The UAE is rapidly adopting artificial intelligence, aiming to become a key AI bridge to the Global South. This ambition is developing in a challenging geopolitical environment, with regional tensions impacting data center developments.

No country on Earth has adopted artificial intelligence faster than the United Arab Emirates – and the Middle Eastern cultural crossroad’s ambitions to become an AI bridge to the Global South just got another major leg up with the delivery of the latest, cutting-edge US-designed chips. But those ambitions are taking shape in a hostile environment. Amid the US-Israel war on Iran, Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has repeatedly taken aim at major Emirati data centres, developed in...