Exit Ideology Hits Greenland

Venture capital meets state power, turning 56,000 people into a test case for corporate sovereignty.

The billionaires have found their new frontier. Not Mars. Greenland.

Peter Thiel’s network has spent years theorizing about exit. The PayPal Mafia, the Dark Enlightenment philosophers, the charter city evangelists. All of them obsessed with the same idea: leaving democracy behind. Building sovereign corporate states where the rich write the rules.

Honduras was the prototype.

They called it Próspera. A city-state governed by corporations, not citizens. One percent income tax for the wealthy elite. Twenty-five percent for everyone else in Honduras.

The locals watched foreign billionaires carve out their own country on Honduran soil. Complete with private courts and private police.

When Honduras elected a government that said no more, Próspera sued for 10.7 billion dollars.

That’s the price tag they put on democracy saying no.

But Honduras taught them something. Contracts with poor countries are fragile. Governments change. People resist.

You need something stronger.

You need the United States military.

In November 2024, Dryden Brown traveled to Greenland. Founder of Praxis, backed by Thiel’s money. He met with Pele Broberg, a politician who once said only people with Inuit heritage should vote on Greenland’s future.

A nationalist. A separatist.

Perfect.

Brown pitched him on Atlas. A city he describes as Jetsons / pioneer / 1950s / space-futurism insane. High-testosterone futuristic vision, he calls it. A revival of Western civilization in the Arctic.

Denmark gives you nothing. No investment. No protection. But we’ll give you everything. Independence. Money. A future.

What they don’t say: you’ll trade Danish control for corporate vassalage.

One month later, Donald Trump announced his pick for US Ambassador to Denmark. Ken Howery.

Not a diplomat. A PayPal co-founder. Thiel’s partner at Founders Fund.

The same day, Trump declared that US ownership of Greenland is an absolute necessity.

The Financial Times connected the dots immediately.

This isn’t Trump’s whim. This is Thiel’s playbook with state power behind it.

Denmark is trapped. They integrated Palantir into their military and police systems. Thiel’s surveillance company. Their own security apparatus runs on software controlled by the man trying to take their territory.

A country that can’t resist because the resistance itself depends on the aggressor’s infrastructure.

And Greenland? The people actually living there?

They’re being sold a fantasy of independence while signing away everything that makes independence real. Currency. Law. Security. All outsourced to Praxis. To algorithms. To contracts written in Silicon Valley.

A network state is an online community that crowdfunds territory and gains diplomatic recognition. FDA-free societies where billionaires can experiment with unlicensed medical treatments. Zones where regulation doesn’t apply.

The goal isn’t to improve democracy. They think democracy is broken.

The goal is exit. To leave the rest of humanity behind and build something new. Something they control completely.

They tested it in Honduras and got sued. They’re infiltrating New Zealand through investment visas. Thiel bought hundreds of acres there as his personal backup plan.

But Greenland is the prize.

Remote. Resource-rich. Strategically vital. And small enough that a flood of capital and a few ambitious politicians could flip it.

They’re calling it a sandbox for terraformation. Practice for Mars.

But that’s decades away.

Greenland is now.

Fifty-six thousand people live in Greenland. They didn’t ask to become someone’s experiment. They didn’t volunteer to be the beta test for billionaire sovereignty.

But that’s what’s happening.

While they navigate their relationship with Denmark, tech elites are plotting to turn their home into Atlas. A city that exists to prove that corporations can replace countries. That wealth can replace citizenship.

That freedom, real freedom, only belongs to those who can afford to buy their own nation.