Top US officials will travel to Europe for crucial meetings on defence and artificial intelligence this week. American secretary of defence Pete Hegseth and vice president JD Vance are set to represent the United States at key summits in Germany, Belgium, Poland and France.
Defence and NATO
On 10 February, Hegseth starts his European tour in Germany, where he is set to visit the US European Command (USEUCOM) and U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in Stuttgart. During his stay, he plans to meet with American military personnel stationed in the country.
His itinerary then takes him to Brussels on 12 February for the Ramstein consultation on Ukraine. According to the Pentagon, Hegseth aims to “emphasise President Donald Trump’s commitment to ending the war in Ukraine diplomatically as soon as possible.”
The following day, 13 February, he joins the NATO defence ministers’ meeting, where discussions will centre on “increasing NATO countries’ defence spending, strengthening European leadership and expanding the capabilities of the defence industry on both sides of the Atlantic.”
Hegseth wraps up his European visit in Poland, where he is scheduled to engage with Polish leadership on bilateral relations and NATO’s eastern flank defence. While in the country, he is also expected to meet with US troops deployed there.
AI summit
While Hegseth focuses on military strategy, Vance will be in Paris for an artificial intelligence (AI) summit at the Grand Palais on 12 and 13 February.
The summit will gather key figures from the AI and political world, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google parent Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, German chancellor Olaf Scholz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang and Nobel Prize-winning AI researcher Demis Hassabis are also expected to attend.
It remains unclear whether Elon Musk, whose company xAI is a rising competitor in the AI space, will participate. French president Emmanuel Macron, who is eager to position France as a global AI leader, is spearheading the event.
The summit comes amid heightened tensions in the tech sector, following the recent launch of the Chinese AI app DeepSeek, which has demonstrated performance levels comparable to ChatGPT but with significantly lower computing power. US president Donald Trump called DeepSeek a “wake-up call” for Western tech companies, highlighting the growing AI competition between China and the West.
US vice president JD Vance shakes hands with US secretary of defence Pete Hegseth after administering the oath of office in the Indian Treaty Room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House Campus in Washington, DC on 25 January, 2025. © PHOTO RON SACHS / POOL via CNP
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