Beyond oil: Abu Dhabi's 5GW US-Israel AI gambit

On May 16, USA and UAE announced plans to build a colossal artificial intelligence cluster in Abu Dhabi with a staggering operational capacity of 5 gigawatts, making it the largest of its kind outside US territory.

While official narratives frame the project as a major economic leap and technological milestone, a critical lens reveals deeper social, political, and human rights implications. This complex is not an isolated tech feat; it is the physical manifestation of decades of global capitalist accumulation. Arguably, it is a direct outcome of the growing normalization between UAE and Israel.

Massive energy, massive data

A 5-gigawatt capacity signals an extraordinary level of energy consumption: comparable to a large nuclear power plant, or enough to power millions of homes simultaneously.

In the realm of AI, such energy is required to operate hundreds of thousands of graphics processing units/GPUs, high-density servers, and power-hungry cooling systems, along with ultra-fast data transmission networks.

These specs position the facility not as a mere data center, but as a mega-scale physical infrastructure that consumes enormous electrical and environmental resources.

It forms a strategic center of gravity for controlling the flow of data and knowledge. Such infrastructure is inseparable from the logic of control and dominance, the very logic it reproduces through the commodification of data and the monopolization of knowledge. Smart computation becomes here a tool of political and social control.

From this angle, the Washington-Abu Dhabi partnership should not be seen as simply tech transfer or infrastructure investment. The involvement of UAE-based company G42, one of the project leads, enhances this view. G42 is already engaged in strategic partnerships with Israeli institutions—highlighting a new alliance between American technology, Gulf capital, and possibly Israeli expertise.

G42 and normalization with Israel

Founded in 2018, the Emirati firm G42 stands at the center of this initiative. Chaired by UAE National Security Adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the company is not merely an implementing partner. It is a pivotal political and economic actor reshaping the region’s control and surveillance architecture. Its ties to Israel go beyond technical collaboration, pointing to deeper integration into a regional security ecosystem.

According to public statements, G42 will receive 20% of the project’s AI chips, equivalent to 100,000 chips annually. The remaining supply will be distributed among major US companies like Microsoft and Oracle. This allocation signals G42’s deep entrenchment within the global tech production network.

In September 2020, G42 became the first Gulf company to establish a wholly owned office in Israel—a clear signal of its deepening commitment to comprehensive tech normalization. This move enabled direct channels for information exchange, largely favoring Israel, a colonial power that strategically deploys tech innovation to reinforce its settlement enterprise.

The company has since expanded its normalization activities across multiple fronts. In April 2021, it launched a joint venture with Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, a leader in AI and data analytics technologies used in military and security applications. Rafael has been implicated in the development of surveillance systems deployed against Palestinians, making its partnership with G42 an extension of regional security normalization.

G42 has also teamed up with Israel’s Viola Group through the Global Valley initiative, aimed at creating joint research and development, and tech incubation centers between UAE and Israel.

In healthcare, G42 formed a strategic partnership with Sheba Medical Center—an Israeli institution known for its ties to military research and clinical trials involving genetic analysis techniques and biometric surveillance. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, G42 and Israeli firm Nanoscent jointly developed a virus detection device based on scent analysis.

Technology as a tool of repression

The human rights dimensions of any project of this magnitude cannot be overlooked, especially in a context like UAE, where constitutional protections for privacy and expression, and controls on surveillance are largely absent.

Relocating the infrastructure of one of the world’s most sophisticated AI systems to a country devoid of parliamentary or civic oversight raises red flags about potential abuses. The UAE’s track record of deploying digital surveillance—including facial recognition systems and internet monitoring—reveals the state’s willingness to harness technology not for empowerment, but for control.

In this context, AI integration is far from neutral; it represents a direct threat to digital rights and civil liberties.

On a societal level, the workforce likely to operate and maintain this massive cluster—technicians, maintenance staff, and support workers—will predominantly consist of low-wage migrant labor. These workers often face precarious conditions, lacking basic labor protections or union representation. In effect, the project replicates exploitative labor dynamics within a hyper-technological setting.

Infrastructure of dominance

Through this AI mega-project, the UAE appears to be transitioning from a petrostate reliant on oil, real estate, and logistics to a regional test bed for the most extractive models of digital capitalism. It is centralizing control, bypassing public accountability, and investing in AI not to empower citizens or promote social justice, but to expand mechanisms of control and redirect public resources toward transnational alliances of influence.

In this light, the UAE’s model does not represent meaningful progress. It is an advanced version of authoritarian modernity. Externally powerful through wealth and security alliances, yet internally hollow in democratic representation, the state is enlisting technology not to build a transparent society, but to fortify its authoritarian grip.

Artificial intelligence, which in theory offers pathways for collective empowerment, is being retooled to squeeze the utmost productive capacity from people, resources, and energy. This is to the benefit of transnational financial, technological, and political networks that make the decisions and direct resources.