Strategic Geography
🇦🇪United Arab Emirates
The UAE is the Gulf’s logistics and financial hub and one of Washington’s most active technology partners in the Middle East: state capital is betting on AI and data centres, while a pipeline lets part of its crude exports bypass the Strait of Hormuz. This section tracks how Abu Dhabi secures chips, capital and security between the US and China, and what those choices mean for energy, supply chains and the Gulf.
2 analyses
Gulf AI Compute: How Washington Trades Chips for Alignment
In July 2026 Washington moved the UAE into Country Group A:5, letting UAE government agencies, G42 and Core42 receive advanced AI chips licence-free, though the two companies’ approval expires in April 2027 unless they become US companies; Saudi Arabia’s Humain still needs licences. Chips buy a Gulf state’s position between the US and China, but power and security decide whether the compute gets built: run flat out, the UAE’s 5 GW campus would use about a quarter of national electricity, and since the Iran war it is reportedly being redesigned.
How the New Pipeline Empire Bypassing the Strait of Hormuz Redraws Oil Power
On a map, the Strait of Hormuz is a thin strip of water; in practice, it is the energy chokepoint the world finds hardest to avoid. The fighting of 2026 has changed how oil power is measured. This article examines how Saudi Arabia and the UAE use bypass pipelines to gain a resilience other Gulf producers lack, and how that is reshaping regional alignments.