3d:T52d,

Hosts Alistair Taylor and Matthew Czekaj speak with MEI Senior Fellow Mohammed Soliman about President Donald Trump's recent trip to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar, which yielded a wave of major US-Gulf tech and AI deals. Soliman explains how these partnerships mark a shift in the relationship—from oil and arms to compute power and data infrastructure—and what it means for the Gulf's strategic role in the global AI ecosystem. The discussion explores the energy bottlenecks behind AI development, evolving US export control policy, and the social and geopolitical implications of the Gulf's ambitions to become a digital hub for emerging markets.

Recorded May 19, 2025.

More analysis from Mohammed Soliman:

3e:T4dd,Ranjan Roy from Margins is back for our weekly discussion of the latest tech news. We cover 1) DeepSeek r1, an efficient, cheap reasoning model from China 2) How DeepSeek stacks up against the state of the art 3) Does DeepSeek invalidate the billions of dollars invested in current foundational models 4) DeepSeek's wild origin story 5) How DeepSeek changes U.S. and China's AI rivalry 6) OpenAI, Softbank, and Oracle team up to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure in a program called Stargate 7) But do they have the money? 8) Will Stargate test the limits of the scaling hypothesis 9) OpenAI's Operator agent debuts 10) Will people want Operator? 11) Analysts downgrade Apple after Apple Intelligence disappoints 12) Wait, TikTok is still here? --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack? Here’s 40% off for the first year: https://tinyurl.com/bigtechnology Questions? Feedback? Write to: bigtechnologypodcast@gmail.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices3f:T6e7,

AI Safety Goes Mainstream