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National AI strategies are increasingly setting ambitious goals for innovation, competitiveness and
responsible deployment. However, the adoption of AI on a large scale remains uneven and path-
dependent, often hindered by misalignment between policy design, infrastructure investment, data
readiness, organisational capabilities and governance mechanisms. While prior research has explained
adoption through diffusion and ecosystem perspectives, there has been a lack of explicit temporal logic
to explain how these interdependent components evolve across institutional layers.
This paper therefore proposes the Clockwork Model of National AI Adoption, which conceptualises AI
transformation as a multi-level ecosystem orchestration challenge. The model represents national AI
systems as interdependent sociotechnical 'gears' - policy, infrastructure, data, talent, use cases,
governance and capital - whose synchronised progression determines scalable, ethical outcomes.
Using the UAE as an illustrative context, the model links the macro, meso and micro levels in order to
coordinate national AI diffusion.
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