Smoke, Mirrors and Greenland

Air Force One subterfuge, Pentagon conflicts, an Arctic oil venture worth watching, and a farewell to Jackie.

Good morning! The Washington Post reports that Trump’s July 8 departure from Turkey involved an extraordinary deception operation prompted by a credible Iranian assassination threat. Trump boarded the legacy Air Force One in view of cameras, then secretly left the aircraft and flew to Britain aboard a smaller military jet while reporters and some White House staff remained on the 747 believing he was with them.

Protecting the president from a credible threat sometimes requires deception. It is harder to explain why the deception continued after the immediate danger had passed.

The decoy aircraft carrying the press eventually used the “AF1” call sign despite Trump not being aboard. After arriving in Britain, Trump appeared before cameras descending from that aircraft, and the White House subsequently said he had landed “aboard the former Air Force One.”

That is the real story here. Concealing a president’s location from a potential assassin is prudent. Allowing the press and public to believe a false account of his movements, and maintaining that account once he was safely on the ground, is something else entirely. Air Force One now comes with a smoke machine.

The Guardian reports that Hegseth’s newly reconstituted Defense Policy Board includes Marc Andreessen and Blake Masters, two men with significant connections to the same defense-tech investment ecosystem in which Donald Trump Jr.’s venture fund, 1789 Capital, has become an increasingly enthusiastic participant.

Andreessen Horowitz, better known as a16z, co-invests with 1789 Capital in companies including Anduril, Hadrian and SpaceX. Masters, meanwhile, sits on the boards of three investment vehicles associated with 1789 co-founder Omeed Malik. The Defense Policy Board does not award contracts itself, but it exists to advise Pentagon leadership on strategy, force structure, national security and, relevantly these days, the rapidly expanding defense-technology sector.

And these aren’t artisanal drone startups hoping someday to sell six quadcopters to the Parks Department.

Anduril has received enormous Pentagon business. Hadrian has landed Navy and Army agreements tied to advanced defense manufacturing. SpaceX has accumulated billions in government contracts and is deeply embedded in military launch, satellite and communications programs.

None of this proves that Andreessen or Masters has improperly directed a contract, nor does it prove that Donald Trump Jr. has benefited from any specific Pentagon decision. But conflicts of interest do not become uninteresting merely because nobody has yet produced the email marked SUBJECT: SECRET FAMILY SELF-DEALING PLAN - PLEASE DELETE AFTER READING.

The concern is structural: people advising the Pentagon on the future of defense technology are connected financially or institutionally to investors and companies positioned to profit handsomely from precisely that future.

1789 Capital itself has undergone quite a transformation. After Trump Jr. joined as a partner, the fund’s reported assets under management surged from roughly $150 million in 2024 to billions, with a substantial share reportedly coming from overseas investors.

Again, none of that is proof of wrongdoing. It is, however, a very good reason to keep the receipts.

Which brings us north. Far north. Greenland north.

Greenland’s government confirmed that Greenland Energy, a Texas company, landed drilling equipment in Jameson Land without the required approvals and issued a strong warning that future logistics need advance clearance. Worth noting going in: Greenland stopped issuing new oil licenses in 2021 after decades of unsuccessful exploration, although the older Jameson Land licenses remain valid.

The company’s chairman, Larry Swets, has reported access to Trump’s circle, the basis for the “Trump-linked” headlines. Be precise about what that means: there’s no disclosed Trump or Trump-family financial stake here. This is influence-by-proximity, not investment, a real distinction after the Pentagon item above.

The supporting cast still earns scrutiny. Dr. Phil is producing a documentary on the venture. A Navy veteran tied to Trump’s Golden Dome initiative sits on the board. And per corporate filings, Greenland Energy isn’t drilling acreage it’s held for years; it’s financing exploration in exchange for a majority stake in rights previously held by a British company, 80 Mile.

There’s no evidence Trump ordered any of this, and Greenland Energy denies any annexation link. But two days after the government’s rebuke, Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself looming over Greenland captioned “Hello, Greenland!” Perhaps coincidence has become an unusually ambitious screenwriter.

Watch what happens next: whether Washington gets involved if permits are refused, and whether anyone starts invoking American strategic interests on the company’s behalf.

Briefly, an update on yesterday’s vaccine story: STAT reports the administration’s new “Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations” were developed via presidential advisers and comparisons to other countries’ schedules, bypassing the usual public evidence-review process. The White House didn’t answer STAT’s questions about who advised Trump or why.

If the new recommendations are better, show the work. Science is unusually accommodating that way.

After a morning filled with secret airplanes, investment networks, unapproved drilling equipment, and public-health policy being reconstructed somewhere behind the White House curtains, we want to end somewhere very different.

Yesterday came the sad news that Jackie, the beloved bald eagle of Big Bear whose life has been followed by people around the world, died at the Ojai Raptor Center, where she had been receiving care. She was only 13.

For years, people watched Jackie and her partner Shadow through snowstorms and nesting seasons, through fragile eggs, disappointments, triumphs, and finally the raising of their young. Shadow is now continuing alone, providing for their last fledglings together.

Jackie’s death lands only six months after that of Sandy Steers, the Friends of Big Bear Valley executive director who launched the eagle livestream in 2015 and spent years introducing Jackie and Shadow to the world. Steers died on February 11 after a recurrence of cancer she had first survived some thirty years earlier. It was Steers who watched the eagles settle into Big Bear, recognized how much there was to learn from them, and thought the rest of us might want to watch too.

Marz and I devoted much of our moonbeam vigil last night to Jackie and Sandy.

There are creatures we never touch and never truly know, yet somehow come to occupy a small permanent place in our lives simply because we have been privileged to watch them live theirs. Sandy Steers understood that better than almost anyone, and gave that gift to millions of strangers.

It is a small comfort to imagine them together, now, forever.