From AI to weapons Trumps Gulf visit looks to swap politics for business

US President Donald Trump is setting up shop in the oil-rich Gulf. His wares are high-tech weaponry, AI chips and nuclear technology.

Because Trump's focus will be on business deals when he arrives in the Gulf on Tuesday, his visit is being framed as economic, above geopolitical. But Trump's transactional approach to foreign policy also underscores a deeper truth about the current world order. 

His visit will start on Tuesday in Saudi Arabia, followed by Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.  

In a shaky global economy, countries are scrambling for investments and fighting for every penny they can get. The US’s chokehold on advanced technology, from weapons to AI, is not what it used to be.

“The underlying reality is that in many areas of technology, including defence, where the US believes it leads, we no longer do,” Chas Freeman, the US’s former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told Middle East Eye.

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“For example, the US is not the most advanced producer of drones anymore, China is. The monopoly on advanced technology that the Washington establishment says it must defend doesn’t exist like it used to,” he said.

According to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the US  has been surrendering its lead in critical technologies like defence, space and energy to China.

An August 2024 report said that between 2003 and 2007, the US led in 60 of 64 technologies, but its position rapidly shrank to leading in just seven between 2019 and 2023, as China pulled ahead to lead in 57 of 64 technologies.

However, there are concerns about Trump's business-first approach in Washington. 

'I’m not sure whether Trump is ideologically committed to Israel’s QME'

- Prem Kumar, Albright Stonebridge Group

For example, Trump’s National Security Council has pushed to downplay his stop in the UAE. US officials  are still frustrated by the Emiratis' economic and military ties to China, one source briefed by the NSC told MEE.

Some US defence and intelligence officials are concerned that in his rush for deals, Trump may be overlooking concerns about how to secure the technology behind American weapons systems and AI from China, which has a close economic partnership with Gulf states. 

The Biden administration never resolved differences with the UAE over the sale of F-35 jet fighters, citing concerns about the Emirates' ties to Beijing. But analysts and former US officials say that deal may be back on the table, with the US president hunting for orders that will boost US job numbers.  

One of the more sensitive deals that the Trump administration is advancing is a joint endeavour between the UAE’s state-owned arms maker Edge and the US's General Atomics, which would see the Emirati firm integrate its precision missiles into the MQ-9B SkyGuardian platform.

Although the deal was authorised, work on it is not yet complete, and it could take a year, a US official told MEE.

Does Trump care about Israel's military edge?

As Trump puts sales numbers ahead of traditional policy considerations, it is irking longstanding allies who are accustomed to having a de facto veto over sales.

The Trump administration signalled in April that it had shifted from viewing the sale of civilian nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia as a lever to entice Riyadh to normalise ties to Israel. Instead, it is a business transaction that could give US companies a slice of the $80bn that experts say the kingdom’s nuclear programme would cost.

The same goes for the sale of F-35 jet fighters to Saudi Arabia. Reuters first reported that the US would discuss the sale with the kingdom, and an American official confirmed to MEE that it’s on the table.

That deal would unnerve Israel because the sale of the US’s most advanced jet fighters was intended to be linked to the kingdom normalising relations with Israel under the Biden administration. But normalisation has all been struck from the agenda for this trip.

Israel has long enjoyed outsized influence over the US’s arms sales to Arab states and Turkey. The US’s commitment to Israel’s so-called qualitative military edge (QME) over its neighbours is written into law and has been a bedrock of the two countries' partnerships, going back to the 1970s.

“I’m not sure whether Trump is ideologically committed to Israel’s QME, but he has to answer to Congress. There may be ways he could push through these arms sales with technological limits to address concerns about Israel’s QME,” Prem Kumar, director of the Middle East division at the DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group advisory, told MEE.

'Brakes off on arms sales'

Trump will have to push if he wants to meet his self-imposed goal of obtaining $1 trillion in investments from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. For perspective, $1 trillion was the total value of Saudi Arabia’s GDP in 2024.

“This administration is totally transactional. Trump is thinking about what deals he can cut that boast manufacturing jobs and increase the US’s bottom line,” one US official working on the visit told MEE.

The low-hanging fruit for Trump is cutting arms deals. The Gulf states were frustrated with the Biden administration’s slow approach to approving sales. Trump laid the foundation for his visit with an executive order last month that seeks to streamline the foreign military sales process.

American weapons transfers have long faced scrutiny, mainly from human rights activists concerned about how foreign governments use arms, but also, increasingly, from Trump-loyalists espousing “America First” values.

For the latter group, Israel and Egypt have come under fire because they obtain billions of dollars in US taxpayer-funded weapons, but the Gulf states pay for their products.

According to Reuters, Trump hopes to unveil $100bn in arms sales when he visits Saudi Arabia.

One of Trump’s talking points in Riyadh and other Gulf capitals will include his plan to expedite foreign military sales, a US defence official working on the file told MEE.

The plans are not yet finalised, and the Department of Defence is working to address concerns about foreign disclosure on sensitive technologies and other matters by the summer.

But Trump is wasting little time. He has already fast-tracked a slew of deals that were stalled under the former Biden administration.

“The breaks are off on arms sales. Everything is a go,” one US official told MEE.

In March, the US notified Congress about the sale of advanced precision kill weapon systems to Saudi Arabia. Then in May, it provided notice about the sale of advanced air-to-air missiles.

The Trump administration is working to fast-track the sale of $20 bn worth of MQ-9 Reaper drones to Saudi Arabia. The deal has been under discussion since 2018, but US officials say it is expected to be sealed under Trump.

In February, the president of General Atomics, the company producing MQ-9s, said the deal would “result in many of tens of thousands of jobs in the US”.

Gulf states want AI chips

Weapons sales and energy have been the bedrock of the US’s ties to Gulf monarchs since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt met Saudi King Abdulaziz al-Saud in 1945, ushering in a decades-old oil-for-security partnership.

Now, Gulf states are looking to lead in emerging technologies like AI, semiconductor manufacturing and critical minerals. At a time when the global economy is wobbling, the Gulf monarchs can dip into sovereign wealth funds that hold trillions of dollars to make investments.

The US unveiled on Friday a “fast-track” investment process for US-designated “allies”. The US says that a new portal will allow foreign investors to file their information before the Committee of Foreign Investment in the US, ahead of any deals.

Gulf states are eager to invest in American AI technology and semiconductors.

The UAE has put itself at the centre of a global rush to build data centres, which house the supercomputers and chips that run AI. In March, Emirati national security advisor Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed pledged to invest $1.4 trillion in the US over the next decade.

The Biden administration placed restrictions on the export of advanced AI chips, but the Trump administration has suggested it is willing to loosen the rules.

American companies like AMD, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI are leaders in the field, and many have struck deals with Gulf states.

However, even the Gulf monarchs are stretched thin.

Fight for investments

Experts say the Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia, will need serious incentives to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the US, and Trump might come home with more paper pledges than real deals.

Saudi Arabia is trying desperately to get foreign investors to buy into Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030, but it hasn’t happened. The kingdom’s foreign direct investment fell last year to its lowest level since 2020, during the Covid pandemic.

In October, Yasir al-Rumayyan, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, said he planned to substantially reduce the kingdom’s overseas investments and focus on the home market.

The kingdom is scaling back projects like Neom, the desert megacity. Instead of 1.5 million people living there by 2030, Saudi officials now anticipate fewer than 300,000 residents. Meanwhile, only 2.4km of the much hyped 170km "Line City" will be completed by 2030. 

Oil prices have plunged about 14 percent this year. Trump had pushed Saudi Arabia and Opec+ to lower energy prices earlier this year.

In April, the energy alliance announced a surprise cut. Saudi Arabia mainly wanted to punish alliance members exceeding their production quotas, but the drop in crude prices will give Trump a win to chalk up when he lands in Riyadh on Tuesday.

However, the drop in prices creates problems for Saudi Arabia. The international benchmark Brent was trading up 1.46 percent on Monday at $64.84 per barrel, roughly half the value the kingdom needs to balance its budget.

In addition, Aramco announced on Sunday that it would slash its dividends by $10bn. To make up for the shortfall in revenue, Saudi Arabia has turned to issuing huge amounts of debt.

A US-Saudi investment forum planned for Tuesday in Riyadh is as likely to see Saudi officials lobbying for US investment in their country as it is the US making the case for Saudi petrodollars to flow in the opposite direction. The CEOs of BlackRock, Tesla, Citigroup, Facebook, and Boeing are all expected to attend.

For a president who makes all politics personal, Trump has already scored some early success ahead of his visit.

Trump’s stop in Qatar has provoked controversy over news that he plans to accept a Luxury 747 Boeing aircraft that will be retrofitted for use as Air Force One and kept by Trump after he leaves the White House. 

In addition, a Qatari government-administered real estate firm has backed the Trump Organization’s plan to build a luxury golf resort near Doha.

In May, Trump's son, Eric, said the UAE’s ruling family agreed to use a stablecoin backed by Trump’s family business to conduct a $2bn transaction.

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