Conor here: The first comment under the WSJ piece sums it up well:
The swamp has been drained and backfilled with radioactive waste. Unreal, but not surprising.
Once again, Trump is more brazen in his corruption and operates on a larger scale than his predecessors. It might be easier for Democrats to take him to task for such insane levels of corruption if they didn’t engage in the same behavior.
Trump’s corruption is on such an unimaginably grotesque scale that it hardly seems real. The unreality of it all serves as camouflage, partly explains why it hasn’t caused the same outrage as, say, Hunter Biden’s mere 7-figure Ukraine corruption.https://t.co/1EyPqKvU1u
— Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) February 1, 2026
The WSJ piece makes it appear that the decision to send highly sensitive artificial intelligence chip technology to the UAE was a quid pro quo for the hundreds of millions invested in the Trump family crypto scam.
One big question remains: is the corruption the driver or a sideline grift to a larger scheme?
Why, for example, did the administration also give the green light for exports to Saudi Arabia? Trump has an extensive financial history with the kingdom and perhaps there is another corruption story to come on that front, but it should be noted that the u-turn in advanced chip export policy from Biden to Trump is being celebrated in corners of think tanklandia.
For example, according to Navin Girishankar, president of the Economic Security and Technology Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), it has to do with a vision for dollar/stablecoin supremacy. He writes:
Access to American compute power will enable both Gulf countries to export AI-enabled goods and services in sectors such as autonomous logistics, precision agriculture, medical diagnostics, and finance.
The Trump administration aims to ensure that “American AI technology continues to be the gold standard worldwide,” according to Vice President JD Vance. But these agreements miss an essential ingredient of American power: a guarantee that AI-enabled exports generated using American chips will be invoiced and settled in dollars.
…the United States should condition access to leading-edge chips on binding commitments to settle AI-enabled exports in dollars…the United States should use dollar-backed stablecoins as the settlement mechanism.
Of course when it comes to corruption and what passes as US global strategy one hand usually washes the other.
By Brad Reed, a staff writer for Common Dreams. Cross posted from Common Dreams.
A bombshell Saturday report from the Wall Street Journal revealed that a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family secretly backed a massive $500 million investment into the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture months before the Trump administration gave the United Arab Emirates access to highly sensitive artificial intelligence chip technology.
According to the Journal’s sources, lieutenants of Abu Dhabi royal Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan signed a deal in early 2025 to buy a 49% stake in World Liberty Financial, the startup founded by members of the Trump family and the family of Trump Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.
Documents reviewed by the Journal showed that the buyers in the deal agreed to “pay half up front, steering $187 million to Trump family entities,” while “at least $31 million was also slated to flow to entities affiliated with” the Witkoff family.
Weeks after green lighting the investment into the Trump crypto venture, Tahnoon met directly with President Donald Trump and Witkoff in the White House, where he reportedly expressed interest in working with the US on AI-related technology.
Two months after this, the Journal noted, “the administration committed to give the tiny Gulf monarchy access to around 500,000 of the most advanced AI chips a year—enough to build one of the world’s biggest AI data center clusters.”
Tahnoon in the past had tried to get US officials to give the UAE access to the chips, but was rebuffed on concerns that the cutting-edge technology could be passed along to top US geopolitical rival China, wrote the Journal.
Many observers expressed shock at the Journal’s report, with some critics saying that it showed Trump and his associates were engaging in a criminal bribery scheme.
“This was a bribe,” wrote Melanie D’Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, in a social media post. “UAE royals gave the Trump family $500 million, and Trump, in his presidential capacity, gave them access to tightly guarded American AI chips. The most powerful person on the planet, also happens to be the most shamelessly corrupt.”
Jesse Eisinger, reporter and editor at ProPublica, argued that the Abu Dhabi investment into the Trump cypto firm “should rank among the greatest US scandals ever.”
Democratic strategist David Axelrod also said that the scope of the Trump crypto investment scandal was historic in nature.
“In any other time or presidency, this story… would be an earthquake of a scandal,” he wrote. “The size, scope and implications of it are unprecedented and mind-boggling.”
Tommy Vietor, co-host of “Pod Save America,” struggled to wrap his head around the scale of corruption on display.
“How do you add up the cost of corruption this massive?” he wondered. “It’s not just that Trump is selling advanced AI tech to the highest bidder, national security be damned. Its that he’s tapped that doofus Steve Witkoff as an international emissary so his son Zach Witkoff can mop up bribes.”
Former Rep. Tom Malinkowski (D-NJ) warned the Trump and his associates that they could wind up paying a severe price for their deal with the UAE.
“If a future administration finds that such payments to the Trump family were acts of corruption,” he wrote, “these people could be sanctioned under the Global Magnitsky Act, and the assets in the US could potentially be frozen.”
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