Mohammed Soliman

Grateful to see West Asia climbing the Amazon charts 📚

#2 in Political Science • Top 20 in Asian Politics • Top 40 in Middle Eastern Politics

Thank you to everyone reading, sharing, and debating these ideas.

a.co/d/09N3OSZz

"The world is changing very fast right in front of us. The old world is gone ... We live in a new era in geopolitics, and it's going to require all of us to sort of re-examine what that looks like and what our role is going to be."

In my new book, West Asia, I trace the rise of the Gulf as a nerve center for this expansive system, stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. Order West Asia today: a.co/d/07MPms0V

West Asia: A New American Grand Strategy in the Middle East West Asia: A New American Grand Strategy in the Middle East [Soliman, Mohammed] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. West Asia: A New American Grand Strategy in the Middle East

Happy book release day! Order your copy today.

www.amazon.com/West-Asia-Am...

Trump’s Board of Peace

US, Taiwan Clinch Deal to Cut Tariffs, Boost Chip Investment The US and Taiwan agreed to a long-sought trade agreement that would lower tariffs on goods from the self-governed island to 15% and see Taiwanese semiconductor companies increase financing for Americ...

Taiwan’s technology industry would also commit to making at least $250 billion in direct investments to expand advanced semiconductor, energy and artificial intelligence operations in the US.
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Meta taps Dina Powell McCormick as president and vice chairman Powell McCormick's connections to the global finance community has put her at the center of dealmaking across industries that matter to Meta in the AI era.

Meta is signaling a deeper push into the Gulf’s AI race through a high-profile hire with close ties to the region.

www.axios.com/2026/01/12/m...?

xAI Raises $20B Series E | xAI xAI is rapidly accelerating its progress in building advanced AI.

Gulf capital is structurally intertwined with the success of leading AI frontier labs, including Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, and many others.

x.ai/news/series-e

Kissingerian consolidation

They had "Venezuela" in the search bar with the latest tab selected so they could see real time updates as posts were coming through

Trump: "The Monroe Doctrine is a big deal. And we've superseded it by a lot. They now call it the Donro Doctrine."

Happy New Year. We are closer to 2050 than to 2000!

“While this reflects strong international demand for Israeli AI talent, it also underscores a retreat from AI21’s original ambition to compete directly with leading AI model developers such as OpenAI or Anthropic.”

Nvidia in advanced talks to acquire AI21 in $2-3 billion deal focused on talent | CTech EXCLUSIVE: The move would mark Nvidia’s fourth major Israeli purchase and signal the limits of Israel’s LLM ambitions.

Keep an eye on Nvidia’s growing footprint in Israel: “Such a transaction would effectively provide Nvidia with a fast-track expansion of its AI talent base in Israel, at an implied cost of roughly $10-15 million per employee.”
www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/ar...

At this rate, America's biotech industry won't just sputter, it will collapse before it can even compete with China.

Manus Joins Meta for Next Era of Innovation Manus is joining Meta, and we’ll continue delivering our current services while accelerating product improvements to bring more powerful, reliable general AI agent capabilities to more users and busin...

After Nvidia-Groq, here’s another milestone acquisition: Meta-Manus right before the sunsetting of 2025. Expect more acquisitions in 2026!

manus.im/blog/manus-j...

“When the towers came down, it changed the game.”

A long goodbye to the first quarter of the 21st century.

open.substack.com/pub/soliman/...

happy holidays!! 🎄🎁🎅

What to watch: Secretary Bessent laid out the strategic industries where the government wants to step in to push reshoring: chips, steel, shipbuilding, and pharmaceuticals.

As 2025 winds down, I’ve been reflecting on a year that felt unusually full of movement, ideas, and life changes. And grateful for the conversations, the travel, and the people who shaped this year.

If you’re curious: lnkd.in/et4Mc-Vx

As 2025 winds down, I’ve been reflecting on a year that felt unusually full of movement, ideas, and life changes. And grateful for the conversations, the travel, and the people who shaped this year.

If you’re curious: lnkd.in/et4Mc-Vx

After Ukraine, Russia’s next move may be in the Middle East—this book shows how and why.

West Asia by Mohammed Soliman (@soliman.bsky.social) is out now in the UK.

See more:
www.politybooks.com/...

Expanding our use of Google Cloud TPUs and Services Announcing a dramatic increase in Anthropic's compute resources

Google’s TPUs are on a serious winning streak, across the board.

#Anthropic

www.anthropic.com/news/expandi...

West Asia: A New American Grand Strategy in the Middle East At the end of the 20th century, the United States birthed a new Middle East order built on realpolitik and a stable balance of power. Three decades later that order has been destroyed. America’s...

It’s a theme I explore in a full chapter of my forthcoming book West Asia. Pre-order now. www.wiley.com/en-ie/West+A...

Compute demand is exploding, from personal intelligence to physical AI. Building more capacity, especially in the Gulf, is essential, but so is connecting that infrastructure with Italy, France, and Greece to create a truly integrated Mediterranean network.

Just back from the Mediterranean Dialogues in Napoli, after an incredible few days discussing the AI infrastructure boom reshaping the region — from subsea cables to an emerging U.S.–EU–Gulf AI infrastructure bridge.

“We’ve underestimated Chinese power…I think the Chinese technology, military, and economics are stronger than we think they are.”

— Nicholas Burns, former U.S. Ambassador to China

The internet we knew is disappearing. In 2020, almost everything online was written by people. Now, nearly half of it comes from AI and by next year, it could be most of it. AI made words cheap. Truth got expensive.