There’s a new nation competing to build out world-class AI infrastructure – and its identity may surprise you.
It’s Iraq, which has already attracted more than $100 billion in the past two years to improve its infrastructure and recently announced a further $450 billion in investment opportunities during the Iraq Investment Forum in Baghdad.
The money will be spent on a variety of infrastructure projects, including the grid, water, network, and compute facilities that together deliver the full stack required to support an AI economy. (The stack also requires decisive governance, and, given its status as an authoritarian federal parliamentary republic, Iraq certainly checks that box).
By U.S. standards, these sums may not seem like a lot, but in a country the size of Iraq (twice as large as the UK, with half its population), they will make a massive difference.
Before investment, Iraq ranks 107th in the Oxford Insights 2024 AI Readiness ranking. Assuming the funds are invested efficiently, they would likely boost its position to somewhere between 40 and 50. While this isn't enough for Iraq to enter FNTV’s Top 25 AI Infrastructure nations, it’s still a significant leap forward.
It isn’t yet clear how much of the funds Iraq will spend on telecom, but it will certainly be less than the U.S. has allocated to improve its own broadband telecom infrastructure with its fabled BEAD funding. Then again, that’s sort of a “Schrodinger’s network” -- if you commit $50 billion to build a network, but never actually spend the money on the network, is it really a network?
Beyond Iraq itself, the winners here are incumbent telecom vendors Huawei, Nokia and Ericsson, who are Iraq’s established telecom equipment providers.
Also, China, which strengthens its position in the Middle East by providing debt financing to Iraq for its AI infrastructure buildout.
It’s doing the same in Nigeria, incidentally, another AI infrastructure up-and-comer, which the U.S. is currently threatening to attack because it says it needs some freedom (hell yeah!) and definitely not because it sits atop the second-largest crude oil reserves in Africa.
While China travels the globe making friends and influencing people, and funding the creation of its AI economic future, the US has alienated most of the Global South by enabling one of the two worst genocides of this century, while also neglecting the utilities it needs to build its own digital future.
And that’s created a situation where poorer nations — the "shithole countries," as President Trump likes to call them — are now building high-quality AI infrastructure that, in places, actually leapfrogs that of the wealthiest country in the world.
And if you think that’s strange, wait until you find out that Iraq, one of the biggest oil producers in the world, is now considering importing gas from the United States.
It’s another clear sign that in the 21st century, the legacy patterns of geopolitical, economic and technological power are being contested, disrupted and reassembled in real-time.
Steve Saunders is a British-born communications analyst, investor and digital media entrepreneur with a career spanning decades.
Opinion pieces from industry experts, analysts or our editorial staff do not represent the opinions of Fierce Network.