Intro (2 minutes) * *[Music Intro] Welcome everyone, to the first podcast of Digital Dopamine! Where I’ll be delivering a weekly dose of tech news, app demos, tips, and tricks, tailored to tech enthusiasts and developers of all levels. On today’s Episode we’re gonna focus on the Tech Billionaire’s wet dream…” Greenland”. As a lot of you probably know by now, there’s this feverish push to “buy” Greenland, which is pretty much another invasion, and they want to make it seem like it’s for national security. While that claim may be partially true. I’m gonna dive into the real culprits behind this push, and that’s all the tech billionaires, specifically the “PayPal” Mafia. Main Story Who’s the PayPal Mafia, you ask? Well i’ll get into that in a bit, but first, let’s go back to 2016, where a man named Ronald Lauder made the first move of this long game plan. I’ll keep this briefing quick, Lauder, in 2016, made a huge investment in , a luxury water bottling company founded by Svend Hardenberg and Jørgen Wæver Johansen, both of whom are well-connected in the political sphere. Now Ronald is the person who floated the idea during Trump’s first term to make Greenland part of the US (Source-1, Source-2), with some analysts describing his investments in Greenlandic businesses asa political strategy rather than purely commercial (Source). Ronald’s business partner, Jørgen, is married to Greenland’s current foreign minister, which is for sure a conflict of interest, but that’s never stopped the ultra-wealthy from doing business. But the same individuals negotiating foreign investment policy are also investment recipients. Now that’s just a bit of context for how this all started, and I recommend diving deeper into Ronald Lauder when you get some free time. But let’s hop ahead a few years to talk about some other Billionaires that didn’t wanna miss out on the exploitation. In 2019, when traction started to pick up on the “idea” of buying Greenland, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Michael Bloomberg all invested in a company called KoBold Metals through Breakthrough Energy, an organization founded by Bill Gates himself (Source). KoBold Metals is a company that explores and develops mineral resources essential for clean energy technologies, which consists of Ev Vehicle wind turbines, etc, and the minerals they are in search of include lithium, nickel, copper, and cobalt, which are critical for batteries and other renewable energy solutions. How they search for these rare earths is through AI-powered exploration of the island. And in 2022, guess who decided to join the party, Sam Altman, and since then, more and more investments have poured into KoBold Metals, valuing the company today at around 2.96 billion dollars. Speaking of muddied interests, Howard Nutlick….I mean, Lutnick… has been investing in a different Greenland Mining company called Critical Metals Corp……..for over 3 decades through Cantor Fitzgerald. He’s since divested in cantor but his stake was just handed over to his children……and I’m SUREEEE they will have a moral compass and not be a conflict of interest in the area moving forward. (Forbes) And then we have Ken Howery, a former venture capitalist and associate of Peter Thiel, who Trump appointed as US ambassador to Denmark…..like how is no major outlet reporting about this?!?!…. That’s rhetorical, of course. There are a couple more folks in the weeds of all of this, but for the sake of time, I’m gonna now get to the PayPal Mafia, and how they plan to create a “Freedom City”…which in reality will be an internet-native/technocratic nation, testing AI surveillance tech before bringing it back home here in the US. Let’s start at Praxis, which is a company founded by Dryden Brown and Charlie Callinan, with Howard Hughes Corporation founder David Weinreb, who is the current vice chairman. Praxis describes itself as an “internet-native nation” [1] and has stated plans to create a 10,000-person city in the Mediterranean. Brown is designing a theoretical “city-state” aiming to “restore Western Civilization,” and has had his sights on Greenland specifically. Who backs this concept???? PayPal Mafia members, including Peter Thiel and Ken Howery, Trump’s pick for Denmark ambassador So how do they play to test surveillance?? Praxis plans include “AI-augmented governance” and will feature “employer-friendly labor laws” described as “Elon-compatible.” The company’s manifesto describes creating all infrastructure—contracts, governance—on blockchain, creating a “tax-free enclave, governed by free-market principles and managed by a king-CEO leading citizen-shareholders.” (Source) The argument for why they are desperate for Greenland is that it’s a small, contained population (Greenland has under 57,000 people) where these billionaires with their shady political connections could experiment with governance, AI integration, and surveillance systems. All while being free from existing regulatory frameworks and the consequences that come with breaking them. These tech billionaires envision unregulated “freedom cities” in Greenland, free from democratic oversight, environmental laws, and labor protections. La Voce di New York Greenland’s cool climate is ideal for hosting massive AI data centers. Wikipedia—combining computational power with a controlled population creates something like a real-world laboratory. The PayPal Mafia’s collective vision is “a state stripped down to its bare bones, with only one objective: maximize shareholder value.”(Source: New Arab). These people include Elon Musk, Thiel’s minion JD Vance, Ken Howery, and other members across Trump’s executive branch, like David Sacks, who is Trump’s advisor on AI and cryptocurrencies. This group has unprecedented political access and, from their past actions, will surely stop at nothing until they get their greasy, greedy hands on Greenland. Peter Thiel and Elon Musk see Greenland not just as a source of rare earths, but as a laboratory for their libertarian economic and social experiments. ( The Irish Times ) The crazy part is, this is all being experimented with NOW in Próspera. “What’s Próspera?” you ask…..well, Próspera is a charter city on the island of Roatán in Honduras, operating as one of three Zones for Employment and Economic Development (ZEDEs) with autonomy from the national government. It’s backed by venture capitalists, including none other than Peter FUCKING Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Balaji Srinivasan (buh-LAH-jee sree-nee-VAH-sun)…I literally had to add how to pronounce his name in the script lol. But the investment is through Pronomos Capital, and has recently attracted Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong as an additional investor. So this is pretty much a libertarian experimental zone designed to test free-market principles at scale. According to historian Quinn Slobodian, Próspera is part of a broader trend of projects aimed at implementing these theories in practice. The model features: * Minimal taxation: Tax rates are 1% on business revenue, 5% on wages, and 2.5% sales tax, with 5% personal income tax as of 2025. * Corporate governance: Honduras Próspera Inc. has veto power over the governing council’s nine-member body, with four members appointed by the company itself. * Crypto integration: Bitcoin is recognized as legal tender within the city. * Private arbitration and custom law: Businesses can select regulations from approved foreign jurisdictions or propose custom regulations subject to Próspera’s approval. (The Irish Times) And this is already negatively affecting the local populations of neighboring villages. The village of Crawfish Rock expressed fears about land expropriation, and funds earmarked for Honduras development haven’t reached nearby communities, while Próspera uses the island’s infrastructure (electricity, airports, garbage) with inequities. Honduras’ leftist President Xiomara Castro repealed the ZEDE law in 2022, citing sovereignty concerns, but Próspera didn’t stop operations…….they instead decided to sue Honduras for $10.7 billion—equivalent to one-third of the country’s GDP. (The Irish Times) This is the atrocity: create a private city with minimal regulation, extract wealth from the land and locals while ignoring their communities, and use international legal mechanisms to override national sovereignty if a government tries to stop it. Greenland would be where this model scales globally. Outro So really quick: we have mining companies searching for rare earth minerals (Bezos, Gates, Bloomberg via KoBold), water extraction (Lauder), and a libertarian city-state with AI governance (Thiel, Howery, Altman via Praxis), an ongoing experiment in Próspera testing these theories of libertarianism, minimal income and business revenue tax while at the same time, horrid wages for workers & being a haven for crypto fraud and laundering by the GOV—all connecting to the same island, all connected to PayPal alumni, all with Trump administration alignment. Editors Note All sources in the article are bolded with links. Feel free to correct any of my sources in the comments. Get full access to Digital Dopamine at digitaldopaminellc.substack.com/subscribe
