UAE and US working to 'get chips moving' after AI deal

After this week's debut of the White House's Artificial Intelligence Action Plan, the UAE is ready to expedite its AI partnership with the US.

This follows President Donald Trump's visit to Abu Dhabi in May, when he announced the US-UAE AI Acceleration Partnership, which included plans for a 5GW UAE-US AI Campus.

Those plans allow for the UAE to obtain powerful CPUs and GPUs from the US which are necessary to build up AI infrastructure.

Once completed, part of the campus, dubbed Stargate UAE, will be among the largest AI data centres in the world.

Security guarantees to protect the UAE AI technology from falling into the wrong hands were are major aspect of the deal.

Also bolstering the deal, Mr Trump's much-anticipated AI plan, unveiled on Wednesday, seeks to reduce regulatory barriers in place to build up AI infrastructure in the US, while pushing for increasing the prevalence of US AI technology around the world.

That bodes well for the UAE, and other countries with similar AI aspirations.

It's also a sharp contrast to the former president Joe Biden's policies. His administration sought tighter export controls on US chips to prevent them from being used in China.

“The UAE welcomes President Trump's AI Action Plan and is ready to fast track our strategic AI partnership with the US,” Yousef Al Otaiba, UAE Minister of State and ambassador to the US, said on Wednesday.

“As a trusted partner, we are working closely with leading US companies to adopt and scale American technology in the UAE and beyond.”

Some pundits aren't sold however, and they're trying to exert influence to slow the US-UAE AI Acceleration Partnership.

In an opinion article in The Washington Post, Christopher Chivvis and Sam Winter-Levy from the Carnegie Endowment, a US-based think tank, expressed concern about China somehow getting access to the US AI technology, among other things.

“To now approve the offshoring of the data centres that will house so many of the resulting chips to another conflict-prone region would be a major unforced error – one that will prove difficult to reverse,” they wrote.

The UAE has addressed this by committing to a $1.4 trillion investment framework for AI infrastructure in the US.

Regardless, the Wall Street Journal also reported that some in the White House have sought to take a closer look at the recently announced UAE deal, amid concerns about US technology diffusion.

But last week, the White House cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence adviser beat back those concerns, and reaffirmed the US partnership with the UAE.

“These are countries that are long-standing partners and allies of the US going back many years,” White House AI chief David Sacks said during a round-table discussion at the Pennsylvania Energy and AI Summit, referring to the UAE.

Mr Sacks added that the Trump administration thought that if US technology wasn't used in AI projects around the world, China-owned Huawei would step in to fill the vacuum.

“We don't want to create demand for Huawei,” he explained, also describing some of the chip smuggling scenarios that have become prevalent in media reports as quixotic.

He said the newest standard data centres technology hardware is approximately 2.4m tall, with servers weighing 1,600kg, and that it's “very easy to see” if they're being transported.

“I know that our Gulf State partners would honour our security agreement,” he said just hours before President Trump appeared at the event in Pennsylvania.

“This is ultimately a trust-but-verify situation, and all we have to do is send an inspector to a data centre and they can count the racks,” Mr Sacks explained, reiterating that he felt the scenarios of AI hardware smuggling were “blown wildly out of proportion.”

Meanwhile, there's no indication from the White House or Department of Commerce, which is ultimately responsible for allowing the export of US technology, that criticism of the UAE deal is gaining traction.

In a statement to The National, the UAE ambassador expressed continued optimism about the AI plans with the US announced back in May.

“Signed just 60 days ago in Abu Dhabi, the UAE-US investment and Ai partnership will deliver enormous benefits to both countries,” Mr Al Otaiba said.

“High level teams have been actively engaging to advance the agreement, to get chips moving and to accelerate technology co-operation.”