
Is Saudi money becoming radioactive? - propman
https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/10/will-mbss-money-ever-become-radioactive/
======
krn
Saudi Arabia's missing princes:

[https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40926963](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40926963)

Saudis Said to Use Coercion and Abuse to Seize Billions:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/11/world/middleeast/saudi-
ar...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/11/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-
corruption-mohammed-bin-salman.html)

Saudi Arabia arrests economist after he criticises Crown Prince's plans:

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-
east/saudi-a...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-
arabia-economist-arrest-mohammed-bin-salman-terror-charges-mbs-name-of-
economist-edited-a8564991.html)

~~~
Jerry2
Look at the list of prominent SV VCs and execs who were recently 'named to a
Saudi advisory board': Sam Altman, Marc Andreessen, Travis Kalanick etc.

[https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-execs-named-saudi-
board...](https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-execs-named-saudi-board-
controversy-jamal-khashoggi-disappearance-2018-10?op=1)

~~~
SauciestGNU
Surprised Sam Altman would sign on. Doesn't Saudi Arabia execute non-
heterosexual people?

~~~
throw34583945
Isn't being jewish (like most of YC) an even bigger issue to the saudis?

~~~
acjohnson55
Maybe 30+ years ago. Not these days.

~~~
throw34583945
According to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_re...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_relations),
Saudia Arabia forbids aircraft traveling to Israel from overflying Saudi
airspace. Doesn't seem very friendly to me.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Saudia Arabia forbids aircraft traveling to Israel from overflying Saudi
> airspace_

Anti-Israel, not (as) anti-Judaism. Saudi Arabia and Israel have a rough
history. I know plenty of Jews who safely do business in the KSA. That said,
they tend to stay within the larger cities of Riyadh and the more-liberal
Jeddah.

~~~
throw34583945
That's interesting, thanks for sharing. I guess pragmatic commerce finds a
way. I thought it was more black and white.

~~~
ethbro
A friend from Bahrain put Middle East politics this way: 'Look at the
Palestinians. Every country's government decries how poorly they've been
treated, but none of them lift a finger to do anything about it.'

In other words, money and business >> beliefs.

------
ilamont
SV founders get into bed with questionable characters, one-party governments,
and evil empires all the time. If the past and present is any guide, the
people named in this article will say some nice-sounding things or stay quiet
and wait for the news cycle to move on to the next scandal.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/08...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/08/why-
does-mark-zuckerberg-want-facebook-employees-to-read-the-chinese-presidents-
book/?utm_term=.91dd257f8aaa)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/11/yu...](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/11/yuri-
milner-paradise-papers/545483/)

------
clubm8
I'm surprised it took _17 years_ after Saudi money paid for 9/11[1] for this
to become the case.

[1][https://www.theguardian.com/us-
news/2016/jul/15/911-report-s...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-
news/2016/jul/15/911-report-saudi-arabia-28-pages-released)

------
timavr
USA has a lot of problems, but the fact that free press exists is a miracle.

Calling people out by name that they are hypocrites by taking Saudi money and
basically funding murder would get you killed in most countries.

~~~
andrepd
Which is why the ongoing attacks against the press are so serious. No joke: a
free press is almost as fundamental to a democracy as a good electoral
process, or good courts.

~~~
cpncrunch
But is a free press that has no checks and balances actually useful to
democracy? I was going to make a complaint yesterday about a Fox News article
that had some serious factual errors, but I see there is no agency in the USA
to make such a complaint to. So basically you have all sorts of fake news
being peddled and there's absolutely nothing that can be done about it.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _there is no agency in the USA to make such a complaint to_

If you have a government agency policing what the press can and cannot say,
you don't have a free press.

~~~
poulsbohemian
Your point is well taken, but I think what the previous poster was suggesting
is some kind of ombudsman. I don't know that the idea is without merit, though
as you point out it could be difficult to do in a way that preserved the
freedom and independence of media.

~~~
cpncrunch
Yes, the press complaints commission seemed to work well in the UK, and didn't
infringe any freedom of the media. We're not talking about deciding what can
and can't be said, just dealing with patently false statements.

------
ProAm
> there’s growing outrage over the week-long disappearance of dissident Saudi
> journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who Turkish officials say was murdered last week
> in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on orders from the Saudi Royal family,
> then cut into pieces with a bone saw and removed from the building.

Wow, that's crazy.

>Silicon Valley big wheels as Marc Andreessen, Sam Altman and Travis Kalanick
are advisors to a $500 billion megacity project being built by the country,
which has pitched it as a model of what future cities will look like.

Has Sam Altman commented on this project at all, or is it not associated with
YC?

~~~
andrepd
> >there’s growing outrage over the week-long disappearance of dissident Saudi
> journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who Turkish officials say was murdered last week
> in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on orders from the Saudi Royal family,
> then cut into pieces with a bone saw and removed from the building.

It's _litearally_ medieval, which is par on course for what this odious
country (regime, to be more clear). It's pretty much what Saudi Arabia is: a
medieval regime in 2018.

Of course, they just had to have trillions of dollars of oil under their feet,
hence we are accustomed to seeing our elected representatives, our leaders,
bowing and kissing the hands of that scum. Repugnant.

~~~
rgbrenner
Right. Forget about global warming.. there should be bipartisan support for
clean energy because we can stop dealing with countries like this.

~~~
stevenjohns
Energy has little to do with it. US support for Saudi Arabia is based on an
irrational opposition to Iran.

~~~
reza_n
Believe it or not, US support has made KSA extremely weak, especially
militarily. So its more like keep your enemies close, or in this case, oil
targets. US could topple KSA in a matter of months.

~~~
rgbrenner
SA is one of the largest arms purchasers in the world. They spend 10% of the
gdp on their military. If the US spent that much, we would be spending 3x what
we are currently -- or almost $2T/year.

They are about as strong as they can possibly be.

But at the end of the day, they're 32m people. 1/10th the US population or
about the same as Texas or New York.

The US didn't "make ksa extremely weak"... they're weak because they're small.

------
reza_n
> ...Diplomatic murder, women's rights arrests, Yemen war, Canada row, royal
> imprisonmemt...

There is also the failed blockade of Qatar. Seems like this has been a pretty
disastrous few years for MBS and he isn't even king. Im surprised he hasn't
been replaced. These are pretty massive blunders.

~~~
bilbo0s
> _Im surprised he hasn 't been replaced..._

Uh, he just took a chainsaw to a guy who said he didn't like the color of his
robe. Would _you_ suggest replacing a guy who does that if you were inside
elite circles in The Kingdom?

~~~
reza_n
If history is any guide, regime change doesn't need to come from within. Many
parallels have been drawn to Saddam.

------
saudiokay
The article is right on the point out the hypocrisy in condemning slight
missteps on the front of gender and diversity in one hand, and taking money
from those that order unlawful murders in another.

------
kgc
This would imply that the SoftBank Vision fund is also radioactive...

------
mattnewport
Something seems odd about this story. I can see him dying in a botched
interrogation or extraordinary rendition and it being covered up, or it was a
successful extraordinary rendition and he's back in a cell in Saudi Arabia,
but if they just wanted him dead why would it take 15 people and why would
they do it in their consulate? It seems like there are easier and more
plausibly deniable methods employed to do that like a "botched robbery", fire,
heart attack or car crash.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
You seem to think thinking about this way too much, IMO.

What's easier / cheaper? Paying a group of guys to just "go to X, kill him in
the streets" or the whole "make it look like a car accident" route from
movies? The former is easier, cheaper and quicker. I mean these people
bankrolled the largest terror attack on US soil and we still do business with
them, why would anyone care about a single journalist?

~~~
mattnewport
It still seems odd, "go to X, kill him in the streets" takes one or maybe two
assassin types not 15 agents and why would you do it in your consulate? There
are lots of examples of suspicious deaths that look like possible
assassinations. They don't usually look like this.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
> It still seems odd, "go to X, kill him in the streets" takes one or maybe
> two assassin types not 15 agents

Maybe in the movies. The more people the less likely one of you takes much if
any damage / death so it's safer that way. They may have wanted to cover most
of the exits, too.

> why would you do it in your consulate

Because that's where he was? I won't pretend to know what their plan was but
it probably wasn't anything too complicated. Just go, kill x, cut up, leave.

------
sys_64738
This country should be on the terrorist watch list. 19 of the 9/11 terrorists
came from that country.

This same country is armed by the Brits.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-40553741](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-40553741)

------
cyphunk
What reasons are there for being more suspect of money from Palestinians than
other middle eastern partners:

> “typically, entrepreneurs don’t like to focus on politics and historically
> have not cared very much where the money came from,” except if it’s “from
> the PLO or Iran.”

Quote from "Longtime VC Jeff Bussgang of Flybridge Capital Partners in Boston"

------
xte
Any country that have an official religion, any country that is not a
democracy with simple and well known rules for voting like Swiss is not a free
country but a strong or light dictatorship and people inside it should know
that and decide what to do for themself and their future generation.

------
pteredactyl
Not to mention all the people they've killed in Yemen and elsewhere...

------
jayalpha
The US (and now also Israel) siding with Saudi Arabia and condemning Iran has
always been madness in my opinion.

See also:

[http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2015/02...](http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2015/02/isis-
isnt-the-problem-saudi-arabia-is.html)

[http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2015/01...](http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2015/01/saudi-
arabia-on-the-edge-of-an-abyss.html)

------
kisstheblade
Well, money talks, and weak people like money. The saudis are scum, I would
never have anything to do with them. I mean the just now apparently "let"
women drive! Are you kidding me, they still think of women as property and as
lesser beings than dogs. Or try being gay over there.

------
newfocogi
Obligatory reference to Betteridge's Law of Headlines... But seriously, the
idea that you vote with your dollars becomes even more compelling when you
have billions to throw around. Unfortunately when you cast your vote and what
you end up voting for don't always happen in the expected order.

------
jernfrost
This is Trump's boy. He helped him get in power. In some ways Trump might have
done a good things, because the Saudi needed a bit more crazy guy on the top
for the west to finally wake up about what a terrible place Saudi Arabia is.

The whole west, and in particular the US has made a faustian bargain with
Saudi Arabia. Sooner or later someone has to answer for that.

Our number one terrorists problem comes from Wahabism, the toxic strain of
Islam, coming straight out of Saudi Arabia funded by petro dollars.

It was weak and embarrassing that we could not back up Canada when they stood
up to these bullies.

~~~
mjevans
Armchair speculation here...

Is Canada only able to stand up like this due to the decreased competition
improving the quantity of profitable petroleum reserves?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves_in_Canada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves_in_Canada)

Moreover, I think this points to a need for greater energy independence. Be
that capturing solar energy more effectively or actually modern nuclear plants
that burn up the fuel instead of producing lots of waste.

~~~
captain_perl
Canada has oil, uranium, water ... the resource list is endless.

