Donald Trump will not be able to force Greenland to change ownership, a former top adviser to the US president has told the BBC.

IBM’s vice chairman Gary Cohn, who advised Trump on the economy in his first term, said “Greenland will stay Greenland” and linked the need for access to critical minerals to his former boss’s plans for the territory.

Cohn is one of America’s top tech bosses, a leader in the race to develop AI and quantum computing, and served under Trump as director of the White House National Economic Council.

In a sign of how seriously business leaders are taking the crisis, he warned “invading an independent country that is part of Nato” would be “over the edge”.

He also suggested the president’s recent comments about Greenland “may be part of a negotiation”.

“I just came from a US congressional delegation meeting, and I think there’s pretty uniform consensus with both Republicans and Democrats that Greenland will stay Greenland”, he said.

Greenland would be happy for the US to increase its military presence on the island, he said, with the North Atlantic and Arctic Ocean “becoming much more of a military threat”.

The US could also negotiate an “offtake” agreement for Greenland’s vast yet largely untapped supplies of rare earth minerals, Cohn suggested.

“But I think, you know, invading a country that doesn’t want to be invaded – that’s part of a militaristic alliance, Nato – seems to me to be a little bit over the edge at this point”, he said.

Cohn indicated the president may be overstating his demands as part of a negotiating tactic – something he says the president has done successfully in the past.

“You’ve got to give Donald Trump some credit for the successes he’s had and he’s many times tried to overreach to get something in a compromise situation,” he said.

“He has overreached in advertising something to end up getting what he actually wants. Maybe what he actually wants is a larger military presence and an offtake.”

The start of this year’s World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos has been overshadowed by the president’s increasingly aggressive stance on the arctic territory, with many political and business leaders alarmed about the potential geopolitical and economic impact. Trump is due to address delegates at the gathering on Wednesday.

While Cohn expressed reservations about some of the president’s actions, he said the US administration had “various different motives” for what they were doing.

He said Trump’s decision to intervene in Venezuela was “a path” to disrupt the country’s relationship with China, the biggest market for its oil, as well as Russia and Cuba.

Cohn also thinks that the president has become increasingly focused on the importance of rare earth minerals, noting that “Greenland has quite a supply” of the resources.

Those minerals are critical to the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and quantum computing – also a major talking point in Davos.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday hit back at claims Trump has blamed his escalating threats over Greenland on the fact he was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In a message to Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, Trump blamed the country for not giving him the prize and said he no longer feels obliged to think only of peace.

Bessent said: “I don’t know anything about the president’s letter to Norway, and I think it’s complete canard that the President will be doing this because of the Nobel Prize.

“The president is looking at Greenland as a strategic asset for the United States. We are not going to outsource our hemispheric security to anyone else.”

Developments in quantum computing and AI are seen as critical not just for the US economy and productivity, but for US strategic influence in the world.

“IBM is dead centre in what’s going on in quantum today. We have the largest amount of quantum computers in use today” Cohn said, highlighting that his company has put many of these computers into use across America in firms from the banking industry to medicine.

“AI is going to be the backbone for data that feeds into quantum to solve problems we’ve never been able to solve”, he added.

“Where we’re heading is AI is going to be part of everyone’s enterprise. AI and quantum are going to be working in the enterprise behind the scenes to make every company more efficient. And we’re just at the beginning of that sort of long road, and that’s going to take probably another three to five years to get there.”

Earlier this month, Google, also a US company, told the BBC it had the world’s best-performing quantum computer. The race to develop the technology is the other key talking point – apart from Greenland – at the World Economic Forum.

Inspections without notice, regular MOT-style checks and compulsory water efficiency labels on appliances are among the key measures in the government’s overhaul of the water industry.

The government is describing the measures as as the biggest overhaul of the water industry in England and Wales since privatisation.

Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds said there will be “nowhere to hide” for poor performing water companies.

The proposed changes come after widespread public anger at increasing numbers of pollution incidents, leaks and water outages that have affected thousands of customers across England and Wales in recent years.

Reynolds told the BBC: “We’ve had a system whereby water companies are marking their own homework.”

“This has been a whole system failure,” she said. “A failure of regulation, a failure of regulators, of the water companies themselves.”

The Water white paper promises to set up company-specific teams to monitor, supervise and support individual firms and their particular issues rather than rely on a “desk based, one size fits all” approach.

Smart meters and mandatory water efficiency labels on appliances including dishwashers and washing machines will also help households monitor their usage and costs, the government said.

It is also creating a chief engineer role at the regulator that will be set up to replace Ofwat.

Government officials have told the BBC that the establishment of a new regulator may take a year or more and water companies say it will take time for the benefits of new investments to be felt.

The government’s reforms come after a review by Sir John Cunliffe, who issued 88 recommendations to improve the industry.

However, he was asked not to consider whether to nationalise the sector, which was privatised in the late 1980s.

Campaigners said the proposed reforms did not go far enough.

River Action chief executive James Wallace said the measures showed the government “recognises the scale of the freshwater emergency, but lacks the urgency and bold reform to tackle it”.

The new regulator must be “truly independent” and properly funded, he warned, and said major gaps remain.

“None of these reforms will make a meaningful difference unless the failed privatised model is confronted head on. Pollution for profit is the root cause of this crisis,” Wallace said.

Surfers Against Sewage chief executive Giles Bristow said the government’s proposed changes were “frankly insulting” and fall short of much needed structural reform.

“The truth is glaringly obvious to everyone except this government. As long as the industry is structured to prioritise profit, the public will keep paying the price through soaring bills and polluted water,” he said.

Sir Dieter Helm, professor of economic policy at Oxford University, said the government had not wanted to explore that because its self-imposed spending rules have already been stretched to the limits.

“In addition to that, I think there’s a very sensible view around government that the government probably isn’t competent and capable to run these businesses,” he said.

“The government should think really quite carefully about this, because if they’re supervising the companies, and something goes wrong, Whose fault is it?”

Problems in the beleaguered sector have been thrown into focus recently after tens of thousands of South East Water customers were cut off for several days both before and after Christmas.

Mike Keil, chief executive of the Consumer Council for Water (CCW), said the “miserable disruption” underlined the importance of “meaningful change” in water regulation.

A new, powerful ombudsman service would also be welcome, Keil said, given CCW has had a 50% increase in customers asking for help with complaints relating to their water provider.

“One of our key asks of the Independent Water Commission was to make our existing voluntary ombudsman service mandatory, as this is vital to giving customers robust protection,” he said.

The River Pang in Berkshire is regarded by some as one of the inspirations for Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows classics. It’s environmental status has deteriorated from “good” in 2015 to “poor” now – with campaigners blaming regular sewage discharges.

On the banks of the Pang, Pete Devery from the Angling Trust told the BBC he was sceptical of the government’s plans.

“I won’t hold my breath” he said.

“The proof will be in the river. Do the rivers across the country improve? That’s the end result. Doesn’t matter what you call that regulator. It doesn’t matter how many regulators there are. If the difference isn’t made in the rivers, they will have failed.”

In 2024, water companies released raw sewage into England’s rivers and seas for a record 3.61 million hours, a slight increase on 2023.

Aging infrastructure, wetter winters and drier springs and farming runoff into rivers and lakes have all contributed to poor water service and quality.

Ofwat, is currently the water industry’s economic regulator for both England and Wales. In October 2025 the Welsh government said that when Ofwat is abolished it plans to form its own stand-alone economic regulator to replace it.

In 2025, water supply interruptions across England and Wales rose by 8% and pollution incidents by 27%, while customer satisfaction fell by 9%.

Average water bills rose by 26%, or £123 a year, from last April after years of below-inflation increases that some have blamed, along with high executive pay and shareholder dividends, on under-investment in the sector.

The sharp rise in bills is meant to address that under-investment by funding spending of £104 billion over the next five years – more than 40% of which is earmarked for new infrastructure.