Coffee in the Desert
Articles about Coffee in the Desert
Nvidia Is Building an Open-Weight AI Empire
This may be a win for middle powers
Fresh attacks hit Riyadh Airport as Chinese Oil Execs Set to Arrive
A strike targeted the Riyadh airport, killing at least 12 people and grounding air traffic in a recent escalation.
Chinese banks lend $3 billion to QatarEnergy
This week, four Chinese banks gave QatarEnergy a five-year, $3 billion loan for general working-capital needs, according to Bloomberg. The financing is timely for Qatar because the war has severely constrained its ability to turn production capacity into export revenue. China already has huge financial and business stakes with QatarEnergy, including a network of gas purchases, shipbuilding orders, and financing commitments up to 25 years. So the deal is not necessarily surprising, but the timing is interesting.
A Response to Yan Xuetong’s Al Jazeera Oped
Calling for Gulf restraint while not addressing Iran’s attacks on Gulf states undermines state sovereignty
The Rise of Frontier Arabic AI
Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE are developing Arabic AI models that are rapidly approaching frontier capabilities and can reason across a wide range of Arabic dialects. If those models become genuinely competitive at the frontier, Gulf states could begin to accumulate advantages that do not depend on matching the United States or China across every layer of the AI stack.