The UAE-US partnership and the rise of ‘algo-diplomacy’

The centres of global influence have always evolved alongside the technologies that connect nations. For much of the previous century, capitals, energy hubs and trade routes shaped international relationships. Today, laboratories and boardrooms in Silicon Valley are developing technologies that governments around the world are preparing to adopt, govern and apply in service of their people.

Thousands of kilometres away, Abu Dhabi is helping to shape this new era through investment, infrastructure and the development of national expertise. The growing relationship between these two centres points to a new form of international co-operation. We call it algo-diplomacy.

The “algo” in algo-diplomacy is shorthand for “algorithm”, the set of instructions that enables a computer system to process information and produce an outcome. Joined with diplomacy, it describes the relationships nations build around artificial intelligence and the capabilities surrounding it. Earlier alliances grew around trade, energy and defence. AI now brings computing power, data, research and technical talent into the same diplomatic conversation.

At the centre of this idea is a clear argument: investment and infrastructure give AI scale, while people, expertise and trusted institutions turn that scale into lasting national capability. The technology changes, while the human requirement endures.

Algorithms may be written in code, yet the choices surrounding them remain profoundly human. Researchers decide what to test, engineers determine what can be deployed, public officials consider how these systems should serve society, and investors decide which ideas will receive the resources to grow. Institutions carry this knowledge forward.

These human decisions explain why the alliances of the AI era will depend on people as much as machines. Chips and data centres can provide immense computing capacity, while national capability requires expertise, judgment and the confidence to make independent choices.

The scale of the UAE-US relationship shows why this distinction matters. The UAE committed in March last year to a 10-year, $1.4 trillion investment framework in the US, covering AI infrastructure, semiconductors, energy and manufacturing. In Abu Dhabi, the UAE-US AI Campus is planned to provide five gigawatts of data-centre power capacity, making it one of the largest AI infrastructure projects outside the US.

Figures of this size command attention. They speak of scale, confidence and a shared belief that AI will shape the economic life of this century. Their lasting value will depend on the people and institutions capable of turning this physical capacity into something useful, responsible and enduring. Five gigawatts can power immense computing systems, while the wisdom to direct them rests with people.

Trust becomes durable when partners agree how sensitive technology is protected, how data is used and who is accountable for deployment. The UAE-US AI partnership connects advanced technology co-operation with commitments to protect sensitive capabilities. It allows engineers to speak candidly with policymakers, researchers to pursue work across borders and governments to discuss security alongside commercial opportunity.

In this sense, algo-diplomacy provides the human architecture surrounding the machines.

A practical example is the Institute of Foundation Models at Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, which established a Silicon Valley lab in May last year as part of a research network spanning Abu Dhabi, Paris and Silicon Valley. This continuing institutional presence creates a setting for researchers to work across borders and for collaboration to extend beyond individual visits.

The National Experts Programme’s Artificial Intelligence track applies this principle directly to the next generation of national expertise. From Monday, 15 Emirati AI experts from government, industry and academia will take part in a programme of engagements with Apple, Scale AI, OpenAI, Nvidia and the Institute of Foundation Models at MBZUAI.

These institutions are globally recognised, and the programme’s substance lies in the questions the experts will explore: how companies decide that an advanced model is ready for release; how privacy can be preserved at scale; what national AI capacity requires beyond servers and electricity; and how investment reaches researchers and founders whose ideas may take years to mature.

The AI era will have its monuments, measured in chips, models and gigawatts. Its most enduring alliances will be carried by people

The value of the visit will become visible after the participants return to the UAE. A conversation with a researcher may grow into a joint project, while an encounter with a founder may reveal a new way to address a public challenge. Through this process, international engagement becomes national capability.

The benefits also travel in both directions. The exchange gives American institutions an opportunity to understand the UAE through the people building its AI future. Microsoft’s Global AI Diffusion Report for the second quarter of this year, published last month, estimated that 73.3 per cent of the UAE’s working-age population used generative AI during the reporting period, the highest share among the economies measured.

This adoption is supported by action across government. Under the two-year framework announced in April, the UAE aims to move 50 per cent of federal government sectors, services and operations to agentic AI models. It has also launched a national programme to train 80,000 federal employees in agentic AI tools and technologies.

The delegation can bring practical questions from the UAE’s transformation into these discussions: how AI should work in Arabic, how public servants can use it effectively, and how institutions should assess its impact on service quality. Exploring these questions together can help partners identify research and deployment priorities relevant to the UAE, while giving participants methods they can take back to their institutions.

History tends to remember the visible structures of an alliance: ports, pipelines, factories and, now, data centres. The conversations that made them possible rarely appear in photographs. They survive in professional relationships; institutional memory and the decisions people make years later when circumstances have changed.

The AI era will have its monuments, measured in chips, models and gigawatts. Its most enduring alliances will be carried by people who know one another, understand one another’s interests and share confidence in what they can build together.

That is algo-diplomacy.