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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026

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It’s such a simple explanation that you can’t even…explain it? Strip mine it for what, exactly? Why would Trump care to strip mine Greenland? Does Greenland do a lot of mining (no)? Is there a mysterious resource that Greenland has that nobody else does?

I mean…yes there is: arctic coastline.

And I’m not “parroting” this. This is obvious to anybody who has even a passing interest in geopolitics and has been a topic or conversation for 20 years at least.

Greenland does in fact have some of the largest known reserves of valuable minerals in the world.

The Tanbreez deposit is not as far along in development—only completing its preliminary economic assessment in 2025—but is also estimated to contain a globally significant deposit of REEs, potentially the world’s largest, at 28.2 million metric tons. Over 27 percent of the project is estimated to consist of heavy rare earths.

That said, it is indeed very uneconomical to develop.

But no matter! Trump got excited even for non-existent Ukrainian rare earths, so this is a no-brainer. And in the glorious AGI-powered future, labor-intensive development will be much more economical, as labor will be mechanized and mass-produced.

«Arctic coastline» is a pathetic excuse, the US in practice faces no limits sans its own fiscal prudence on militarizing Greenland.