South Korean president calls for aggressive AI spending in budget speech

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Tuesday known as for tripling the federal government spending on initiatives for increasing synthetic intelligence infrastructure and know-how in a finances speech.

Lee additionally known as for lawmakers to approve a deliberate 8.2% enhance in protection spending subsequent 12 months, which he mentioned would assist modernize the navy’s weapons programs and cut back its reliance on the USA, because the allies’ navy chiefs met in Seoul for annual security talks.

Most conservative opposition lawmakers boycotted Lee’s speech amid an ongoing rift over a legal investigation into former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s brief imposition of martial law in December.

Lee’s speech got here after South Korea final week hosted the leaders of main Pacific Rim nations for this 12 months’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings, which his authorities used to showcase its ambitions for AI and advance an effort at a commerce take care of the U.S.

In his speech on the Nationwide Meeting, Lee highlighted his APEC diplomacy and a bilateral assembly with U.S. President Donald Trump, which he mentioned eased uncertainties going through South Korea’s trade-dependent economic system by securing decrease tariffs on cars and pc chips, two of the nation’s key exports.

He mentioned the nation was nonetheless going through a crucial second for “nationwide survival” amid fast adjustments within the international commerce order and a “large, transformative wave of AI.”

Lee mentioned the proposed finances of 728 trillion received ($506 billion), which might symbolize an all-time excessive for presidency spending, could be the nation’s “first finances to open the AI period.”

He known as on the liberal-led legislature to approve 10.1 trillion received ($6.9 billion) in AI-related spending — greater than triple this 12 months’s stage — to advance the nation’s AI computing and manufacturing capabilities, with a selected deal with industries comparable to semiconductors, cars, shipbuilding and robotics.

“Simply as President Park Chung-hee paved the freeway for industrialization and President Kim Dae-jung constructed the freeway for the knowledge age, we should now assemble the freeway for the AI period to open a way forward for progress and progress,” Lee mentioned, referring to main growth drives underneath Park’s dictatorship within the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s and Kim’s presidency from 1998 to 2003, which centered on increasing South Korea’s web infrastructure.

Lee mentioned South Korean corporations would have little problem securing the chips for his or her AI initiatives, citing a deal for Nvidia, whose GPUs energy a lot of the global AI industry, to provide 260,000 graphics processing items for AI infrastructure initiatives with main South Korean companies and the federal government. The deal was introduced following a gathering throughout APEC between Lee and Jensen Huang, the Silicon Valley firm’s chief government.

It isn’t instantly clear when Nvidia — which agreed to ship 50,000 GPUs every to the federal government, chipmakers Samsung and SK, and automaker Hyundai, and one other 60,000 to web firm Naver — will ship these chips. Huang informed reporters in South Korea that AI knowledge facilities and energy networks should first be established earlier than the corporate can start delivery the GPUs.

Considerations have grown over the initiatives’ future after Trump mentioned aboard Air Drive One on Monday that solely U.S. clients ought to have entry to Nvidia’s newest Blackwell AI chips, declaring, “We don’t give that chip to different folks.”

Lee proposed a protection finances of 66.3 trillion received ($46 billion) subsequent 12 months, which he mentioned can be centered on modernizing the navy’s weapons programs, together with by the adoption of AI applied sciences, to make the armed forces extra self-reliant.

“It’s a matter of nationwide pleasure that South Korea, which spends 1.4 occasions North Korea’s annual GDP on protection and is perceived because the world’s fifth strongest navy, continues to rely on others for its safety,” Lee mentioned.

Throughout his assembly with Trump, Lee reaffirmed South Korea’s dedication to extend protection spending and known as for U.S. help for South Korean efforts to amass nuclear-powered submarines.

Trump later mentioned on social media that the USA will share closely-held know-how to permit South Korea to construct a nuclear-powered submarine, and that the vessel can be constructed within the Philly Shipyard in Philadelphia, which was purchased final 12 months by South Korea’s Hanwha Group.

Lee’s speech got here as U.S. Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth and South Korean Protection Minister Ahn Gyu-back had been assembly in Seoul for the allies’ annual safety talks. The assembly is predicted to deal with key alliance points, together with South Korea’s protection spending commitments and the implementation of a plan to switch wartime operational management to a joint command led by a South Korean common with a U.S. deputy.