Flipping the kill switch: Why Trump wants Greenland to control military industry
The real military reason President Trump wants Greenland might not be what you think it is.
Experts and military strategists talk about the territory's key location between Russia and the US, but the real reason America wants to own Greenland could be for its key minerals buried deep underground.
"Rare earths are critical in this context for the development of military capability [and] high-end military capability," Charlie Edwards, senior fellow for strategy and national security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), said.
Greenland has several rare earths on its territory, such as uranium, tantalum, niobium, and zirconium, according to the Center for Strategic & International Studies.
Mr Edwards said that in 2025, Pentagon analysts alerted Mr Trump to a Chinese monopoly on rare earth exports, which they called the kill switch.
"It realised that China now had a stranglehold to a point where it would potentially pause, if not significantly delay, the development of US military capability," he told BFBS Forces News.
"So, it was called the kill switch."
Rare earths are used in the production of the F-35 fighter jet and other high-end military hardware. However, with so much production located in China, a US-owned Greenland could provide an alternative Western source of these key materials.
"I think there was a sense within the Trump administration that if they acquired Greenland, many of those problems would fall away," Mr Edwards added.
"And they would then be able to act, irrespective of whether acting would take another five, 10 years.
"There was a sense at least they would now be able to do that without, frankly, challenges from the local population, Denmark and others."
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