A Pro-American, Post-Israel Approach For The United Arab Emirates

Is the UAE a serious country? Then act like it. Help US build the future.

Bayraktar: Coming to an America sky?

Reading the recent news about Representative Mike Gallagher’s hard ball approach to the United Arab Emirates’s G42 in the New York Times I wonder if, perhaps, we’re missing what’s really going on here. This is a Likud shakedown of the UAE — a payback for the UAE turning on Sam Altman and the Chisraeli factions.

Gallagher is very tied into the weird Chinese-Israeli faction that shakes down the Middle East or Chinese deep state whenever the occasion arises. Think of him as this nexus’s Marine face. He’s ever bit the actor that his Broadway star wife is. Gallagher is friendly with Palantir advisor Jacob Helberg. Helberg is married to pro-Israel sexual harasser Keith Rabois who recently decamped Founders Fund for the very BJP-friendly Khosla Ventures. Khosla is a backer of OpenAI, which was recently rejected for investment by the UAE on national security grounds.

Gallagher was appointed to the China select committee by Kevin McCarthy whose own ties to Chinese organized crime ultimately led to his downfall and may yet lead to McCarthy’s federal imprisonment. (You can’t grift off the Navy, Kevin!) Gallagher is not a serious player but the sort of good looking neocon often trotted out out of central casting to perform a trick or two. His decision to fire off a letter to the Commerce Department to blacklist the UAE over its purported Chinese ties should be understood in this context. Not a serious man. Not a serious player.

Sam Altman and Sheikh Maktoum bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, First Deputy Ruler of Dubai and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance

The geopolitics of the UAE require that it constantly be on the cutting edge lest its neighbors eat it. A Middle Eastern friend describes it thusly: “defend the caravan, attack the caravan.” Great work if you can get it.

I have to say that I like the pirate vibe and I have to say that I’m indebted to the UAE whose investments in my satellite, genomics, submarine, and facial recognition technologies have helped change the world for the better.

Unfortunately the UAE has gone through middle men to access me and my mind and I’m frustrated and frankly a little annoyed. We should be working together directly but instead I get sent all these wannabes and never was losers. This is surprising to me as I am one of the most, if not the most, pro-Palestinian, pro-Muslim and pro-Turkish technology investors in America. Whoever is constructing assets or building alliances over there in the UAE doesn’t quite have it right. I mean Medicaid fraudster funder Joe Lonsdale or human trafficker Matt Michelsen. Really?

But the events of October 7th have changed the calculation in the Middle East and with it comes new opportunities. MBZ has shown real bravery in telling Netanyahu off over his treatment of the Palestinians: “Ask Zelensky for money,” MBZ is rumored to have said. Is MBZ revealing the degree to which Zelensky is tied into the organized crime syndicate of Netanyahu? How clever.

The way the Israelis built a close relationship with the United States was by inserting itself into our technology stack. Netanyahu even had a strategy of building Israeli tech companies and having them get acquired by Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Google. he pursued his “binational security state” objective to make it impossible for Americans to turn on the Israeli apartheid state as they had with South Africa. By all accounts his policy worked marvelously — if deviously. You don’t see nearly as much pressure on Israel in America as you do in Europe. There was a hope that normalizing ties with Israel would make Israel a normal country. It hasn’t worked.

A similar approach to Israel’s won’t work in our current antitrust environment.

Still there’s no reason that the UAE can’t help to develop the best technology available.

Were I playing this game I’d offer to due diligence deals for the UAE and help put a stake in heart of deals that frankly do not serve the Emirates’ best interest. For too long the Gulf has been treated as an ATM not as an ally or partner.

To survive you need a stake in the commanding heights of the emerging economy and you need to go direct rather than through weird Jewish, Israeli, or Lebanese middlemen which is your custom.

Here’s what I’d do — off the top of my mind.

• I’d buy stakes in American and British genomics companies immediately. Its approach in genomics isn’t well served by Nebula which is too associated with G42—and incompetence. There should be a concerted effort to build a real genomics database which steps past the Israelis and the Chinese who have thoroughly compromised much of the pharmaceutical world.

• I’d invest in Bayraktar and turn that company into a DJI competitor in the United States and other NATO countries. If China is as bad as congressman Mike Gallagher says why are DJI drones allowed in so many police departments? Are U.S. policymakers going to deny the second largest army in NATO flying drones with our police chiefs?

• I’d develop a new generation of pro-Arab, pro-Middle Eastern American technology entrepreneurs. The focus should be on technology that clears the hurdles of the Commerce Department’s National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), which is to say real technology which strengthens the American state and its allies.

• I’d discard UAE assets like Liberty City Ventures which has terribly managed its investment in Clearview.AI and Hoan Ton-That and I’d help the US and British alliance take control of facial recognition technology in the West. It’s time to clean up a lot of these sort of deals.

Of course there are other ideas but these should be communicated much more privately.

Over sulaimani in Abu Dhabi?