[continued from previous message]   
      
   a model operates, like neurons in the brain that decide how to respond to   
   different signals. If bad actors get their hands on a model’s weights, they   
   can reconstruct them for their own purposes.   
      
   Read: A disaster for American innovation   
      
   Speaking in Saudi Arabia in May, Sacks acknowledged the importance of   
   preventing chips from reaching “countries of concern.” But he suggested   
   that this would be easy to accomplish. “All one would have to do,” Sacks   
   said, “is send someone to a data center and count the server racks to make   
   sure that the chips are still there.” It was a convenient dismissal.   
   Counting hundreds of thousands of chips is no simple task, and regimes in   
   the Middle East could decide to give China remote access to their chips.   
   Sacks also did not mention the concern about model weights, which may prove   
   to be an even greater vulnerability.   
      
   There are some signs that the Trump administration may be doubting its own   
   decision. In June, Reuters reported that the UAE deal is “far from   
   resolved,” according to five sources briefed on the project, because of   
   outstanding questions related to security and enforcement. Four of the   
   sources said “U.S. officials remain cautious about the UAE’s close   
   relationship with China.”   
      
   There is an even more significant concern, though. Building what may be the   
   world’s most important complex of data centers in the UAE—and, perhaps   
   later, in Saudi Arabia—means placing some of America’s most important   
   strategic assets in the world’s most geopolitically volatile region, within   
   range of Iranian drones and missiles. For the Gulf states, these risks only   
   sweeten the deal. If the U.S. senses that its vital infrastructure is in   
   danger, it will be more likely to rush to their defense. (Indeed, Saudi   
   Arabia has even proposed giving the centers the protected status of U.S.   
   embassies, and the UAE could follow suit.) In this way, the data centers   
   would offer a silicon shield for the Middle East nations, as well as grant   
   them significant leverage in their relations with both America and China.   
   Moreover, the deal threatens to pull the U.S. further into the region, at a   
   time when successive administrations have tried to focus on the Indo-   
   Pacific.   
      
   If AI becomes nearly as powerful as some of its inventors believe it will,   
   the data centers it relies on must be built in America, where the   
   government can better ensure that basic safety and national-security   
   concerns are taken into account. Diverting massive quantities of advanced   
   chips to subsidized data centers in the Middle East could make that   
   functionally impossible. There just aren’t enough chips to go around.   
      
   Trump’s H20 reversal and Middle East deals could be just the beginning. The   
   Financial Times recently reported that the Trump administration had “frozen   
   restrictions on technology exports to China to avoid hurting trade talks   
   with Beijing and help President Donald Trump secure a meeting with   
   President Xi Jinping this year.” On a visit to China last month, Huang   
   said, “I hope to get more advanced chips into China than the H20.” Beijing   
   is pushing to ease more restrictions.   
      
   The Trump administration’s AI plan is a sophisticated document with some   
   sound aims, but the administration’s recent actions have cut against them   
   and made winning the AI race much harder. Providing China with advanced   
   chips and prioritizing next-generation data centers in the Middle East over   
   ones built in America could have enormous negative consequences, ones that   
   subsequent administrations may not be able to reverse.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)