Defense- & Dual-Use Technologies Edition

Trump, Greenland, and the Panama Canal: America's Strategic Future?

Defense and dual-use technologies

Jan 10, 2025

Good morning!

Unless you’ve been asleep all week, you’ve almost certainly seen or heard about President-Elect Trump’s comments concerning renaming the Gulf of Mexico, making Canada a U.S. state, securing preferential rates for U.S. shipping transiting through the Panama Canal while reducing Chinese influence there, and his continued interest in acquiring Greenland. Skip to the news, if you want…

Panama Canal

Last year, Building our Future discussed the silent crisis in the Panama Canal—that increased maritime traffic, climate conditions, and last year’s El Niño caused the lakes that feed the canal to largely dry up. In response, the Panama Canal Authority restricted the number and size of ships using the critical passage. Ships unable to transit the canal have to tack on about three additional weeks of travel and face the Drake Passage or Magellan Strait. To be blunt, the impact on U.S. shipping is profound.

Trump’s interest in the canal and ensuring U.S. access is understandable. Now, the Panamanian president has disputed the claim, as has the Panama Canal Authority chief, that China is operating the canal. While the specifics of his language that “not a single Chinese soldier is in the canal” could be true, it belies the reality that China’s influence in Panama has grown over the past eight years. Both U.S. experts and third-party experts have highlighted China’s long use of comprehensive national power—mixing hard, soft, and smart power—although likely with a preference for soft power. As such, it makes sense that China would not deploy their military forces into the Canal Zone, but would seek to influence its operations through ‘softer’ means.

All of this is to say that the Panama Canal remains important and concerns over its operations are valid. I won’t go so far as to call the Torrijos-Carter Treaties a ‘disgrace’ as the President-Elect has chosen to do. The world is a much different place than it was in 1977. After World War II, globalization ruled and that movement accelerated in the euphoria characterized by post-conflict optimism after the Cold War. Today, though, the world is increasingly fragmented, peoples are more nationalistic. Faith in multilateral and supranational institutions has faltered. In many ways, the world today is closer to the world before the First World War than it is to the world after the Second World War or after the Cold War.

Greenland

So, why does the President-Elect care about a frozen wasteland that is the most sparsely populated territory in the world?

This is a bit more complicated. There are quite a few reasons that Greenland is important—principally, the arctic is heating up figuratively and literally.

Okay, we’re going to steer clear of discussions about the cause of climate change for today’s post BUT we think that our erudite readers all likely accept that there is some change happening. Sea ice in the arctic is decreasing at a rate of 12.2% per decade. As a result, new sea lanes are emerging. First will likely be the North Sea Route, followed by the Northwest Passage and Transpolar Sea Route. Some analysts believe that large scale shipping in the Arctic could come within the next 15 years.

With these shipping routes opening, moving things from the Atlantic to Pacific will get dramatically faster. Let’s go back to the Panama Canal, if that closes, having the ability to ship through the Arctic will still be faster for U.S. shipping from the east coast to the west coast than going around South America.

Currently, Russia’s economic exclusion zone and claims cover roughly half of the Arctic circle.

What’s more, China is attempting to push into the Arctic. Xi Jinping has referred to China as a ‘Polar Great Power.’ The CCP has identified the polar regions, seabed, and space as its strategic frontiers. And, the CCP has incorporated a ‘Polar Silk Road’ into its 14th five-year plan. So, now we have our #1 and #2 greatest peer competitors either controlling half of the arctic or working to establish a certain presence and capability to control shipping through the area.

In the post World War II global order, Canada, the United States, and Denmark (Greenland) collaborated through their participation in NATO. In fact, it was during the Second World War that the United States began building the stations that would evolve into Thule Air Base and now Pituffik Space Base in Greenland. This base provided critical ballistic missile warning throughout the Cold War and since. Unfortunately, as previously mentioned, cracks are forming in that post-WWII international system. International trust is at a relative low.

Speaking of Pituffik Space Base, that’s likely the next reason that the President-Elect remains so fixated on Greenland. Pituffik Space Base hosts the Solid State Phased Array Radar System (SSPARS), which replaced the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) in providing ballistic missile warning coverage over much of the arctic (the shortest route that Russian or Chinese ballistic missiles can fly to the United States). Greenland also anchors the GIUK or Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap. This region of the northern Atlantic presents a naval chokepoint and an important component of defense against a potential use of Russia’s North Sea Fleet.

A map depicting critical ballistic missile warning systems including in Greenland

Right, so Greenland is geostrategically positioned to provide security for the United States against threats and to provide security to shipping in the Arctic.

In the famous words of Billy Mays, “But wait, there’s more!”

While it’s not likely the primary motivator, we cannot overlook the natural resources of Greenland. Greenland has rich stores of minerals including uranium, iron, gold, and rare earth minerals needed for everything from spark plugs to F-35s to PET scanners. In fact, Greenland has the world’s sixth largest deposit of Uranium and second largest of rare earths. What’s more is that 80% of Greenland has been under ice and remains unexplored for its resources. Finally, there are oil & gas deposits around the coast of Greenland. If the President-Elect is determined to halt construction of wind turbines and potentially other renewable energy sources, then we will need to continue our reliance on fossil fuels until we can build sufficient nuclear plants and advance fusion, hydrogen, and space based solar power technologies.

A map depicting known mineral reserves in Greenland

Now, in addition to the geostrategic location to control the Arctic and protect against naval attacks through the GIUK gap, the missile warning infrastructure, and the natural resources of the world’s largest island, we cannot rule out the possibility of a long game. As global temperatures warm, it could well be that Greenland will one day be a temperate location, ideal for Mar-a-Lago 2 or MacLeod House 2.

All kidding aside, the President-Elect is thinking strategically about U.S. security and economic well-being. Having said that, we don’t want the United States to give up entirely on the society of states and the international order. We’d prefer to continue working with our allies—like the Danes—to create a collective security, which remains better for the world.

If nothing more interesting happens in the next week, maybe we’ll revisit this topic next week to talk through how things could unfold.

Alright, enough yapping, let’s dig in to the news!

News Headlines:

Germany and France warn Trump over threat to take over Greenland (BBC)
Kremlin ‘watching’ the ‘dramatic development’ of U.S. desire for Greenland; less concerned over Panama Canal (RT)
SECDEF: U.S. troops need to stay in Syria to counter the Islamic State (AP)
Iran was ‘defeated very badly’ in Syria, top Iranian general admits (NYT)
Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD) is preparing to introduce a bill to buy the Panama Canal back for a symbolic $1 (TH)
The U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen has been busy reassuring our Allies that we have no plans to increase military presence in Greenland (RT)
As some Mid-Atlantic communities are still digging out from last weekend’s snow storm, they’re having to prepare to get blasted again (NPR)

Defense & Dual-Use Technologies

Defense Tech consortium could upend Primes (RS)
New threats push Pentagon to rethink how it defends bases globally (DO)
Kendall: CCA Increment 2 shouldn’t be ‘exquisite,’ but better than Inc 1 (ASF)
New F-15 electronic warfare system starts full production (ASF)
Navy shipbuilding plan would cost $1T over next 30 years (MT)
Navy’s next-gen jammer reaches critical milestone (DS)
Outgoing cyber czar: U.S. has ‘a lot of work to do’ on network defenses (DO)
Special ops forces seek to manage digital footprints, achieve ‘security through obscurity’ (DS)

Threat Tech

Chinese tech companies Tencent, CATL and others protest U.S. listings as army-linked companies (AP)
Japan links Chinese hacker MirrorFace to dozens of cyberattacks targeting security and tech data (AP)
Taiwan accuses China of sabotage over cut cables, Chinese shipowner denies claim (RT)
China preparing tech to hijack starlink satellites and track stealth aircraft (DG)
Chinese underwater drone prowling Philippine waters netted by fisherman (TWZ)
U.S. forces take out more Houthi weapons hubs, CENTCOM says (SS)

Foreign Defense Tech

Asia-Pacific nations boost amphibious naval fleets to repel China (DN)
Rafale jets, subs push France’s defense exports to $19B in 2024 (DN)
German army gets nod to buy Israeli PULS rocket launchers (DN)
Serbia completes fielding of Chinese air-defense system (DN)
Taiwan demonstrates sea defenses against potential Chinese attack as tensions rise with Beijing (AP)
Ukrainian F-16 pilot downs 6x cruise missiles in single mission (KI)

Defense Industry

Military robotics maker Ghost settles patent suit with Boston Dynamics (TC)
Rheinmetall, Bohemia Interactive Simulations announce partnership to enhance military simulation tech (DC)
Firestorm Labs wins $100M contract from the Air Force for its small unmanned aerial systems (TDP)
BlueHalo lands $50M Navy drone sensor system contract (WAT)

Autonomous Systems

Sudden death of top Chinese military drone scientist shocks industry (SCMP)
VRR Inc wants to create drone hives in cardboard shipping boxes (FBS)
Congressman Mark Green (R-TN) prioritizes drone bill in new congress (TH)

Finance & Deal Flow:

Funds

U.S. Global launches A&D and Defense Tech focused ETF (BZ)

VC

Irish marine robotics startup Xocean raised $119M from S2G Ventures (TC)
Alta Resource Technologies raised a $5.1M seed round led by DCVC and Voyager Ventures to break down electronic waste and extract rare earth metals (TC)

PE / M&A

Missile maker MBDA buys Safran’s stake in rocket-engine supplier Roxel (DN)
Flock Safety acquires drone maker Uniform Sierra Aerospace for undisclosed amount and amid controversies (DL)

Opportunities

DARPA is initiating a long-term, open call for the most disruptive, new, and novel technology solutions under its Expedited Research Implementation Series (SAM)
The Defense Threat Reduction Agency has issued a BAA for innovative proposals for technologies (TRL 3-7) that will lead to new or improved technical solutions for countering and deterring WMD (SAM)
The Army has issued a statement of objectives as a pre-solicitation for its Low Altitude Stalking and Striking Ordnance (LASSO) program (SAM)

Lighter Side:

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Keep Building,

BOF

the long warred

Jan 10

Yes keep building.

—-//———

All this noise means is Trump can read a map, knows who has nukes and who doesn’t, and that IF Imperialism can’t be turned off it should be pointed in safer directions.

——-//———

In a choice between shameful Imperialism and nuclear war, choose shame to avoid nuclear war.

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Sean Harper

Great analysis on the Panama Canal and Greenland. All part of a good defense in depth.

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