Microsoft has urged US President Donald Trump to walk back restrictions on artificial intelligence chips enacted during the final days of Joe Biden's administration that placed limits on access to advanced chips and graphics processing units sought by countries including the UAE, India and Saudi Arabia.
Brad Smith, Microsoft's vice chairman and president, wrote in a blog post that the AI Diffusion Rule – which categorises countries into three tiers with regard to restrictions on access to US-made AI components – caps the export of critical materials to “many fast-growing and strategically vital markets”.
“Left unchanged, the Biden rule will give China a strategic advantage in spreading over time its own AI technology, echoing its rapid ascent in 5G telecoms a decade ago,” Mr Smith wrote.
In the lengthy blog post, Mr Smith said that Microsoft understood the desire to protect US national security interests, which is essentially the motive behind the AI chip export restrictions, but that Mr Biden's decision to place so many countries – among them Switzerland, Poland, Greece, Singapore, India, Indonesia, Israel, the UAE and Saudi Arabia – in the second tier, could have serious ramifications.
“This tier two status is undermining one of the essential requirements needed for a business to succeed – namely, confidence by our customers that they will be able to buy from us the AI computing capacity that they will need in the future,” he wrote. “Customers in tier two countries now worry that an insufficient supply of critical American AI technology will restrict their opportunities for economic growth.”
Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan and the UK are the countries exempt from AI diffusion restrictions, falling into what has become known as the first tier of AI diffusion countries. The third tier of countries, which includes China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria and Venezuela, will have the most difficulty obtaining GPUs and CPUs under the new rules.
Nvidia has slammed the AI diffusion rule, describing it as “200-plus-page regulatory morass, drafted in secret and without proper legislative review”. A source at Nvidia later told The National that the new rules would make it harder for other countries, such as the UAE, to build capacity for “non-frontier AI use cases”.
Frontier AI is a term used to describe highly capable AI models and technologies that could pose severe risks to public safety. “This would capture a lot of GPUs that are included in gaming and other applications like health care and scientific research that don't have anything to do with frontier AI,” the source said.
During the final days of the Biden administration, several US officials sought to defend the AI chip export rules. Alan Estevez, the Biden administration's undersecretary of commerce for industry and security, said the new rules give tier two countries a path to obtain more chips if certain stipulations are followed, while also insisting the rules would prove effective in the long run as a way to blunt China's efforts to capitalise on US technology.
“AI can enhance military operations, command and control, targeting, logistics, autonomous warfare, all those things are very worrisome,” he said during an event at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a technology trade group based in Washington, said that the new rules will unfairly put pressure on nations to choose between the US and China, which could potentially backfire on the US and technology companies based there.
“The solution is not to further restrict access to AI chips or models but to reassess the current strategy,” wrote the foundation's vice president Daniel Castro. “Future policies should prioritise enhancing US competitiveness in AI by expanding market access for US chips and AI technologies to secure a dominant global market share for American firms, and countering geostrategic competitors like China and Russia, which are actively forming alliances such as the Brics AI Alliance to provide their partners with access to critical AI resources.”
Yet despite the nudging from some of the world's most powerful technology companies, it is not yet clear if the Trump administration will reverse the Biden policy, especially with the adversarial relationship between the US and China having become more contentious in recent months.
Ultimately, the decision might come down to Mr Trump's Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was recently at a meeting between Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang and Mr Trump. Details of that meeting are scarce but the Nvidia source told The National that “strengthening US technology and AI leadership” were a major part of the conversation.
As for countries like the UAE, the US-UAE business council, an organisation dedicated to advancing bilateral commercial relations between the countries, recently encouraged members to submit comments to the Trump administration as it seeks guidance for an AI action plan.
A source familiar with the UAE's AI ambitions told The National that the US technology industry's criticism of the Biden chip export policy "speaks for itself".
What can victims do?
Always use only regulated platforms
Stop all transactions and communication on suspicion
Save all evidence (screenshots, chat logs, transaction IDs)
Report to local authorities
Warn others to prevent further harm
Courtesy: Crystal Intelligence
In numbers: China in Dubai
The number of Chinese people living in Dubai: An estimated 200,000
Number of Chinese people in International City: Almost 50,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2018/19: 120,000
Daily visitors to Dragon Mart in 2010: 20,000
Percentage increase in visitors in eight years: 500 per cent
The five pillars of Islam
1. Fasting
2. Prayer
3. Hajj
4. Shahada
5. Zakat
The Details
Kabir Singh
Produced by: Cinestaan Studios, T-Series
Directed by: Sandeep Reddy Vanga
Starring: Shahid Kapoor, Kiara Advani, Suresh Oberoi, Soham Majumdar, Arjun Pahwa
Rating: 2.5/5
Where to donate in the UAE
The Emirates Charity Portal
You can donate to several registered charities through a “donation catalogue”. The use of the donation is quite specific, such as buying a fan for a poor family in Niger for Dh130.
The General Authority of Islamic Affairs & Endowments
The site has an e-donation service accepting debit card, credit card or e-Dirham, an electronic payment tool developed by the Ministry of Finance and First Abu Dhabi Bank.
Al Noor Special Needs Centre
You can donate online or order Smiles n’ Stuff products handcrafted by Al Noor students. The centre publishes a wish list of extras needed, starting at Dh500.
Beit Al Khair Society
Beit Al Khair Society has the motto “From – and to – the UAE,” with donations going towards the neediest in the country. Its website has a list of physical donation sites, but people can also contribute money by SMS, bank transfer and through the hotline 800-22554.
Dar Al Ber Society
Dar Al Ber Society, which has charity projects in 39 countries, accept cash payments, money transfers or SMS donations. Its donation hotline is 800-79.
Dubai Cares
Dubai Cares provides several options for individuals and companies to donate, including online, through banks, at retail outlets, via phone and by purchasing Dubai Cares branded merchandise. It is currently running a campaign called Bookings 2030, which allows people to help change the future of six underprivileged children and young people.
Emirates Airline Foundation
Those who travel on Emirates have undoubtedly seen the little donation envelopes in the seat pockets. But the foundation also accepts donations online and in the form of Skywards Miles. Donated miles are used to sponsor travel for doctors, surgeons, engineers and other professionals volunteering on humanitarian missions around the world.
Emirates Red Crescent
On the Emirates Red Crescent website you can choose between 35 different purposes for your donation, such as providing food for fasters, supporting debtors and contributing to a refugee women fund. It also has a list of bank accounts for each donation type.
Gulf for Good
Gulf for Good raises funds for partner charity projects through challenges, like climbing Kilimanjaro and cycling through Thailand. This year’s projects are in partnership with Street Child Nepal, Larchfield Kids, the Foundation for African Empowerment and SOS Children's Villages. Since 2001, the organisation has raised more than $3.5 million (Dh12.8m) in support of over 50 children’s charities.
Noor Dubai Foundation
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum launched the Noor Dubai Foundation a decade ago with the aim of eliminating all forms of preventable blindness globally. You can donate Dh50 to support mobile eye camps by texting the word “Noor” to 4565 (Etisalat) or 4849 (du).
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
