Prakash Nanda
YU highlights how MBZUAI’s President, founding members, trustees, and Board members have connections to united front organisations involved with technology transfer or have received awards from PRC Government entities.
For instance, MBZUAI’s current President, Eric Xing, was appointed as a ‘Zhongguancun Overseas Strategic Scientist’ in March 2017 at the Beijing-Silicon Valley High-end Talent Summit by the head of Beijing Talent Work Leading Group.
One of MBZUAI’s founding Board members, Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, current head of College AI at Tsinghua University, also has links to the PRC Government. In 2005, Beijing presented him with the Chinese Government Friendship Award.
Kai-Fu Lee, Chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures, is also an MBZUAI trustee. Lee has been recognised as one of the “40 Chinese Returned Overseas Students in 40 Years of Reform and Opening-up” by United Front-affiliated organisations, which are central to illicit technology transfer efforts in China.
Ties with companies
Beyond the people involved with the university, MBZUAI has also built relationships and collaborated with PRC companies and institutions. In March 2023, it signed a five-year research and development cooperation agreement with Beijing Infinite Brain Technology (IBT) Company to establish a joint research laboratory that develops digital therapeutic products for human brain health by advancing and optimising AI technology.
MBZUAI also works with Chinese tech giants with strong Government links. For example, Huawei has supported individuals affiliated with MBZUAI and provided them with GPU computing services for research. Obviously, the US authorities do not consider all these connections with China to be friendly when MBZUAI also has close ties with leading American AI organisations. After all, MBZUAI has a Memorandum of Understanding with IBM to establish an AI Center of Excellence. Under this MoU, IBM has provided training and technology to support the university’s aim of becoming a global leader.
Urban environment
The university also worked with IBM to apply the company’s geospatial foundation model to understand the urban environment in Abu Dhabi. Besides, MBZUAI is also a member of the AI Alliance, a group launched by IBM and Meta in December 2023.
Significantly, in January this year, MBZUAI’s research project, ‘Conceptcentric Representation, Learning, Reasoning, and Interaction,’ received a $4 million grant from the US Department of Defense and intelligence community for AI collaboration in defense. Other university partners in this project include Meta, Amazon, the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Center for the Theoretical Foundations of Learning, Inference, Information, Intelligence, Mathematics and Microeconomics at UC Berkeley (CLIMB), Cerebras System, CMU, Stanford, and New York University.
It is no wonder that MBZUAI’s involvement with Chinese entities in such close proximity to leading US technology companies and universities has attracted the attention of American authorities.
Australia, Canada too
Even Australians have complained China’s relentless pursuit of technological dominance has manifested in their country “in a multifaceted campaign of intellectual property theft, cyber espionage, and talent recruitment.” The same is true for Canada, too. The Federal Government has released a list of ‘sensitive’ research areas, including advanced weapons, quantum technologies, robotics, aerospace, space and satellite technology, and medical and healthcare technology.
Researchers seeking federal grants to study in any of those fields will need to attest that they aren’t working with or receiving money from any of the foreign organisations and institutions cited by Ottawa as threats to national security. There are 100 such foreign organisations and institutions from Russia, Iran, and China.
In view of this environment, what should the UAE do? This is a very difficult question to answer, other than to say that Abu Dhabi has to perform a very challenging diplomatic balancing act to achieve its global AI ambitions.
