{"id":111829,"date":"2026-01-19T23:40:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T23:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=111829"},"modified":"2026-01-19T23:40:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T23:40:00","slug":"greenland-will-stay-greenland-former-trump-adviser-declares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=111829","title":{"rendered":"Greenland \u2018will stay Greenland\u2019, former Trump adviser declares"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Donald Trump will not be able to force Greenland to change ownership, a former top adviser to the US president has told the BBC.<\/p>\n

IBM\u2019s vice chairman, Gary Cohn, who advised Trump on the economy in his first term, said \u201cGreenland will stay Greenland\u201d and linked the need for access to critical minerals to his former boss\u2019s plans for the territory.<\/p>\n

Cohn is one of America\u2019s top tech bosses, a leader in the race to develop AI and quantum computing, and served under Trump as director of the White House National Economic Council.<\/p>\n

In a sign of how seriously business leaders are taking the crisis, he warned \u201cinvading an independent country that is part of Nato\u201d would be \u201cover the edge\u201d.<\/p>\n

He also suggested the president\u2019s recent comments about Greenland \u201cmay be part of a negotiation\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just came from a US congressional delegation meeting, and I think there\u2019s pretty uniform consensus with both Republicans and Democrats that Greenland will stay Greenland\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

Greenland would be happy for the US to increase its military presence on the island, he said, with the North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean \u201cbecoming much more of a military threat\u201d.<\/p>\n

The US could also negotiate an \u201cofftake\u201d agreement for Greenland\u2019s\u00a0vast, yet largely untapped,\u00a0rare-earth mineral reserves<\/span>, Cohn suggested.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I think, you know, invading a country that doesn\u2019t want to be invaded \u2013 that\u2019s part of a militaristic alliance, Nato \u2013 seems to me to be a little bit over the edge at this point\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

Cohn indicated the president may be overstating his demands as part of a negotiating tactic \u2013 something he says the president has done successfully in the past.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got to give Donald Trump some credit for the successes he\u2019s had, and he\u2019s many times tried to overreach to get something in a compromise situation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has overreached in advertising something to end up getting what he actually wants. Maybe what he actually wants is a larger military presence and an offtake.\u201d<\/p>\n

The start of this year\u2019s World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos has been overshadowed by the president\u2019s increasingly aggressive stance on the arctic territory, with many political and business leaders alarmed about the potential geopolitical and economic impact. Trump is due to address delegates at the gathering on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

While Cohn expressed reservations about some of the president\u2019s actions, he said the US administration had \u201cvarious different motives\u201d for what they were doing.<\/p>\n

He said Trump\u2019s decision to intervene in Venezuela was \u201ca path\u201d to\u00a0disrupt the country\u2019s relationship\u00a0with China, the biggest market for its oil, as well as Russia and Cuba.<\/p>\n

Cohn also thinks that the president has become increasingly focused on the importance of rare earth minerals, noting that \u201cGreenland has quite a supply\u201d of the resources.<\/p>\n

Those minerals are critical to the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and quantum computing, also a major talking point in Davos.<\/p>\n

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday hit back at claims that Trump has blamed his escalating threats over Greenland\u00a0on the fact that he was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a message to Norway\u2019s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr St\u00f8re, Trump blamed the country for not awarding him the prize and said he no longer feels obliged to prioritise peace.<\/p>\n

Bessent said: \u201cI don\u2019t know anything about the president\u2019s letter to Norway, and I think it\u2019s a complete canard that the President will be doing this because of the Nobel Prize.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president is looking at Greenland as a strategic asset for the United States. We are not going to outsource our hemispheric security to anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n

AI \u2018to be part of every business\u2019<\/h2>\n

Developments in quantum computing and AI are seen as critical not just for the US economy and productivity, but for US strategic influence in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cIBM is dead centre in what\u2019s going on in quantum today. We have the largest amount of quantum computers in use today,\u201d Cohn said, highlighting that his company has put many of these computers into use across America in firms from the banking industry to medicine.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI is going to be the backbone for data that feeds into quantum to solve problems we\u2019ve never been able to solve\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere we\u2019re heading is AI is going to be part of everyone\u2019s enterprise. AI and quantum are going to be working in the enterprise behind the scenes to make every company more efficient. And we\u2019re just at the beginning of that sort of long road, and that\u2019s going to take probably another three to five years to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Google, also a US company,\u00a0told the BBC it had the world\u2019s best-performing quantum computer. The race to develop the technology is the other key talking point \u2013 apart from Greenland \u2013 at the World Economic Forum.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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