THis week, President Trump went to the Middle East for a corporate and diplomacy mission, during which he has greeted the sale of hundreds of thousands of US manufacturing AI chips with Saudi water and Arabia companies. These agreements report a major change in the United States approach to advanced AI technology. Previously, American leaders had focused on limiting access to ultra-powerful fleas, in particular countries that could represent national security threats. Now Trump uses them as a lever effect for his larger commercial ambitions.
While Trump was at the Saudi -US Investment Forum in Riyadh – led in parallel with his visit – the White House announced that Saudi Arabia engaged $ 600 billion in investment in the United States, “the construction of economic ties that would endure for future generations”, in terms of conference, Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang announced that his company New company, Saudie’s company was seizing a massive partner with Human, a new Owned by Saudi company public investment funds from Kingdom and sending them hundreds of thousands of chips. Rival Chipmaker AMD announced its own Saudi project of $ 10 billion. Another current agreement could send hundreds of thousands of chips to the Emirati G42 firm.
While Trump’s allies have announced the agreement as mutually beneficial for all parties, some national security experts have concerns about the long -term impacts of the spread of these chips around the world.
“The AI fleas should not negotiate schools for wider commercial transactions,” said Janet Egan, a senior scholarship holder for the Center for a New American Security (CNA). “They underlie us the domination of AI, and we must be very careful not to make short-term decisions that could be beneficial for short-term trade, but give in the management of AI in the longer term.”
At the beginning of this year, Chinese company Deepseek revealed that it had developed a very powerful model mainly using Nvidia chips obtained before the closure of the Biden administration closed an export escape in 2023, increasing the intensity of the race. President Biden, in his last weeks, has reached export checks, including limits to the Gulf countries.
Last week, the Trump administration tore off these rules, with a spokesman calling them “too complex, bureaucratic” and saying that they “hinder American innovation”. They then went to a new approach: link countries access to AI fleas with larger trade negotiations. The transition to a negotiation-based approach, supported the administration, could allow greater flexibility of the country to swimming and allow Trump to obtain key commercial concessions from the Partners of the Middle East.
Companies and governments of the Middle East have massive ambitions for AI, aimed at positioning itself at the forefront of this emerging technology. They benefit from several strategic advantages to do so, in particular access to limitless energy, free flow capital thanks to petroleum and sovereign funds and a lack of government restrictions – allowing them to quickly pass through massive infrastructure projects. But so far, the Middle East has not had a crucial piece of puzzle: access to the American poles of companies like Nvidia.
Now, the quantity of tokens that American companies would send to water and Saudi Arabia are massive: “We are talking about something larger than any AI training system that exists in the world today,” said Alasdair Phillips-Robins, a Carnegie Endowment Stockier for International Peace. In theory, ultra-powerful models built with this training system could synthesize automated cyber attacks, information collection and weapon development.
This is potentially problematic for certain American analysts, given Saudi Arabia and the close ties of water with China. In previous years, American spy agencies have issued warnings that G42 could be a conduit to siphon advanced American technology in China. The G42 has denied any link with the Chinese government or the army.
“If you think of which country should lead the future of potentially the most critical and transformative technology that we have ever had, I wouldn’t want it to be an undemocratic authoritarian regime,” said Egan.
On Tuesday, the limited committee of the Chinese Communist Party Chamber, led by the Michigan Republican, John Moolenaar, wrote on Twitter that the new features “present a vulnerability to the CCP to exploit”.
Sam Winter-Levy, another Carnegie Endowment scholarship holder, fears that the agreement will encourage us to move to the Gulf, where they could obtain better offers on energy and avoid American regulations and the decline in the community. Eminent American companies have not lost time to seize the new opportunity presented by the Trump administration. Sam Altman of Openai, Jensen Huang of Nvidia and Lisa Su D’AMD all attended the Saudi forum. The AI Startup scale – which has a partnership with the United States government to develop IA security standards – has announced its intention to open an office in Saudi Arabia. Google, too, has advanced an AI center in the country.
“You could find yourself in a position where a large proportion of the American calculation power has been adapted to a lot of states which can have a leverage on American foreign policy to shape it in a way that does not align with American national interests,” explains the winter-tune.
Winter-Levy also argues that these IA fleas transactions go against Trump on an approach to “America First” foreign policy. “These are dislodged data centers that could be built in the United States. These are delocal chips that could go to American technological companies,” he said. “It is difficult to reconcile this with a first approach to industrial policy or economic policy in America in general.”
