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Silicon Valley is awash with Saudi Arabian money
- curiousgal 8y agoThis might sound insensitive but I don't get what the big deal is. Even if the Saudis had the journalist killed, how is that different than all the other (more) horrible things other governments have been engaging in?
- throwaway2048 8y agoKidnapping and murdering people using official diplomatic status in foreign countries is a massive violation of the norms of international diplomacy. The fact that countries don't normally do stuff like this is what keeps diplomatic channels open, and wars from starting.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- stephengillie 8y agoFrom the article: > Torture. Assassination of political dissidents. Financing terrorism. Civilian airstrikes. Oppression of women and religious minorities. Saudi Arabia’s record on human rights ranks among the world’s worst. Not unlike CIA and military actions in South America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East (e.g. Iran Contra), and Guantanamo & Thailand, over the past 150 years.
- a008t 8y agoAt least with the CIA, arguably, the intentions were good. There are success stories, too - Japan, West Germany, South Korea. As far as I am aware, the Saudi establishment is only out for themselves.
- flyinglizard 8y agoIt is a big deal - committing violence against your own citizens in diplomatic havens on foreign soil is as dark as it gets. However, there are good things going on in Saudi Arabia right now and the West would be futile to derail this. The Saudis need to answer for their actions, but not at the price of stopping the modernization they are undergoing.
- dudul 8y agoI'm not an expert but I've read/seen here and there that even the whole "modernization" thing is overblown. The "women can drive!" thing was mostly for show, and is barely applied in practice. It seems to even be the opposite : while former rulers were sharing power with their counselors, MBS looks like he wants to rule alone and unopposed.
- flyinglizard 8y agoMBS wants to turn Saudi Arabia into something like a Gulf state. Therefore they are investing in tech (directly and indirectly e.g Softbank), building a new tech city with relaxed rules, etc. They know the oil run won't last for another 50 years.
- Kaveren 8y agoWhy are you so eager to buy into the modernization narrative? Killing an innocent journalist is not very modernizing, and I can't pretend to believe even for a second that MBS didn't know about this. It's clearly only for PR so they can make more money and continue to commit atrocities. There won't be real progress. When I hear "anti-corruption purge" I think "get rid of my political enemies".
- flyinglizard 8y agoI'm sure MBS knew about this. Many people will find it offensive, but the Middle East has its own rules. Saudi Arabia is nothing like a Western state in terms of its power structure and population. Things that we find barbaric are contributing to long term stability. In this area, when you lose control over the population you get things like the Syrian civil war. But that's not at odds with modernization. Singapore is a very modern nation, as is China in parts and you could count some Gulf states on some aspects. Modernization does not have to include democracy and human rights in the way they are perceived in the West. Whatever happens, it's a long process and has inertia. Put hard limits on MBS and his ilk, but be wary of turning SA into a pariah state over this. They are turning their back to Whabbism and radical Islam, it won't be good for anyone if things are rolled back.
- abledon 8y agoI think parent comment shouldn’t be flagged, helps give context for an ELI5 explanation
- tomhoward 8y agoBest to try and avoid starting flamewars over sensitive topics like this. There's plenty of discussion all over the internet about the question you've posed. Re-litigating it here isn't likely to progress it any further than people have been able to do elsewhere.
- growlist 8y agoIs this a serious question? If so one response is: where would you draw the line? It doesn't seem a huge leap from eliminating a single troublesome journalist to eliminating a troublesome citizen/group of citizens/town/region/entire ethnic group..
- SiempreViernes 8y agoThey've been violently suppressing religious groups for years, so it's not like that is a hypothetical scenario, rather close to being the status quo. Is it fair that the murder of just one columnist gets this sort of attention?
- losvedir 8y agoIn one sense it is a big deal - we don't want precedent that it's okay to kill your citizens in other countries (cf Skripal), but you're right that in another sense this seems to be how the world has always worked. I remember when Obama killed a US citizen overseas in a targeted airstrike (al-Awlaki) I was pretty upset about that and worried about the precedent it would set but it didn't catch on in the same way. Obviously "journalist" is more sympathetic than "accused terrorist" but the principle is the same, to me.
- kopo 8y agoIt doesn't make much sense. There are other journos who have died in custody or are still rotting away in custody.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sidcool 8y agoI am not the only one saying this since eons, but power and money are the only things that work in global relations. Countries are forced to develop nuclear weapons because treaties are not honored owing to special interests. If your big brother is powerful, you can get away with almost anything. As much outrage the journalist killing has caused, they will be able to buyout any powerful dissidents, corporations or countries.
- mc32 8y agoSomething’s different about this. Journalists get killed by rogue government elements in Mexico, Russia, probably even Turkey itself, but you don’t see the same reaction. What gives?
- gtsteve 8y agoIt happened in an embassy in another country, as opposed to an event that could be passed off as a mugging gone wrong. It was provably done by agents of the government, so that's what makes it especially inflammatory.
- danso 8y agoThe difference here is that critics don’t believe that Khashoggi was killed by “rogue government elements” — they believe he was killed because of orders from the top of government. Can you recall the last time a journalist, or other controversial citizen, was killed inside their country’s own embassy? Nevermind one that had such a blatant coverup? I would agree that other governments may have had citizens assassinated and made it look like “rogue government elements”, but not nearly as obvious.
- mc32 8y agoI agree with what you say, but the implications are rather interesting. It means that while we know less than stellar governments kill journalists, the killings themselves aren’t as upsetting as the manner of the killing? As if there is an accepted “etiquette” in those things?
- throwaway2048 8y agoMoney is not, even now, the only factor that matters when it comes to power and politics. The Hilary campaign in sum (as far as anyone can tell) outspent the Trump campaign by 2:1.
- loblollyboy 8y agoHe said global relations, but it’s kind of a no brainer point - ‘power and money’ is pretty all encompassing
- unstuckdev 8y agoShe also got millions more votes. That election turned on a few tens of thousands of votes in a couple of states due to the way the electoral college works. Money paid for the targeted ads responsible and built the company that made it possible.
- coldtea 8y agoThat's because politics also has this antiquated thing called "voters", and they won't always vote like those with most money want them to (e.g. Trump, Brexit, etc). It's also because those with money have been getting what they wanted for so long, that they didn't expect much resistance this time either. But they still have the power, they just can't go and openly revert the voting results. They took their lessons for next time though, and they wont let anything like this happen again...
- kapauldo 8y agoIt's not news that the Saudis are bad
- guelo 8y agoUnited States used to at least credibly pretend that it cared about human rights. It is squandering its superpower soft power that it used to use to influence the world towards democratic ideals. I blame the Democratic party neoliberals for buying into the free market religious myth that capitalism will magically fix dictatorships.
- cbg0 8y agoDemocratic party neoliberals are to blame that the republican house, republican senate, and republican president are squandering the US' superpowers?
- guelo 8y agoBefore Reagan and Bill Clinton the Democrats used to be in opposition to some of the free trade extremism. Once they capitulated it developed into a Washington bipartisan consensus no matter who is in power.
- kopo 8y agoWell...all that Saudi oil money has to go somewhere and isn't it just better most of it flows into the US instead of China or Russia or wherever? Wielding soft power doesn't have to be tightly coupled to it.
- guelo 8y ago
- joeblau 8y agoI'm extremely curious watching the progress of the Vision Fund. Softbank already announced a second 100B fund of which Saudi Arabia is contributing 45B, but we've been in an extremely bearish market. What's going to happen during the next economic recession. Will there be so much money going into private companies that they'll be able to ride out the next economic pull back?
- joeblau 8y agoSorry, I said bearish and I meant bullish.
- tw1010 8y agoWhat's the best way to know what quotient of your investment money comes from "good" (e.g. enviourmentally friendly) sources vs "bad" (e.g. oil) sources? The enviourmental industry tend to be really good about going deep with where energy is coming from (looking many layers deeper, not allowing certain certificates if e.g. solar panels are constructed in an enviourmentally unfriendly way). Is there something similar in the tech investment world? Is there some index or something you can look up (some independent investigator) to ensure that you're minimizing taking money from actors who has gotten it in a questionable way (or who will use their returns to e.g. invest in coal plants)? Don't tell me it's an impossible task. Again, the energy industry tends to be pretty good at this. There are ways to know that the energy you're buying is clean not just on the surface level (but many layers down the pipeline of influences).
- TheCoelacanth 8y ago"Environmentally friendly" vs. "environmentally unfriendly" is surely not easy to measure, but it's going to be a cakewalk compared to measuring "good" and "bad".
- tw1010 8y agoI'm not expecting anything rigorous, of course. A first approximation is fine. There are some smart hardworking academics out there, surely they've thought about this question in some book somewhere. This what humanities excels at.
- docker_up 8y agoThis isn't the first time journalists have been killed by governments, and won't be the last time. A journalist was assassinated by the Taiwanese government right here in Silicon Valley, on US soil, ~30 years ago, and no one seems to care anymore. No one would think twice about doing business with the Taiwanese government these days, I think, tragically, this will blow over after a while. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Liu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Liu
- danso 8y agoThe lengthy Wikipedia bio you link to suggests that Liu was far from forgotten. Numerous Kuomintang officials were sent to prison, including a life sentence for the head of intelligence. It also appears to have played a factor in the Chiang family not pursuing the presidency. What other consequences do you think Taiwan should be facing 30 years after the fact?
- kronecker_delta 8y agoA quick glance at the article immediately says that the KMT is responsible, which is the Chinese representative party of Taiwan that believes it should not be considered its own country despite having its own democratic government. Following that line of thought, it would be more logical to say “no one would think twice about doing business with China”.
- padmabushan 8y agoIt happened. It was a symptom of dictatorship(or whatever you call it). US courts provided a reasonable platform for justice in that case. Then, it is followed by democratic reforms in Taiwan. Taiwan have moved towards addressing root cause, I see now that the Saudis are far from any self-correcting action.
- projectramo 8y agoThe big question for me is: why now? You can have your own list of equivalent or worse actions by several allies. So what triggered the recent reaction? The Washington Post suggests that it’s because it humanized the action. A lone journalist — a writer whom we may have read — attacked in a brutal fashion. But what no one mentions is that his uncle was a famous billionaire and his cousin was Dodi al Fayed. Surely he has powerful family members who are outraged and connected. The only problem with this theory is that the same might have been said of Bin Talal and nobody blinked at his arrest.
- BariumBlue 8y agoPartially the reaction is due to the location: a Saudi consulate. Embassies/consulates are generally considered unassailable, because an attack on them (or the people in them) is considered an attack on that nation itself. Essentially, conducting an attack/murder at a consulate is considered far out of the standard diplomatic procedure. Bin Salman (who wasn't initially aware who conducted the attack) was outraged and demanded answers (not knowing the chain of responsibility would route back)
- projectramo 8y agoWouldn’t that make it less objectionable since that would mean they technically attacked a person in their own country?
- danso 8y agoWhy would it be less objectionable to be killed in your own "home" by your own government? The reason why governments don't kill their own citizens on another country's soil is because it's incredibly hard to do so without angering that other country.
- anticensor 8y agoYou cannot execute a person in an embassy.
- twtw 8y ago
- liftbigweights 8y agoAnd the news industry, hollywood and politics... Isn't the US awash in saudi money everywhere? Would anyone be shocked if next to israel, saudi arabia owned the second largest stable of lobbyists and politicians in DC. I wouldn't. Also, what about the british, canadian, qatari, chinese and israeli money in silicon valley, news, hollywood and politics? The only reason tech companies, news companies, hollywood and politicians are pushing the russian interference and influence narrative is because the russians are too poor to buy influence and interfere in the US. I'm glad some light is being shed on the saudis but for how long? Until they can get the saudis to write some big checks to hush them up? And more importantly, will the british, chinese and israeli money and influence get any scrutiny? Or is sinclair correct? "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not knowing the right answer."
- perseusprime11 8y agoThis explains why none of the big wigs in the Industry like Marc Andreesen, Reed Hastings, Vinod Khosla, Reid Hoffman, and others pretty much kept quiet. On other days, their Twitter feed will be filled with Trump hate. Looks like there is a price for American values.
- hollerith 8y agoSA get more negative press now than they did after the 9/11 attacks even though 14 of the 15 attackers grew up in SA and even though wealthy Saudis were the main source of funds for the madrassas that created most Islamic extremists. The US doesn't need SA the way it did in 2001 what with its having become self-sufficient in petroleum.
- sschueller 8y agoThey do if they want to control the price for the rest of the world and make sure that oil is traded in dollars.
- doubleunplussed 8y agoIs the oil being traded in dollars really that big a deal to anyone? Call me naive but that sounds like being worried about whether the volume of the oil is measured in gallons vs litres.
- yaakov34 8y agoThe fact that dollars are widely used in international markets, e.g. in oil trading, is what enables the US to borrow money abroad in its own currency. Which is a pretty big deal, since owing money in currency you don't control (which of course is what most nations have to do) leaves you vulnerable if there is a downturn in your economy and your currency weakens. Keeping the status of the dollar as a major reserve and trade currency is important to the USA.
- dialtone 8y agoUSA still imports about 50% of the oil barrels it uses each day, about 10m[1], and there is not enough pipeline capacity to move shale oil to refineries[2]. It's a long way to being self-sufficient. [1]: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/10/18/americas-shale-industry-faces-constraints https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/10/18/americas-shale-... [2]: https://www.economist.com/business/2018/10/20/the-shale-boom-has-made-america-the-worlds-top-oil-producer https://www.economist.com/business/2018/10/20/the-shale-boom...