
Silicon Valley's Saudi Arabia Problem - petethomas
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/12/opinion/silicon-valley-saudi-arabia.html
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joe_the_user
The problem is that the Saudi Regime has reached a point of not just murder
but instability and poor judgement. IE, they brutally murdered someone of
substance, in a lawless fashion, outside Saudi Arabia proper, for very little
cause - after they brutally, physically extracted wealth from their own
financier class (princes and such probably had taken a good portion of this
corruptly but there's a reason for rule-of-law in these situations, other the
state doesn't know when to quit).

It's one, sadly normal, thing these days to get blood money from one or
another sources. It's another thing to get money from a powerful entity that
kills anyone at all that displeases them - after all, at that point they might
actually kill you, personally if you lose money or complain. I don't think
even the Mafia is foolish enough to do this regularly.

And the evils of the Saudi Regime have been considered tolerable for years, in
the interest of stability and, well, making money. Now you have something like
a coal-mine that's broken out into the open. What to do, what to do?

~~~
konschubert
> The problem is that the Saudi Regime has reached a point of not just murder
> but instability and poor judgement.

Maybe you did not mean it that way,but this sounds extremely cyncical.

~~~
joe_the_user
I personally would love for the US to have a foreign policy that's even
remotely humanitarian - I'll vote and advocate here for that.

The reality however is that US' policy has for years been murderously cynical
with respect to the Saudis and numerous other dictatorships.

I don't have the ability even now to change much. Well meaning folks don't
really have that ability. So really all one can do is throw the brutality and
cynicism of those having power back in their faces. Maybe spotlighting this
level of actual murderous narcissism will get the attention of who argued the
need for the realpolitik approach of supporting the Saudis.

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rdlecler1
I saw Marc Andreessen and Sam Altman listed on the new Saudi Arabian advisory
board. I’d bet the Saudi’s are either LPs in their funds or they are courting
them for their next fund.

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dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18201620](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18201620)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18197431](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18197431)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18196934](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18196934)

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gfodor
It's striking how in the span of a week the media is in a full court press
against Saudi Arabia, based upon (as far as I know) unconfirmed alligations
around the disappearance of a journalist. There is truth to the narrative that
SA is an ethically compromised country, it has been for decades, but the
sudden coordinated messaging and deluge of articles that all seem directed
towards affecting the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the US is too
overt not to notice.

~~~
buboard
not long ago there was coordinated reporting about the "saudi arab spring"
that the new ruler would bring. Thats the media i guess, herdish.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/opinion/saudi-prince-
mbs-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/23/opinion/saudi-prince-mbs-arab-
spring.html)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/18/world/middleeast/mohammed...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/18/world/middleeast/mohammed-
bin-salman-saudi-arabia-60-minutes.html)

~~~
gfodor
The cynic in me thinks that, like most things the media reports on these days
it seems, there is an attraction to stories that undermine Trump. Call me a
conspiracy theorist, but I'm going to assume that this sudden meme about Saudi
Arabia emerging is evidence in favor of there being some currently undisclosed
diplomatic headway in the peace talks underway between the US, SA, Israel, and
others that have been ongoing since Trump's trip to Riyadh the first month of
his presidency.

~~~
fmajid
No, it's much simpler than that. A journalist was murdered, and that hits
close to home for... journalists. Unlike genocide in Yemen.

