A CIA veteran was sent on an unusual mission to Abu Dhabi: to assess whether the United Arab Emirates could gain access to the most advanced American chips for artificial intelligence. What followed exceeded the boundaries of classic espionage — Jonny Gannon ended up getting close to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan and the director of the G42 company, even contributing to solving the problems he himself had discovered through espionage operations. The story, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, reveals the backstage of a dispute that has divided the US national security community and has changed the course of the global race for artificial intelligence.
Jonny Gannon, a veteran of covert operations in the Middle East, was pulled from a leadership position in Washington and sent to Abu Dhabi in 2023, under diplomatic cover. His mission: to find out whether Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the national security advisor of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), can be trusted in the context where his AI company, G42, is requesting access to the most advanced American Nvidia chips.
Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the national security advisor of the United Arab Emirates, planned to build one of the world’s largest artificial intelligence centers — and he had the necessary financial resources to succeed. With an estimated fortune of 1.4 trillion dollars, Tahnoon was seeking Washington’s approval for G42, the UAE’s national champion in the AI field, to be able to import the most advanced Nvidia chips.
However, high-ranking officials in Washington were worried that Beijing was making progress in infiltrating intelligence services in the U.A.E. The United States had learned, from intercepted communications, that China was seeking to use its relationship with G42 to steal American technology and artificial intelligence algorithms. The CEO of G42, Peng Xiao, had renounced his American citizenship — a mandatory condition to enter the inner circle of the Emirati government.
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