The foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland are visiting Washington today for talks with State Secretary Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance. The meeting follows nearly two weeks of escalating threats from President Trump about annexing Greenland, even if it requires using the U.S. military.
Preview: “We face a geopolitical crisis, and if we have to choose between the U.S. and Denmark here and now, then we choose Denmark,” Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen told reporters in Copenhagen on Tuesday, while standing beside Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. “We stand united in the Kingdom of Denmark,” he added, according to Reuters.
Trump reax to Nielsen: “I disagree with him. I don’t know who he is, don’t know anything about him, but that’s going to be a big problem for him,” the president told reporters Tuesday.
The president repeated his insistence on seizing Greenland on social media Wednesday. “The United States needs Greenland for the purpose of National Security. It is vital for the Golden Dome [missile defense program] that we are building,” he wrote in his post, and again claimed Russia or China would take Greenland if the U.S. doesn’t, though no one has made that allegation other than Trump. “NATO becomes far more formidable and effective with Greenland in the hands of the UNITED STATES. Anything less than that is unacceptable,” Trump said in the post.
Experts have repeatedly noted that seizure is unnecessary. “There’s a way for the Trump administration to get what it says it wants, and that’s mineral access and military bases, by doing something that should be normal,” Nick Burns, former U.S. ambassador to NATO and U.S. ambassador to China, told TIME on Friday. “And that’s respecting Denmark, working with them diplomatically on the basis the Danes have suggested: ‘We are sovereign, but we welcome American investment and military presence’.”
See also: “I’m in Denmark’s Parliament. Mr. President, We’re Already on Your Side,” said Ida Auken, with nearly two decades’ experience in parliament, in an op-ed for the Times on Sunday.
Greenland POV: “We’re not going to sell our soul. We’re not stupid,” Pipaluk Lynge, leader of the Parliament’s foreign and security policy committee, told the New York Times, reporting Wednesday from the capital city of Nuuk. After traveling to “different parts of the territory” and speaking to many residents from “different walks of life,” the Times reports “people on the island don’t want to be recolonized by a new outside power, and that only a small minority has even the faintest flicker of interest in joining the United States.” Read more, here.
A U.S. military takeover of Greenland “will be the end of NATO,” said European Commissioner for Defence and Space Andrius Kubilius told Reuters on the sidelines of a security conference in Sweden on Monday. “Who will recognise that occupation and what impacts on all the relationships in between the United States and Europe, including, for example, trade, where also Americans can face quite painful negative consequences?” he asked.
Kubilius said he did not think a Greenland invasion was likely, but noted “there is such an obligation of member states to come for mutual assistance if another member state is facing military aggression,” referencing the European Union’s treaty article 42.7 regarding mutual self-defense.
NATO’s former top military officer also said he believed Trump seizing Greenland by force would be “the end of NATO,” he told the New York Times on Monday. However, retired Dutch Adm. Rob Bauer said he thinks it’s more likely Trump is just using the threat as a negotiating tactic to compel more security resources for the arctic region.
Related new legislation on Capitol Hill: A bipartisan senate duo on Tuesday introduced a new bill they say is designed to keep Pentagon or State Department money from being used “to blockade, occupy, annex or otherwise assert control over the sovereign territory of a NATO member state without that ally’s consent or authorization.”
It’s called the “NATO Unity Protection Act,” and it comes from the desks of Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. “This bill sends a clear message that recent rhetoric around Greenland deeply undermines America’s own national security interests and faces bipartisan opposition in Congress,” Shaheen said in a statement. “The mere notion that America would use our vast resources against our allies is deeply troubling and must be wholly rejected by Congress in statute,” Murkowski added.
European officials are waking up to a growing number of Russian-linked sabotage efforts across the continent (but not on Greenland), three researchers write in a new report from the London-based Royal United Services Institute. These attacks involve arson, vandalism, and attempted bombings, and have struck several countries including Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, and the UK. These Russian-linked efforts “are often carried out by ordinary individuals who are recruited via encrypted messaging apps and paid in cryptocurrency,” the authors warn in their report. In other words, “Hostile actors now outsource low-cost tasks to disposable individuals (or ‘agents for a day’) recruited online.”
In several cases, Russian ringleaders seem to be “exploit[ing] the presence of Ukrainian migrants, with the aim of provoking public distrust and political tension.”
Topline: “For NATO states, the challenge lies in addressing both the operational risks posed by these decentralised attacks and the broader strategic implications of a system deliberately structured to blend criminality, social manipulation and state-directed hybrid warfare.” The authors shared nearly two-dozen recommendations to help expose, educate and address the multifold threat these Russian sabotage operations pose for Europe and its allies. Find the full report, here.
And from the region: One of Europe’s largest ammunition makers is about to launch an initial public offering of around €30 billion, the Financial Times reported Tuesday. That would be Prague-based Czechoslovak Group, and their IPO announcement could come as soon as today.
That IPO is seen as “as part of a wave of European defence groups” looking “to capitalise on investor enthusiasm amid a significant sector rally,” FT writes. Others expected soon include Franco-German tank maker KNDS and British metal engineer Doncasters Group.
Welcome to this Wednesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter focused on developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. It’s more important than ever to stay informed, so we’d like to take a moment to thank you for reading. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1799, the young U.S. government ordered 10,000 muskets from inventor Eli Whitney, a deal that validated his interchangeable-parts manufacturing scheme—and pioneered defense contracts with provisions for “excusable delays.”
Around the Defense Department
Three “meta trends” are reshaping warfare, INDOPACOM commander says. Information operations, cognitive operations, and cyber operations are key to keeping the U.S. military ready to face off against China, Adm. Sam Paparo, told a standing-room-only audience at the Honolulu Defense Forum. One way the command will prepare is by incorporating information operations into “every plan, every investment, every operation,” Paparo said. “We don’t bolt information operations on the end. We integrate and suffuse it from the very start.” Defense One’s Jennifer Hlad reports from Hawaii, here.
Grok is in, ethics are out in Pentagon’s new AI-acceleration strategy.
Seven “pace-setting projects” will “unlock critical foundational enablers” for other U.S. military efforts, the department announced Monday in a six-page document that also directs the department’s many components to fulfil a four-year goal to make their data centrally available for AI training and analysis.
The new strategy directs efforts to remove all “blockers” to the expanded use of AI tools. It discards Biden-era mention of ethical use of AI and casts suspicion on the concept of AI responsibility.
It also bans the use of unnamed models with left-leaning “ideological ‘tuning’” while announcing plans for widespread access to the right-leaning Grok. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that Pentagon networks, including classified ones, would enable access to the Elon Musk-owned, Saudi- and Qatari-backed AI chatbot noted for its partisan, even Nazi, slant and its willingness to create sexually explicit images of children. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reports, here.
The Atlantic: “We asked the DOD if it endorsed xAI’s sexualized material or if it would reconsider its partnership with the company in response. In a statement, a Pentagon official told us only that the department’s policy on the use of AI “fully complies with all applicable laws and regulations” and that “any unlawful activity” by its personnel “will be subject to appropriate disciplinary action.” Read that, here.
Related reading: “America’s Biggest Power Grid Operator Has an AI Problem—Too Many Data Centers,” the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
Update: U.S. military officials claim convenience, not “perfidy,” during their controversial first boat strike in September. The Defense Department used an “aircraft painted in civilian colors to carry out a lethal Sept. 2 strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean because the unit could be the quickest ready for the operation—not because it was trying to deceive the targets,” the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday after allegations of another possible war crime from that encounter surfaced in New York Times reporting the day prior.
It is perhaps worth noting, however, that on 29 August Reuters reported “seven U.S. warships, along with one nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, were in and around the Southern Caribbean,” which is at least four days before that questionable lethal attack on the small boat. In addition, the U.S. military is widely regarded as the most advanced in the world, and it is difficult (though not impossible) to imagine the small boat carrying such an allegedly lethal quantity of drugs that continued U.S. surveillance and follow-on interdiction—via the Coast Guard or others—was out of the question.
At any rate, “Questions about perfidy have arisen in closed-door briefings of Congress by military leaders,” the Times reported Monday, which suggests lawmakers have begun engaging in the oversight process of the Defense Department that their duties dictate.
Developing: The U.S. military allegedly bought a powerful sonic device during an undercover operation that some investigators suspect is linked to the so-called “Havana Syndrome” that affected U.S. officials serving in embassies abroad, CNN reported Tuesday.
The device “produces pulsed radio waves” and “is not entirely Russian in origin, [though] it contains Russian components,” according to CNN.
An alleged weapon with similar characteristics was reportedly used during the U.S. military’s raid to abduct Venezuela’s leader on January 3, the New York Post reported Saturday. Though that report has struck several U.S. veterans and observers as suspect for a number of possible reasons, as former State Department official and independent journalist Sasha Ingber explained in a 12-minute video Tuesday.
Ingber also claimed U.S. special operations forces “captured” the weapon “some months ago” and “have been testing it to understand how it works.” According to Ingber, “What is de[s]cribed sounds like an acoustic weapon, like an LRAD,” or long-range acoustic device. “These devices are incredibly common, and are even used by law enforcement.”
“The claim could also be bogus,” Ingber cautioned, while noting, “Whether these stories are true or not, make no mistake. The US has had non-lethal, directed-energy weapons for decades.” Catch her video in full, here.
Middle East
As violent protests continue to stir across Iran, some personnel at the U.S. military’s Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar have been advised to leave by this afternoon, Reuters reported Wednesday from Doha. One official referred to the advisory as “a posture change and not an ordered evacuation.”
Why now: “Tehran warned regional countries it would strike U.S. military bases in case of an attack by Washington, after President Donald Trump threatened to intervene in Iran,” Reuters notes.
By the way: “Chinese surveillance firm Tiandy is helping Iran track, identify, and repress innocent protesters—moving from street cameras to knock-on-the-door arrests,” Craig Singleton of the Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies wrote on social media Tuesday morning, referencing a report on the technology that he wrote three years ago. “This is digital authoritarianism in action,” Singleton added.
Meanwhile in the U.S. state of Minnesota this week, “ICE using private data to intimidate observers and activists, advocates say,” Minnesota Public Radio reported Tuesday.
And in additional reporting from the Middle East, “Since the beginning of the ceasefire, Israel has demolished more than 2,500 buildings in Gaza,” the New York Times reported Tuesday in a multimedia presentation featuring satellite imagery, video and before-and-after photography.
Read the full article here