This is consistent with Alphabet's trajectory of becoming a defense contractor. One might ask why during peak oil on the precipice of a major decline in releva

This is consistent with Alphabet's trajectory of becoming a defense contractor. One might ask why during peak oil on the precipice of a major decline in relevance of Saudi Arabia (partner to the US military and client state of the US Government) this would be happening. There must be a need to have US-guided firms crowd out any other tech infrastructure investment in Saudi, to provide a substrate more friendly to surveillance and psychological operations projects in the future. There is also the factor that because we are at peak oil, Saudi elites have an unprecedented amount of wealth and they can simply transfer some of it to Alphabet in exchange for the increased political clout that teaming up with a major defense contractor offers. Note that for all the moralizing done by Google about not being evil, censorship, etc., Alphabet is teaming up with one of the most backward and corrupt regimes in the modern world, a regime that would have been replaced by something far more democratic long ago if it weren't for support by the US Government. So while in general economic cooperation makes wars less likely and helps reinforce private sector independence from the public sector (which is generally a good thing) anything involving Saudi or Alphabet is clearly a government sponsored, military-focused operation at its core. It's going to be pretty hard for Alphabet employees to explain to their grandchildren why they worked for a company that was known to cooperate with US domestic surveillance programs and team up with undemocratic monarchies. The greatest human evils are not obvious like scary monsters in movies, they creep up around us with the support of many reasonable people.