Microsoft President Hopes US Builds on AI Chip Deal With UAE, Avoids Restrictive Controls
Microsoft President Brad Smith this week warned the U.S. against introducing new export controls that could prevent American companies from becoming the world’s leading exporters of AI services, suggesting the Trump administration should instead look into expanding or replicating the AI deal it announced in May with the United Arab Emirates.
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Smith, speaking during an event this week hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he hopes the U.S.-UAE partnership (see 2505150063) “will be a beginning” of efforts to “advance economic development and prosperity and societal good in the Middle East itself, in places like the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, and the like.” But he also said the deal is a “partnership that the United States and a nation like the UAE can then build on to help bring technology to other places as well.”
The White House earlier this year said the deal includes commitments by the UAE to align its “national security regulations with the United States, including strong protections to prevent the diversion of U.S.-origin technology” (see 2505190041). Smith said that deal should be used as a template for others, pointing to Microsoft’s partnership with Group 42, a UAE-based AI company, which Microsoft announced last year to deliver its products to the Middle East (see 2407110045).
“You put in place the same kind of controls. You have a trusted cloud, a trusted data center. You have American companies partnering with others. You make it possible for other great companies, like a G42, to qualify as well,” Smith said. “And then you ensure that technology can be exported with the kinds of safety and security that people rightly should expect.”
He said the U.S. has the chance to become the “world’s leading exporter” of AI services, but it can’t be hampered by burdensome export controls. “What does it take for the United States to be a leader? Well first, we need the support of our own government,” said Smith, who also is a CSIS trustee. “We can’t have export controls that are so restrictive that it prevents us from bringing these services to other countries.”
The Bureau of Industry and Security announced in May that it would not be enforcing the Biden-era AI diffusion rule, which was set to impose new global export licensing rules for shipments of advanced chips, among other new controls (see 2506110008). The rule frustrated some U.S. trading partners, including multiple EU member states, who said the control framework was too restrictive (see 2502200051).”.
Smith said the U.S. needs to “sustain people’s trust,” adding that technologies that historically became most popular are the ones that were the most trustworthy.
“We need the world to trust American technology. And we need the world to trust American technology even at a time when trade relations are, let’s just say, a bit frayed,” he said. “We need to sustain confidence that the world will have access to American technology.”