A senior American official has defended the potential annexation of Greenland, a move that has strained NATO, triggered a diplomatic crisis and alarmed European capitals, by arguing it could help revive a struggling US seafood chain's all-you-can-eat shrimp deal.
The remark, delivered to The New Yorker's Ben Taub, came from Tom Dans, the man Donald Trump appointed in December 2025 to chair the United States Arctic Research Commission (USARC). Dans was appointed by Trump as chair of the USARC in December, and when Taub met him for lunch in Washington earlier this year, he declined to speak further on the record except to articulate what he called a 'narrow, symbiotic vision for the future.' That vision centred not on military doctrine, rare-earth economics or Arctic sovereignty, but on bottomless crustaceans. 'My view is that the United States could take all the seafood Greenland could produce, and cut out the middleman, and keep it from China,' Dans told Taub, 'and you could bring back all-you-can-eat shrimp at Red Lobster.'
