Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff. This is the story. Each week
Speaker 1: on Wednesdays, we bring you an in depth interview with
Speaker 1: someone who has a front row seat to the most
Speaker 1: fascinating things happening in tech today. We're joined by Bradley Hope.
Speaker 1: Hope is an investigative journalist and author. He's the co
Speaker 1: founder of Project Brazen, a narrative nonfiction production studio based
Speaker 1: in London and Singapore, and before starting his own journalism company,
Speaker 1: Hope covered the Arab spring from Cairo, Beirut, and Abu
Speaker 1: Dhabi and led investigations as a financial reporter at The
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal. He also co wrote the book Billion
Speaker 1: Dollar Whale, about the Malaysian businessman Jolo. We asked Bradley
Speaker 1: to join us from his studio in London to discuss
Speaker 1: his recent piece in Wired Irresistibly, titled a Spymaster Shake
Speaker 1: controls a one point five trillion dollar fortune. He wants
Speaker 1: to use it to dominate Ai. So who is the
Speaker 1: spy master?
Speaker 2: Shaikh So? The spine master is Abu Dhabi. Royal Shaik
Speaker 2: Taknun Benzayed al Nahyan.
Speaker 1: Shak Tarnun is one of the twenty odd sons of
Speaker 1: the United Arab Emirates first president. But back when Hope
Speaker 1: started paying attention to this shadowy figure, he didn't play
Speaker 1: a major role in government.
Speaker 2: He was kind of this minor real estate tycoon with
Speaker 2: Harbyish businesses.
Speaker 1: When Hope moved to Abu Dhabi soon after the two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight financial crisis, one of the things he
Speaker 1: covered for a newspaper was real estate. The country was
Speaker 1: in the midst of a building boom, and the craze
Speaker 1: spread to the island surrounding Abu Dhabi, including a place
Speaker 1: called Riem Island. Hope soon discovered that Reem Island was
Speaker 1: actually Shake Taknun's personal project.
Speaker 2: He wanted it to be kind of a little mini
Speaker 2: manhattan next to Abadabi. It was like a building site,
Speaker 2: you know. It was just tons of different projects rising up,
Speaker 2: and even today it looks sort of half built. And
Speaker 2: so I was always very interested in him because he
Speaker 2: had this kind of diletantish thing about him that was
Speaker 2: kind of irresistible. And over the years I watched as
Speaker 2: he just rose higher and higher in the power structure
Speaker 2: of Abu Dhabi.
Speaker 1: Today, Sheikh Tagnun is the United Arab Emirates National Security Advisor,
Speaker 1: the intelligence chief to one of the world's wealthiest and
Speaker 1: most surveillance oriented small nations. Taknun is also the younger
Speaker 1: brother of the Yue's President, Mohammad bin Zayed al Nayan.
Speaker 1: Outside his duties as the national security Advisor, Taknun has
Speaker 1: official control over much of Abu Dhabi's vast sovereign wealth.
Speaker 1: According to Bloomberg News, he directly oversees a one point
Speaker 1: five trillion dollar empire. To put that in perspective, that's
Speaker 1: more cash than just about anybody on the planet. And
Speaker 1: as you might expect of a spymaster, Sheikh Taknun is
Speaker 1: a mysterious figure, but over the years, Bradley Hope has
Speaker 1: been able to make enough connections in the UAE to
Speaker 1: learn more about this extremely influential politician and diplomat, a
Speaker 1: man who seems to be transforming the small but wealthy
Speaker 1: country into a major AI power. You described him as
Speaker 1: one third Gulf royal, one third fitness obsessed tech founder,
Speaker 1: and one third bond villain. Can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about those three legs of the stool of Tachmoon.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, so the bond villain part, you could
Speaker 2: call it slightly unfair of me, but I find him
Speaker 2: to be kind of giving off that vibe. He always
Speaker 2: wears sunglasses indoors or outdoors, and it's because of a
Speaker 2: light sensitivity, according to people I spoke to, but it
Speaker 2: still gives him a James Bond villain a kind of feeling.
Speaker 2: He commands this obscured network of companies that are all
Speaker 2: involved in different types of espionage, and he has his
Speaker 2: fingers in so many places. Like on one hand, he's
Speaker 2: got all these AI companies. He's really mixed up in China.
Speaker 2: He is a big investor in Israel. Under the normalization
Speaker 2: of UAE Israel, he's kind of still the spymaster stuff.
Speaker 2: He's always been obsessed with mixed martial arts and jiu
Speaker 2: jitsu and has really become like this major patron of
Speaker 2: the sport in the whole world. He flies over the
Speaker 2: best sportsman in that sport and they come and train
Speaker 2: with him and spend time with them. And I spoke
Speaker 2: to a few of those guys and they said, you know,
Speaker 2: he's just a kind of a fitness freak. He eats
Speaker 2: one meal a day, he's exercising for two hours per day.
Speaker 2: You know, he really believes in longevity, and you know,
Speaker 2: I'm guessing that he probably takes like a hundred supplements
Speaker 2: a day, you know, that kind of stuff. He's a
Speaker 2: very interesting character. And then once you start studying the
Speaker 2: Gulf royals, you really get to see what happens when
Speaker 2: interesting characters are given access to resources, they just become
Speaker 2: very interesting.
Speaker 1: There's a great quote in your piece which is nearly
Speaker 1: every story about royalty in the Gulf is a story
Speaker 1: about succession, about paternalistic families trying to ward off external
Speaker 1: threats and internal rivalries that crop up when inherited power
Speaker 1: is up grabs. How is that relevant to understanding tachmoon Well,
Speaker 1: I think that this has been something I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of my journalistic career on, which is being fascinated
Speaker 1: by these modern monarchies.
Speaker 2: There's no real monarchy in the world except for the Gulf.
Speaker 2: You know. These are true old fashioned monarchies where all
Speaker 2: power is derived from these families, and they can make
Speaker 2: huge decisions, and they can direct the entire country's wealth
Speaker 2: towards achieving those goals. There's no technical mandate, like they
Speaker 2: can't be voted out. But on the other hand, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of brittleness that is created by generational transfer
Speaker 2: of power, so by the time it gets to the
Speaker 2: third generation, it's almost always getting very fraught. Behind every decision,
Speaker 2: there's also a bit of maneuvering and trying to establish
Speaker 2: what's my power going to be and if my brother
Speaker 2: were to pass away, where do I stand, and all
Speaker 2: that sort of.
Speaker 1: Thing, and it's my understanding. This is almost exactly what
Speaker 1: happened to Takmoon in twenty twenty two. His brother Mohammed
Speaker 1: Benzaied became the president of the UAE, and shortly after that,
Speaker 1: Muhammad named his own son as successor, and so am
Speaker 1: I writing thinking there was kind of a need to
Speaker 1: appease Taknun, who may have seen this decision as a snub.
Speaker 2: Well, I'd say Tartannun became very ambitious over time, and
Speaker 2: in the case that this younger son of Mahma Benzaid
Speaker 2: became the crown prince, there needed to be some sort
Speaker 2: of a trade with Toatnun to make him happy about
Speaker 2: that arrangement, And essentially the deal was that he would
Speaker 2: get much greater control over the investments of the country.
Speaker 1: There's a detail in the story that I love about
Speaker 1: how Taknun's sort of interest in technology began as a
Speaker 1: personal fixation on the collaboration between man and machine. Can
Speaker 1: you speak a little bit about that.
Speaker 2: So back in the early two thousands when Shake Tatnun
Speaker 2: started building this conglomerate called the Royal Group. Essentially, it's
Speaker 2: a series of holding groups, which hold holding groups, which
Speaker 2: hold companies, which hold further companies. One of the things
Speaker 2: he got obsessed with was chess as a game that
Speaker 2: he liked to play personally, and he became very interested
Speaker 2: in how to invest in chess computers. This was the
Speaker 2: era of Garry Kasparov playing against the Deep Blue, and
Speaker 2: so he found an interesting I believe, Austrian computer scientists,
Speaker 2: and it basically bankrolled that guy to develop a chess
Speaker 2: computer called Hydra. And the Hydra was especially well known
Speaker 2: during that period for this kind of man plus machine
Speaker 2: style of playing chess. And so you would be able
Speaker 2: to you as a human were there using it kind
Speaker 2: of like how we use AI today. You use it
Speaker 2: as a tool to play against a player.
Speaker 1: As it suggests a range of moves and you pick
Speaker 1: the most optimal one or.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to some extent, I think to a large extent,
Speaker 2: it tells you the next move and you just kind
Speaker 2: of executed it. Yeah, So he was playing chess online
Speaker 2: so much that the computer scientist was like wondering when
Speaker 2: he was going to get offline because he needed to,
Speaker 2: you know, tinker with the code and stuff.
Speaker 1: Incredible. I mean, if you'll often talk about the Middle
Speaker 1: East as a chess board, it's one of the kind
Speaker 1: of hoary analogyes, for thinking about the Middle East. But
Speaker 1: I mean, do you see something in Technom's fascination with
Speaker 1: chess and desire to win in chess that is a
Speaker 1: kind of key to understanding how he's approached his own
Speaker 1: rights to power.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, to some extent, A country like the
Speaker 2: UAE is in a very interesting sort of precarious position
Speaker 2: compared to some other bigger country. It's pretty small. It's
Speaker 2: a country of I think it's something like six million residents.
Speaker 2: Of those, more than a million are actual emiratis, so
Speaker 2: it's a very small population. The country is famously full
Speaker 2: of expats, so there's no way that they could ever
Speaker 2: go to war with another country. As a country, they
Speaker 2: really have to be kind of strategically allied at the
Speaker 2: same time as that they don't want to just be
Speaker 2: a pawn of the West or of America. So they're
Speaker 2: in things like developing a stronger relationship with China. So
Speaker 2: I do think someone like Toatnoon and someone like the
Speaker 2: President Muhammad Bin de Sided figuring out how how they
Speaker 2: fit into the world is is a very strategic question
Speaker 2: for them.
Speaker 1: I want to kind of chart Technolog's progress from eccentric
Speaker 1: with interest in chess and robotics to spy master to
Speaker 1: this kind of current AI investor at large. But maybe
Speaker 1: we can start with with his kind of becoming a
Speaker 1: spy master. How did that start to happen? How did
Speaker 1: it start to show up?
Speaker 2: Well, I'll caveat by saying it's very hard to know
Speaker 2: everything about these people because they don't give interviews, nobody
Speaker 2: talks around them in an official capacity. You know, it's
Speaker 2: a very difficult place to report on, and I'm only
Speaker 2: able to do so because I've lived in the region
Speaker 2: and i just developed enough relationships where I'm able to
Speaker 2: do that. But my hypothesis around how he became a
Speaker 2: spymaster is actually focused on this digit because when he
Speaker 2: was running Royal Group and focusing on Rheam Island and
Speaker 2: not really playing a huge role in sort of the
Speaker 2: strategic part of the country. They started having some questions
Speaker 2: about how do they use technology to enforce essentially a
Speaker 2: police state because the UAE, like I said before, is
Speaker 2: kind of fragile. It's kind of a spy's paradise because
Speaker 2: all the countries in the world are there, and so
Speaker 2: they're all spying against each other, and there's an element
Speaker 2: of danger and risk to their whole positioning. If there
Speaker 2: was a bomb that exploded in Dubai or something, that
Speaker 2: would be hugely problematic for the country. So they were
Speaker 2: thinking about, well, we can't have like police on every corner.
Speaker 2: We're not China, we don't have that size of a population,
Speaker 2: so we need to use other techniques, and technology was
Speaker 2: the answer, you know. And so I think top Nune
Speaker 2: just had a much greater appreciation of technology and that
Speaker 2: was enough to make him start to play a crucial
Speaker 2: role in how do we use technology for domestic security
Speaker 2: and then overtime for external threats as well. And so
Speaker 2: there was like a pro democracy activist in the UAE,
Speaker 2: and famously, when they figured out how his computer had
Speaker 2: been hacked, they traced it back to the Royal Group
Speaker 2: there was like a connection in the kind of digital trail,
Speaker 2: So that's why I have that hypothesis. And then also
Speaker 2: there's an element of his personality which is useful too,
Speaker 2: which is he doesn't seem to me in all my
Speaker 2: reporting to be a judgmental person or a dogmatic person
Speaker 2: at all, which is probably useful to be as a spymaster.
Speaker 2: So whenever, for example, secret meetings happened, he would be
Speaker 2: often the person that would go, and it wouldn't be
Speaker 2: like a news item for him to go, versus if
Speaker 2: his brother went. The kind of effective ruler, and he
Speaker 2: seemed to have a kind of cool temper because the
Speaker 2: UAE was in this very pitched, never physical, but very
Speaker 2: heated battle with Qatar, this other little island nearby, and
Speaker 2: eventually when they reached a deal mostly broke good by
Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia, it was only tak Noon who would go
Speaker 2: and meet the quitaris. So I think that's kind of
Speaker 2: why he eased into the role to some extent.
Speaker 1: What was some of the other kind of signature cyber
Speaker 1: espionage programs and did you have any experience of them
Speaker 1: in the period you were living in UAE.
Speaker 2: I had this kind of funny experience. One day, I
Speaker 2: think probably in two thousand and nine or so, everyone
Speaker 2: had blackberries at that time, iPhones were not as popular,
Speaker 2: and I picked the BlackBerry up to speak into it,
Speaker 2: and it was so hot that it almost burnd me
Speaker 2: the mic in my phone, and I thought there was
Speaker 2: something going wrong with it. But then everybody else started
Speaker 2: having the same problem, that they were reporting the same problem,
Speaker 2: and then emerged on a security website that what had
Speaker 2: happened was they had tried to roll out to all
Speaker 2: Blackberries a kind of patch that allowed them to selectively
Speaker 2: download all of the messages of that person, because at
Speaker 2: that time, BlackBerry messengers were considered very secure and you
Speaker 2: couldn't get BlackBerry emails, and so basically the UA government
Speaker 2: couldn't access what was happening on BlackBerry messengers. But instead
Speaker 2: of rolling it out correctly, they rolled it out so
Speaker 2: that all the phones instantly started trying to download all
Speaker 2: the messages to a central server, and that server just
Speaker 2: got completely overloaded instantly, But because it kept trying to
Speaker 2: access it over and over again, it was heating up.
Speaker 1: The phones and was taken and directly involved in that.
Speaker 1: We don't know, I guess, but do you have hypothesis
Speaker 1: that he may have been.
Speaker 2: I think it was part of the kinds of things
Speaker 2: he was working on. I don't know if it was
Speaker 2: his particular responsibility or decision, but I think yeah.
Speaker 1: Coming up, how do spymaster Shake became a pivotal player
Speaker 1: in the global race for AI stay with us? How
Speaker 1: did this sort of experience with building a technological surveillance
Speaker 1: architecture prepare technom for the current chapter? I mean, how
Speaker 1: do you go from the mid two thousands to today
Speaker 1: in terms of the scale of what he's trying to
Speaker 1: achieve even and how did this cyberspionare stuff in a
Speaker 1: sense prepare him for the moment?
Speaker 2: Well, I would say probably right now, the cyber espionage
Speaker 2: stuff is actually holding him back to some extent because
Speaker 2: he has it's a bit of a checkered history for
Speaker 2: because the UAE has a lot of money and it
Speaker 2: wants to invest that money in a way that results
Speaker 2: in more money being made. And also they're quite trend following.
Speaker 2: They love new technology, and when there's a big sector
Speaker 2: interest in the world, they also are interested in that sector.
Speaker 2: And then also any wealthy developing country so to speak,
Speaker 2: can you use AI as a differentiator because they're going
Speaker 2: to be less focused on like AI ethics or controls.
Speaker 2: They'll be more focused on just using it, getting it going,
Speaker 2: but there will be less handringing about the problems and
Speaker 2: risks of that. So I think the UA is just
Speaker 2: a place that is generating a lot of money because
Speaker 2: of oil, and they're looking for places to put it,
Speaker 2: and they're excited to put it into the things that
Speaker 2: seem exciting.
Speaker 1: One of these things is Stargate, right star Yeah, And
Speaker 1: Stargate is this huge investment program to build data centers
Speaker 1: that Trump announced recently with Larry Ellison from Oracle and
Speaker 1: Sam Altman from Open AI and Nassi actually so from SoftBank.
Speaker 1: According to your piece, Taknoon is in control of an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of money one point five trillion dollars, and
Speaker 1: after he was kind of passed over in the succession race,
Speaker 1: he was made chairman of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority,
Speaker 1: a sovereign wealth fund that controls money on behalf of
Speaker 1: the government. On top of that, Taknoon presides over something
Speaker 1: called Group forty two or G forty two. Can you
Speaker 1: tell us a bit more about this tech conglomerate.
Speaker 2: So one of Tartnun's favorite things are conglomerates, and there's
Speaker 2: many different parts of money in Abudwi. There's more passive
Speaker 2: big funds like the abadw Investment Authority, and then there's
Speaker 2: all these more aggressive funds. There's Mubadala, and then there's
Speaker 2: even more aggressive funds which are like the Tatnoon entities.
Speaker 2: These different conglomerates. One of the ones he created was
Speaker 2: called G forty two or Group forty two is supposedly
Speaker 2: a reference to is that Hitchiker's Guy, Hitchiker's Guide to
Speaker 2: the Galaxy. Yeah, so this group was a kind of
Speaker 2: Frankenstein in a way. It collected some old companies that
Speaker 2: were moved under it, and then it also established new initiatives,
Speaker 2: and like all golf things, it was extremely well funded,
Speaker 2: you know, in the billions. But also hidden within the
Speaker 2: structure are companies that could be even perceived as a
Speaker 2: bit problematic because of the kind of work they were doing.
Speaker 2: So it kind of has again this James Bond villain
Speaker 2: vibe Group forty two.
Speaker 1: So there's this one chess game happening in the Middle
Speaker 1: East between Kutter and Saudi and UAE, and then there's
Speaker 1: another global chess game when it comes to technology, and
Speaker 1: I think we just talked about Stargate, but then we
Speaker 1: had the deep seek Chinese AI model. We've had the
Speaker 1: hand ringing about whether or not export controls on video
Speaker 1: chips actually effective. Is taking on positioning himself with the
Speaker 1: UAE's cash and his investments, to play a role in
Speaker 1: this larger global chess game.
Speaker 2: I think in general, the UAE doesn't have an inherent
Speaker 2: AI advantage. They haven't, for example, drawn all the world's
Speaker 2: best AI people to live in Abu Dawi to build
Speaker 2: their companies. So what they can do is piggyback on
Speaker 2: these bigger companies in Silicon Valley. And the challenge that
Speaker 2: they've had in the chess game is that the US
Speaker 2: is taking this very protectionist view of AI and they're
Speaker 2: saying this is like a national treasure security issue, and
Speaker 2: they told the UA, look, you can't work with China
Speaker 2: if you're going to work with US. So one of
Speaker 2: the things that group for you two has had to do,
Speaker 2: and what Town News had to do is basically jettison
Speaker 2: all of this maybe perhaps billions of dollars of investment
Speaker 2: in China related joint ventures just to have access to
Speaker 2: the seemingly cutting edge USAI companies.
Speaker 1: So in a sense, the US forced Tarknoon into a
Speaker 1: choice between the US and China in terms of access
Speaker 1: to investment.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, because if the UAE remained close with China,
Speaker 2: especially some of these companies like Huawei and had this
Speaker 2: potential risk according to the US of IP leakage and
Speaker 2: information leakage to the Chinese companies and the government, then
Speaker 2: the US was going to block them from having any
Speaker 2: of the fancy Nvidia chips that you need to kind
Speaker 2: of do this AI training and make it very difficult
Speaker 2: for them to have play a role in AI at all.
Speaker 1: And why now and what made what made this moment
Speaker 1: that the one to kind of run a big story
Speaker 1: on Tagnoon.
Speaker 2: Well, primarily I would say is that he had become
Speaker 2: such a high profile person. So not only had he
Speaker 2: taken on so much money control of so much money
Speaker 2: in the country, so he became this big investor globally,
Speaker 2: but also he had really sort of broken through from
Speaker 2: spymaster to kind of citing to be this more public figure.
Speaker 2: So even last summer he was on this big almost
Speaker 2: like a road show. It is very similar to when
Speaker 2: Mohammed bin Salman first came to America and he had
Speaker 2: all the meetings in Silicon Valley and in Texas. So
Speaker 2: actually taught Nun did the exact same trip this last summer,
Speaker 2: and it was all in anticipation of this kind of
Speaker 2: rebranding of him and the rebranding of his efforts as
Speaker 2: being you know, the friendly partner in AI investing. And
Speaker 2: obviously this coincides with this huge demand for funding because
Speaker 2: you know, these companies like open Ai are just absorbing
Speaker 2: billions of dollars and just burning it on training new
Speaker 2: models and trying to grow and defeat the competition.
Speaker 1: Can you just explain what is the balance they're trying
Speaker 1: to strike between investing in projects like Stargate and investing domestically.
Speaker 2: Well, I think Stargate is for the UA. Stargate would
Speaker 2: be a political investment to just make Trump happy because
Speaker 2: it means that because Trump loves to make announcements where
Speaker 2: there's big numbers, and they contributed to that. So anybody
Speaker 2: who comes to Washington and agrees to make a big
Speaker 2: number announcement gets you know, FaceTime with the President. So
Speaker 2: there's a political element for sure. And then on top
Speaker 2: of that, it's continuing to beat down the skepticism of
Speaker 2: the UAE as a trustworthy partner. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: people in the security apparatus who think it's a terrible
Speaker 2: idea to allow anything sensitive within the UAE. Not not
Speaker 2: even because the UA wants to leak it, but maybe
Speaker 2: they just can't even prevent it from leaking in some cases,
Speaker 2: like it may just be considered a leaky place for
Speaker 2: one reason or another. And then also it's a chance
Speaker 2: for them to grow closer to these companies like open
Speaker 2: AI and potentially get open AI to let them build
Speaker 2: facilities in the UA, which leads to other economic benefits
Speaker 2: for the UAE. And also they always like to be
Speaker 2: close to domain experts so that they can figure out
Speaker 2: how they might be able to apply those innovations in
Speaker 2: the country. So the UA has in a bit of
Speaker 2: head of the curve. They had the first Minister of
Speaker 2: AI before this big AI boom, and I think because
Speaker 2: they're so small, they really want to use this to
Speaker 2: tackle the bureaucracy of the country and make it possible
Speaker 2: to even better self govern themselves.
Speaker 1: And of course one of the key things you need
Speaker 1: a lot of AI right now seemingly is cash, but
Speaker 1: the other is energy. So there is a there's a
Speaker 1: kind of geo strategic advantage that UA has in that respect, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And also the UA because of the distorted amount
Speaker 2: of capital in Abu Dhabi and because everything is top down,
Speaker 2: they end up doing a lot of things that are
Speaker 2: not economically feasible in the short term, Like, for example,
Speaker 2: when they're building infrastructure, they overbuild. They like vastly overbuild
Speaker 2: their infrastructure, which at the time is inefficient as an
Speaker 2: economic point. But in this particular case, now they have
Speaker 2: all this excess capacity for power, for space, for water,
Speaker 2: and things like that that they can use to now
Speaker 2: pivot towards building data centers for example.
Speaker 1: How did China react to technoum walking away from some
Speaker 1: of those relationships.
Speaker 2: Well, that's one thing that I talked to some people
Speaker 2: in the US government about which was interesting that usually
Speaker 2: when somebody makes a public kind of embarrassment for China
Speaker 2: or they reject them, or they tear their equipment out
Speaker 2: or whatever, or they suggest that Huawei is unreliable or
Speaker 2: a state backed conspiracy or something, they tend to punish
Speaker 2: people for that in one way or another. But now
Speaker 2: in the UA's case. I think China's playing a longer game.
Speaker 2: They realize the UA has to make these kind of
Speaker 2: comments and follow the US orders I guess or requirements.
Speaker 2: But I think that the fact that they didn't say
Speaker 2: anything about it suggests that they feel very comfortable in
Speaker 2: their relationship with UAE in the long run, and that
Speaker 2: the UAE itself is going to follow the rules to
Speaker 2: the letter of the law, but not beyond that. So
Speaker 2: there's going to be always room for further discussion.
Speaker 1: When we come back the future of the United Arab
Speaker 1: Emirates global AI influence stay with US. Did the US
Speaker 1: under the Biden administration build in any enforcement requirements to
Speaker 1: make sure that in return for access to key US
Speaker 1: technologies technolo in the UAE sort of kepture their word
Speaker 1: and didn't also work with China. Or was this like
Speaker 1: a handshake agreement.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's a lot of teeth on it,
Speaker 2: But I think Microsoft has taken on a lot of
Speaker 2: responsibility because they're sort of the partner at Group forty two.
Speaker 1: So Microsoft invested in Group forty.
Speaker 2: Two, yes, as a kind of as part of this
Speaker 2: whole agreement with the US government to allow the UA
Speaker 2: to start having more access to AI technology and these chips.
Speaker 2: So Microsoft has kind of became a little bit of
Speaker 2: a steward of that decision. So they've taken on a
Speaker 2: little risk because if for some reason group who does
Speaker 2: something untoward which we don't think or no they will,
Speaker 2: then Microsoft will look pretty bad for having been an
Speaker 2: investor in the company and overseer of this relationship.
Speaker 1: It's so fascinating how there's so much criticism of state
Speaker 1: owned enterprises in China from a US perspective, but this
Speaker 1: seems to be, at least on the surface, looks like
Speaker 1: an example of a private company sort of being coupted
Speaker 1: by the government or encouraged by the government to play
Speaker 1: a role in diplomacy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, it's a very complex space too, and
Speaker 2: you know, also it's one of those things where there's
Speaker 2: so much going on all the time. For example, it's
Speaker 2: my understanding that in the future, whenever you use chat
Speaker 2: GBT and maybe in certain parts of the world, there's
Speaker 2: a chance that your query will rout through the UAE.
Speaker 2: So there's two types of AI that require these chips.
Speaker 2: One of them is the training of the original models,
Speaker 2: and that's kind of like the secret sauce very closely
Speaker 2: held that will continue to be only done in America.
Speaker 2: But then the other thing is the actual workforce nature
Speaker 2: of AI where it which is called inference. And so
Speaker 2: if you're putting in a request that could route through
Speaker 2: the UA, and it's a little nerve wracking if you,
Speaker 2: for example, might be an IMMORDI activist based in London,
Speaker 2: to know that you know you're trying to build your
Speaker 2: some sort of a document using AI, it might be
Speaker 2: routing through the UE. And there's just a feeling, at
Speaker 2: least at this stage, that that's a bit risky. And
Speaker 2: it's unclear if it is a risk or not, but
Speaker 2: it definitely feels like a risk.
Speaker 1: So, taking a step back, what is your interpretation of
Speaker 1: what Technowon's key goal is today overall with all of
Speaker 1: his AI stuff, and is he on track to achieving it?
Speaker 2: I would say his big goal is to I mean,
Speaker 2: it's funny to say it like this, but simplistically, his
Speaker 2: big goal is to look like he's succeeding. So the
Speaker 2: optics of all these deals, for example, saying I made
Speaker 2: a return on this deal are the thing that matters
Speaker 2: the most. Nothing matters more than that, And then after that,
Speaker 2: it might be that AI somehow helps transform the country
Speaker 2: and makes it more efficient and makes it a better
Speaker 2: place to live and things like that. But that's a
Speaker 2: distant second to the first one, which again just is
Speaker 2: a very clear indication that we're dealing with an absolute
Speaker 2: monarchy without power centered in one place. So it's all
Speaker 2: about how you look visa vis your brother or brothers,
Speaker 2: and that's the most important thing to them of all.
Speaker 1: I think, I guess two big things changed since you
Speaker 1: reported this story. The first is the Biden administration became
Speaker 1: the Trump administration, and the second was this kind of
Speaker 1: like deep seek freak out where the power of export
Speaker 1: controls on Nvidia GPUs was was questioned. Can you kind
Speaker 1: of talk about both of those things in terms of
Speaker 1: how they affect the fundamental dynamics of the story that
Speaker 1: you wrote.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think on the Trump side, he's always been
Speaker 2: a fan of this transactional relationship with the Golf, like
Speaker 2: he wants to do a big deal and they have
Speaker 2: a lot of money, and let's do a deal. And
Speaker 2: the UA. He's always understood that the Gulf people in general,
Speaker 2: the leaders enjoy Donald Trump for that reason because they
Speaker 2: kind of know who they're dealing with. He's not somebody
Speaker 2: who's going to be trying to enforce some sort of
Speaker 2: view of what the world should be like or what
Speaker 2: human rights are things like that. Not that they don't
Speaker 2: believe in human rights in the UAE, but they just
Speaker 2: have a very different understanding of government. They believe in
Speaker 2: absolute power and they don't believe in democracy and things
Speaker 2: like that. So I think on the Trump side, things
Speaker 2: are looking good for them. But on the other hand,
Speaker 2: Trump is still pretty hawkish on China and so the
Speaker 2: same kind of standards that were placed before. By the way,
Speaker 2: the kind of criticism of the Group forty two deal
Speaker 2: wasn't coming from the Democrats. Actually it was coming from
Speaker 2: both sides, including a lot of people who are hawkish
Speaker 2: on China and things like that. So I think he
Speaker 2: will still be persuaded by the China argument to keep
Speaker 2: very tight control on AI technology. So it's probably not
Speaker 2: too transformed different that respect. On the deepseak side, I'm
Speaker 2: sure at a strategic level, they were thinking to themselves
Speaker 2: that they've really sided with the US in a somewhat
Speaker 2: short sighted way, because if they had stuck with their
Speaker 2: China partnerships, they maybe would have had access to just
Speaker 2: as good, if not cheaper, less constrained requirements and rules
Speaker 2: around China AI. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: the UAE has always been a fairly pro US leaning country,
Speaker 2: So I'm not sure if they would have gone completely
Speaker 2: gone a different direction, but it would have given them
Speaker 2: a different kind of leverage in these discussions.
Speaker 1: And then I guess, just to close, what will you
Speaker 1: be looking out for in this story as it develops?
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the Tech Stuff podcast. What should
Speaker 1: the text Stuff audience know and be thinking about when
Speaker 1: it comes to the interaction between the golf monarchys, their
Speaker 1: investment portfolios, and the development of technology in the US.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm very persuaded by this publication called Rest of
Speaker 2: the World, which is run by a called Sophie Schmidt,
Speaker 2: and they have this view which I really subscribe to,
Speaker 2: which is that all of the best and worst things
Speaker 2: that could happen with AI are not going to happen
Speaker 2: necessarily in the Western countries first, because if you're in Indonesia,
Speaker 2: if you're in Thailand, that's where people are going to
Speaker 2: really be able to push the limits on the AI
Speaker 2: use cases in ways that are both dangerous and good
Speaker 2: at the same time. So I think watching how AI
Speaker 2: is used in countries around the world, especially places like
Speaker 2: the UAE, is very indicative of the true underlying value
Speaker 2: and danger of AI, because it's like, you know, if
Speaker 2: a criminal sits down with an AI and it's not
Speaker 2: controlled in the way that it is controlled now, and
Speaker 2: they say they want to do something, it could become
Speaker 2: an ingenious tool to invent schemes and things like that.
Speaker 2: And the same thing can be true of countries which
Speaker 2: is inventing things, inventing ways of repression, of monitoring the
Speaker 2: population and things like that. So I think that's really crucial,
Speaker 2: really important. The story that I wrote was a lot
Speaker 2: more about strategic geostrategic element, but the application of AI
Speaker 2: is really important on the geo strategic level. I would
Speaker 2: also be really interested to see how the Saudi UAE
Speaker 2: relationship continues to play out. Saudi is a much bigger
Speaker 2: country with a much bigger economy, much bigger ambitions in
Speaker 2: a way, and now they're watching the UAE make these
Speaker 2: announcements with Donald Trump, and they're they're most likely in
Speaker 2: my view, sitting back thinking about Okay, what's our you know,
Speaker 2: one two punch going to be that's going to completely
Speaker 2: change this equation and make us the leading investor in
Speaker 2: AI in the world.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Bradley, No problem. That's it for tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm os Vloshin. This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis
Speaker 1: and Victoria Domingez. It was executive produced by me Karen
Speaker 1: Price and Kate Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Novelle for
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts. Jack Insley makes this episode and Kyle Murder
Speaker 1: Rodolph join us on Friday for the Weekend tech We'll
Speaker 1: break down the headlines and hear from our friends at
Speaker 1: four or Form Media about how Hollywood is getting creative
Speaker 1: with AI. Please rate, review and reach out to us
Speaker 1: at tech Stuff podcast at gmail dot com. We can't
Speaker 1: wait to hear from you.