President Donald Trump went to the Gulf this week and struck some deals that AI companies in Silicon Valley are excited about.
Lawmakers, on the other hand, are less excited.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called those critics “naive” in an X post on Saturday.
“This was an extremely smart thing for you all to do and i’m sorry naive people are giving you grief,” Altman said on X, responding to David Sacks, Trump’s AI czar and a former PayPal executive.
In his own X post, Sacks said he was “genuinely perplexed” how anyone could see Trump’s AI deals in the Gulf as anything but “hugely beneficial for the United States.”
Among the deals announced during Trump’s tour was a partnership between chipmakers Nvidia, AMD, and Humain, a new Saudi AI company launched by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to bring billions in chips and hardware to the kingdom. Amazon Web Services also announced a $5 billion plan to build an “AI Zone” in Saudi Arabia. The UAE announced a new AI campus.
OpenAI, too, is ramping up investment in the Middle East. The company this week announced plans for a new data center in the UAE. It may end up as one of the largest in the world, and is another sign that the tech industry is eyeing the region as a new AI hub.
In Washington, however, these deals have drawn critics from both sides of the aisle who worry the emerging technology could end up in the wrong hands.
During a speech on the Senate floor on Thursday, Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer said the chip deal was “dangerous because we have no clarity on how the Saudis and Emiratis will prevent the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese government, the Chinese manufacturing establishment, from getting their hands on these chips.”
The Republican-led House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, meanwhile, said in a post on X that “Reports of new U.S. chip deals with Gulf nations — without a new chip rule in place — present a vulnerability for the CCP to exploit.”
The competition between the United States and China to dominate AI technologies has ramped up in recent years. The US has tightened export controls on advanced chips and manufacturing tools to curb China’s progress, while also boosting domestic production. China, meanwhile, has accelerated investment in its own AI companies and sought suppliers outside the United States.
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