The Inversion of Soft Power: America’s Reversal at 250

Small Wars Journal | Antonia-Laura Pup, by Lidia Bernd

The United States is experiencing a rapid inversion of its traditional soft power model as domestic institutions face budget cuts and political fragmentation, while foreign nations actively acquire influence inside American research and policy networks. Longstanding instruments of American public diplomacy, including the Fulbright Program, USAID, and Radio Free Europe, have suffered severe structural rollbacks, including $75 billion in USAID project terminations and a 17% drop in international student enrollment.

Concurrently, Gulf monarchies led by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates are transforming soft power into strategic infrastructure by funding higher education, artificial intelligence initiatives, and think tanks. Qatar alone contributed over $1.1 billion in reportable university gifts and contracts in 2025, while the UAE positioned institutions like the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence within global tech governance ecosystems. This systematic institutional integration embeds foreign interests directly into future decision-making systems, shifting global influence from an outward American export to an inward foreign leverage mechanism.

Comment

Foreign capital integration into frontier research platforms like the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence alters the architectural pipeline of dual-use algorithms before hardware export controls take effect. By embedding state-backed capital into primary research nodes, sovereign funds bypass traditional foreign investment screening mechanisms such as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. This structural position grants non-aligned capitals early visibility into advanced machine learning architectures prior to commercialisation.

Downstream, this dynamic decouples technological innovation from national security alliance boundaries. Joint ventures involving major Western software firms and Abu Dhabi-based entities institutionalise shared IP pipelines across jurisdiction lines. Consequently, joint AI initiatives at institutions like Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence make technical decoupling between Western tech firms and Gulf sovereign wealth practically unenforceable.

Strategic Question for Discussion

Which factor presents a greater risk to Western tech sovereignty — the direct acquisition of dual-use IP through joint research at Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, or the structural reliance of Silicon Valley developers on Gulf sovereign funding?

The available evidence points toward structural funding reliance as the more systemic vulnerability, as it shapes corporate incentives long before intellectual property is formally filed. While project-level collaboration at Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence creates immediate dual-use leakage risks, sovereign capital infusion establishes long-term dependence that restricts the enforcement of Western export controls.

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