President Donald Trump reportedly left members of his own administration staff "shocked" after green-lighting looser regulations on advanced tech sales to a key Middle East ally, per Politico, after they had compiled extensive and serious reports warning him not to.
According to Politico's Wednesday morning report, Trump alarmed members of his own Commerce Department last summer when his administration "granted the United Arab Emirates sweeping access to advanced American semiconductors and other technology." This was based on conversations with "three former officials with knowledge of the reports and two other people familiar with the matter," who said that Trump had been warned against that move, as despite the fact that the UAE is an allied nation, concerns arose about the technology finding its way into the hands of American adversaries.
"The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security announced on July 10 that it was loosening restrictions on sensitive tech exports to the UAE, a key ally in the war in the Middle East whose leaders pledged last year to invest more than $1 trillion in the U.S. over the coming decade," Politico detailed. "According to one of the people familiar and two former officials, the announcement surprised staff inside the agency, which is tasked with securing American tech from adversaries and criminals. It also ran directly against recommendations staffers submitted to senior Trump administration officials at the department last year."
The outlet continued: "The five people said agency staff compiled and circulated multiple internal reports and memos last fall documenting security risks tied to G42, the UAE’s state-backed AI giant, and its affiliated companies. In the assessments, which have not been previously reported, staff warned that expanding the companies’ access to U.S. technology — such as cutting-edge processors from companies like Nvidia, as well as the powerful AI models built with them — made it more likely the technology would get into the hands of adversaries. In particular, they flagged concerns about China’s influence in the Emirates."
One anonymous source told Politico that, "It is an open secret that the UAE is the primary diversion point for sensitive U.S. technologies in the Middle East — by orders of magnitude." All of these warnings were ultimately "brushed aside," with the administration refusing to address several questions from Politico about the decision, instead responding with boilerplate statements praising Trump's leadership.
Concerns later arose about Trump's potential motive for pushing the decision through, given that the UAE had purchased a 49 percent stake in his family's cryptocurrency firm, World Liberty Financial, making the move another potential example of Trump's unprecedented second-term grift.
“It reeks of corruption,” Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren said about the situation. “The UAE secretly buys a 49 percent stake in Donald Trump’s crypto business. Then the UAE gets access to chips that the U.S.’s own security people say should not be given to the UAE. What does the UAE plan to do with those chips? The concern of our own security people is that they end up in China and help advance Chinese weapons systems that will be used against the U.S.”
