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Much of the world’s attention today is understandably focused on conflict in the Middle East, and the immediate implications for energy markets and global security. But other regions...
President and Founder, IAF Strategies; and Non-Resident Senior Associate, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Iris Ferguson (00:03):
The Arctic is changing so rapidly. It’s warming some four times the rate of the rest of the world and how we thought about the Arctic 20 years ago is different than how we think about it today. And that’s primarily because of climate change, it’s also because of technological advancements from both ourselves and our adversaries and the ability to access the region. But you have to be really intentional about the investments that you make there. It’s not an easy card by any means.
Bill Loveless (00:32):
Much of the world’s attention today is understandably focused on conflict in the Middle East and the immediate implications for energy markets in global security. But other regions remain important on the long-term strategic map because of critical minerals, emerging shipping routes, military positioning, and energy security. Among them are Greenland and the broader Arctic.
(00:55):
The far North is key to geopolitical competition among the United States, China, and Russia. Though it has fallen out of the recent news cycle, President Trump put Greenland and its resources in the spotlight last year by calling for US control of the Danish territory. So how significant are Greenland’s energy resources and geography? How should we think about its mineral resources in the context of supply chains in China? And how might the Arctic’s fast changing climate affect the region’s communities, culture and geopolitical importance?
(01:31):
This is Columbia Energy Exchange, a weekly podcast from the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. I’m Bill Loveless. Today in the show, Iris Ferguson. Iris is the president and founder of IAF Strategies and a non-resident senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. From 2022 to 2025, she served as the inaugural Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Arctic and Global Resilience, advising the Pentagon on protecting US and allied interests in the Arctic. Previously, Iris served as an advisor for the US Air Force where she authored the service’s first Arctic strategy. Iris and I talked about Greenland’s strategic significance and how the Arctic is changing both physically as well as geopolitically. We discussed the region’s rich resources and we looked ahead at the key research and funding decisions that will shape this region in the years to come. Here’s our conversation. Iris Ferguson, welcome to Columbia Energy Exchange.
Iris Ferguson (02:40):
Great to be here.
Bill Loveless (02:41):
I’ve looked forward to our conversation just given your career and all that you’ve accomplished and about a topic, Greenland and the Arctic. It’s a region many of us really don’t know all that much about. And so I look forward to the conversation to get a better understanding of this region and its importance and what lies beneath it. We should all know that much more about. But let’s start by just a little bit about yourself. What prompted your interest in this field and brought you to where you are today?
Iris Ferguson (03:16):
Yeah, thanks, Bill, and thanks for having me on. I got originally introduced to the Arctic region while working on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for then Senator Biden back some 20 odd years ago. We were working on Law of the Sea issues. And if you remember at that time, Russia had actually gone and planted a flag at the bottom of the North Pole in the middle of Law of the Sea negotiations in the Senate. And I thought, that’s really intriguing that a country would feel so convinced of their sovereign rights in a territory that feels very vast and largely untouched that they would go to put a flag in the middle of the North Pole. And unfortunately, this Law of the Sea Treaty did not pass during that time when we were trying to get it across the line. But I have started to really get invested in understanding the geography, the ownership, the governance, all of the different elements of the Arctic region.
(04:22):
It’s really one of those places where you can, if you’re interested in almost any topic, it’s there for you, whether it’s environmental issues, it’s military security and missile defense, geopolitics, energy and resources. It’s all in the Arctic. And so it’s a really fascinating region. I have had the privilege of being able to work on it in the last 10 years of my career within the Pentagon first at the Department of the Air Force, working as the Arctic expert and developing the Air Force’s Arctic strategy. And then in the Biden administration when they created a new deputy assistant secretary of defense office dedicated to looking at the Arctic region and pulling across all the different services and their interests and also the combatant commands and the allies and partners, I was asked to stand that office up and had the privilege of doing that for about three years prior to leaving government about a year ago now.
(05:17):
So I’ve had a front row seat to some of the changing geopolitics and changing cast of characters that are interested in the region and also really trying to define what are US strategic interests in the region and how we can make sure to secure those.
Bill Loveless (05:32):
Have you traveled in the region much? In the Arctic and Greenland?
Iris Ferguson (05:36):
Absolutely. Yeah. You really have to travel to the region to fully appreciate it. I mean, when I was at the Pentagon, I spent a decent amount of time in particular looking at our North American security interests given that that is what we primarily need to be focused on. We spent a lot of time in Alaska, spent a lot of time up in Canada, including at Alert, which is the most northern military installation just near Greenland off to the west coast of Greenland. And then also spent a decent amount of time in Greenland itself traveling to Pitific, which is the space base there, which was previously named Tule and then down in the southern part of Greenland to some sites called Kangerlussuaq and Ilulissat. And Kangerlussuaq is actually an old airbase that we used to have back in the Cold War era. And it still performs as a really important logistical hub for Greenland and it kind of operates as a hub and spoke model, but it’s one of the longest runways that we have within Greenland.
(06:39):
And it’s typical of, I think, the environment that you find in Greenland where you see a lot of the infrastructure that we rely on today from the Cold War era that needs a lot of modernization, but is still really critical to our ability to operate in the region, whether it be at Pituffik space base or even utilizing some of these existing runways or infrastructure that we created at the height of the Cold War.
Bill Loveless (07:01):
What are people like there? It’s not a big population, but …
Iris Ferguson (07:05):
Yeah, well, they’re incredibly friendly. They’re just really incredibly nice people, quite frankly. I think the tourism industry has been slow to take off compared to the rest of the world, primarily because there hasn’t been a lot of flight access to the island, but that’s changed as of last year. There’s now a direct flight from Newark every summer to Nuke, the Capitol. And so Bill, I encourage you to jump on that flight this summer.
Bill Loveless (07:37):
Sounds very interesting.
Iris Ferguson (07:38):
You’re able to go see and walk the land. The people are really, they’re fascinating and they’re also very resilient. They’ve spent hundreds of years navigating an incredibly challenging environment and thriving there. And so they’re very proud, quite frankly, too. They’re very independent and proud of their island and the culture as they should be. And it’s a real privilege to be able to spend time with them. I would also just talk about the environment there too. Greenland is so unique in terms of its environmental geography. If you get a chance to go, I hope that you’re able to obviously go to the capital and meet with people, but it’d be great to get to Ilulissat, which is in Disko Bay where you can actually see the ice sheet calving into the ocean in front of your eyes. You can take a tour just off the island and you’re amidst all these incredible icebergs that have literally fallen off of the ice sheet.
(08:40):
And then if you’re so lucky to be connected with the National Science Foundation, which when I was with the government, we were able to do some of these really incredible tours of taking helicopters out to the ice sheet where you get to see some of the locations where scientists work, where they’re doing ice core studies and you fly over the ice sheet and it is just astoundingly vast. It’s a magnificent and beautiful landscape and you can only really fully appreciate it by putting eyes on it yourself, but I hope you’re able to get there.
Bill Loveless (09:09):
My gosh, it sounds fantastic. When policymakers talk about Greenland and the Arctic today, what are they really worried about? Is this primarily about energy critical minerals, military positioning, climate change, or all of the above?
Iris Ferguson (09:25):
I think it’s all of the above, quite frankly. The Arctic is changing so rapidly. It’s warming some four times the rate of the rest of the world. And how we thought about the Arctic 20 years ago is different than how we think about it today. And that’s primarily because of climate change. It’s also because of technological advancements, quite frankly, as well from both ourselves and our adversaries and the ability to access the region or the ability to have weaponry that can fly over the region that would keep our interests at threat. It really has to do with the physical location primarily, I think first and foremost of why we care so much about the Arctic region. Even in the Cold War, when climate change was not necessarily something that was front of mind for folks, we spent a lot of investment in securing our interests at the top of the world because we were worried about Russian bombers coming at us because of the proximity that we have to their air bases and the ability for them to hold our assets at risk.
(10:29):
So we have a lot of radar sites across the north of America, including in Alaska and Canada and Greenland where we still have a space base in order to keep track of the threats that could come at us over the polls. If you look at the region from the top down at a polar view, you really see that the Arctic plays a role as a bridge between North America, Europe, and the Indo-Pacific. And that’s a fundamental geography that you can’t change and that we really need to be thinking about it. And so as the region is changing and opening up, I think it’s becoming more and more strategic, even more so than we had originally thought back in the Cold War, because now you have access to resources and now you have access to potential shipping routes that are coming online. Now you have a very complicated theater to keep track of in tabs on in terms of different adversary movement and action.
(11:24):
If you’re able to respond to, say, Chinese presence off the coast of your country where you didn’t usually see them before, there’s a totally different calculation that you have to think about your own strategic interest and certainly for the United States, which has substantial territory and interests within the Arctic region, we need to be very cognizant of the changes that are taking place and be aware of securing those.
Bill Loveless (11:48):
Yeah. It’s interesting. So the strategic significance of this region has been apparent for many years. Just recently, Greenland was in the headlines, but attention’s faded recently. From your vantage point, did anything actually change or are the structural drivers still very much in place?
Iris Ferguson (12:12):
I think it’s great that Greenland is getting the attention that it deserves. It is such a strategic location. Some people have said it’s sort of acts as an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that we should care about our interests off North America, that we should work to secure. And so I think it’s great that people are finally appreciating its strategic location. I think that the underlying premise of the importance of Greenland has not changed. I think there’s just more awareness of what is possible with it with Greenland. Obviously, understanding the role that the Space Force Base plays within Greenland and having an appreciation for missile defense architecture of quite frankly, education on maps. Is there increased emphasis on the region and development shifted? I think that there’ll continue to be more emphasis placed on Greenland, even if the headlines aren’t there just because it makes common sense, quite frankly.
(13:17):
The territory itself, like I said, is so strategic, but you have to be really intentional about the investments that you make there. It’s not an easy card by any means. There’s a lot of challenges to infrastructure and logistics and the cost of things can be very prohibitive, but if you have the right security rationale or the right economic development rationale, then I think that you can make the case for increased investment and increased attention and focus, but it’s all about prioritization, of course.
Bill Loveless (13:50):
At the end of the day, we are an energy policy podcast and so energy topics are important to us. How significant are Greenland’s oil and gas resources today economically and strategically?
Iris Ferguson (14:03):
I’m really glad that you asked these questions about the resources because I think it’s important to have a lay of the land of what’s out there. There are three big resource opportunities within Greenland, critical minerals, oil and gas and hydropower. And you’re asking about the oil and gas potential. The reserves that are there have been, they’ve been explored really since the ’70s. There’s been a lot of just scouting about what could potentially be there. And there has been some significant discoveries of what’s possible, including one area on the east coast of Greenland, which I think has some 13 billion barrels of oil potential, but that’s an onshore opportunity. It’s actually, I think the releasing rights for that came about in, I want to say 2014 timeframe. And then in early 2020s, the Greenland government actually put a moratorium on oil and gas development and discovery.
(15:08):
And primarily for environmental concerns, I think there’s a huge emphasis on maintaining the pristine-ness of the environment. And if you’re ever able to go there, you’ll understand why because it does, it feels untouched in so many ways. And most of the communities that live there are subsistence-based living, so they rely on fisheries. And so any kind of degradation of the environment immediately impacts the livelihoods of those that live there, but also there’s a huge emphasis on protection of nature and of ensuring that the children are passed down in an environment that they are proud of and that they continue to protect that and also because so much of the existing electrical infrastructure is hydropower. And so I think there was a little bit of a, what do we have? We probably have more to lose than we have to gain by allowing some of this oil exploration.
(16:13):
I do wonder if that calculation tilts as Greenland looks to try to develop its own economic independence. The reserve that I mentioned, that lease was given in 2014. And actually my understanding is that there’s a couple of companies that are looking to try to execute on that lease as early as this year where they’re bringing in ship companies from Canada that are familiar with operating off the coast of Canada for logistics purposes. It’ll be again on the eastern side of Greenland where they’re going to try to explore some of this, like I said, 13 billion barrels of oil, which is a substantial amount. So it’ll be, I think, a pilot case of whether or not, one, it’s feasible. Two, can you do this in a way that’s economically and environmentally reasonable in the country and maybe could be a test case for the future. But I do think that the politics right now are not in favor of having more leases from what I have gathered.
(17:25):
In 2021, they created a moratorium on allowing more leases. I don’t see that getting lifted anytime soon. And so this lease that existed in 2014 has been grandfathered in. So they basically kind of have to let the lease stand.
Bill Loveless (17:42):
Critical minerals may be more tangible. How should we think about Greenland’s rare earths and other minerals in the context of supply chains and China?
Iris Ferguson (17:52):
No, well, absolutely. I mean, the critical minerals there are vast. Some studies have shown that the rare earth elements that could exist on the island could be second to only China in terms of the amount that exists there. So the potential is certainly there. The logistics are less so. I think that’s one of the biggest challenges with resource exploration in general in Greenland is that the potential is very different from the production. It’s very hard to access these minerals. There’s not a lot of ports. There’s not a lot of infrastructure. There’s only two stoplights on the entire island, so there’s not a lot of road infrastructure even to get minerals out. There’s two active mines right now in the southwest of Greenland. There’s actually a really great Wall Street Journal article on the mining infrastructure and some of the challenges, quite frankly, to actually getting further development underway.
(19:02):
And a lot of it’s that it’s really costly and that the infrastructure’s not there. And then there’s this, again, the political environment is very tricky. And a lot of the decisions are very local-based decisions within local communities and whether or not they feel comfortable with having mining on their doorstep. And one example is that a lease was given or a potential lease was given to a company to be doing some mining and then there was a moratorium put on uranium mining. And so that is often a byproduct of some of the mining of these rare earth elements and it has now stopped the ability of the mine to actually go forward despite the potential economic boon and of course the workforce opportunity that could exist for Greenland, the local community has decided that that’s not worth it for them. So I think we’re seeing a bit of a tug and pull between the interest of certainly international partners that are interested in trying to access some of these resources, but then the realities on the ground combined with the politics create a very different situation.
Bill Loveless (20:12):
You mentioned some of the recent mining activity and did that involve rare earth elements or I know there’s substantial quantities of uranium, iron ore, zinc, and gold on the island as well.
Iris Ferguson (20:26):
Yeah, absolutely. There’s a lot of copper in particular that’s been found, which obviously plays into the broad global electrification trends. And then there’s a lot of graphite deposits that have been shown to exist, which is of course a key component of battery manufacturing. I think that there’s a lot of different opportunities again that exist here, but the price points of some of these elements are so volatile that it creates a real challenge, I think, for investors to rely on the return. Even if you could find a place that is politically and logistically viable, the price points are so in flux that it’s really hard to justify. And that’s why I think this oil example is actually an interesting comparison, right? It’s obviously incredibly expensive to try to go explore here, but maybe the price point for oil can justify the exploration in a way that some of the mining is still struggling to do.
Bill Loveless (21:28):
And when you talk about access and geography, there’s other things to consider, right? I mean, you’re talking about shipping lanes, missile defense, proximity rather than the energy itself.
Iris Ferguson (21:42):
Yeah. There’s a lot of different elements to access and there’s a lot of different variables that you have to think about when you’re trying to advocate for development like this. I think you can make the case for development of some of this if there’s a security premium that’s put upon it. If there’s a rationale for development of minerals with some kind of price floor, or you know that you’re willing to pay X times over the market price because of the security dimension to it, I think you can absolutely make the justification, but it would become, I think absent that, I think it’s pretty tricky today to say that they’re viable.
Bill Loveless (22:35):
I want to talk some more about the strategic importance of the area, but I can’t help but flag a great explanation, a description of Greenland I read in the BBC the other day and I said, Greenland resembles a Cadbury cream egg with an outer hard margin enclosing an interior of white ooze. Does that sound about right?
Iris Ferguson (22:54):
Well, I don’t know if it feels like it’s white ooze. It’s pretty hard. That sounds malleable.
Bill Loveless (23:04):
And that would be good, I guess, if you were exploring for minerals.
Iris Ferguson (23:08):
And digestible. I don’t know that I would quite describe it like that.
Bill Loveless (23:15):
We’ll work on another description.
Iris Ferguson (23:18):
I don’t know that particular … I mean, this is where if you go into the ice sheet, you’ll see what I mean. You will think, this is not ooze. This is really, really hard. And if anything, it’s like a gobstopper. It’s like it just gets harder and harder as you enter the middle. I did, Bill, want to just briefly mention the space base that’s up at the top of Greenland because I think it’s important for folks to know that one, the people that work there have immense respect for the local communities. Within Greenland, they spend a lot of time trying to get to know the local communities. They do a yearly run out with a bunch of presents on a C-17 or dropping, I’m not sure if it’s a C-17, but they take presents to local communities at Christmastime in order to build common ties.
(24:18):
And the space space performs a really critical mission for the United States security architecture and it has for a long time. It keeps track of the potential for ballistic missiles, which are these ones that kind of fly up really high and come down to be able to make sure that we’re keeping tabs on those. It also has a space situational awareness capacity where you’re tracking thousands and thousands of satellites to prevent collision or to see if there’s challenges to them. So just really performs at an incredible public service good. And the work there also flows back though to the Greenland community down south. So one of the things that I worked on when I was at the Department of the Air Force [unclear] was making sure that a base maintenance contract that we have for the actual base actually provides mutual benefit to not only us to make sure that the mace is maintained, but that the workforce is supplied by local Greenlanders and that the contract itself is awarded to the local Greenlandic economy.
(25:22):
And so there’s a real intention with our presence with military presence in Greenland to make sure that it benefits everybody, that there’s a recognition that it’s not just the United States taking control of the space that we have and doing what we want, but that there’s a real symbiotic relationship. And that’s, I know, very important for the military and I just wanted to make sure that your listeners are aware.
Bill Loveless (25:46):
Yeah, that’s an important point to make, Iris, because I think the importance of that base and its relationship with the nation there perhaps has been overlooked with a lot of the news and the political news and the controversy most recently. How does Greenland fit into the broader Arctic strategies of Russia and China? And what is the US most concerned about?
Iris Ferguson (26:07):
Well, again, as you look at the map, Greenland plays a really critical kind of node for US and North American security interests. It’s actually part of the North American continent and again, trying to protect what could come at us. Russia and China are actively exploring how they can control their own interests within the Arctic region. Russia has a substantial coastline. They have a lot of military architecture that they’ve been investing in, especially along the Northern Sea route, which is the sea route right above their coast. And they have a lot of oil and gas reserves that are coming out of the northern sea route that provide, I think some estimates, say 25% of Russian GDP comes from the Arctic. So they have a real rationale to secure those interests. They also are developing, I said, their military capabilities in a way that could be offensive in nature and not just defensive in nature.
(27:06):
And that’s, of course, what gives the United States a little pause when you start to look at the West Coast of the United States and Alaska and trying to make sure and keep tabs on how Russia is engaging on the Indo-Pacific side of the Arctic region. You see China investing heavily alongside Russia to develop that northern sea route because they’re getting the mineral access out of the northern sea route. They have unprecedented levels of cooperation that you’re seeing between the two of them happening in the Arctic, probably more than any other region in the world. And unfortunately, I think the media has captured so much attention on the East Coast of the United States and it’s important again, but I think a lot of the security interests for the United States are actually happening off the coast of Alaska where we have a lot of our own territory to defend and a lot of our existing military architecture, which is meant to flow from Alaska into the Indo-Pacific in the event of a contingency there.
(28:12):
We need a lot of investment and work to protect those assets. And that’s where we see our two primary competitors of Russia and China acting in cooperation in a way that you don’t see in other … You certainly don’t see off the coast of Greenland, but you do see off the coast of Alaska the couple of military exercises that they’ve done together, joint bombing campaigns, some naval exercises, memorandums of understanding around Coast Guard and of course, economic development. So it’s really about the vision that they have long-term about developing the Arctic region. I don’t know that their vision is always the same, quite frankly. I do think that there’s a bit of a symbiotic relationship right now in leveraging the economic benefits of China to Russia’s interest. And effectively, China is bankrolling Russia’s continued invasion of Ukraine because even in the wake of sanctions, they’re able to continue to invest in the Northern sea route and continue to advance their Arctic interests because of some of the Chinese investment that has come in.
(29:21):
And China’s interests are really about trying to get a foothold in a region where they don’t have territory and trying to befriend nations so that they do have a seat at the table. They’ve spent a lot of time trying to engage with Arctic partners and Nordic partners as part of their initial Arctic Silk Road effort to develop a bit of an economic corridor for themselves across the Arctic. I think a lot of our Nordic partners in Greenland and included have really shut the door to some of that interest because they’re eyes wide open to some of the long-term motivations of The Chinese getting a foothold. But again, it’s back to this long-term vision. For China, 20 to 30 years is 50 years is not a long time. In the US, we have a harder time with imagining this. And so I think their long-term strategy is to make sure that the Arctic is seen as a global commons, that they have access, that they can secure their own interests, that they can steer the governance in their favor.
(30:25):
And if our interests are aligned with theirs, that’s great. I think that it gives us pause, of course, as the United States, because it’s unclear if our interests are aligned.
Bill Loveless (30:38):
You attended the recent Munich Security Conference and you spoke on a number of panels on Arctic issues, energy, climate security. What were some of the broad themes that stood out to you?
Iris Ferguson (30:51):
Well, the fact that the Arctic has become such a part of the main stage at Munich Security Conference is in itself pretty telling. In years past, there have been some events on the Arctic, but the amount of events dedicated to looking at Arctic security was pretty unprecedented from my perspective. There is a lot of focus right now on how allies and partners can work together to advance our interests, a recognition that we haven’t invested enough, a recognition that we need to do more. And that’s why you see I think some of the NATO announcements of late and the work on Arctic Century, which is a new NATO exercise meant to look at re-securing our interests in the Arctic region.
(31:41):
You see the tension between the US and Europe. I think it’s important to note that there is tension, but I think there’s an opportunity to rebuild and use the Arctic as a kind of a pilot case of keeping the alliance together because the US really needs Europe in order to secure its own interests in the region. The US has enough dependencies, whether it be on infrastructure or basing, or it’d be on capabilities or on resourcing that really working alongside Europe and NATO is critical to the United States. And so I’m interested to see how we can use the Arctic region as a means for us to continue to advance the Transatlantic Alliance and make it stronger. You also, I heard a lot of emphasis from NATO on actually embedding Arctic within the institution of NATO. Prior to this last couple of years, I think NATO has been so focused rightly on trying to navigate the Ukraine challenge and has a large territory and a lot of different member states to try to navigate prioritization around.
(32:48):
But with the accession of Finland and Sweden into NATO, there’s a new emphasis on securing the north and there’s a new clear geography and players in which to do that. And so there’s going to be redesigns of some of the plans that they use to carve up territory. And I do think you’ll see an increased level of emphasis specifically on the Arctic and on allowing for Arctic capabilities that countries are buying to actually go into some of the NATO targets for the first time. So I know this is nitty-gritty policy stuff, but actually it kind of starts to move the needle about how we secure our interests long-term.
Bill Loveless (33:28):
The controversy has been over President Trump’s interest in annexing Greenland, right? And how difficult does that make for the sorts of collaboration among NATO partners and others on these very issues that you just described?
Iris Ferguson (33:44):
You saw it pretty viscerally at Munich from some of the partners. I think Greenland sort of became a bit of a red line for some of the European states where you felt like it became when you started to talk about sovereignty and protection of sovereignty and sovereign interests, that’s where they drew the line and not willing to negotiate around those kinds of terms. There’s definitely a bit of a trust deficit that exists between Europe and the United States right now. I mean, you can just read the news to recognize that’s not a surprise. I do think that some of the rhetoric out of the Trump administration, I will say it has been helpful for advancing European countries’ recognition of the role that the United States has played in being the backstop to NATO for so long. It also has been helpful in helping countries kind of wake up that they need to define security interest for themselves in some ways and can’t necessarily ride on the coattails or can’t necessarily always be looking into the United States for answers.
(34:57):
I do think that that’s actually very healthy. Quite frankly, I think it’s healthy in Canada. I think it’s healthy across Europe, but certainly in the Arctic nations as well for folks to define their own interests and what they want to invest in to secure their interests meaningfully and to make that contribution. And of course, when they make that contribution, it also helps the alliance as a whole. That being said, I do think that even though there’s tension right now and I do think that there’s a real trust deficit, I think the dependencies that we have on one another and the Arctic are so profound that it can’t remain tension forever because if we’re actually serious about securing our Arctic interests, that we have to work together.
Bill Loveless (35:41):
I want to touch on climate change. It’s unavoidable to discuss these days. How does climate change complicate this picture?
Iris Ferguson (35:49):
Well, dramatically, as I said earlier, the Arctic is one of the places where climate change is impacting the region harder and faster and clearer than arguably any other region in the world — warming at some four times the rate as the rest of the world. When I was at the Pentagon, we treated climate change not as a security slogan, but as a security condition. And so it was really imperative that we think about the changes of the environment and how that impacts our operations, how it’s impacting how our adversaries are thinking about the ability to operate in the region. I was talking to you earlier, Bill, about how Russia and China aren’t holding back. They see the region changing dramatically because of climate change, because the middle of the Arctic Ocean is starting to open up a little bit, that things are shifting, that they’re starting to put in markers of places where they want to be, whether it be naval presence and showing up places where they never used to show up that would give us a lot of concern, but now their presence becomes normalized or they start to invest in infrastructure that is very forbidding and hard, but also they see the long-term vision.
(37:07):
That’s happening because climate change is allowing for it to happen. And on Greenland in particular, there’s a huge ice sheet that’s melting and that has direct implications for sea level rise, including places like Miami where you have warm weather flooding days. I used to live in Miami and my streets would just be flooded on a random Tuesday with no rain. Some of this has to do with the sea level rise that we’re seeing from the melt of the Greenland ice sheet. And the other part of climate change is, of course, permafrost thaw and the challenges of infrastructure that exist and trying to place infrastructure meaningfully and at a reasonable cost knowing that the ground might melt underneath you. And the other piece of climate issues that I don’t think are talked about enough because I honestly, I feel like there’s a little bit of a disconnect in how scientists talk about climate change and how the policy community and certainly how the national security community talks about climate issues, but the potential tipping of AMOC, the current that exists within the North Atlantic because of the melt of the ice sheet of Greenland really I think needs to be talked about more.
(38:22):
The fact that you have this Gulf stream that carries warm water up north that we’ve really created entire societies based off of, including in Northern Europe and in North America and along the East Coast that has this milder climate because of the warming of the Gulf stream. If the Greenland ice sheet melts allowing more fresh water and changing the salinity, the patterns of that current scientists say will change dramatically, causing for totally different weather patterns, including much more extreme freezing and colder weather across Northern Europe and across Northern North America, that would totally impact our societies in a way that we’re not fully grappling with. I think it also, of course, has a huge impact on fisheries and on different economies. So this is something that some countries in the Arctic are starting to actually recognize. Iceland, for example, has recently added the tipping of the AMOC and of climate security issues to front of mind in their strategies because they realize that so much of their economy has been developed based off of the Gulf stream and their use of that, that it’s going to dramatically impact them should climate change continue at the same pace that it’s forecast.
Bill Loveless (39:41):
Is there insufficient attention in terms of science and research on what’s happening there?
Iris Ferguson (39:48):
I think that we need to do a hard look at science across the board, but just looking at the Arctic in particular, most operators, including our national security operators, would say that we don’t have the level of data and clarity that we need to fully appreciate what’s going on in the Arctic region. This is even before some of the announcements of some of the cuts to science. There’s an exercise called ICEX, which happens every two years. The Navy runs it. I think they’re actually supposed to be doing it this cycle in 2026. So I was fortunate enough to be able to go on it two years ago where you basically take an airplane and a helicopter and land on the ice north of Alaska, some 200 miles north of Alaska and then you jump on a submarine that has popped up through the ice and spend the night on the sub-
Bill Loveless (40:42):
You were on the submarine?
Iris Ferguson (40:43):
Yes. Yeah. Yeah, spent the night underneath the ice, which is truly a life-changing experience and huge hats off to the submariners and the folks that do that mission day in and day out to protect us because it is a very, very hard operating environment. Well, one of the things that ICEX does is also brings scientific communities out to the ice sheet to do a months long of research around the changing nature of the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska. And several years prior to, I think it was probably 2022, I can’t remember exact dates, the ice sheet actually started to crack in the middle of the camp itself because the predictive models weren’t forecasting the ice flow movements effectively. So they had to load up the camp on snowmobiles and quickly drag it to a more stable piece of ice flow. Otherwise, it just would’ve obviously been treacherous and it was treacherous, but this is just a classic case of even when you’re trying to provide the right level of knowledge for current operations, we don’t necessarily have it right.
(41:56):
And I’m not saying it’s easy to get that right, but we need to spend some time figuring out how to get that right so that we’re able to protect not only current operator’s interests, and of course being able to predict ice flow at a minimum for naval and civilian traffic, but also for our future interests. And then one other quick side note on this, Bill, because I do think this is important to state too that I don’t know that more is more here either. And so I do think that I’m hoping that this moment of decline in funding for some of the science can be a little bit of a cohesion moment for the science and climate communities to come together and really focus on what matters. Is there something that is a no-fail mission that we need to all get behind and say that that’s the thing to care about?
(42:47):
I think that is one of the things that I struggled with in the Pentagon is really knowing which data to point to all the time. There’s so many different sets of data, there’s lots of tools, there’s lots of ideas. And I’m not saying that they don’t have their unique application, but I do think having some kind of prioritization and even cohesion within the scientific community could really be helpful to not only galvanizing public attention and awareness, but also ensuring that funding remains.
Bill Loveless (43:13):
What would be some things we should watch for, over the next five to 10 years, Iris, to understand whether Greenland and the Arctic are becoming more strategically important or less?
Iris Ferguson (43:25):
For the United States, I would look at funding, honestly. I would look at where we’re actually making investments. There’s been a lot of rhetoric around the Arctic and I think this is across administrations. I’m not trying to say one administration does this more than the other. I think that there’s been a lot of emphasis on securing Arctic interests without the money to actually do so. And actually, Senator Murkowski said this point blank at one of the panels at Munich. She said, “We the United States have a lot of our own challenges because we haven’t invested what we need to invest.” And Alaska in particular, of course, she’s an Alaskan senator, but that’s the truth too, is that we have some real intentional investments that we need to be making. So I’d be looking at where we actually make those big bets and where we decide that it’s worth the money to make investments.
(44:19):
You’ll see that with icebreakers now, that we’re finally getting our icebreaker capacity up primarily through partnership and again, relying on others to help us because we don’t have our own industry built yet. We’re relying on Finland and Canada to help with utilizing some of their shipyards and labor. That’s the kind of model that we should be looking to, I think, for other capacities too, in order to save the taxpayer money, but also leverage where these other countries have been so out in front in developing capabilities. I’d be looking at where we’re making investments. Also, I’m looking at where China is operating in the region, where they’re showing up, where they’re able to show up in places where we didn’t think they could actually be. We saw an unprecedented level of scientific – which also has military application… It was very transparent about their dual use of science off the coast of Alaska this past summer with some five research vessels operating in Alaska.
(45:20):
We saw them operating close to the North Pole. There’s a reason why they’re trying to operate that far north. They’re trying to get a rid of the terrain and understand where fisheries are going, understand different bathymetric studies for potential submarine use. I’m intrigued to see how they try to continue to secure their interests in the region. And then of course, I think looking at how the data on how climate is impacting the region, there’s still so many unknowns about how climate change is impacting the Arctic. The forecasting for the opening of the sea routes, including the transpolar route, which is that one that goes over the North Pole.That’s the game-changing route. There’s the routes that are kind of around the countries themselves, but the game-changing one is across the North Pole. And you hear estimates wildly ranging from 2040 to 2060 that that could be ice-free and navigable. It’s still very hard to predict that. And so I’m really keen to see if science can be advanced to have better predictive modeling.
Bill Loveless (46:29):
My goodness, there’s so much to consider there in terms of this area that’s so important that we’ve become so aware of recently because of controversy and headlines and all, but there’s a lot beneath all of this. Beneath all of this ice and these strategic trade routes is so many strategic considerations for us to examine. Iris Ferguson, thanks for taking the time today to join us on Columbia Energy Exchange.
Iris Ferguson (46:54):
Ah, it was a pleasure. Thanks, Bill.
Bill Loveless (47:01):
That’s it for this week’s episode of Columbia Energy Exchange. Thank you again, Iris Ferguson, and thank you for listening. The show is brought to you by the Center on Global Energy Policy at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. The show is hosted by Jason Bordoff and me, Bill Loveless. Mary Catherine O’Connor, Caroline Pitman, and Kyu Lee produced the show. Greg Vilfranc engineered it. For more information about the show or the Center on Global Energy Policy, visit us online at energypolicy.columbia.edu or follow us on social media at ColumbiaUnergy. If you like this episode, leave us a rating on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. You can also share it with a friend or colleague to help us reach more listeners. Either way, we appreciate your support. Thanks again for listening. See you next week.
Much of the world’s attention today is understandably focused on conflict in the Middle East, and the immediate implications for energy markets and global security. But other regions remain strategically important because of critical minerals, emerging shipping routes, military positioning, and energy security. Among these regions are Greenland and the broader Arctic.
The far north is key to geopolitical competition among the United States, China, and Russia. Though it has fallen out of the recent news cycle, President Trump put Greenland and its resources in the spotlight last year by calling for US control of the Danish territory.
So how significant are Greenland’s energy resources and geography? How should we think about its mineral resources in the context of supply chains and China? And how might the Arctic’s fast-changing climate affect the region’s communities, culture, and geopolitical importance?
Today on the show, Bill Loveless speaks with Iris Ferguson about Greenland’s strategic significance, and how the Arctic is changing, both physically as well as geopolitically.
Iris is the president and founder of IAF Strategies and a non-resident senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. From 2022 to 2025 she served as the inaugural deputy assistant secretary of defense for Arctic and global resilience, advising the Pentagon on protecting US and allied interests in the Arctic. Previously, Iris served as an advisor to the US Air Force, where she authored the service’s first Arctic strategy.
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