00:00:30.000Hello, everybody, and welcome to this very live, very special report on everything that's been going on at Davos and, of course, Greenland.
00:00:38.940We are joined by a former guest of ours, been on the show a number of times.
00:00:43.300She's advised two U.S. presidents, I think, Pippa, I'm right in saying, Dr. Pippa Malmgren,
00:00:48.000and your late father, who was someone we both really respected as well, advised four U.S. presidents.
00:00:52.880So, collectively, I think you've got a hell of a lot of knowledge about this.
00:00:56.880And behind you, we can actually see Greenland, which is a country I didn't really expect to become relevant in a territory, but it has.
00:01:05.440So, first and foremost, crazy stuff has been going on at Davos, so much to talk about.
00:01:11.720Explain to people who've been living their lives, feeding their families, going to their things, not really paying too much attention.
00:01:22.960Okay. It's so great to see you guys, first of all.
00:01:26.700And, gosh, you know, I know you started out as comedians, and this is a moment where we need humor in dealing with this issue because it's a lot of heavy stuff.
00:01:35.680So, bottom line is, the United States has said to its NATO partners that it needs to have a greater presence on the island of Greenland, which is the largest island in the world.
00:01:48.440It's an Arctic island, and there it is in the background.
00:01:52.620And under the terms of a treaty from 1951, the United States does have the right to do pretty much anything it wants to militarily here.
00:02:02.940So, the island is part of the kingdom of Denmark, but it is strategic security-wise aligned with the United States.
00:02:11.320The Greenlanders, and there are only 58,000 of them that live here, they have been going through a process of a kind of a long, slow divorce with Denmark.
00:02:28.060And their view is they want to be independent of all of you guys.
00:02:31.120And they're annoyed because when President Trump said, well, we've just got to have Greenland, and he used the language, we'll take it if we have to, because they're like, wait, we live here, so you can't just take it.
00:02:45.940So, everybody's been on very high stress around this.
00:02:49.200I would give you my personal view based on my background working on geopolitics globally, but also I've been very focused for the last five years or so on the geopolitics of the Arctic to try to understand why is this happening?
00:03:03.420And I think part of the answer is Ukraine.
00:03:07.060So, the president's trying to bring the war in Ukraine to an end.
00:03:14.420Russia says, yes, we'll get to an agreement.
00:03:17.180Ukraine now says, yes, we'll get to an agreement.
00:03:20.560The parties that say, no, we want to continue the war are the Europeans for a variety of different reasons.
00:03:27.800And so, the president says, okay, well, the U.S. doesn't want to continue in this war, and we think it's a stupid war.
00:03:34.000And if you guys want to carry on, then Greenland becomes critically important, because where would Russian nuclear weapons, either on submarines or ships,
00:03:46.380where would they come through towards the United States?
00:03:49.960They would come through this physical space known as the Jiyuk Gap, the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap.
00:03:56.760And it's literally the body of water between Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom, Scotland.
00:04:02.420That becomes a place you would have to have a close eye on to see whether the Russians were bringing nuclear weapons into the Atlantic.
00:04:10.380So, they're like, obviously, Russia's going to escalate if the Europeans continue with the war.
00:06:13.460And then the second is resources, asteroid mining, which sounds far away, but it's coming.
00:06:18.420And third is the connection, and the key to the Arctic is the connection to the megaconstellations of satellites that surround Earth.
00:06:26.160One of the best ways to get the data to Earth, and then to you and me and our cell phones, is through one point in the Arctic called Svalbard.
00:06:37.360And that is the ground station for the polar satellites and the polar-related data that then connects to the subsea cables and ends up on your phone and lets you use Uber Eats or DoorDash or whatever it is you use to order food at your door.
00:06:52.340Now, in 2022, somebody started cutting the internet cables that connect the space link to the subsea cables, which is the fastest internet cable in the world.
00:07:04.700And you're like, why is that in the Arctic?
00:07:06.900And the answer is because this is the, like, umbilical cord for data from space to connect to everything around Earth.
00:07:16.200So, if somebody's cutting the cable, then there's suddenly a need to have a backup.