Building an AI Alliance in the Middle East

There is no “Team America” AI—yet. Data center construction and semiconductor sales make good headlines and generate solid profits for the tech companies that function as the market movers on Wall Street. The Trump Administration has an AI Action Plan for leveraging diplomatic and financial resources in partnership with American companies to promote the full spectrum of AI equipment, infrastructure, and programming. But none of that activity is equivalent to a global alliance that will adopt “American AI systems, computing hardware, and standards… in line with our shared values.” In the latest Policy Brief from the Center for the National Interest, Joshua Yaphe concludes that a real multilateral framework for cooperation can be achieved. However, it’s going to take more creative thinking about how to use AI tools as confidence-building measures and how to mobilize funding from partners, without getting sidetracked by regional rivalries and competition.

The United States will not be able to offer full, unfettered access to the latest AI technology, especially as lawmakers and the public become more aware of the potential of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and more stringent export controls are imposed. But that is precisely what top-tier AI players around the world want, it is what second-tier players think they deserve, and it is what everyone else at the bottom believes to be just and fair. And as long as China is willing to offer open-weight AI models and infrastructure as a service, there may be no U.S. strategy that will cast China out of the region altogether. Officials in Washington should recognize that they cannot keep up with the rapid pace of technological change, they cannot avoid deep-rooted ambiguities in the policies they create, and they cannot impose a solution for digital collaboration among partners and allies.

A real alliance, in which America’s partners collaborate and support one another, is achievable. It will not entirely block Chinese access to these markets. But it can result in U.S. leadership of the digital transformation of the Middle East, even in the absence of an international agreement on the principles of AI governance. It means encouraging trusted U.S. partners to share select AI tools as confidence-building measures, and working with some states to deliver financial assistance to others for obtaining the technical support they need from American providers. The diffusion of technology has to come with a coordinated approach to the collaborative use of those tools and applications, not least because that has always been a part of the advantage of buying American.

About the Author:

Joshua Yaphe is a Senior Fellow at the Center for the National Interest, host of the Key Judgments podcast on Intelligence Studies, and author of Time and Narrative in Intelligence Analysis: A New Framework for the Production of Meaning (Routledge, 2025), which is available for free in an Open Access edition online. He was Senior Analyst for the Arabian Peninsula at the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) and visiting professor at the National Intelligence University (NIU). He received a PhD in History from American University in Washington, DC, and authored the book Saudi Arabia and Iraq as Friends and Enemies: Borders, Tribes and a History Shared (University of Liverpool Press, 2022).

The opinions and characterizations in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. Government.