Silicon Valley is awash with Saudi Arabian money | Hacker News Reader

Silicon Valley is awash with Saudi Arabian money

qz.com

168 pointsdsr12122 comments

SA 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.

They do if they want to control the price for the rest of the world and make sure that oil is traded in dollars.

Is 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.

The 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.

USA 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-... [2]: https://www.economist.com/business/2018/10/20/the-shale-boom...

I accept your correction; the US in not self-sufficient: "in June America produced 13% of global crude oil" (economist URL in child comment) whereas it consumes about 20%:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/273565/share-of-the-majo...

I 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.

Something’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?

It 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.

The 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.

I 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?

I'm not so sure it's as much about etiquette than deniability.

If he was killed in some "accident" then the other countries or corporations can easily buy the lie, avoid the confrontation and keep the money/relationship (even if they think it is likely to be state-sanctioned). Because it was such a screw up (fiance waiting outside was a kind of solid witness as well as the recording etc.), it is much harder for others to accept the "accident", which becomes toxic PR and therefore something to distance yourselves from.

This is exactly what I was thinking. Other alleged government-ordered assassinations have enough plausible deniability that they may indeed be the work of rogue elements. For example, at around the same time that Khashoggi's death became known, Bulgarian journalist Viktoria Marinova was found raped and murdered after she had gone out for a jog. It was immediately suspected to be politically-motivated, as she had recently anchored a news program that looked at EU corruption. A few days ago, a 21-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of Marinova's rape and murder, and prosecutors do not believe that she was killed for her work [0].

Of course, that doesn't mean she wasn't killed as part of a state plot. But there's not much reason to suspect that over the possibility that she was a random murder victim. For her death to be as scandalous and controversial as Khashoggi's, it would have to have the same evidence of suspicious circumstances. For example, the 21-year-old suspect being an employee of Bulgaria's intelligence agency or military covert forces, and being caught and identified right after her death, but taking 1+ weeks to come up with the confession that he randomly murdered her, despite purported audio recordings that suggest that he murdered with political intent.

[0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/10/viktoria-marinova-mur...

This is bullshit. The difference is that this guy was a blue check mark with a column in the Washington Post. He was a journalist, one of them.

If a human rights activist had been killed in the same way the story would have blown over already. It is not news to anyone that Saudi Arabia is the personal fief of the Saud family, who are brutish medieval thugs. Everyone knows perfectly well that they cut off people’s hands and crucify people and if there’s a government on the Arabian peninsula that doesn’t use torture according to Amnesty or Human Rights Watch I’ll be very much surprised.

The denial was not meant to be credible, it was meant to be nakedly obvious that he was killed in the consulate and they were meant to get away with it s it free as a warning to any other dissidents.

And the next time they will. It’s the combination of being a guy who goes to inside Beltway cocktail parties, the Turkish government having the consulate bugged and the Saudis’ gross incompetence that did it. The absence of any one would have had them getting off Scot free.

So presumably you're going to provide us a list with human rights activists who have been killed in the same way? That said, I don't see what you're arguing here. Is there any doubt that the murders of well-known people get more attention than murders of less-known people? And when a well-known someone is brazenly murdered in connection to the reason he was well-known, that the fame effect is amplified? What's your point?

Not an activist, but the head of the Interpol was kidnapped (and currently whereabouts unknown) by his own country. Not a random person, but head of the Interpol.

Don't see the same outcry. Also the Maltese journalist (Caruana) uncovering European dark money who was bombed --not much press.

There's not been the same outcry but there has definitely been coverage of the fact that Meng Hongwei had been detained by the Chinese government [0], just as there was when Fan Bingbing, "China's most famous actress", disappeared before recently announcing she had been investigated for tax evasion [1]. Should there be more outcry about the Chinese government detaining its citizens without transparency? Sure, but I think it's obvious why Khashoggi's case has received more attention. Not just that he died and his body is currently missing, but for the ongoing coverup. Also, both have at least been officially accused of crimes by their government, whereas Khashoggi AFAIK had not been at the time of his death.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/world/asia/china-interpol...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/world/asia/china-fan-bing...

edit: Memories and perceptions vary, of course, but Caruana's murder from what I remember got a massive amount of attention in the media. The top Google result for "Caruana murder" are currently from the BBC, NPR, The Guardian, and the NYT. In addition, the "Forbidden Stories" collaboration was launched to continue her work:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/world/europe/journalist-m...

> After her death, 45 journalists from 18 news organizations agreed to work together to pursue leads from her work on corruption and international money-laundering networks, as well as look into the circumstances surrounding her death. Forbidden Stories, an investigative nonprofit in Paris devoted to completing the work of jailed and murdered journalists, coordinated the collaboration, in which The New York Times took part.

She was killed 1 year ago but her death still gets recent coverage, like this article from 2 days ago from the Committee to Protect Journalists:

https://cpj.org/blog/2018/10/efforts-to-find-mastermind-in-m...

> presumably you're going to provide us a list with human rights activists who have been killed in the same way

You are doubting that human rights activists are killed by governments?

Emphasis mine:

> presumably you're going to provide us a list with human rights activists who have been killed in the same way

The root-level comment [0] is speculating that there's "something different about this", because Khashoggi's death what seems like an inordinate amount of attention. I'm arguing that his alleged assassination is getting so much attention because of the egregious circumstances and coverup surrounding it. If it were the case that many, or even just a few other people have died under similar circumstances, only to be quickly forgotten, then it would strengthen the implication that the controversy around Khashoggi is partly concocted by some greater conspiracy.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18267858

I understood what you are saying, and FWIW I'm very glad Khashoggi is getting all this attention.

But that doesn't make the parent wrong that Khashoggi getting attention disproportionate to similar crimes (and it doesn't demonstrate a conspiracy; IMHO he simply is more prominent and in many people's minds he is effectively an American journalist and/or represents American values).

I assume you must be aware that horrible things like this happen to many people in many countries - and I wish they all got this level of attention. Just off the top of my head, in China there are people in Xinjiang in labor/re-education camps, people who disappear when they go to Beijing to petition the government, dissidents who the Chinese government kidnaps from foreign countries, etc. That's just one country; there's N Korea, Myanmar, Russia (all the murdered and imprisoned journalists and political opposition) and so many more.

I'm not sure what you're really trying to say. Is the crime in Khashoggi's case qualitatively different? Because he was killed? While not everyone in every example I named was killed, certainly many are.

Yes, Khashoggi's case is qualitatively different -- not just because he was killed, but because of who he was in life, the manner of his alleged murder, and the ensuing coverup. We can agree in theory, or ideally, that all deaths/murders should be equal in weight. But pragmatically, we only have a limited attention span to devote to a finite number of these tragedies. And the info and background around Khashoggi's case is substantially more accessible than people who have been covertly murdered.

Of course famous people get more attention when things happen to them (not just death, but relationships, babies, job changes, etc) -- the nature of being famous is that more people know about you at all. But the parent commenter is wrong to believe that the attention and stories given to Khashoggi are simply about the event of his murder. Khashoggi was a journalist for one of the world's largest and most prestigious news organizations -- it shouldn't be a surprise that those newspeople are inclined to make a big deal of his death. And because his life involved being an outspoken critic of a particularly important world leader -- which unavoidably entangles other world leaders, such as President Trump -- the matters surrounding his death are going to continue draw worldwide attention.

For sure we can presume if he’d been sympathetic to Kurds in the southeast, or critical of the post coup attempt crackdown, he’d likely be on a different list. Point being this seems like Turkish manoeuvering for their benefit. But that said the coordination in the reaction has been unique.

>> This is bullshit. The difference is that this guy was a blue check mark with a column in the Washington Post. He was a journalist, one of them.

Well yes, it turns out people care about it a lot when someone in their group gets cut to pieces with a saw.

What gives, imo, is that the "international community" [whatever that means to you ..] has decided that MbS can not be the next King of SA.

Heads of state are routinely dispatching people by various violent means, including "bloody dismemberment" by remote controlled Drones. Normally, this is "OK" by the "international community", unless the head of state in question has crossed the said "community" or violated unspoken "international" protocols not disclosed to us peons.

Another view is that Western leaders never err -- how can they? -- in violently dismembering people (and their families) and only brown (or otherwise shaded) leaders commit such sins. In other words, no Nobel Prize for you, MbS.

I remember chuckling reading in Vanity Fair how the CEOs of the "international" criminal banking guild were all huddled up and worried about the ethical issue of should they go to MbS's upcoming gathering or not. Besides chuckling, I was impressed by the amazing discipline of those who control MSM to line up the bipartisan ducks when the order is issued from on high.

But seriously, in the early 70s the United States of America and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia reached a secret strategic agreement. And the USA no longer wishes to hold up their end of that grand agreement.

Naturaly, HN, this is my opinion.

> Heads of state are routinely dispatching people by various violent means, including "bloody dismemberment" by remote controlled Drones.

Why not give examples? I can give a well-known one: President Obama's approval of the 2011 drone strike on Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen residing in Yemen (his 16-year-old son, also a U.S. citizen, was killed in another strike but was not officially targeted for killing).

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/magazine/the-lessons-of-a...

It was controversial years later, including today -- his 8-year old daughter was killed during a 2017 U.S. raid [0], but I think we can agree that Obama was far from danger of stepping down. However, the facts surrounding al-Awlaki's and Khashoggi's deaths are different enough to suggest there are natural, non-conspiracy reasons for why MBS is facing far more scrutiny. We can only imagine hypotheticals, but if Obama had ordered a drone strike on Sean Hannity on U.S. soil, and then pretended for a week that it was an accident despite his signature on the kill order, I'm pretty sure he would have faced similar levels of outrage.

> But seriously, in the early 70s the United States of America and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia reached a secret strategic agreement. And the USA no longer wishes to hold up their end of that grand agreement.

The United States's and Saudi Arabia's strategic of the past decades has hardly been "secret". And the U.S. is far from eager to disengage from that alliance, as recent headlines suggest:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/white...

> At the same time, Trump defended the oil-rich monarchy as an “incredible ally” and kept open the possibility that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman did not order Saudi agents to kill Khashoggi.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/01/yemen-strike-e...

The scope and details were, in fact, a secret: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-05-30/the-untol...

It's because he was, effectively if not literally, an American journalist. It's well known among journalists, and there's even a sort of exponent-based 'law' that's sarcastically cited - I can't remember it, but it's something like: 1 person killed on your block is equivalent to 10 people killed 100 miles away, etc.

An American killed means much more to Americans than 100 people from Saudi Arabia killed, and vice versa.

He was Saudi, hence his visit to the embassy to get some marriage license thing done. It’s like saying an American correspondent stationed in Iran is actually an Iranian.

Even if he had been, say, what’s that conspiracy theorist-cum-journalist, Jones. If he’d bern offed as an American, I’m unsure of yhd media reaction. Of course, you might come and retort hd wasn’t a “true journalist”. But then we’re picking anc choosing fights.

> He was Saudi

To be clear, I wasn't talking about his legal status. I'm talking about how the conception of him in the minds of many Americans: A journalist for the Washington Post is an American journalist, to a great degree, in many Americans minds. If he worked for the Jerusalem Post or a prominent Saudi news organization, IMHO Americans would have much less interest. Many Al Jazeera journalists have experienced pretty bad treatment, but I doubt most people know.

The rest of the parent comment is a made-up situation.

I disagree, IMHO what works best are immigrants and emigrants. Typically, the country people emigrate into has more influence in that relationship, but there is an effect the other way around, too.

> power and money are the only things that work in global relations

Power is the only thing that works anywhere (money being a source of power) at a certain level, but that's kind of like saying all science is physics - it'd doesn't really have explanatory use. The question is how and why it's exercised. Domestically in advanced countries, it's controlled to a significant extent by government, which is controlled by citizens and people with power, who all can be manipulated by mass media, who are subject to Facebook and Twitter's power, which is influenced by public opinion and stockholders and the news the CEO reads, etc. etc. etc. It's a complicated web.

> Countries are forced to develop nuclear weapons because treaties are not honored owing to special interests

But even nuclear weapons treaties are influenced by public opinion. After (and before) the treaty with Iran was signed, there was a intense campaign on the U.S. right to discredit it, along with their attempts to discredit everything Obama did, giving Trump sufficient political support to break the treaty. If the public has been strongly in favor of it, it would have been a different story. So what power led the U.S. to break the treaty? Public opinion? Whoever was trying to influence public opinion in that direction? Large donors to the Trump or the GOP? There is a web of influence.

But I will say this for the the theory of "power and money" - the best way IMHO to find the power behind something is to follow the money: Who benefits? Who is benefited from the murder of Khashoggi? Who benefited from the portrayal of the Saudi dictator as a good person? Who benefits from the response?

The 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.

Partially 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)

Wouldn’t that make it less objectionable since that would mean they technically attacked a person in their own country?

Why 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.

You cannot execute a person in an embassy.

This would make a lot of sense if it wasn't the Saudi government that did it. The Saudi government killing him in their own consulate is not "an attack on the nation."

> The Washington Post suggests that it’s because it humanized the action.

Putting a human face on a controversy tends to cement the controversy in people's minds. Rosa Parks was not the only nor the first person to be arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat [0], but she was the one whose case was made famous. But Khashoggi was not merely just someone known who was killed, he was someone known for speaking out against the Saudi prince. People who are killed because of their (legal) work, by the powers most threatened by their work, generally get more sympathy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks#Her_refusal_to_move

Why Khashoggi's murder shocked?

A power network in the West was pushing Muhammad bin Salman a the reformer and the good guy in an imminent attack on Iran.

Khashoggi's Apple Watch helped solve the case as he recorded his own murder. And suddenly MbS has turned out to be a "butcher" killing a journalist in a Saudi Arabian consulate. So the power network has a dilemma.

Now the irony is that Apple is one of targets for Saudi money in Silicon Valley money.

It's pretty clean cut. People's opinions change in tandem with the actions of others.

Stalin is supposed to have said: "The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic."

Khashoggi's murder had emotional force, while the war in Yemen did not, because the media was able to focus on one person's story and make us empathize. Also, as far as the US media were concerned, they were able to identify with him as a US resident and a reporter. Not surprisingly, news organizations heavily cover attacks on their brethren.

Great points. Another thing I think may have contributed is the odd way (odd to me at least) that information trickled out. Things were released in a way where the story wasn't able to be buried. New details emerged seemingly daily and they emerged in a way that helped paint a detailed picture of not only the crime but the cover up.

People aren't buying it and it also helps lift the curtain on politics and people get to see the dark machinery behind the clean cut curtain politics likes to have.

Politics definitely helps manipulate tons of markets but in the world we are in right now and the way I imagine most people feel about the way the governments represent them around the world people seem to be sick of not only that but the way the government's power has a stranglehold on media. People like to say people are stupid but I don't think they are stupid enough to have the wool pulled over their eyes all the time.

Obligatory Quote Investigator link: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/21/death-statistic/

> In conclusion, the saying was attributed to Joseph Stalin by 1947, but the evidentiary support for the linkage was not clear to QI. Columnist Lyons stated that the words were spoken during a meeting “of the highest ranking Commissars”. Perhaps a statement was made by a witness, but QI has not located such a document at this time. The satirist Kurt Tucholsky placed a similar remark into the mouth of a French diplomat in a piece that was available in German by 1925.

The war in Yemen is a proxy war against Iran and it is tragic. It's also billed as a war on terrorism. It is also not covered well in the USA.

Killing a journalist is always a bad idea because journalists are the ones in charge of the message / media.

I think it is about swallowing the less poisonous pill.

Of course, he is related to Dodi Fayed (the dude killed with Diana), and his uncle is Adnan Khashoggi, the billionaire arms dealer. The entire family was very well connected in the West, especially the elite (British monarchy, Washington DC, etc).

But beyond that, he was also a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a diametrically opposing philosophy to Al Saud's Salafism (but still islamist and regressive, in my opinion. Bin Laden was a member, someone who Jamal was friendly with for a long time).

Perhaps the American media are more closely aligned with MB than with Al Sauds. This would explain the outrage to me. The GCC nations are extremely anti MB. However, MB has a relatively positive presence in the US. Here is an article from WaPo about when CAIR was designated as a terrorist org in UAE due to MB ties (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/11/17...).

I think the US generally turns a blind eye to both MB and Saudi atrocities. However, MB is a little better connected socially in the US (elites, civil rights orgs, etc) compared to Saudi, which is better connected on a federal level (aid, trade, investments).

> Of course, he is related to Dodi Fayed (the dude killed with Diana), and his uncle is Adnan Khashoggi, the billionaire arms dealer. The entire family was very well connected in the West, especially the elite (British monarchy, Washington DC, etc).

I don't see how it's relevant to his murder, other than to try to smear the victim. That Princess Diana was murdered is an unsubstantiated rumor.

> But beyond that, he was also a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a diametrically opposing philosophy to Al Saud's Salafism (but still islamist and regressive, in my opinion. Bin Laden was a member).

Now I'm not sure if these are more smears or not. Is there a basis for them?

> Now I'm not sure if these are more smears or not. Is there a basis for them?

Do you know much about the Ikhwan Muslimeen? If not, then you are missing a huge part of MENA politics over the last 90 years, and the more recent Saudi vs. rest of MENA spats (ex: Qatar). Might be worth reading up on them. Start from end of Ottoman Empire and don't skip over Sayyid Qutb.

there is a basis to at least some of these claims.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Khashoggi

“There is a basis”

Of course there is. I have no idea why there is such a viceral reaction to a nuanced viewpoint of why a guy got dismembered. It’s not a simple “he was a cool WaPo journalist who criticized the Saudi family “

It reminds me of how so many smart people supported the Iraq war in 2003, including American media like NYT.

I implore people to not do that again.

There is a serious and well documented basis in neutral american and european media-going back decades.

It reminds me of how so many smart people make decisions based on an anecdotal basis, including American media like NYT. I implore people to not do that again.

side note: your background is wild. you have been around the block a time or two..I think you have some good stories to tell.

There's an article up on the Brookings Institute's website, which directly addresses all of the Republican/Saudi talking points that you're sharing here.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/10/19/o...

I think the US generally turns a blind eye to both MB and Saudi atrocities.

I do agree with you on this point. I think the United States's complicity in atrocities committed by the Saudi regime is abhorrent.

I am appalled you think these are “republican/Saudi” talking points. Please don’t get swayed by this sort of propaganda. I never said Jamal was anti secularism. This article you link seems to presenting a very biased take on history.

I am speaking as someone who lived under salafi rule and have a strong dislike of Saudi Arabia. To suggest I am using Saudi talking points is absolutely bizarre, ignorant and uneducated.

Note to self: never call out the extreme close mindedness of certain HN commentators. Even if it directly applies to why you became a refugee.

> The big question for me is: why now?

The main reason this became a story is because the Saudis where caught red handed by Turkey, and that Turkey saw that they could use this to damage Saudi Arabia.

If you've been following the story, it is fairly clear that information coming out of Turkey has been timed to inflict the most damage to Saudi Arabia and disrupts its relationships with the west.

Part of it is just coverage. Coverage on the news appears to be a prerequisite for large scale outrage, although it also doesn't appear to be sufficient. The very nature of who was murdered, a journalist, has made it much easier for other journalists to talk about this a lot. That some of them knew the victim certainly reinforces this. Hence the coverage and hence the outrage.

The other thing that's fascinated me for a while is the breaking point for certain regimes or systems. Regimes can survive decades of abuse, but when the breaking point arrives it's never what you think it would be. The large scale Arab Spring revolt was triggered, as best we can tell, by the public suicide of a harassed street vendor (Mohamed Bouazizi). A tragic story for certain, but a surprisingly small trigger when compared to the decades of abuse and conflict in the region.

With that framework in place, it would not surprise me one bit if something like a murdered journalist is the straw that breaks the camel's back in the relations between Saudi and the west. Set against the backdrop of 9/11, persistent human rights abuses, and staggering civilian deaths in Yemen, one journalist is a very small drop of blood in a large ocean. But that's how these things go sometimes.

>So what triggered the recent reaction?

>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.

The clear answer to me is that the Washington Post has more influence & power to stoke public outrage than a Saudi billionaire does. Which... really isn't very surprising.

It's also the continuation of a trend by the intelligence services in recent months to "dox" their opposition+. Not sure why the change: perhaps a realization that information is impossible to contain these days so they may as well leak it to their best advantage.

+E.g. Russian dudes in jogging pants going to Salisbury to see the cathedral..

My best sketchy guess is that:

1) The American media is rallying around one of its own. This means more headlines but doesn’t mean much about what action ultimately gets taken.

2) Incredible incompetence on the part of the Saudis, resulting in being caught completely red handed. They’re so unable to come up with a convincing lie about what happened that even Donald Trump can’t deny it was a state sponsored hit.

What'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).

"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".

I'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.

This 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

The 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?

A 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”.

It 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.

I'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?

Sorry, I said bearish and I meant bullish.

This 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.

Money 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.

He said global relations, but it’s kind of a no brainer point - ‘power and money’ is pretty all encompassing

She 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.

If only she knew that running up the score in California wasn’t as important as securing wins in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan...

She did almost no campaigning in California after the primaries. Mostly all she did in California after that was fund raising.

That'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...

Voter roll purges are under way in certain states to consolidate Republican control, especially Georgia.

> Money is not, even now, the only factor that matters when it comes to power and politics.

This is true. While military strength, money, control of resources, etc, have always been important (and probably always will be), public opinion has been a factor in international relations since the time of the french revolution.

It isn’t, but it’s still a huge factor in American politics that so much of the eligible voting population stays home. Successful campaigns are the ones that optimize the “get out the vote” efforts, and that requires money for ads and field offices.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18267674.

This 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?

Kidnapping 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.

From 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.

At 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.

It 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.

I'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.

MBS 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.

Why 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".

I'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.

You're looking at Saudi Arabia from the point of view of a strategic ally. They're a threat, and what they do is not something we need to support.

I'm not usually the person to bring up past comments, but I do think your opinion on what I extrapolate to be cancelling the arms deal:

"> and when countries can’t rely on Western political, technological and military support, it is very likely they will attempt to pursue WMDs to make up for it (as done by all three)"

It's a commonly brought up argument, but North Korea never pursued WMDs because of fear of a Western threat, or to defend themselves from anyone. They did it because they want to use it as leverage to get the US to pull out of South Korea (which is also why they want the peace treaty declared so badly). This is working quite well so far.

Again, I only bring that comment up because I think it's relevant here, and the North Korea statement as a counter-example. I'm more concerned by what Saudi Arabia is going to do with those arms we sell them.

It's possible that a moderate Western democracy could eventually work if you didn't kill members of a free press, which would be the first step.

> However, there are good things going on in Saudi Arabia right now...

What is not given prominent coverage at the moment is MbS is the latest in the House of Saud attempting to prune back the Wahhabist power base [1]. There are whispers that Jamal Kashoggi might possibly be nefariously related to 9/11, and is at the least a "person of interest" [2]. It is extremely unlikely we will ever know the realpolitik behind-the-scenes story now, and going back to status quo ante becomes increasingly possible for the KSA the more days this drags on (it would be interesting to find out if the KSA has procured crisis management and/or PR expertise for this incident).

[1] https://www.albawaba.com/news/saudi-arabia-turning-against-w...

[2] https://washingtonsblog.com/2018/10/jamal-khashoggi-where-th...

I think parent comment shouldn’t be flagged, helps give context for an ELI5 explanation

Best 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.

Is 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..

They'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?

In 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.

Don’t forget that his 16 year old son was killed in that strike too. He was not an accused terrorist.

His son was targeted and killed in a separate, later strike.

My mistake, thank you.

It doesn't make much sense. There are other journos who have died in custody or are still rotting away in custody.

United 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.

Democratic party neoliberals are to blame that the republican house, republican senate, and republican president are squandering the US' superpowers?

Before 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.

The current POTUS is anything but a "free trade extremist"

Yes, for better or worse Trump is breaking the Washington concensus on trade and you get a lot of opposition from the establishment both left and right.

Well...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.

In my ideal world we would be isolating Saudi Arabia and treating it as the drug dealer feeding the world's addiction to oil that we need to kick.

Yeah...but maybe in the ideal world the addiction gets kicked and the drug dealer get rehabilitated. Isolation will probably create its own consequences.

What time are you talking about? In the 40s they had concentration camps inside the US for japanese people. In the 50s they experimented on some towns/US citizens with different diseases, and in the 70s and 80s they created coups all over South and Central America against democratic governments.

Yes, and in all those time periods they had a far better record than their main adversaries.

C'mon people, is it really that hard to get that the West (1) has a flawed human rights record, and at the same time (2) has a better record than the main other countries?

The main other countries being? Even USSR didn't have 2/3rds of the world's population enslaved and their countries occupied. Western colonial powers did. This is just Africa for example [1], add Asia (including at times China and Japan, and Latin America, plus parts of Europe (e.g. Cyprus, a British colony).

Heck, the 2 world wars weren't started by those "other countries" either. European countries started it too.

[1] https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--SDNKBhk...

That is more a matter of competence than morals. Asia and Africa had no better moral instincts, any look at what they did within shows that, they just lacked the competence to conquer beyond their geography.

This idea is the most disgusting part of western morals...

The inability to understand that, with their faults and all, not all cultures are equally power-grubbing like theirs. And that who did what to whom matters...

At least they could say they're sorry, instead of "I only fucked you over because you didn't have the power to fuck me".

Sorry, but how are Western and non-Western morality systems different when it comes to justifying power-grubbing or hostile action?

I don't see how that is a Western moral, in fact modern Western mores are incredibly self-loathing about imperialism, in sharp contrast with say Japanese attitudes, just as a recent example. You suggest that non-Western cultures are less power grubbing. Which ones exactly? The Aztecs? The Mongols? The Japanese? The Zulu? The Arabs? The Persians? The Chinese? Power grubing is as universally human as speech.

“2/3rds of the world's population enslaved and their countries occupied”

At this point, even Howard Zinn would be placing a hand on your shoulder and warning, “Bring it down a notch, kid.”

I agree with you. But that is not what the parent stated, he said that "United States used to at least credibly pretend that it cared about human rights". I don't think the US ever credibly pretended it cared.

Yes, as far as empires go, the US is not that bad. I actually wonder what's going to happen if China becomes the next superpower/empire, given that they are a dictatorship. And they may even use that fact to say they are more efficient, because a dictator can swiftly take decisions while parliaments are quite messy.

Will China achieve 100% renewable energy before Europe/US? It definitely can, and they'd sell their dictatorship pretty easily on that achievement.

They also supported and funded Pinochet, Suharto, Saddam, overthrown the democratically elected president of Iran (Mossadeq), meddled in sovereign countries like Korea and Vietnam, and so on. Heck, they divided Europe into zones of influence between themselves and USSR too.

The United States foreign policy has never been about human rights, it's always been realpolitik, we give it lip service when it suits the end result (which is not credible except to credulous Americans.)

The main exception was Jimmy Carter - https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/ca...

The international good guy theory of the United States foreign policy is a fiction fostered by history books in American K-12 public education - it's not supported by the evidence of a century of interventions in foreign countries for monied interests.

Which is why they said "credibly pretend that it cared about human rights" instead of "cared about human rights".

And 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."

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