From Honduras to Greenland: The Billionaires Blueprint for Deregulated Cities
A new corporate World Order?
Freddie Ponton
21st Century Wire
What if the popular Conservative Inc call for “freedom” isn’t about democracy at all, but the privatisation of governance itself? What if all the popular talk of innovation and deregulation is really about a coordinated globalist agenda to hollow-out national sovereignty and replace it with a new corporate world order? This investigation traces a precarious journey of a privatised economic zone in Honduras called Prospera, to a newly planned corporate frontier slated for Greenland—showing how technocrats, financiers, and political elites are now attempting to rewrite the rules and structures of government and representative democracy.
Honduras: Testbed for Corporate Rule
Honduras did not become fertile ground for radical privatisation by accident. In June 2009, President Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a military coup and expelled from the country at gunpoint; the decade that followed saw deeply corrupt governments, entrenched poverty, and a weakened democracy that made the nation vulnerable to externally driven policy experiments. The stage was set for Zones for Employment and Economic Development (ZEDEs), which many critics describe as private jurisdictions cloaked in economic rhetoric.
ZEDEs were designed as enclaves with sweeping powers: they could establish independent courts, write laws, levy taxes, and operate private police, all with minimal oversight. After Honduras’ Constitutional Court struck down earlier reforms as unconstitutional, Congress replaced dissenting judges and passed the ZEDE law in 2013, a judicial purge that altered Honduran governance and laid the foundation for Prospera.
In August 2017, Honduras Próspera Inc (previously known as Sociedad para el Desarrollo Socioeconómico de Honduras, LLC) was incorporated in Delaware to back a charter city on the Island of Roatán. Marketed as a private, semi-autonomous enclave, Prospera offered low taxes, bespoke regulations, and legal stability guarantees that were insulated from national law. On the ground, there were only a handful of buildings, but what grew quickly was conflict: residents of Crawfish Rock say they were initially told it was a resort before the surrounding land was fenced and privatised. UN experts warned that ZEDEs could control significant territory and pose human‑rights risks, while Honduran anti‑corruption watchdogs described them as fertile ground for illicit financial activity.
Legal Warfare and U.S. Political Intervention
By 2022, political winds shifted. Former President Juan Orlando Hernández, a central figure in implementing ZEDEs, was arrested, convicted and sentenced to 45 years in prison by a U.S. federal court on drug trafficking and weapons charges, which included the trafficking of at 400 ton cocaine into the U.S., on behalf of the drug cartels. Despite this major conviction, Hernández was pardoned by Donald Trump in December 2025—a controversial move that left some uncomfortable questions unanswered, such as who specifically asked Trump to free this high-profile criminal, and why?
Honduras then elected the left-leaning Xiomara Castro, who specifically campaigned on an anti‑ZEDE platform and oversaw a unanimous repeal of the ZEDE law. Castro labelled ZEDE’s creations as a “narco‑regime,” and at the United Nations General Assembly, said ZEDE land was “irrigated with the blood of native peoples.” Castro went on to equate the infiltration of ZEDEs to a new form of western capitalist colonialism.
Prospera’s response was to unleash legal warfare, underwritten by its transnational billionaire benefactors. In December 2022, Honduras Próspera Inc. filed a claim for $10.8 billion at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) under CAFTA‑DR, not for past losses—but future profits. These investor‑state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms allow corporations to sue governments in private tribunals, with enforceable judgments that can be treated as sovereign debt, or executed against state assets.
While some U.S. lawmakers like Senator Elizabeth Warren criticised Prospera’s lawsuit as “bullying Honduras,” others, including Senators Bill Hagerty and Ben Cardin, pressed the Biden administration to uphold treaty protections for U.S. investors after the ZEDE repeal. The U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa publicly criticised Honduras for discouraging investment, further illustrating Washington’s contradictory posture, and how an array of shadowy special interests have plans for Prospera, and plans to roll out other ZEDEs.
On the surface, this looks like a case of elite, white collar criminal extortion of a small country, but the story goes much deeper once you begin to peel away the ‘libertarian’ facade of the operation.
Technocrats, Ideology, and the PayPal Mafia Vision
Prospera was financed by Pronomos Capital, founded by Patri Friedman, grandson of the famous economist Milton Friedman, whose advocacy of free markets, deregulation, and minimal government reshaped 20th‑century economic policy worldwide.
IMAGE: Patri Friedman, founder of Promos Capital, who financed Prospera
Pronomos’s principal backers include billionaire tech and defense moguls Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Balaji Srinivasan, all figures associated with Silicon Valley’s self-styled ‘libertarian’ circles—a closed circle of oligarchs often dubbed the PayPal Mafia. These elite technocrats champion idea that democratic states are inefficient and that governance should be replaced by corporate contract law, and private arbitration.
Long before charter cities, some libertarians promoted “seasteading,” floating corporate cities designed to escape national laws. Though physically impractical, this idea transitioned into onshore visions like charter cities, zones where laws are customised for wealthy investors rather than working residents. Prospera itself now touts a “platform that delivers governance,” with “crypto‑first” economies, arbitration courts, minimal to no regulation, and taxes as low as 1%, a configuration which critics argue privileges capital over a citizen’s fundamental rights and welfare. A comprehensive analysis of Balaji Srinivasan’s (Prospera) concept and its real-world implementations was reviewed in a report authored by David Stancel, which raises many concerns over the inherent conflicts of interest which are ingrained into this corporate model.
Even economist and former World Bank leader, Paul Romer, who first theorised charter cities, has distanced himself from schemes like Prospera, which he sees as deviating from original goals and sliding toward elite-constructed ‘libertarian’ enclaves. A report from the International Relations Review explains in great detail why Próspera in Honduras is such a controversial experiment in corporate governance.
Other criticisms point to some obvious problems with these unaccountable corporate enclaves—which is that they will ultimately become a destination for offshore criminal money laundering, effectively functioning as a haven for the cartels, as corrupt politicians (see Zelensky and the Panama Papers), as well a front for the nefarious activities of intelligence agencies like the CIA and Mossad, both actively working in concert to undermine and flip governments in Latin America–including the outgoing leftwing government in Honduras.
Greenland: The Technocrat Frontier Where Strategic Territory Meets Ideology
Greenland’s strategic value lies in its vast rare earth minerals, Arctic sea routes, and geopolitical position between North America and Europe. But the elite-driven “freedom city” agenda is now visible here too. Reports show Silicon Valley financiers envision a libertarian tech hub in Greenland, complete with AI labs, massive data centers, autonomous vehicles, and minimal to no regulatory oversight. These plans involve many of the very same billionaire ideological actors behind Prospera: Thiel, Andreessen, and Ambassador Ken Howery, another co-founder of PayPal whom Trump appointed (not coincidentally) as the new U.S. ambassador to Denmark in October 2025 (which holds sovereignty over Greenland).
It’s hard not to notice what is happening in plain sight. All the evidence points to a coterie of billionaire oligarchs who have effectively bought access to the Trump administration, and in turn, Trump is delivering everything they’ve asked for in return.
IMAGE: Ambassador Kenneth A. Howery (member of the PayPal Mafia ) in Greenland, attending the annual Joint Committee meeting between the U.S. and Greenland with Denmark in December 2025 (Source: Ken Howery X account)
Ronald Lauder’s Strategic Investments
Ronald S. Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder fortune and President of the World Jewish Congress, played a key role in prompting Trump’s interest in Greenland. According to John Bolton, Lauder was the businessman who suggested Greenland to Trump. Lauder is also co‑owner of Greenland Water Bank, a boutique water export company based in Nuuk, and has stakes in infrastructure projects through Greenland Development Partners LLC, a Delaware‑registered investment vehicle. Ronald Lauder’s partners in Greenland are highly influential. Svend Hardenberg, a former senior civil servant and energy executive, brings significant experience, while Wæver Johansen, a past minister, currently leads the governing Siumut party in Nuuk. Additionally, his wife, Vivian Motzfeldt, who is Greenland’s foreign minister, has previously held a position on the board of Greenland Water Bank.
VIDEO: While speaking in Davos, President Trump reiterated his colonial intention to acquire Greenland, stating that he would not pursue this by force (Source: South African Journalist, Sherwin Bryce-Pease on X)
Speaking in Davos, President Trump appeared to give a plug to colonialism in relation to his efforts to acquire Greenland which he said he would not do by force. Watch…#sabcnews pic.twitter.com/ObxHJ6zW3m
— Sherwin Bryce-Pease (@sherwiebp) January 21, 2026
Other oligarchs have already positioned their capital in order to exploit the territory, once Trump gives them the green light. Investors like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Michael Bloomberg have backed KoBold Metals, using AI to explore Greenland’s resource potential, indicating the attraction of corporate interests beyond water.
“These billionaires bet big on Greenland, after Trump took interest”, reads a Forbes article.
IMAGE of Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock (source: Joel SAGET | Getty Images)
BlackRock, led by financier mogul Larry Fink, has expanded aggressively into institutional crypto and tokenisation, facilitating market infrastructure that aligns with the so-called ‘freedom city’ economic model. BlackRock’s integration with Coinbase’s institutional custody and trading platform embeds it in the financial infrastructure that freedom cities operate on. This matters because freedom cities deliberately sidestep national laws and democratic regulators—in favour of privatised technocratic, ‘digital-first’ finance—a system which BlackRock and Coinbase are positioning themselves to dominate. In the Greenland vision, they wouldn’t just enable the economy; they would also extract any value from it; controlling custody, settlement, and tokenised assets, and turning governance itself into a rent-seeking revenue stream for firms that already dominate global finance. In essence, it is the model for a new, oligarch-run corporate order.
As independent researcher and critic of technocracy Derrick Broze highlighted in his January article for The Last American Vagabond, a 1940 map from Technocracy Inc. lays bare the organisation’s expansive ambitions: Greenland, Canada, the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, and all Central America nations, including Honduras—all envisioned as part of a new globalist technocratic order. Broze also emphasises that Panama’s inclusion in the Technate should raise alarm, especially given Larry Fink’s recent attempts to acquire control over key ports in the Panama Canal, suggesting a continuity of elite strategies to dominate strategic infrastructure under the guise of corporate and financial planning.
MAP: Technocracy, Inc. and the Technate of America (Source: Boston Rare Maps)
Freedom Cities in the United States: Corporate Utopia or Trojan Horse?
As the Prospera experiment unfolded internationally, a mirror‑image idea has taken root on U.S. soil, one that reflects the same deregulatory, billionaire-gamed ‘free market’ driven philosophy exported to Honduras, and now courted in Greenland.
This concept of Freedom Cities is now being actively promoted by political and private sector forces aligned with the Trump administration.
In early 2024, policy groups connected with the Trump campaign and allied think tanks announced a vision to build more Freedom Cities on U.S. federal land, and appropriated urban zones with dramatically relaxed federal oversight and highly favourable business environments.
A 2025 article from WIRED explains how ‘Startup City’ Groups were meeting Trump officials to push for the approval of a chain of deregulated Freedom Cities in the United States. According to the Frontier Foundation, which publicly supports the initiative, Freedom Cities are intended to act as Special Economic Zones with streamlined regulatory frameworks designed to “reopen the frontier” and supposedly accelerate U.S. competitiveness in advanced technologies, manufacturing, and critical industries. This was confirmed in a PR Newswire report titled, Frontier Foundation Announces Support For President Trump’s Freedom Cities Initiative“.
“The Frontier Foundation today announced its support for President Trump’s Freedom Cities initiative, aligning with the foundation’s mission to establish new specialized economic zones with streamlined regulatory frameworks. These Freedom Cities will advance American industrial innovation and strengthen national security, helping accelerate leadership in advanced technologies and manufacturing.” PR Newswire
The public positioning of Freedom Cities borrows heavily from classic Frontier rhetoric. The Frontier Foundation’s announcement, which are purposely aligned with Trump’s stated goals, quoted him saying the plan would “reopen the frontier” and deliver a “quantum leap” in economic opportunity by building new cities on under-utilised federal land.
How likely this stated corporate utopia vision is likely to actually work is anyone’s guess. But one thing is guaranteed: these projects will all be viewed as prime real estate for an increasingly emboldened billionaire class looking to launder its money through the various and sundry corporate property and asset schemes.
While the Freedom City language appears to gesture towards popular talking points like housing affordability and economic growth, their underlying structural proposals, including how to create these zones, reveal deeper ideological aims.
According to WIRED, several “startup city” lobbying coalitions—including the Freedom Cities Coalition, Frontier Foundation, and the Charter Cities Institute, have been in discussions with Trump administration officials to draft legislative frameworks that would allow these cities to operate with limited oversight from federal agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
VIDEO: In 2023, Trump proposed building ten new US ‘Freedom Cities’ (Source: Forbes Breaking News | Youtube)
These well-financed advocacy groups have outlined multiple legal pathways for realising Freedom Cities, including things like interstate compacts, federal enclaves, and of course, executive orders (Trump’s main lever of power)—each designed to position these charter cities well outside the reach of any standard regulatory regimes. This proposal directly mirrors the logic used in special economic zones abroad, including Prospera’s model in Honduras, where deregulated governance is marketed as “innovation” but in reality, it only serves to prioritise capital ‘freedoms’ over broader public protections.
Frontier Foundation’s public statements make its corporate technocratic and ideological intent clear: Freedom Cities are being pitched as hubs for industrial innovation, advanced manufacturing, and technology development, with a focus on sectors like AI infrastructure, semiconductors, and next‑generation energy systems, and with reduced regulatory barriers viewed as obstacles to growth. Another industry they are pushing is unregulated biotech and the rapidly expanding “Bio-Hacking” longevity medicine and therapy business—not surprisingly, a sector extremely popular with the transnational billionaire class.
On the surface, proponents portray these unregulated enclaves as outlets for “American dynamism” and economic revival. But the broader narrative, supported by policy coalitions with ties to Próspera’s wealthy backers, reveals a consistent pattern: transforming governance into a tool that privileges investment and unrestrained elite agendas over democratic accountability. In such zones, critics argue, corporate interests can dominate at the expense of any worker protections, environmental safeguards, and civic participation.
Freedom Cities, then, are best understood in the context of a larger movement, one that seeks to rewrite the rules of sovereignty in favour of zones where capital, deregulation, and corporate legal frameworks take precedence—whether in Honduras, Greenland, or the interior of the United States.
To Summarise: Sovereignty for Whom?
From Roatán to Greenland, a pattern emerges: democratic constraints are framed as ‘inefficiencies’, and sovereignty is treated as an obstacle, as local populations are sidelined in favour of private governance experiments, bankrolled by laundered capital from globalist elites, criminal cartels, and western intelligence agency cut-outs.
Investor‑state dispute mechanisms shield corporate investors while governments face bankruptcy threats, and the transnational Billionaire (and newly-minted trillionaire) class influence shapes physical territory and governance—not through ballots, but lthough raw financial power, backed up by private legal and lawfare force.
Prospera revealed the model. The ICSID lawsuit exposed its legal leverage. Now Greenland shows the broader ambition—all scaled, financed, and backed by U.S. political power. This is not fringe ideology; it is a very real agenda to commodifying and ultimately eliminating sovereignty itself.
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