How Saudi Arabia shaped Silicon Valley

pianist Maniacs. Each episode will speak with a special guest, listen to musical gems, play music

“inspired games, and answer questions from our listeners. The first episode drops March 4th.”

Listen on the NPR app. November 4th, 2017 Stone Rings at around 4 in the morning. A Saudi prince named Adwalid Ben Talal answers. A voice commands. Adwalid Ben Talal is a billionaire, a business partner of Bill Gates, a stakeholder, an Apple and Twitter, a guy not used to taking orders, but his uncle is the king of Saudi Arabia, and he's told he wants to see him right away. So he gets in his car and drives to the

royal court, where another car pulls up. Prince Adwalid is told to get in. His driver, his guards, and his assistant are put in a different car. There's no time to grab his phone. And Prince Adwalid finds himself completely alone. It's a long drive up almost like an official kind of road,

“heavy security on the outside and walls around it. Perfectly manicured palm trees line the road,”

as the sun begins to rise. Prince Adwalid sees an extravagant mansion with towering columns and rows of countless windows in the distance. This is the Ritz Carlton Diyad. It's a huge fancy hotel, like visiting a French palace or something like that. The car comes to a stop outside the grand entrance of the Ritz, and Prince Adwalid is ushered into the lobby. The lobby is luxurious, with really beautiful polished marble floors, and

the traditional type of incense called ood is always burning in the lobby. But something feels

different about it. Weirdly empty. He's escorted to the elevator, told he'll be staying in a sweet and left to wait. With nothing else to do, he turns on the TV. Breaking news fills the screen. Dozens of Saudi businessmen and royal family members are being arrested on suspicion of corruption and rounded up somewhere. Then it begins to dawn on Prince Adwalid that he is one of those people. His captors have removed the locks on the doors, remove the curtains, block the windows,

dismantled the shower doors, so nobody could hurt themselves. overnight, the Ritz had been converted into a makeshift prison. By morning, Prince Adwalid is locked in alongside hundreds of other wealthy Saudis. Guards walk the hallways, 24/7, manning the exits, hotel staff are directed to cancel upcoming reservations. And then what happened to these people was they underwent a series of sort of interrogations to suss out how much of each prisoner's wealth had been gained through

corruption. Either they kind of fell in line and they could go home right away, or they could

stay and try to fight. But ultimately the way you got out of trouble is you just signed over a huge

amounts of wealth back to the state. The Ritz was closed off to visitors for three months while this was going on. And then one day, as quickly as it had transformed into a prison, it went back to being a five-star hotel business as usual. It's one of the craziest events that I've ever heard about in my lifetime. Some called it The Shake Down spelled S-H-E-I-K, a pun on the title for an Arab leader or chief. I mean, there was many, many hundreds of billions of dollars in this hotel

“of people worth that much money. And it was no secret who was behind it all. The kingdom's”

de facto ruler, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, who the world would come to know as MBS. For him, this wasn't just a purge. It was a pivot to a new future. By the time the Shandali is

repolished and the curtains pressed, he had reportedly secured upwards of a hundred billion dollars

for the Saudi state. Money that would help the Crown Prince transform how the U.S. does business. Basel says just one of a small army of tech titans falling over themselves to do business with the Saudis and Hoover up that cash. Elon Musk's X-A-I gets $3 billion investment from Saudi back to AI firm. The biggest YouTuber in the world, Mr. Beast, was in Riyadh this week to launch Beastland. Jared Kushner appears to have cashed in on his time in the White House, so they

two billion dollar investment. Kushner, with the help from Saudi Arabia, took video game giant electronic arts private in the largest leverage buyout ever. A new Trump talent Saudi Arabia in a cryptocurrency venture. Saudi Arabia is helping the Edison family,

in their bid to control U.S. media. Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Bill Gates,

“Sam Altman, Larry Ellison, Alex Carp, Jared Kushner, Mr. Beast, Jeffrey Epstein.”

Those are just a few of the people who have been friendly with and often done business with Saudi Arabia over the last decade. Many of them are Silicon Valley titans. People whose technologies have fundamentally changed how we live. Well before the AI race got going, billions of Saudi dollars were already reshaping the U.S. economy. And now, many of those tech companies are vulnerable. As Iran targets their infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries

in the ongoing war. I'm Randad De Fattah. I'm Rahmteen Arab Louis. On this episode of throughline from NPR, we follow the money trail, tracing how one of the most authoritarian regimes

“in the world became one of the biggest investors in American tech, a business partner to the”

American president and how that shaping the future for all of us. You're listening to throughline from NPR on the dual from Michelle Canada. Hey, Lulu here, whether we are romping through science, music, politics, technology, or feelings, we seek to leave you seeing the world a new, radio lab adventures right on the edge of what we think we know wherever you get podcasts. Part one, the startup prince.

Mohammad bin Salman is like your classic millennial. This is journalist Bradley Hope. He's the co-author of the book, Blood and Oil. Mohammad bin Salman's ruthless quest for global power. Born in 1985,

“he grew up with technology. He loves it. Spend a lot of time playing video games. He had an absolute”

fascination with the great entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley. He created a manga company at one point, because he was really interested in Japanese manga. He really had no conception whatsoever of one day becoming the ruler of Saudi Arabia. So how did this manga-loving techy become the guy who

would stage the shakedown at the rits? The answer is a saga of power and intrigue that could pass

for an episode of Game of Thrones or succession. For most of its history, the region we now call Saudi Arabia was pretty sparsely populated with nomadic tribes. It's the desert, so it's not easy to find food in water. And its main claim to fame was as the home of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, but the center of Islam for the world. But in the early 1900s, things began to change. Mohammad bin Salman's grandfather, who's known in the West as Ibn Saud, took over the country

through a kind of daring invasion. There was a lot of jocking for power happening among the tribes of the region. Ibn Assad wanted to reclaim the glory and ancestral lands of the house of Saud and unify the Arabian Peninsula. He staged a two-prong attack, a military campaign and a strategic alliance with the ultra-conservative Wahhabis to form the modern nation of Saudi Arabia.

Ibn Assad would be its first king. It's a absolute monarchy where all law originates from the

decision of the monarch. And then subsequently all further kings were actually his sons. Ibn Saud had over a hundred kids with 22 wives, give or take, so we're talking a lot of sons. And MBS's father, Salman, is one of them. This new nation in the middle of the desert didn't seem to have a lot going for it, but American representatives from the standard oil company of California believed there was oil. Ibn Assad cut a deal, they created what would become known

as the Arabian American oil company, or a ramco, and the search began. They found oil, but not in commercial quantities. It was not encouraging. They drilled again, no luck, and again, still failure. And then did happen. They did find a huge amount of oil. Over the next few decades, a ramco grew into the most

profitable company on the planet. And the Al Saud family would have a seat at the most important

palaces. Oil had given them a ticket to a life of luxury beyond what most of us can even imagine.

“This was my father's cousin's who loaded the oil in these tankers. We know what that oil's”

worth. This is our land, but we did not see us, kids, the money that's coming through. This is Ali Al Ahmed. He's a Saudi journalist and dissident who's been living in the U.S. for the last 30 years. Growing up in Saudi Arabia in the 1960s and 70s, oil shaped everything about his life. He still remembers the view from the roof of his family's home. I can see the port, the main oil port. He lived in a city on the coast of the Persian Gulf.

The ancient city that goes back thousands of years. Ali says all the best resources in his city were funneled 250 miles back to Diyad, the country's capital, in the center of the country where the royal family lived. Riyad is drinking fresh water and getting the best electric power. We didn't have any paved roads in the city. But people couldn't make their needs known. In an absolute monarchy, you don't have free speech. News media and TV were severely restricted,

and many books were banned. Ali says the government would conduct raids searching for contraband. We were so worried about these raids, we had to bury our books, non-political books. One of Ali's favorite banned books was about the Brimuda Triangle. As a child, I remember this big sign on the highway. This is with the government. It says, "Achil Muatan, la tofakkar, fanahenunu fakkiruank."

"Dear citizen, do not think we will think for you." In 1981, when Ali was 14 years old, he found himself in the crosshairs of the Saudi state, while on vacation with his family in neighboring Qatar. "They had an alert to track some activists that were coming from Iran, I think.

And they arrested us in Del Haqqatar." "So they didn't tell you what the charges were, anything they just picked you up."

“"No, nothing. You are from a population that they don't like. You must be guilty."”

It was the middle of Ramadan, the month of fasting for Muslims. "July, my God. It was so hard." "He and his family members were put on a bus." "Exqul bus with no AC." "With other detainees."

"And the thing was packed, we had kids and people just started throwing up."

When they finally crossed into Saudi territory,

and the bus came to a stop outside a prison. "They had to drive me from the bus." "You resist it." "Resistant." "So they put chains on my hand and my legs. And I remember reading made in California.

USA."

“"And then we were separated in different cells."”

"Hily was then interrogated." "This investigator," he said, "What did you do?" "I said, "I'm supposed to ask you that." "And there's no right to remain silent or anything like that." "No, no, no, no."

"No, there's nothing like there's torture and people were crawling." "Later, I found that one kid is 17 year old. He died in the same area I was." After a few weeks, Ali and his family were released. His dad was able to pull some strings to get them out. Ali left Saudi Arabia for good in the 1990s, relocating to the United States.

Around that time, a young MBS was busy playing video games and surfing the newly minted worldwide web. "No plans for the throne on the horizon." His father was still number three on a list. There's two other older brothers before him.

And even if his father somehow ended up as King, MBS wasn't the logical successor.

His mom was the third wife and he had several older half brothers.

It was kind of unimaginable. Plus, the royal family had ballooned. Ebnes Saud's many kids had many kids. We're talking thousands. Different branches of the family controlled different parts of the government and it was easy to get lost in the shuffle.

MBS knew he had to find a way to stand out. So unlike his older half brothers who spent a lot of time abroad, they almost sound like posh British people. MBS decided to stay in Saudi Arabia. He went to university in Saudi Arabia.

His English wasn't even that great for a long time. He wanted to be close to his father, Salman. He was kind of the family's disciplinary,

so he had files on everybody.

“All that intel his father had went into a kind of burn book,”

which MBS had access to, and which he would later use to consolidate power. And then in less than a year, MBS's fortunes changed dramatically. Between October 2011 and June 2012, two of MBS's uncles died.

The older brothers in line for the throne before his father. With their debts.

His father became essentially the guaranteed second in line to be the king.

Suddenly MBS had a clear path to power, but there were others in the royal family vying for that spot. And MBS knew he had to move fast. It was like almost Shakespearean people conniving against Salman coming into power. MBS put together a team of people he trusted.

And they were using everything they could,

“even what you might consider espionage techniques to understand”

what everyone else is doing and what are the different plays being planned against his father. MBS just became around the clock, tactician. Clearing the path for his father to take the throne

and proving himself indispensable.

He switched gears from the young kind of business oriented guy into this kind of king and waiting. In early 2015, word began to spread that the sitting king of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, was very sick. MBS actually went to King Abdullah with his father

in the hospital, and King Abdullah was on a respirator. He was basically dead. Something those closest to him were trying to conceal for as long as possible. And MBS marched into the room.

The secretary of the king was there to make sure nobody sees the king on a respirator. MBS slapped him across the face. That slap led to the announcement of King Abdullah being dead. Layward from overseas tonight of the passing of a major figure in the Middle East. King Abdullah died at the age of 90.

King Abdullah's half-brother Salman immediately succeeded him. Salman himself was getting up there in age, so when he took the throne, MBS would be pulling the strings. His cousin told me, he is like a bull in a china shop. What he says goes no matter what anybody else says.

Send in the F-15s. That's the order MBS gave to a room of stunned Saudi generals. Just eight weeks after his father Salman took the throne. Almost overnight, MBS had consolidated control over the kingdom's finances and military. He installed a close ally as head of a ramp code.

Hello, hi. And he launched a deadly bombing campaign in Yemen. American move bombs, the Obama administration sold him. MBS hoped he could quickly stomp out the hoothy rebels there, who were backed by Saudi Arabia's longtime rival, Iran.

He's saying this will be over in a couple of months. Then it becomes a, you know, decades-long problem and nobody knows that better than America. As bombs were falling in Yemen and civilians dying, MBS turned his attention to his most ambitious project.

“The thing he saw as the key ingredient to Saudi Arabia's future.”

Winning over Silicon Valley. The way things get done in the world are through a combination of focus and personal connection. The third factor is self-belief. Ever since he was a video game-loving kid, MBS had been obsessed with tech,

and he'd always kept one eye on the US.

Now he had the power to disrupt things and that lofty think big style of tech CEOs like Sam Altman. He called his plan vision 2030. It's centered around Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund. The public investment fund or PIF, a rainy day stockpile worth many billions of dollars. His plan involved converting the PIF into a Silicon Valley super-engine.

The entire philosophy was they would use this money as an accelerant to something that was already starting to show signs of growth, and they would just pour a money onto it in the hopes that it would ignite into a monopoly or something like that. MBS had gotten the idea from his cousin, Prince Al-Walid Ben Talal. They'd actually pitched the idea together, Shark Tank Style,

when King Abdullah was still alive. This was years before the Ritz kidnapping. Their idea went nowhere.

which in the 21st century was becoming more and more of a problem.

Saudi Arabia was in a bit of a crisis. They were conservative economically. They were conservative politically.

“In the age of internet and social media.”

They were conservative socially. Women couldn't drive and had strict dress codes. Movie theaters were outlawed. And there's this going to be a problem in the future. MBS wanted the country to change on his terms,

which frustrated Prince Al-Walid Ben Talal, who had his own vision for how things should go. He's the kind of person that drinks coffee out of a mug with his own face on it. He was the second biggest investor in Twitter, owning more stock than even Jack Dorsey. It's then CEO, and he had shares in Rupert Murdoch's company's Fox and Newscore. Even so, MBS cut Prince Al-Walid out of his future plans

and started meeting with a Japanese billionaire tech investor named Masayo Shisan. Together in 2016, they started taking Silicon Valley by storm.

“Uber has turned the Middle East forward to biggest investment ever.”

The Uber deal wasn't particularly well structured or valued.

Company announced, and you know, three and a half billion dollar raise from Saudi Arabia's

public investment fund. An unprecedented amount of money for a single investment. It was just saying, "We've arrived." This is the new Saudi era. Coming up, Saudi Arabia goes on a spending spring.

Hi, this is Justin Whitlow from Western North Carolina, and you are listening to three lines. Part two, friends in high places. Silicon Valley, December 2015. An FBI agent walks into Twitter headquarters with a shocking report. The agency believes there's a spiring inside the company.

“Two Saudi citizens and one Lebanese American were being paid by the Saudi government”

to spy on Saudis inside the country and abroad.

Two of the men were Twitter employees. They'd managed to hack thousands of Twitter accounts. And had helped unmasse Saudi Twitter users as in finding their IP addresses. Their phone numbers helped discover where they live, personal information, and passed that information along to Saudi authorities.

This is journalist Jacob Silverman, author of the book, "Hilded Rage." Elon Musk and the radicalization of Silicon Valley. I've talked to Saudi exiles who live in the US who believe that their family members in Saudi Arabia were unmasked and arrested because of this process. Five years earlier, in December 2010, Twitter had helped ignite the Arab Spring.

The story of a Tunisian food vendor named Mohammed Wahazizi went viral after lighting himself on fire in protest. And across the Middle East, people were coordinating, protesting, resisting, using Twitter to amplify their voices. Many young Saudis logged into those conversations.

For a while, Saudi Arabia was one of the biggest markets and certainly the biggest market in the Middle East for Twitter. It was a digital public square where free thought was allowed, even if their physical reality remained unchanged. At the time, a lot of these tech companies saw their technologies,

and especially social media, as inherently liberatory, as these were emancipatory technologies. The Arab Spring, of course, did not take off in Saudi Arabia because it's a very repressive country. By 2015, Saudi Prince Al-Walid Bin Talal was a major investor in Twitter. In 2018, the Arabic language Twitter account of Saudi journalists and

dissident Ali Al Ahmad was suspended. He'd also been a target of the spiring. The Saudi government has one of the largest media empire in the world. They have a policy of expanding their media empire to control public opinion. Now, they were paying the price.

People are spending years in prison decades in prison because of this action. One of the men who was allegedly unmasked by the spiring was recently executed. The full extent of the damage isn't quite known, and that may be happening much more widely than just Twitter. The two Saudi spies managed to flee the U.S. without consequences,

and are believed to be living in Saudi Arabia.

and was sentenced to three and a half years in prison. That indictment is how we learned a lot of these details. But one name omitted from the record was the head of the spiring back in Saudi Arabia. They took away his name, but somebody leaked it, and it was pretty obvious. Baddid Al-Assakid, a close advisor of Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman,

known widely as MBS, who runs his private foundation.

“I think one mistake that the tech industry made that Silicon Valley made was that it went”

into all these foreign markets without really thinking about how can this stuff be used in more malevolent ways for surveillance, for oppression, for monitoring those same dissidents and activists. In June 2016, six months after the FBI showed up at Twitter headquarters, Jack Dorsey and MBS met in the U.S. They took photos together, smiling and shaking hands. The photos were posted to Twitter,

by none other than baddid Al-Assakid, the alleged head of the spiring.

To my knowledge, Jack Dorsey never commented on any of this.

This was all happening right around the time that massive unprecedented Uber deal went through. In a lot of CEOs in Silicon Valley, we're starting to wonder if the Saudis were the key to their futures too. MBS might be a dictator, but he had a lot of money and was clearly

“willing to invest. There's these two worlds of MBS. There's the secret paranoid hidden”

world where he's trying to defend himself against perceived threats, and then at the same time there's the sort of public version, which is the transformative charming changemaker Prince, who is going to change Saudi Arabia forever. Because alongside his authoritarian moves, MBS was starting to liberalize Saudi Arabia in ways that appeal to Westerners, reopening movie theaters, allowing mixed gender gatherings, giving women the right to drive, and sidelining the religious

police who had strictly controlled what women wore. The question was, could that paranoid hidden worlds and his public image as a changemaker co-exist forever? Over the following year, each season brought that question closer and closer to a tipping point. Spring 2017. Tomorrow is you're not going to Saudi Arabia. Just a few months into his first term. President Trump surprised everyone

“when he announced his first overseas trip as president. Usually in the traditions of the White House”

that you first visit your closest allies, you know, it might be Canada or the UK, and then this was like Saudi Arabia, which is culturally seemed at the time to be very far. Also the home of most of the 9/11 attackers. To a lot of people at the time, it seemed like a strange choice, but behind the scenes. The UAE ambassador to Washington, D.C. started putting Mohammed bin Salman forward as this

amazing changemaker in the Middle East, and he could really have huge impacts on the world.

That made MBS very attractive to the Trump administration. It's a be seen like they were helping change something or having an impact. MBS rolled out the red carpet for Trump at the Ritz Carlton Rihand. I stand before you as a representative of the American people to deliver a message of friendship and hope and love. The MBS team knew exactly what Trump needed. Trump wanted a number with a lot of zeros at the end of it, because it's all about announcing big deals and

stuff like that. This landmark agreement includes the announcement of a 110 billion dollar sorely funded defense purchase. Silicon Valley meets like New York City ostentatiousness. But inside Saudi Arabia, MBS would soon ramp up a campaign of political repression. People were being stopped in the streets and their phones were being checked by police. Activists who had led the push for women to drive were arrested. So we're dissenting clerics. No protest of any kind

would be tolerated. The Saudi workforce continued to rely on the Catholic system, a system critics have called modern-day slavery, in which migrant workers are completely at the mercy of their employers. And there were allegations of war crimes in Yemen where MBS was continuing his military campaign with weapon support from the U.S. But none of this seemed likely to change

after this historic first trip President Trump took to Saudi Arabia, signaling that he was on

board with MBS's vision for the future. A green light to Silicon Valley to go all in with MBS. I think that there was a definite change once Trump came into power and more of an authoritarian

in the pan of Trump. Fall 2017. This was a huge coming out of introducing Saudi Arabia.

“Five months after MBS put on a show for Trump at the Ritz. He up the ante. Putting together a three-day”

economic summit at the Ritz called the Future Investment Initiative. But informally marketed to the world. Devils of the Desert Technology. New frontiers. Unleishing innovative ideas. Celebrating the vision that he was among us. How is it the Wall Street Journal? I came as a journalist to cover the conference. But I mean, it was a huge conference. I was member walking through the Ritz and there was Tony Blair there. All the CEOs of major companies. A star-studded kind of event.

So then we all went back to wherever we were we lived. A few weeks later, suddenly there was this news that came out in this very unofficial way. Breaking news. Breaking news out of Saudi Arabia.

“Callous intrigued to the end-degree. We're seeing a truly historic upheaval unfold right now. A royal purge in Saudi”

Arabia, ending up several high-profile people. All these bold moves MBS was making. In Yemen, in Silicon Valley, within Saudi itself, had made a lot of the other royals mad. And so he really had to sleep with when I opened at that time. As had become his MO by this point, he decided to try something pretty extreme to stifle descent. Q. The Shake Down. There has been a lot of news this week

out of Saudi Arabia, which is basically America's cookie-rich uncle who occasionally beheads people.

This time, the American news media did pay attention. Of course, it helped that it was a riveting story. Even Jeffrey Epstein, who considered MBS a close friend, was apparently keeping a close eye on what was happening at the rits. MBS's name is all over the Epstein files by the way. But why do this person? Anyway, American watchers were confused. Wasn't this the guy bringing radical reform to Saudi Arabia? You know, that's the big question. They say it's all about corruption.

I really don't believe that. In one Washington Post interview, MBS explained his actions this way.

“"You have a body that has cancer everywhere, the cancer of corruption. You need to have chemo,”

the shock of chemo, where the cancer will eat the body." This event of the rits creates him cracks in the surface, but it didn't break. Spring 2018.

Biodes' rits' culture and hotel has finally been more than three months after it was converted

into a gilded prison. Just a month after the rits reopened to the public as a hotel. MBS took all that money he'd seized and went on a whistle-stop tour through the U.S., and he gets a very warm welcome. He meets with President Trump and Washington, Wall Street bankers in New York, and taxieos in Silicon Valley, looking to make deals. "You would think that maybe U.S. businessmen and oligarchs would wonder,

"Hey, didn't this guy just imprisoned a bunch of Saudi colleagues, but that didn't seem to bother anyone." "He had dinner at the Bill Gates house." There are pictures from that visit of MBS standing with a whole bunch of top Silicon Valley venture capitalists and CEOs. There seemed to be no red line he could cross that would keep Americans from doing business with him. And then fall 2018. Jamal Khajoggi walked into a consulate in Istanbul.

That's coming up. My name is Yveria Soheem, and I'm calling from London, United Kingdom. You're listening to true lines from NPR. Part three, the Uncanny Valley. Where is Jamal Khajoggi? No signs of a missing Saudi journalist. The search is on for clues.

Walked into the Saudi Arabian embassy. Never seen coming out. He hasn't been seen since.

Disappeared. At 115 p.m., on October 2nd, 2018, Jamal Khajoggi, known to Americans mostly do as a opinion column for the Washington Post, entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

People describe him often as a journalist, right? But it's a very underdeveloped way to describe him.

“He was something that we can't really connect with. There's no equivalent in the”

American life. He was on the payroll of the royal family of Saudi Arabia. His role was to be almost propagandistic at times. After the Arab Springbroke out in 2010, Khajoggi began speaking out more against the Saudi regime and its autocratic policies, which landed him in hot water when MBS took over. In the MBS era, there was only two sides. There was either 100% MBS or 0% MBS. And if you're a 0% MBS, you're essentially enemy of the

state. And over time, it became more and more clear that he was not on the right side. If he was going to stay inside the Arabian, he would have to just essentially disappear. He didn't really want that life for himself. So he essentially fled and escaped to America.

“It was summer 2017. Soon after, he began to write pieces for the Washington Post criticizing MBS.”

In one piece, he compared the shake down at the rits to the night of the long knives. Hitler's brutal 1934 purge and consolidation of power in which hundreds of people were killed. It seems to me likely that they knew a quite a bit about what Jamal Khajoggi was doing, and who he was talking to and who he was meeting with. MBS had his people keeping tabs on Khajoggi. He had essentially built his own intelligence service that only answered to him.

They were really aggressive looking for who's out to get MBS, who is against them. There are more arrests happening at home. Jacob Silverman says at one point, an exile in Canada accused MBS of sending hitmen to kill him. The Saudis were also accused of trying to hack Jeff Bezos's phone. Neither accusation was ever proven. What we do know is that Bezos owns the Washington Post where Khajoggi worked, and a couple months later, Khajoggi disappeared.

Only a few people have heard the actual tapes, but here's what they reveal. Inside the console,

a team of 15 hitmen, Saudi security officers were waiting for Khajoggi. One of them says has the sacrificial animal arrived, and they all laugh. When Khajoggi gets there, they approach him at reception and tell him there's a warrant out for his arrest that he must return to Saudi Arabia. At first, Khajoggi resists, then his voice changes, growing more fearful. Are you going to give me an injection? He asks, "Yes, the hitmen respond." They grab Khajoggi. He's beaten and tortured

before finally being strangled. His last words are, "I can't breathe." One of the men, a forensic pathologist, then cuts up Khajoggi's body with a saw, and then somebody actually put on his clothes and walked around Istanbul acting as if they were him.

To this day, authorities have never recovered his body.

And this got the world's attention. The dictatorship that calls itself the kingdom of Saudi Arabia insulted the world with its written explanation of how Washington Post journalist Jamal Khajoggi

“was murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. I think it's certainly open some Americans”

eye as to how brutal this regime could be and how aggressive MBS could be. And there were calls for accountability. Congresspeople drafted bills to stop U.S. weapons funding to Saudi Arabia in its war in Yemen. A lot of business people dropped out of Davos in the desert that year. The Saudis summit for the global financial elite. "They reduced it to one person. As there's only one issue, oh it's just what God, no it's not one God."

Ali al Ahmad, a fellow Saudi dissident and journalist, new Khajoggi personally. "We have people who are much more important than Jamal Khajoggi, who were killed inside the Arabian."

He says Khajoggi wasn't the first or last person, the Saudi regime targeted,

and even with the fallout from Khajoggi's murder. NBS. "Didn't seem to break a sweat or like really, you know, savage himself over it. He just turned all of his focus inward, all of the investment, the public investment fund focused inward, and he just slowly, patiently, rebuilt." He pumped more money into Saudi Arabia's infrastructure and began clearing the way

clad between two mirrored walls. The original plan for it was supposed to be 170 kilometers,

“which we should know led to the displacement of around 20,000 Saudis." "There have been other”

foreign artists who have performed in the Kingdom." He began paying big bucks for American celebrities to come to Saudi Arabia. "People like Mariah Carey and Enrique Glyssias and the Backstreet Boys and Saudi Arabia continue to make big deals with Silicon Valley, building an especially close

relationship with Elon Musk. "Document show Elon Musk has raised more than $7 billion from investors,

including a Saudi prince to help finance his purchase of Twitter. They became regular investors in this company." And when the AI race started to heat up, Musk began depending even more on Saudi money to compete. "Because these AI companies need to raise billions every few months, in order to sustain the data center build out and the outlay of resources that is required." The heads of other AI companies traveled to Saudi Arabia to meet with MBS2,

open AI Sam Altman, Palantir's Alex Carp. "The tech industry has hardly wavered in in kind of its loyalty and alignment with MBS." In the last few years, Silicon Valley executives have quietly made their way back to Davos in the desert. And yes, the summit still happens at the rits. "To me, it feels haunted. I don't think I would even want to step foot in there, but who knows if there's even thinking of the history of that place."

The Trump family also ramped up its business with Saudi Arabia after Trump left office. "He would talk to Jared Kushner a lot, they would talk over WhatsApp."

“Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, signed a $2 billion deal with MBS. "I think that deal”

signified a new era that is now completely proliferated everywhere. We live in an era where

everything is done by the deal guys." In 2025, Trump again chose Saudi Arabia as his first overseas

trip after coming back into office. He derived in Saudi Arabia with a huge entourage of top American executives. They all lined up to meet Prince Mohammed and he invited MBS to the White House, marking his return to the U.S. for the first time since Hajouki was killed. "We have an extremely respected man in the old office today in a friend of mine for a long time." MBS really had a very in-control kind of feel about him. He also made jokes during the dinner.

"So what did they do to them saw or you do the bit?" "When I saw the picture of the dinner, everyone was sitting around and they're black, attire, and everything. I just thought to myself, this is a complete 360 moment. Everything is back to what it was like before." And I want to thank you for a $1 trillion investment and contribution toward our country. That's a lot of jobs. Thank you very much. Thank you. Please.

“"I think it's signifies that Saudi Arabia is probably the most important Trump ally. I mean,”

they have been one of his great benefactors in one way or another, whether it's on the political stage or really helping to put some money in his pocket." People like the Trump administration think of themselves more like shakes than they do think of themselves like presidents in the traditional sense, where it's all kind of blended together, you know, power and money and everything. "Everything, including crypto, which has unlocked a whole new level of business for the so-called

deal guys around the world. And these business connections have become more clear and public since

2020-26 began." In January, Saudi real estate developer Dar Global announced a $10 billion deal

with the Trump organization to build multiple Trump-branded buildings in Saudi Arabia. In February, the board of peace met for the first time to discuss future development plans for the reconstruction and governance of Gaza. Among the board members are Jared Kushner and Steve Whitkoff. Steve Whitkoff, the close friend of Trump's also his top diplomatic envoy and a co-founder of World Liberty Financial. The main Trump crypto companies.

Whitkoff and Kushner were also in charge of the failed nuclear negotiations that preceded the war with Iran. When the war began, retaliatory strikes on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries followed. In late March, there were reportedly a number of calls between MBS and Trump, in which MBS urged him to continue the war, seeing it as, quote, "a historic opportunity to remake the region." Iran is Saudi Arabia's longtime rival and Saudi Arabia

has historically marketed itself as a key defender of Palestinians. In private, MBS has reportedly

this. He's also indicated he may eventually move to recognize Israel. If there's a clear path

“to a Palestinian state, and if the price is right. The custodian of the two holy cities of”

Mecca and Medina, agreeing to recognize Israel in that way, is such a big thing. He's also a deal guy, just like Whitkoff and Kushner. And he's thinking, if I'm going to do that deal, I'm going to make sure that I really get something that's really strong. And what he wants is things like a security relationship that's maybe similar or even better than the Qatar One. He also

wants to have nuclear power and Saudi Arabia. MBS is already doing some business,

discreetly, with Israel, especially in the cybersecurity and surveillance sector. And now, there's a new superpower that it seems like everyone is racing towards

“AI. For us, like the average people, a lot of us are interacting with AI in terms of chat bots”

and sort of a tool for work and things like that. But on a higher level, governmental level, AI and all of that is also being conceived as surveillance technology, defense tech, military tech.

Yeah, I think Silicon Valley is helping build up a global surveillance state. And I think that's a

good term for it. I mean, consider what Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, said, "The police will be on their best behavior, because we're constantly recording, watching, and recording everything that's going on. Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we're constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on." I think what was happening before was perhaps Silicon Valley didn't realize that they were

creating tools of control, that something like Twitter could become a tool of control.

“I think now Silicon Valley knows that they're making tools of control. And how is AI being used now?”

Well, it's being used in Gaza to pick out targets for the idea of to bomb people. You know, us here in America, for the border patrol and ice now to find people to deport. It's these much more draconian aggressive top-down security state-style forms of governance that we're seeing AI enable. The greater Silicon Valley is supported by dictatorships who want these surveillance tools.

Ali Al Ahmed has been in the US for 30 years now. He's continued to be a vocal critic of the Saudi regime, even though that's meant he can no longer be in contact with his family back in Saudi Arabia to protect them from repercussions. He's received threats from the Saudi government and also offers. I got offers of millions of dollars. This is because they do not fathom anyone outside and instead to speak freely. But Ali isn't a deal guy. I can sleep on the floor.

I can eat pizza bread and a slice of tomato and I'll be fine. I will not complain. The thing I want is to be free to talk to say something. That freedom of me speaking my mind, I cannot put a number on it. And that's it for this week's show. I'm Randabhit Fattah. I'm Ramhtin Adablui. And you've been listening to "Throughline" from NPR. This episode was produced by me. And me and Julie Kayne. Ania Steinberg, Casey Meiner, Cristina Kim, Devancariama, Irene Naguchi, Kiana Mohatem, Thomas Coltrane,

Factor Kim for this episode was done by Kevin Vogel. Also, thank you to the National News, Vivian Nareem, Natasha Tiku, Johannes Dergi, Dylan Kurtz, Rebecca Ferrar, Leanna Simstrom, Beth Donovan, and Tommy Evans. This episode was mixed by Robert Rodriguez, music for this episode was composed by Ramhtin and his band "Drop Electric," which includes