UAE-US AI campus unveiled in Abu Dhabi during Trump visit
The campus will host large-scale US data centers and enterprises, offering critical compute resources to serve the Global South. Once complete, it is expected to support nearly half of the world's population with accelerated digital services.
Powered by a mix of nuclear, solar and gas energy, the facility is designed to minimise carbon emissions. It will also include a dedicated science park to drive AI innovation and research.
US Secretary of Commerce Howard W. Lutnick described the initiative as a 'major investment in advanced semiconductors and data centers across the US and the UAE,' adding that American companies will operate the data centers and provide US-managed cloud services throughout the region.
The project is being developed by Emirati AI leader G42, in collaboration with multiple US firms. It falls under the newly launched US-UAE AI Acceleration Partnership, a bilateral framework to advance cooperation on artificial intelligence and emerging technologies.
The UAE has been a pioneer in AI development, becoming the first country in the world to appoint a Minister of Artificial Intelligence in 2017. It also launched the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in 2019 as part of its broader national AI strategy, aimed at transforming sectors including education, healthcare, transportation, and energy.
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The National
3 hours ago
- The National
Trump says DC residents 'feel so safe' with National Guard posted
US President Donald Trump on Thursday said Washington residents "feel so safe already", after he ordered federal agents and members of the National Guard to patrol the streets in support of local law enforcement. The White House has said the move was needed amid a surge in violent crime, although city officials say crime has been decreasing in recent years. "I had calls from many, many friends, including Democrats, a lot of Democrat friends ... and they were thanking me so much for what I'm doing in DC," Mr Trump told reporters from the Oval Office. "So we will have crime under control very shortly in DC." Mr Trump said Washington officials and police had "fudged" the crime statistics to make it seem as if violent incidents were going down. "We're going to be getting the criminals the hell out of here. People are so happy to see our military going into DC and getting these thugs out of there," he said. The federal intervention is supposed to last 30 days but Mr Trump has said he will have Republicans in Congress push for extensions. A significant rise in the number of troops and federal agents could be seen on the streets on Thursday after the White House said the day before that more would be on patrol. It has said that more arrests are being made and homeless people are being forced to remove their tents from public spaces. The Pentagon says the 800 National Guard members who have been activated will have missions that include monument security and community safety patrols. They will not be armed, according to the Pentagon, and the White House said they will help with crowd control but will not be making arrests. National Guard Maj Micah Maxwell said troops will assist federal and local law enforcement in a variety of roles, including traffic and crowd control. The Guard members have been trained in de-escalation tactics as well as the proper use of crowd control equipment, Maj Maxwell said. Mr Trump has described the residents of Washington as "happy" to see troops and agents on the streets, but a viral video shows a man confronting a law enforcement officer and hitting him with a sandwich. The man was charged with a felony and fired from his job at the Justice Department.
Middle East Eye
3 hours ago
- Middle East Eye
US terror designation of Muslim Brotherhood and Cair 'in the works'
In comments on a right-wing radio show earlier this week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Trump administration is working on designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation, as well as cracking down on a Muslim-American non-profit for its perceived ties to the Brotherhood. While calls to do so have come from several US lawmakers in the past, they have not borne fruit. But now, a cabinet-level official is making the assertion. "Why wouldn't you guys designate the Muslim Brotherhood and Cair?" asked the radio host, Sid Rosenberg, referencing the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest Muslim civil liberties organisation in the country. "I just - I look at these organisations. I have a mayor's race here in New York City with this psycho, this lunatic Mamdani," he added, referencing the current Democratic candidate for mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who also happens to be Muslim. "Both of these groups, you know, are behind him, especially the Muslim Brotherhood," Rosenberg said of Cair's indirect financial support for the progressive candidate. "Is that something you think we can count on maybe in the near future? Maybe not Cair just yet, but certainly the Muslim Brotherhood?" New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters " Yeah, all of that is in the works," Rubio responded. "Obviously, there are different branches of the Muslim Brotherhood, so you'd have to designate each one of them... these things are going to be challenged in court, right?" " We are constantly reviewing for groups to designate for what they are: supporters of terrorists, maybe terrorists themselves, whatever it may be. We haven't done this in a long time, so it's - we've got a lot of catch-up to do. And you've mentioned a couple names, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, that are of grave concern," he said. Last month, a bill was introduced in the House of Representatives called the "Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2025", which called on the Trump administration to do just that. And a letter was sent just last week by Republican Senator Tom Cotton, calling on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to revoke Cair's nonprofit status for its alleged "ties to terrorist activities" linked to "Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood". US senator asks tax authority to strip Muslim civil rights organisation of nonprofit status Read More » Middle East Eye reached out to Cair for a response on Rubio's comments, and was referred to a statement released by the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (Mpac) instead, which condemned the move to "smear" a domestic group "or treat political disagreement as grounds for terrorism designation". Mpac's vice president of policy and programming, Haris Tarin, is a former senior policy advisor to the Secretary of Homeland Security, and was at the agency under three different presidents since the Obama administration. "For the Secretary of State to comment on Cair... that's extremely problematic and concerning to us. He does not have the right to say that. He does not have the authority. He does not have the mandate," Tarin told MEE. "The conversation around Cair [now]... that was never in previous administrations, including Biden, Trump 1.0, Obama, and Bush," he added. "There was never conversations about banning Cair. There was conversations about engaging Cair and whether the federal government thought it was a politically right or politically savvy thing for them to engage Cair". The public, Tarin said, should be "extremely alarmed when it comes to designating a domestic institution" precisely because Americans fund it and it is not a foreign institution. What could happen - should the Trump administration compile clear evidence for such a case - is that it would have to file charges through the Department of Justice, he explained. What is The Muslim Brotherhood? The Muslim Brotherhood is most commonly known in the Arab world as a political party founded on Islamic principles and laws, whose support skyrocketed in the wake of the 2011 Arab protests aimed at overthrowing autocratic rulers. It was established in the late 1920s in Egypt and gained popularity as the mid-century ushered in secular governments that saw modernisation and westernisation interchangeably. In 2012, after the toppling of Egypt's ruler of three decades, Hosni Mubarak, an internationally-monitored election in Egypt saw the victory of its first Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohammed Morsi. Within a year, he was toppled by the military, imprisoned, and died in prison in 2019. The Muslim Brotherhood is now banned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, and most recently in Jordan. 'Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiments have created a narrative in the US where democracy is good, except when religious Muslims win to govern their own countries' - Raed Jarrar, Dawn "Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiments have created a narrative in the US where democracy is good, except when religious Muslims win to govern their own countries," Raed Jarrar, the advocacy director for Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), told MEE. "We saw that narrative come out of Gaza when Hamas won the elections. We saw that narrative come out of Egypt when the Muslim Brotherhood won the elections. We saw that narrative in Tunisia, in Libya, in Jordan, and many other countries where religious Muslims won democratic elections," he said. Jarrar added that there is no singular Brotherhood entity or "headquarters" because it's an ideology and a movement that springs up independently across each of the countries in the Middle East and North Africa - so a US designation would have to be detailed and country-specific to hold up in court, just as Rubio indicated. For lawmakers pushing for a terror designation, the Muslim Brotherhood "poses a direct threat to US national security through radical jihadist attempts to eliminate and destroy America and its allies", Florida Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, who sponsored the House bill, said in a press release. MEE put the question to George Washington University professor Nathan Brown, who is an expert on Middle East politics and sits on the board of trustees at the American University in Cairo. In what ways is the Muslim Brotherhood a threat to US national security? " None at all," he said. Anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian sentiment When Senator Cotton wrote to the IRS, he alleged that Cair was listed as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee and that the group participated in a meeting of Hamas supporters in Philadelphia. Cair firmly rejected the claims and said they're tied to anti-Muslim bigotry. "You have some very heated anti-Muslim forces [in the State Department] that are a little bit more eager to try to find and make those connections, but they're going to run into the same problem: you can't. There's no smoking gun anywhere, because there's no real, tangible connection," Shahed Amanullah, a former State Department senior staffer under Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, told MEE. What's so scary about the Muslim Brotherhood? Read More » The State Department is the agency that is responsible for any terrorist designations, as well as visa revocations. "In the past, I would say that people at the State Department were sophisticated and smart enough to understand the nuances of those affiliated movements overseas, and that it wasn't some kind of command and control structure," Amanullah said of the Muslim Brotherhood. "Those people have been hollowed out from the State Department," he said. Unlike past attempts at designating the Brotherhood and going after Cair, this time in particular, it's also taking place with the backdrop of the genocide in Gaza, Tarin told MEE. "Anything that has to do with American-Muslim institutions... it has to do with their support for pro-Palestinian organisations," he said. The Trump administration has made it a priority to go after international students and some of the most prestigious universities in the country for pro-Palestine protests and activism. Students have been jailed in immigration detention centres, deported, and the institutions they attended were effectively sued for hundreds of millions of dollars by the government. Jewish Voice for Peace, which has joined pro-Palestine demonstrations, has previously noted that the administration's playbook is taken from the Heritage Foundation's 'Project Esther' report, "which is a blueprint for using the federal government and private institutions to dismantle the Palestine solidarity movement and broader US civil society, under the guise of 'fighting antisemitism'". "I think pro-Israel groups feel that American Muslim institutions that support the pro-Palestinian movement are a threat to their existence here in the US, and their dominance of US foreign policy," Tarin told MEE.
Al Etihad
3 hours ago
- Al Etihad
RSDI builds global bridges while advancing regional security dialogues
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