COVER STORY
The result is that ministries, banks and other regulated sectors can treat their data as fluid – shifting workloads where compute is most efficient – while remaining fully within UAE jurisdiction. Instead of compromising between performance and protection, the Core42-VAST model delivers both.
Building an architecture of trust
Chakravarthi describes the Sovereign AI Cloud as an‘ architecture of trust’, founded on three principles:
1. Sovereign trust containers – Secure enclaves where compute, storage and policy are bound together under national oversight.
2. Passport layer – Data objects carry their own policies and encryption boundaries, making governance portable and persistent.
3. Consistency through abstraction – All data types are presented in a unified namespace, ensuring compliance is applied uniformly while supporting AI-scale performance.
“ These principles mean sovereignty and scale advance hand-in-hand, enabling governments to share, analyse and act on data with complete trust,” Chakravarthi said.
Embedding national values into AI
Sovereign AI is not only a technical issue but also a cultural and ethical one.“ Until now, AI has largely been built by a few very large
Raghu Chakravarthi, EVP at Core42
organisations,” he said.“ We’ re now starting to see countries building their own models and fine-tuning them. This gives us the opportunity to inject values and cultural norms into the specific AIs being built,” Hallak said.
“ Sovereign AI capabilities mean AI can interact with us based on our specific requirements – including values and cultural nuances. This is the next exciting phase of AI: making it more specific and customised than it is currently.”
Urgency vs patience
This is the next exciting phase of AI: making it more specific and customised than it is currently.
Nations are divided between those that move cautiously and those that adopt rapidly. Hallak believes the UAE falls into the latter category:“ Some governments are too patient, others are reactive. The UAE is acting quickly, taking advantage of new technologies earlier than most. I think that’ s the right approach. Those who wait too long will be left behind.”
Workforce transformation in the age of AI agents
The rise of Sovereign AI agents will reshape government and industry workforces.“ Many people believe only very experienced workers will have a place in the new workforce, but I disagree,” Hallak said.“ Those who understand how to use AI will hold the most prominent positions, and that tends to be the younger generation.” www. intelligentgov. tech. com 15