Comment by cryoshon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cryoshon | Hacker News Reader

hacking of bezos' phone by MBS of KSA suggests an effort by the saudis to influence news coverage so that their backwards petrostate is not excoriated as routinely or as comprehensively for its cornucopia of egregiously unacceptable faults. there may also be some sort of wrondoing on behalf of trump in this incident, but i think it's too early to say either way.

on the bright side, this flap is a battle of billionaires. whoever loses, we win. at the current stage of the news cycle, it looks like MBS is down for the count, meaning that we're that much closer to being able to exclude KSA from world affairs until it modernizes. but, we'll have to see where it goes. if the media and the UN don't carry this investigation to its conclusion, there's still a chance the perpetrators could weasel away.

relatedly, this is the second incident in which someone has sought to blackmail bezos and failed horribly. i usually don't appreciate bezos, but the guy's unflappable. i wonder what bezos is doing behind the scenes to get back at the perpetrators, if anything.

> ...this flap is a battle of billionaires. whoever loses, we win

Why? Does power or wealth leak back to society amid the Game of Thrones?

Love the comment.

As long as one powerful entity is weaker we are all stronger. In reality no matter who wins we all lose in different ways. A weak Saudi makes Iran stronger. A weak Bezo means lobbying and laws that will affect us in someway.

Yeah...OP's comment doesn't make sense to me either. And frankly, MBS is far more powerful than Bezos is. It's a battle between a billionaire living amongst other billionaires in a republic, and a multi-trillionaire who's an absolute monarch leading a great power.

saudi arabia isn't a great power. it has economic power via oil, but this power is eroding at a lightning speed thanks to the end of the petrochemical era. it has no military power to speak of, nor any cultural influence whatsoever outside of the muslim world. at the same time, its own culture is being eroded by the west's at a blinding pace. its institutions are weak and too corrupt to be taken seriously. its labor force is non-competitive. its citizens are not educated, nor are they interested in a transition to being more educated and competitive.

it is entirely reliant on foreign labor, foreign weapons, and foreign intellectual property. it has no natural resources to speak of, other than oil. it isn't a member of any powerful geopolitical blocs, and its fear of its more powerful neigbor (iran) has dictated its disposition for a long time.

in short, it's a billionaire's playground, but it isn't a nation that's very formidable. in the realm of cybersecurity/cyberwarfare, i'd put my money on bezos.

If I were Bezos I'd shut off the Saudi's access to Prime and Small Parts.

> until it modernizes

What's that even supposed to mean?

Until it becomes a liberal democracy, I presume.

Which is not bloody likely.

And indeed, maybe liberal democracies are history, anyway.

If SA were a liberal democracy, Iran is a good example of the government voters would elect and the relationship the country would have with the US. So of course the US prefers tyranny there, just as it preferred tyranny in Iran. Once the oil runs out there, the US will suddenly return to the values it espouses.

That's a good point. I agree with you about US policy.

But basically, that's why liberal democracies are unlikely in the Middle East. It's not just the current tyranny. It's the absence of a cultural context for liberal democracy.

> It's the absence of a cultural context for liberal democracy.

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Except that liberal democracies are not the only way to run fair and stable societies. So it should not be an end goal, this is a very Western-centric view of things.

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