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The National
20 hours ago
- Business
- The National
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.'
Washington Post
2 days ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
When FEMA's response to extreme weather is the disaster
Sarah Labowitz is a senior fellow in the Sustainability, Climate and Geopolitics Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. At a July 12 news conference about the federal response to the devastating floods in Texas, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem said, 'What you saw from our response in Texas is going to be a lot of how President Trump envisions what FEMA would look like in the future.'
Washington Post
3 days ago
- Business
- Washington Post
The gulf is not the place to build the world's AI infrastructure
Christopher S. Chivvis is director of the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Sam Winter-Levy is a fellow in the Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In May, the Trump administration green-lit one of the most consequential technology investments of the decade: the construction of massive artificial intelligence data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. These facilities, funded by gulf sovereign wealth and built with U.S. technology, are projected to host some of the largest and most powerful computing clusters in the world — critical infrastructure for training and deploying advanced AI models.
Express Tribune
16-07-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
India's great-power delusions
Listen to article India, apart from its very carefully curated glitzy and 'shining' image, has been quietly sulking at the loss of its status internationally, consequent to its brief but humiliating skirmish with Pakistan recently, and the dawning of Indian reality on a pro-Indian American establishment. The US has undoubtedly helped New Delhi in its great power aspirations, ostensibly as a bulwark against a rising China. Whether India ever was and ever will to do the US bidding is another story, the fact remains that Chanakya Kotelia (375 BCE-283 BCE), the Brahmin Hindu sage's cunning writings on statecraft, to this day guide Indian policy formulation, Ashley J Tellis, currently fellow at the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs at the Carnegie Endowment, and former Under Secretary of State in the Bush senior's administration, in his recent article in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, details India's delusions and shortcomings to rise as a great power. This article is an adaptation of his writing with opinions. The premise by George W Bush, the 41st US President (1989-1993), to make India a great power stood on the rationale that with the demise of the USSR in 1989, the US and India, a friend of the Russia, had no reason to be on the opposite sides. However, the US infatuation with India runs deeper, as clearly articulated by Henry Kissinger in his seminal work, The White House Years (1979). Kissinger, while mentioning the US role in the 1971 Indo-Pakistan War (Chapter titled The Tilt), laments that State Department would drag its feet on admonitory communiques to India, while dispatching the same without loss of time to Islamabad. However, despite the romanticism of a great democracy in the land of languages, cultures and mystique, Washington and New Delhi do not see eye-to-eye on a range of issues like climate change, war in Ukraine, data sovereignty, e-commerce rules, trade preferences, global governance, Russia, Iran, etc. And more importantly, Ashley believes, India does not want a world where the US is perpetually the sole power. India, instead, given its non-aligned credentials, seeks a multipolar international system where it can hedge, become a genuine power, and be able to restrain not just China but any country that would aspire to be the sole dominating hegemon, including the US. India believes multipolarity is key to global peace and its own rise. Obsessed with its strategic autonomy, India carefully avoids bloc politics and alliances and has been able to maintain good relations with the West Plus and anti-West countries like Russia and Iran. However, India can become a great power in terms of GDP by the middle of the Century, but not necessarily a superpower. The unpalatable two-front scenario of war with a much stronger China and an agile Pakistan; the baggage of Hindu nationalism, tearing its secular fabric apart; and the country's 'illiberal pivot' would sap its potential and keep undermining its power aspirations. During the Cold War, India's economic indicators were short of its inherent potential. Its GDP grew around 3.5 per cent annually between 1950 and 1980. Its GDP growth averaged at 5.5 per cent during the 1990s. Since then, it has grown at 6.5 per cent annually. It does not equal the Chinese miracle and is not likely to match Beijing's economic growth rate, before middle of the Century. And that likely parity is dependent on the supposition that India grows at 8 per cent over the next 25 years, while China grows at miniscule 2 per cent. Both unlikely, so India would remain below par to a resurgent China. Hence, if New Delhi wants to restrain China, it needs the West Plus, especially the US, as no other Indo-Pacific powers (Japan or Australia) would be strong enough by 2050 to compensate for the US. So, those clamouring for an anti-China alliance with New Delhi would be disappointed with India's economic weakness, its non-aligned proclivities, its aversion to collective defence arrangements, and the limits of its partnership with the US. Indian outlook is guided by its colonial past, where its founding father Jawaharlal Nehru pledged India would never be a 'camp follower' of any great power. In alliance framework, India fears constraints that come with such arrangements. In IR parlance, India demonstrates 'realist' inclinations, believing only in 'interest-based' inter-state interactions, as against ideologically driven relations. In this world, it believes, multipolarity is the natural state and is essential and needed for peace. Indian thinkers like FM Jaishankar believe India should identify and exploit opportunities created by 'contradictions' in the international system to advance its interests. He favours a bipolar order where India can play one pole against the other. It is in this milieu that despite deepening relations with the US, India at times acts to constrain the US power, as discussed. Even on China it aims to maintain a stable relationship that of cooperation wherever possible. It also remains part of non-Western forums like BRICS and SCO. India is drifting away from its foundations of staunch secularism, constitutionalism, and "jus soli" or birthright to citizenship, as in Assam etc. It increasingly and officially subscribes to the poisonous Hindutva ideology, which relegates India's 200 million Muslims and 30 million Christians to second class citizenship status. Continuation of this drift would have serious consequences not only for India but also for the world, where 'Shining India' would cease to be an 'exemplar' of liberal democracy for the global south, for example. An illiberal India would also be less powerful. This combined with 'moderate economic growth, partnership with all but privileged relations with none', India's geostrategic imperatives with China and Pakistan and a hostile neighborhood in SAARC would diminish India's increasing material strength. India cannot influence outcomes in East Asia and Middle East; relies on external balancing against a militarily more capable China; is reluctant to closely partner with Washington; and is growing increasingly illiberal. These factors, at odds with the US aspirations, force America under Trump to drift towards a more transactional relationship with New Delhi, which is interest-based and not ideology-driven. India's inability to balance against Beijing is already forcing a rethink on the US, questioning continued investment on India, further shrinking Delhi's great power ambitions.
Middle East Eye
14-07-2025
- Business
- Middle East Eye
US offers to oversee disputed Armenia-Azerbaijan corridor
The United States has proposed taking over the planned transport corridor between Armenia and Azerbaijan in an effort to advance long-stalled diplomatic negotiations between the two Caucasus nations, the US ambassador to Turkey, Tom Barrack, told journalists during a briefing on Friday. Although Armenia and Azerbaijan reached consensus on a draft peace agreement in March, Baku continues to insist on several additional conditions before formally signing the deal. Azerbaijan demands that Yerevan amend its constitution to remove references to Azerbaijani territory, among other conditions. One of the main sticking points remains the so-called Zangezur Corridor, which would connect Azerbaijan proper to its exclave, Nakhchivan, via Armenian territory. Armenia refuses to use the term "Zangezur Corridor," arguing that it has irredentist connotations on sovereign Armenian territory, known as Syunik. Azerbaijan has insisted that the corridor should not be placed under Armenia's total control, expressing concerns that Yerevan cannot be trusted to guarantee unfettered access. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Likewise, Armenia categorically opposes transferring control of the route to any third party. The 32-km-long corridor has become a significant obstacle to achieving lasting peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan. "They are arguing over 32 kilometers of road, but this is no trivial matter. It has dragged on for a decade - 32 kilometers of road," Barrack told journalists during a briefing hosted in New York. "So what happens is that America steps in and says: 'Okay, we'll take it over. Give us the 32 kilometers of road on a hundred-year lease, and you can all share it'." Turkey originally proposed the idea Barrack's comments mark the first official confirmation that the Trump administration offered to manage the corridor through a private US commercial operator, which would serve as a neutral guarantor. A recent report by Carnegie Endowment suggested that the plan is modelled on an earlier European Union proposal, which would put a US logistics firm in charge of managing and monitoring cargo transit along the route, sharing data transparently with all parties. The report noted that the proposal draws on precedents of international oversight in Georgia's breakaway regions, aiming to address Baku's demand for robust, long-term security guarantees while preserving Yerevan's sovereignty over the corridor. Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders to meet in Dubai later in July Read More » Meanwhile, Turkey has quietly urged Baku to sign the peace agreement, reminding Azerbaijani officials of shifting regional dynamics, such as Iran's waning influence. A regional source familiar with the negotiations told Middle East Eye that it was Turkey that originally proposed the idea of a private company, approved by both Armenia and Azerbaijan, managing the corridor. "However, the Armenian side demanded that the company should also work on the Nakhchivan side of the corridor, which was unacceptable for Baku," the source said. The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan dates back to the 1993 Nagorno-Karabakh war, when Armenian forces seized the disputed enclave, recognised as Azerbaijani territory by the United Nations, following the collapse of the Soviet Union. After a bloody six-week war in late 2020, Azerbaijan launched a military operation in September 2023 to retake Nagorno-Karabakh, leading to a ceasefire agreement. Most ethnic Armenians fled, and the breakaway region was officially dissolved on 1 January 2024. Turkey's own normalisation process with Armenia is closely tied to the prospect of a peace deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Turkish officials view Armenia as a vital link in the so-called Middle Corridor, which would directly connect Turkey to Central Asia. Turkish companies are also eager to participate in potential infrastructure projects within Armenia. Despite Baku's objections, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hosted Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan last month, marking the first official visit to Turkey by an Armenian leader.
