Trump’s ambassador tasked with getting control of Greenland confirmed

By Elías Thorsson October 8, 2025
1168
Ken Howery, U.S. President Trump’s nominee to be U.S. ambassador to Denmark, looks up before testifying at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 8, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Ken Howery is stepping into one of Europe’s most sensitive ambassadorships with a mandate that is both explicit and combustible. On Oct. 7, 2025, the U.S. Senate confirmed him 51–47 in an en-bloc vote as ambassador to the Kingdom of Denmark, which also covers Greenland and the Faroe Islands; Howery acknowledged the vote that night on X.

Politically, his posting has been framed from the start as an Arctic power play. In December 2024, then president-elect Donald Trump announced Howery for Copenhagen and declared that U.S. “ownership and control of Greenland” is an “absolute necessity” for national security—language that has echoed through Nordic capitals ever since.

On paper, Howery’s own agenda is broader and more conventional. In his May 8 confirmation-hearing statement, he set three priorities: shared security and NATO burden-sharing across the entire Kingdom, deeper trade and tech ties, and Arctic security with specific attention to Greenland and Pituffik Space Base, supported by the U.S. Consulate in Nuuk. He pointed to the 1951 defense agreement and Pituffik’s early-warning role as anchor points.

The ‘PayPal Mafia’ 

Howery arrives with an unusual résumé for a diplomat. A Stanford-trained economist, Howery co-founded PayPal in 1998 alongside Palantir founder Peter Thiel and Elon Musk (among others) and later co-founded the venture firm Founders Fund with Thiel and Luke Nosek.

    That lineage ties him to two of Trump’s closest tech allies: Thiel—who bankrolled Vice President JD Vance’s rise and remains tightly aligned with him, and Musk, whose relationship with Trump has swung from adviser to public feuds to rapprochement this year. Their companies also do vast business with Washington: SpaceX is a major Pentagon and NASA contractor under multi-billion-dollar award streams, while Palantir has amassed billions in federal obligations since 2008 and continues to win sizable U.S. government work. Separately, Palantir’s government role drew new scrutiny this summer after lawmakers cited reports of plans for an IRS “mega-database of American citizens,” which has drawn criticism from civil-liberties groups and Democrats in Congress. It remains to be seen how and if this complex political baggage will follow Howery from Silicon Valley into Arctic policy.

    Howery has also worked as a diplomat and was U.S. ambassador to Sweden (2019–2021) during Trump’s first term.

    The context he walks into is fraught. In late August, Denmark summoned the top U.S. diplomat in Copenhagen after reports that Americans with ties to Trump ran covert influence efforts in Greenland to map perceived allies and opponents and stoke secessionist sentiment. While not refuting the reports outright, Washington distanced itself from private citizens while reaffirming Greenland’s right to self-determination, but the episode sharpened scrutiny of U.S. motives just as the ambassador’s chair sat empty.

    Danish media have also reported internal jitters among embassy and consulate staff, citing a Judicial Watch public-records request that triggered broad document holds on messages referencing “Trump” in the context of Greenland. Danish newspaper Politiken reported that 30 employees at the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen and the U.S. Consulate in Nuuk were ordered in June to hand over all documents and written communications about Donald Trump and his ambition to acquire Greenland that they had written or received over a three-month period. In the article, former U.S. ambassador to Denmark Rufus Gifford said that the order “feels like a purge campaign.”

    Getting Greenland

    Greenland’s leaders have been unequivocal that the island isn’t for sale and that its future is decided in Nuuk. That stance, plus Trump’s revived rhetoric, makes Howery the face of a delicate balancing act: sustain close defense cooperation at Pituffik, deepen commercial ties and critical-minerals cooperation and convince Copenhagen that Washington respects Greenlandic self-determination, all the while advancing his boss’s agenda.