US spy agencies obtained intelligence in 2022 that the United Arab Emirates gave Huawei technology that they believe China used to extend the range of air-to-air missiles, giving its fighter jets an advantage over American warplanes.
According to six people familiar with the intelligence gathered during the Biden administration, the technology allegedly transferred to China by G42, the UAE’s flagship AI group, was used to upgrade long-range missiles fired from fighter jets.
Two of the people said the technology was passed to Huawei. One of those people and another person said the Chinese missiles were the PL-15 and PL-17 variants.
While many US intelligence and security officials were concerned about the information about G42 and China, a few officials were more circumspect. There was also debate among officials about whether G42 knew that the technology would be used to help the People’s Liberation Army.
But another six people familiar with the matter said the information came as US spy agencies were detecting broader evidence that the UAE, a critical American ally in the Middle East, appeared to be moving closer to China.
“Intel was flashing red,” said one former US official. “G42 and the UAE were drifting into China’s orbit.”
The intelligence prompted a fierce debate in the administration about US relations with the UAE and whether it should co-operate more with the Gulf state on AI on condition that it agreed to stop working with China.
The UAE, home to an American military base and a big investor in the US, has maintained close ties to Washington for decades. But relations grew strained during the Biden administration, with Abu Dhabi frustrated by the muted US response to attacks on the UAE’s capital by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
The exact nature of the technology G42 shared with China was unclear. G42 is chaired by UAE national security adviser Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan and has expanded into geospatial, aeronautics and satellite technology. Two people said the technology involved software that would optimise the flight of the missiles.
There is no evidence that transferring the technology would have breached any laws and the FT could not establish whether G42 was aware of its subsequent use.
American officials believed the technology shared with Huawei, which may have been dual use, would give Chinese fighter jets even more time to target American fighters in any war over Taiwan, increasing an advantage that the PLA had secured over the US military. It was another example of China starting to eclipse the US in certain weapons systems.
“China’s defence industry spent the 2010s building and delivering air-to-air missiles — including the PL-15 and PL-17 — that leapfrogged their US equivalents in range and in advanced seeker technologies,” said a former senior CIA expert on the Chinese military.
The White House in early 2023 weighed adding G42 to the so-called entity list, according to several people familiar with the discussions, which would have made it hard for American companies to sell it technology.
The US dispatched top officials to the UAE to tell Sheikh Tahnoon that his country must choose between the US and China for its AI industry. One former official said then commerce secretary Gina Raimondo in effect told senior UAE officials that it was a case of “one strike and you’re out”. Raimondo did not respond to a request for comment.
Former US officials said Abu Dhabi ultimately addressed the concerns raised by the Biden administration, although some security hawks were not convinced that the UAE was being completely up front with Washington.
“There were, and still are, some in different US government agencies who had a strong bias against UAE, while others including myself believed that the UAE was a critical ally and that any concerns should be openly and directly addressed,” said Amos Hochstein, who was Biden’s global energy adviser.
“In every case of concern, the UAE acted immediately to either explain or address them.”
For example, the UAE agreed to remove Huawei technology from its data centres. In late 2023, after months of tough conversations with US officials, G42 said it was severing ties with Chinese groups to enable it to focus on co-operating with the US in AI.
People familiar with Abu Dhabi’s thinking have previously said it took a strategic decision to go all-in on US tech to meet its AI ambitions.
G42, whose shareholders include Microsoft, Silver Lake and the UAE’s sovereign investment fund Mubadala, disputed the US intelligence, saying it categorically rejected the “false and defamatory allegations” from “sources with questionable motive and intent”.
“The assertion that G42 might have ‘leaked’ technology to Huawei while Huawei was a supplier to G42 is factually baseless.”
G42 said its dealings with Huawei ended in October 2023 and had been confined to a standard commercial supplier arrangement in which Huawei acted “solely as a vendor” for cloud infrastructure and related services used to build applications and solutions for its customers in the UAE and the region.
“In no instance or under any circumstance did G42 provide any proprietary or protected technology to Huawei or the PLA,” G42 added. “The accusations now being made to the FT were not raised in 2022, or at any point thereafter, on any level and are patently false.”
Huawei said the claim was “entirely untrue” and there was “no technology provision or transfer from G42 to Huawei that ended up being used to the claimed situation”. There has been no suggestion made to the FT that Huawei violated any laws.
William Burns, CIA director at the time, declined to comment on the intelligence about G42 and China.
China’s embassy in Washington accused the US of “overstretching the concept of national security, politicising and weaponising economic and trade issues or approaching them from an untenable security angle”.
Under the Trump administration, US relations with the UAE have become stronger. Abu Dhabi signed up to become a major partner in Stargate, a $500bn project led by OpenAI to create huge data centres.
The plan was agreed when President Donald Trump visited Abu Dhabi in May. It would allow US firms to supply advanced chips to the UAE. But the administration has not issued most of the required licences, which has frustrated UAE officials.
Two people familiar with the situation said the Trump administration was aware of the concerns about possible leakage of US technology to China but it believed that it had inserted sufficient guardrails into the plan.
But some US security officials and lawmakers remain nervous about sharing American AI technology with the UAE because of China.
“UAE and China maintain a close technology partnership, and this past spring UAE officials deepened those ties with a visit to China,” said John Moolenaar, the Republican chair of the House China committee.
“I welcome the prospect of closer US technology collaboration with the UAE, but it needs to come with the Emiratis verifiably and irreversibly choosing America.”
