this becomes easier to extract over the next 10-20 years, while the rest of the planet bakes and burns.
Despite their recent streak of embarrassing headlines, The New York Times can still get it right sometimes. According to a recent piece, the usual technocratic oligarchs have "financial ties" to companies that are actively seeking to mine Greenland. The group includes Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, and Marc Andreessen. They see the country as an undeveloped, relatively uninhabited frontier (population 57,000). They also know that other countries, including China, are trying to develop projects on the land. To top things off, climate projections show melting ice opening up new shipping routes. According to a piece from Inside Climate News, several companies from around the world have been fighting Greenland's harsh conditions and local opposition to resource extraction. It's pretty clear: American tech, energy, and mineral companies want Trump and his regime to bulldoze the way ahead for them.
By the way, did you know Sam Altman is a doomsday prepper?
That's right. The head of OpenAI has a reinforced bunker under his home. He owns a compound in the southern cliffs of California. He stockpiles guns, iodine tablets, antibiotics, water, and gas masks. He says he wants to build more bunkers, in case of a world war or even an AI apocalypse brought about by his own company. At times, he jokes that maybe it won't save him. But he does it all anyway, probably because it makes him feel a little bit safer at night.
This is one of the guys who wants Greenland.
It fits.
As we've discussed a few times, American tech bros know what's coming. Sam Altman and his friends aren't fools, at least when it comes to their own narrow, shortsighted self-interests. They put Trump into power to sign the paperwork and sell their apocalyptic, technofeudalist fantasy nightmares to the public, through whatever lies and outrages he can. What's in it for Trump? He gets to build hotels and golf courses all over the world. He gets to act like he's in charge. It feeds his ego.
Most importantly, he stays out of jail.
The Sam Altmans of the world will try to use Trump to take over Greenland. We know they'll try, because they've left themselves no other choice. They need every pile of copper, iron, gold, silver, lithium, neodymium, dysprosium, praseodymium, and terbium they can get their hands on. It's even possible that the trade war with China, which appeared to be a foolish ego contest, was actually a test to see how far China would go and just how vulnerable the U.S. was to supply chain shocks. As we saw last year, China dominates raw material logistics. The tech bros don't like that.
Whether it was planned or not, the trade wars have made the case to the U.S. oligarchs and their politician puppets that they really do "need" to take these other countries and territories by any means, including force.
While the rich are scheming, Trump is building an army of violent thugs to go around arresting Americans and shooting them when they resist, regardless of their legal status. Get in their way, get mowed down and called a domestic terrorist after the fact. That's what we just witnessed this week, in horrifying real time.
Say any of this, and you get called a paranoid conspiracy theorist, even as we all watch it happen in broad daylight. It's really something...
Now for an update on the guide:
Right now, I'm filling in some details and working on layout for the first hundred pages. Sometime next week, I'll share a PDF. After that, we're going to start working on a new set of topics like fixing flat tires and building composting toilets, along with other basic emergency sanitation strategies.
In the meantime, stay sane.
Survival Illustrated is a reader-supported project. It also receives funding from organizations like the Alfred Kobacker and Elizabeth Trimbach Fund, which focuses on individuals driving meaningful change.
