AI Sovereignty Becomes Key to Nations' Future, Says UAE Business Leader

Obaid Al Ketbi, founder and chairman of Abu Dhabi-based Dr. O Group Holding and a former UAE major general, opened his address at the Future AI Mobility Summit 2026 with a blunt warning: nations that fail to build and govern their own artificial intelligence systems will cede control of their futures to those that do.

Speaking Tuesday at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Seoul, Al Ketbi reframed what many treat as a technology race. The real contest, he argued, is not about manufacturing better vehicles or aircraft. It is about sovereignty.

Additional reference context is available at https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10794596.

The algorithms embedded in autonomous vehicles, airspace management systems and logistics networks are not neutral tools. They encode decisions about safety, data handling and operational priorities that reflect the values and interests of whoever designs them. “If nations do not build and govern these systems themselves, those choices will be made for them,” Al Ketbi said. “Sovereignty is not about building walls. It is about a nation’s capacity to direct artificial intelligence in line with its own values and future.”

That convergence is already underway. Mobility, artificial intelligence and what Al Ketbi called the “low-altitude economy” are merging into a single interconnected system. Drones, autonomous platforms and eventually people will move through shared airspace, all coordinated by systems that do not yet exist in their final form. Who designs, operates and governs those systems carries implications far beyond commerce.

Al Ketbi pushed the argument into national security territory. The low-altitude domain, he noted, is no longer exclusively civilian. Military and border security applications are already emerging, and nations that depend on foreign technology for these functions face exposure to external control or disruption. Genuine sovereignty, he argued, requires homegrown research capacity and domestic institutions capable of advancing AI independently. He pointed to the UAE’s Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence as the kind of institutional foundation every serious nation must build.

Korea, in his view, is a natural and necessary partner for this work. He cited the country’s established strength in manufacturing, robotics, battery technology and mobility systems as assets that could be combined with AI research to create something neither nation could achieve alone. Rather than approaching the relationship as trading partners competing for market share, Al Ketbi proposed that Korea and the UAE function as co-investors, jointly establishing the standards, safety protocols and governance frameworks that will define the emerging field.

The vision he presented was grounded in human outcomes. Success, he emphasized, will not be measured by the complexity or elegance of the systems themselves. It will be counted in lives improved and communities strengthened. That framing, he suggested, should guide both research priorities and policy decisions as nations navigate the choices ahead.

What remains open is whether the two countries will move from partnership rhetoric to the shared institutional commitments that kind of co-investment actually demands.