Bradley Hope (2:46)

windows, dismantled the shower doors so nobody could hurt themselves.

Rund Abdelfattah (2:50)

Overnight, the Ritz had been converted into a makeshift prison.

Ramtin Arablouei (2:55)

By morning, Prince Alwaleed is locked in alongside hundreds of other wealthy Saudis.

Rund Abdelfattah (3:00)

Guards walk the hallways 24 7, manning the exits. Hotel staff are directed to cancel upcoming reservations.

Bradley Hope (3:08)

And then what happened to these people was they underwent a series of sort

Rund Abdelfattah (3:13)

of interrogations to suss out how much of each prisoner's wealth had been gained through corruption.

Bradley Hope (3:19)

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 huge amounts of wealth back to the state.

Ramtin Arablouei (3:30)

The Ritz was closed off to visitors for three months while this was going on.

Rund Abdelfattah (3:35)

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.

Bradley Hope (3:47)

It's one of the craziest events that I've ever heard about in my lifetime.

Ramtin Arablouei (3:52)

Some called it the shakedown, spelled S H E I K a pun on the title for an Arab leader or chief.

Bradley Hope (3:59)

I mean, there was many, many hundreds of billions of dollars in this hotel of people worth that much money.

Rund Abdelfattah (4:05)

And it was no secret who was behind it all. The kingdom's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who the world would come to know as mbs.

Ramtin Arablouei (4:18)

For him, this wasn't just a purge. It was a pivot to a new future. By the time the chandeliers were polished and the curtains pressed, he had reportedly secured upwards of $100 billion for the

Rund Abdelfattah (4:31)

Saudi state, money that would help the Crown Prince transform how the US does business.

Ramtin Arablouei (4:37)

Bezos is just one of a small

Jacob Silverman (4:39)

army of tech titans falling over themselves

Ramtin Arablouei (4:42)

to do business with the Saudis and

Bradley Hope (4:43)

hoover up their cash.

Rund Abdelfattah (4:44)

Elon Musk's Xai gets 3 billion dol billion investment from Saudi backed AI firm

Jacob Silverman (4:49)

the biggest YouTuber in the world.

Bradley Hope (4:51)

Mr.

Rund Abdelfattah (4:51)

Beast was in Riyadh this week to launch Beastland. Jared Kushner appears to have cashed in

Ramtin Arablouei (4:56)

on his time in the White house

Rund Abdelfattah (4:57)

with a $2 billion investment. Kushner, with the help from Saudi Arabia, took video game giant Electronic Arts private in the largest leverage buyout ever.

Ramtin Arablouei (5:06)

A new Trump Tower in Saudi Arabia in a cryptocurrency venture.

Sponsor/Advertisement Voice (5:09)

Saudi Arabia is helping the Ellison family.

Rund Abdelfattah (5:12)

Ellison, who are major Trump supporters, launch

Ramtin Arablouei (5:15)

a hostile takeover of Warner Brothers in their bid to control US Media.

Rund Abdelfattah (5:29)

Elon Musk, Donald Trump Bill Gates, Sam Altman, Larry Ellison, Alex karp, 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.

Ramtin Arablouei (5:47)

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.

Rund Abdelfattah (6:02)

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 Rund Abdelfattah.

Ramtin Arablouei (6:14)

I'm Ramtin Arablouei.

Rund Abdelfattah (6:16)

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's shaping the future for all of us.

Ramtin Arablouei (6:41)

You're listening to Throughline from npr.

Ali Al Ahmed (6:43)

I'm Abdul from Montreal, Canada.

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Rund Abdelfattah (8:01)

Part 1 the Startup Prince

Bradley Hope (8:05)

Mohammed bin Salman is like your classic millennial.

Rund Abdelfattah (8:09)

This is journalist Bradley Hope. He's the co author of the book Blood and Mohammed bin Salman's ruthless quest for global power.

Bradley Hope (8:18)

Born in 1985, he, you know, grew up with technology. He loves it, spent a lot of time playing video games, 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.

Rund Abdelfattah (8:43)

So how did this manga loving tech geek become the guy who would stage the shakedown at the Ritz? The answer is a saga of power and intrigue that could pass for an episode of Game of Thrones or succession.

Ramtin Arablouei (8:58)

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 and water. And its main claim to fame was as the home of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

Bradley Hope (9:15)

It's the center of Islam for the world.

Ramtin Arablouei (9:18)

But in the early 1900s, things began to change.

Bradley Hope (9:23)

Mohammed bin Salman's grandfather, who is known in the west as Ibn Saud, took over the country through a kind of daring invasion.

Ramtin Arablouei (9:33)

There was a lot of jockeying for power happening among the tribes of the region. Ibn Saud 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 Wahhabists to form the modern nation of Saudi Arabia. Ibn Saud would be its first king.

Bradley Hope (10:02)

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.

Rund Abdelfattah (10:11)

Ibn Saud had over 100 kids with 22 wives, give or take. So we're talking a lot of sons. And MBS's father, Salman is one of them.

Ramtin Arablouei (10:22)

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 Saud cut a deal. They created what would become known as the Arabian American Oil Company, or aramco. And the search began.

Jacob Silverman (10:45)

They found oil, but not in commercial quantities. It was not encouraging. They drilled again.

Ramtin Arablouei (10:53)

No luck.

Jacob Silverman (10:54)

And again, still failure. And then it happened.

Bradley Hope (11:00)

They did find a huge amount of oil.

Ramtin Arablouei (11:02)

Over the next few decades, Aramco grew into the most profitable company on the planet. And the Al Saud family would have a seat at the most important tables in the world, helping to shape the global economy. They lived extravagantly in massive palaces. Oil had given them a ticket to a life of luxury beyond what most of us can even imagine.

Ali Al Ahmed (11:26)

It was my father's cousins who loaded the oil in these tankers. We know what that oil is worth. This is our land. But we did not see as kids the money that's coming through.

Rund Abdelfattah (11:39)

This is Ali Al Ahmed. He's a Saudi journalist and dissident who's been living in the US 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.

Ali Al Ahmed (11:56)

I can see the port, the main oil port.

Rund Abdelfattah (12:00)

He lived in a city on the coast of the Persian Gulf, an ancient

Ali Al Ahmed (12:03)

city that goes back thousands of years.

Rund Abdelfattah (12:06)

Ali says all the best resources in his city were funneled 250 miles back to Riyadh, the country's capital. In the center of the country where the royal family lived, Riyadh is drinking

Ali Al Ahmed (12:18)

fresh water and getting best electric power. We didn't have any paved roads in

Rund Abdelfattah (12:24)

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.

Ali Al Ahmed (12:42)

We were so worried about these raids, we had to bury our books. Non political books.

Rund Abdelfattah (12:48)

One of Ali's favorite banned books was about the Bermuda Triangle.

Ali Al Ahmed (12:52)

As a child, I remember this big sign on the highway. This is with the government. It says, Dear citizen, do not think. We will think for you.

Rund Abdelfattah (13:14)

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.

Ali Al Ahmed (13:24)

They had an alert to track some activists that were coming from Iran, I think, and they arrested us in Daw Ha, Qatar.

Rund Abdelfattah (13:32)

So they didn't tell you what the charges were or anything? They just picked you up?

Ali Al Ahmed (13:34)

No, nothing. You know, you are from a population that they don't like. You must be guilty.

Rund Abdelfattah (13:40)

It was the middle of Ramadan, the month of fasting for Muslims.

Ali Al Ahmed (13:44)

July. My God, it was so hot.

Rund Abdelfattah (13:47)

He and his family members were put on a bus, like school bus, with no ac, with other detainees.

Ali Al Ahmed (13:54)

And the thing was packed. We had kids and people just started throwing up.

Rund Abdelfattah (14:00)

When they finally crossed into Saudi territory and the bus came to a stop outside a prison, they had to drag

Ali Al Ahmed (14:06)

me from the bus.

Rund Abdelfattah (14:08)

You resisted, Resisted.

Ali Al Ahmed (14:10)

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.

Rund Abdelfattah (14:23)

Ali was then interrogated this investigator, he

Ali Al Ahmed (14:27)

said, what did you do? I said, I'm supposed to ask you that.

Rund Abdelfattah (14:30)

And there's no right to remain silent or anything like that?

Ali Al Ahmed (14:33)

No, no, no, no. There is nothing. There is torture. And the people were crawling. Later, I found that one kid, 17 years old. He died in the same area I was.

Rund Abdelfattah (14:48)

After a few weeks, Ali and his family were released. His dad was able to pull some strings to get them out.

Ramtin Arablouei (15:02)

Ali left Saudi Arabia for good in the 1990s and 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.

Bradley Hope (15:17)

His father was still number three on the list. There was two other older brothers before him.

Ramtin Arablouei (15:23)

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.

Bradley Hope (15:33)

It was kind of unimaginable.

Ramtin Arablouei (15:35)

Plus the royal family had ballooned. Ibn 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

Bradley Hope (15:56)

almost sound like posh British people.

Ramtin Arablouei (15:58)

MBS decided to stay in Saudi Arabia.

Bradley Hope (16:02)

He went to university in Saudi Arabia. His English wasn't even that great. For a long time he wanted to

Ramtin Arablouei (16:08)

be close to his father Salman.

Bradley Hope (16:10)

He was kind of the family disciplinarian handling these different families disputes. So he had files on everybody.

Ramtin Arablouei (16:17)

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.

Ali Al Ahmed (16:28)

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim Assalamu alaikum.

Rund Abdelfattah (16:30)

War rahmatullah. 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.

Bradley Hope (16:51)

With their deaths, his father became essentially the guaranteed second in line to be the king.

Rund Abdelfattah (16:57)

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.

Bradley Hope (17:07)

It was like almost Shakespearean people conniving against Salman coming into power.

Rund Abdelfattah (17:13)

MBS put together a team of people

Bradley Hope (17:15)

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 ways ploys being planned against his father. MBS just became around the clock tactician,

Rund Abdelfattah (17:29)

Clearing the path for his father to take the throne and proving himself indispensable.

Bradley Hope (17:35)

He switched gears from the young kind of business oriented guy into this kind of king in the waiting.

Ramtin Arablouei (17:44)

In early 2015, word began to spread that the sitting king of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, was very sick.

Ali Al Ahmed (17:52)

MBS actually went to King Abdullah with his father in the hospital. And King Abdullah was on a respirator. He was basically dead.

Ramtin Arablouei (18:00)

Something those closest to him were trying to conceal for as long as possible.

Ali Al Ahmed (18:05)

And MBS barged into the room. The secretary of the king was there to make sure nobody sees the king on the respirator. MBS slapped him across the face. That slap led to the announcement of King Abdullah being dead.

Ramtin Arablouei (18:22)

Late word from overseas tonight of the passing of a major figure in the Middle East.

Rund Abdelfattah (18:27)

King Abdullah died at the age of 90. King Abdullah's half brother Salman immediately succeeded him.

Bradley Hope (18:35)

Salman himself was getting up there in age.

Ramtin Arablouei (18:38)

So when he took the throne, MBS would be pulling the strings.

Ali Al Ahmed (18:43)

His cousin told me he is like a bull in a china shop.

Bradley Hope (18:47)

What he says goes, no matter what anybody else says.

Rund Abdelfattah (18:53)

Send in the F15s. 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 Aramco. And he launched a deadly bombing campaign in Yemen. American made bombs the Obama administration sold him. MBS hoped he could quickly stomp out the Houthi rebels there who were backed by Saudi Arabia's longtime rival Iran.

Bradley Hope (19:36)

He's saying this will be over in a couple of months. Then it becomes a decades long problem and nobody knows that better than America.

Rund Abdelfattah (19:45)

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.

Ramtin Arablouei (20:02)

The way things get done in the world are through a combination of focus and personal connection.

Jacob Silverman (20:07)

The third factor is self belief.

Ramtin Arablouei (20:10)

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 in that lofty think big style of tech CEOs like Sam Altman. He called his plan Vision 2030. It centered around Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, the public investment fund or a rainy day stockpile worth many billions of dollars. His plan involved converting the PIF into a Silicon Valley super engine.

Bradley Hope (20:43)

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 money onto it in the hopes that it would ignite into a monopoly or something like that.

Rund Abdelfattah (20:57)

MBS had gotten the idea from his cousin Prince Al Walid Bin Talal. They'd actually pitched the idea together Shark Tank style when King Abdullah was still alive. This was years before the RIT's kidnapping. Their idea went nowhere. The Al Sauds weren't exactly known for taking risks, which in the 21st century was becoming more and more of a problem.

Bradley Hope (21:20)

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

Rund Abdelfattah (21:26)

In the age of Internet and social

Bradley Hope (21:28)

media, they were conservative socially.

Rund Abdelfattah (21:30)

Women couldn't drive and had strict Dr. Dress codes. Movie theaters were outlawed and there's this

Bradley Hope (21:36)

going to be a problem in the future.

Rund Abdelfattah (21:37)

MBS wanted the country to change on his terms, which frustrated Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal, who had his own vision for how things should go.

Bradley Hope (21:47)

He's the kind of person that drinks coffee out of a mug with his own face on it.

Rund Abdelfattah (21:50)

He was the second biggest investor in Twitter, owning more stock than even Jack Dorsey, its then CEO. And he had shares in Rupert Murdoch's companies Fox and News Corp.

Ramtin Arablouei (22:01)

Even so, MBS cut Prince Al Walid out of his future plans and started meeting with a Japanese billionaire tech investor named Masayoshi son. Together in 2016, they started taking Silicon Valley by storm.

Jacob Silverman (22:18)

Uber has turned to the Middle east

Ramtin Arablouei (22:20)

for its biggest investment ever.

Bradley Hope (22:22)

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

Ramtin Arablouei (22:25)

Company announcing a 3 1/2 billion dollar raise from Saudi Arabia's public investment fund, an unprecedented amount of money for a single investment.

Bradley Hope (22:34)

It was just saying we've arrived. This is the new Saudi era.

Ramtin Arablouei (22:41)

Coming up, Saudi Arabia goes on a spending spree.

Jacob Silverman (22:54)

Hi, this is Justin Whitlow from Lester, North Carolina.

Rund Abdelfattah (22:58)

And you are listening to Throughline.

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Rund Abdelfattah (24:13)

Part 2 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 spy ring 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

Jacob Silverman (24:47)

accounts and had helped unmask Saudi Twitter users. As in, find their IP addresses, their phone numbers, help discover where they live, personal information, and pass that information along to Saudi authorities.

Rund Abdelfattah (25:02)

This is journalist Jacob Silverman, author of the book Gilded Rage, Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley.

Jacob Silverman (25:10)

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.

Ramtin Arablouei (25:30)

Five years earlier, in December 2010, Twitter had helped ignite the Arab Spring. The story of a Tunisian fruit vendor named Mohammad Bouazizi 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.

Jacob Silverman (25:55)

For a while, Saudi Arabia was one of the biggest markets and certainly the biggest market in the Middle East.

Ramtin Arablouei (25:59)

For Twitter, it was a digital public square where free thought was allowed, even if their physical reality remained unchanged.

Jacob Silverman (26:07)

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.

Ramtin Arablouei (26:25)

By 2015, Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal was a major investor in Twitter. In 2018, the Arabic language Twitter account of Saudi journalist and dissident Ali Al Ahmad was suspended. He'd also been a target of aspiring.

Ali Al Ahmed (26:42)

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.

Ramtin Arablouei (26:56)

Now they were paying the price.

Ali Al Ahmed (26:59)

People are spending years in prison, decades in prison because of this action.

Ramtin Arablouei (27:03)

One of the men who was allegedly unmasked by the spy ring was recently executed.

Jacob Silverman (27:09)

The full extent of the damage isn't quite known, and that may be happening much more widely than just Twitter.

Rund Abdelfattah (27:16)

The two Saudi spies managed to flee the US without consequences and are believed to be living in Saudi Arabia. The Lebanese American spy stood trial in a US Federal court 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 spy ring back in Saudi Arabia.

Ali Al Ahmed (27:39)

They took away his name, but, you know, somebody leaked it and it was pretty obvious.

Rund Abdelfattah (27:45)

Badr Al Asakir, a close advisor of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known widely as mbs, who runs his private foundation.

Jacob Silverman (27:56)

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.

Rund Abdelfattah (28:13)

In June 2016, six months after the FBI showed up at Twitter headquarters, Jack Dorsey and MBS met in the us they took photos together, smiling and shaking hands. The photos were posted to Twitter by none other than Badr El Esakid, the alleged head of the spy ring.

Jacob Silverman (28:34)

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

Ramtin Arablouei (28:37)

This was all happening right around the time that massive, unprecedented Uber deal went through. And a lot of CEOs in Silicon Valley were 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.

Bradley Hope (28:56)

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 this sort of public version, which is the transformative, charming change maker prince who is going to change Saudi Arabia forever.

Ramtin Arablouei (29:12)

Because alongside his authoritarian moves, MBS was starting to liberalize Saudi Arabia in ways that appealed 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.

Rund Abdelfattah (29:31)

The question was, could that paranoid hidden world and his public image as a change maker coexist forever? Over the following year, each season brought that question closer and closer to a tipping point.

Ramtin Arablouei (29:47)

Spring 2017.

Ali Al Ahmed (29:51)

Tomorrow, as you know, I'm going to Saudi Arabia.

Rund Abdelfattah (29:54)

Just a few months into his first term, President Trump surprised everyone when he announced his first overseas trip as president.

Bradley Hope (30:03)

Usually in the traditions of the White House, you first visit your closest allies. You know, it might be Canada or the UK and then this was like Saudi Arabia, which was culturally seemed at the time to be very far from also the home of most of the 911 attackers.

Rund Abdelfattah (30:18)

To a lot of people at the time, it seemed like a strange choice. But behind the scenes, the UAE ambassador

Bradley Hope (30:25)

to Washington, D.C. started putting Mohammed bin Salman forward as this amazing change maker in the Middle east. And he could really have huge impacts on the world. That made MBS very attractive to the Trump administration to be seen like they were helping change something or having an impact.

Rund Abdelfattah (30:44)

MBS rolled out the red carpet for Trump at the Ritz Carlton Riyadh.

Ali Al Ahmed (30:49)

I stand before you as a representative of the American people to deliver a

Ramtin Arablouei (30:55)

message of friendship and hope and love.

Bradley Hope (31:01)

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.

Ali Al Ahmed (31:10)

This landmark agreement includes the announcement of a $110 billion Saudi funded defense purchase.

Bradley Hope (31:19)

Silicon Valley meets like New York City ostentatiousness.

Ramtin Arablouei (31:25)

But inside Saudi Arabia, MBS would soon ramp up a campaign of political repression.

Jacob Silverman (31:32)

People are being stopped in the streets and their phones are being checked by police.

Ramtin Arablouei (31:36)

Activists who had led the push for women to drive were arrested. So were dissenting clerics. No protest of any kind would be tolerated.

Rund Abdelfattah (31:44)

The Saudi workforce continued to rely on the Kefala system, a system critics have called modern day slavery, in which migrant workers are completely at the mercy of their employers.

Ramtin Arablouei (31:56)

And there were allegations of war crimes in Yemen, where MBS was continuing his military campaign with weapons support from the us.

Rund Abdelfattah (32:05)

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.

Jacob Silverman (32:20)

I think that there was a definite change once Trump came into power and more of an authoritarian slide in Silicon Valley. But to me, that was something that was already there and already happening independent of Trump.

Ramtin Arablouei (32:36)

Fall 2017.

Bradley Hope (32:41)

This was a huge coming out. Introducing Saudi Arabia.

Rund Abdelfattah (32:44)

Five months after MBS put on a show for Trump at the Ritz, he upped the ante, putting together a three day economic summit at the Ritz called the Future Investment Initiative, but informally marketed to the world.

Ramtin Arablouei (32:57)

Davos of the desert.

Bradley Hope (33:00)

Technology,

Ramtin Arablouei (33:03)

new frontiers, unleashing innovative ideas,

Bradley Hope (33:10)

celebrating

Ali Al Ahmed (33:11)

the visionaries among us.

Bradley Hope (33:14)

I was at the Wall Street Journal, so I came as a journalist to cover the conference. I mean, it was a huge conference. I always remember 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 lived. A few weeks later, suddenly there was this news that came out in this very unofficial way.

Rund Abdelfattah (33:40)

Breaking news, breaking news out of Saudi Arabia.

Jacob Silverman (33:43)

Palace intrigue to the nth degree. We're seeing a truly historic upheaval on right now.

Rund Abdelfattah (33:48)

A royal purge in Saudi Arabia, rounding up several high profile people.

Ramtin Arablouei (33:53)

All these bold moves MBS was making in Yemen, in Silicon Valley, within Saudi itself had made a lot of the other royals mad.

Bradley Hope (34:02)

And so he really had to sleep with one eye open at that time,

Ramtin Arablouei (34:07)

as had become his MO by this point. He decided to try something pretty extreme to stifle dissent.

Rund Abdelfattah (34:14)

Cue the shakedown.

Ramtin Arablouei (34:17)

There has been a lot of news this week out of Saudi Arabia, which is basically America's kooky 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 Ritz. MBS's name is all over the Epstein files, by the way.

Rund Abdelfattah (34:42)

So why do this purge anyway? American watchers were confused. Wasn't this the guy bringing radical reform to Saudi Arabia?

Ramtin Arablouei (34:50)

You know, that's the big question. They say it's all about corruption. I really don't believe that.

Rund Abdelfattah (34:55)

In one Washington Post interview, MBS explained his actions this way. Quote, 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.

Bradley Hope (35:11)

This event of the Ritz created some cracks in the surface, but it didn't break.

Ramtin Arablouei (35:20)

Spring 2018.

Rund Abdelfattah (35:25)

Riyadh's Ritz Carlton Hotel has finally reopened, more than three months after it was converted into a gilded prison.

Ramtin Arablouei (35:35)

Just a month after the Ritz reopened to the public as a hotel, MBS took all that money he'd seized and went on a whistle stop tour through

Jacob Silverman (35:44)

the US and he gets a very warm welcome.

Ramtin Arablouei (35:48)

He meets with President Trump in Washington, Wall street bankers in New York, and tech CEOs in Silicon Valley looking to make deals.

Jacob Silverman (35:58)

You would think that maybe US businessmen and oligarchs would wonder, hey, didn't this guy just imprison a bunch of our Saudi colleagues? But that didn't seem to bother anyone.

Ali Al Ahmed (36:09)

He had dinner at Bill Gates House.

Jacob Silverman (36:11)

There are pictures from that visit of MBS standing with a whole bunch of top Silicon Valley venture capitalists and CEOs.

Ramtin Arablouei (36:21)

There seemed to be no red line he could cross that would keep Americans from doing business with him.

Rund Abdelfattah (36:28)

And then fall 2018, Jamal Khadjogi walked into a consulate in Istanbul. That's coming up.

Ramtin Arablouei (36:46)

My name is Javeria Sahil and I'm calling from London, United Kingdom.

Rund Abdelfattah (36:49)

You're listening to through line from npr.

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Rund Abdelfattah (38:09)

Part 3 the Uncanny Valley.

Ramtin Arablouei (38:16)

Where is Jamal Khashoggi? No signs of a missing Saudi journalist. The search is on for clues.

Rund Abdelfattah (38:24)

Walked into the Saudi Arabian Embassy.

Ramtin Arablouei (38:26)

Never seen coming out.

Sponsor/Advertisement Voice (38:27)

He hasn't been seen since.

Bradley Hope (38:29)

Disappeared.

Ramtin Arablouei (38:34)

At 1:15pm on October 2, 2018, Jamal Khashoggi, known to Americans mostly through his opinion column for the Washington Post, entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. He never came out.

Bradley Hope (38:53)

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 American life. He was on the payroll of the royal family of Saudi Arabia. His role was to be almost propagandistic at times.

Ramtin Arablouei (39:11)

After the Arab Spring broke out in 2010, Khashoggi began speaking out more against the Saudi regime and its autocratic policies, which landed him in hot water when MBS took over.

Bradley Hope (39:24)

In the MBS era, There was only two sides. There was either 100% MBS or 0% MBS. And if you're 0% MBS, you're essentially an 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 in Saudi Arabia, he would have to essentially disappear. He didn't really want that life for himself. So he essentially fled and escaped to America.

Ramtin Arablouei (39:48)

It was summer 2017. Soon after, he began to write pieces for the Washington Post criticizing mbs. In one piece, he compared the shakedown at the Ritz to the Night of The Long Knives, Hitler's brutal 1934 purge and consolidation of power in which hundreds of people were killed.

Bradley Hope (40:11)

It seems to me likely that they knew quite a bit about what Jamal Khashoggi was doing and who he was talking to and who he was meeting with.

Rund Abdelfattah (40:17)

MBS had his people keeping tabs on Khadjogchi.

Bradley Hope (40:21)

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's against him.

Jacob Silverman (40:31)

There are more arrests happening at home.

Rund Abdelfattah (40:34)

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 phone. Neither accusation was ever proven. What we do know is that Bezos owns the Washington Post where Khadjoggi worked. And a couple months later, Khadoggi disappeared.

Ramtin Arablouei (40:58)

On the morning of a October 2, 2018, Khashoggi headed to the Saudi consulate to pick up his marriage documents. He had recently become engaged. At 1:15pm he entered the consulate. What happened next is captured on tape and a warning. Some of the details are pretty graphic.

Rund Abdelfattah (41:20)

Only a few people have heard the actual tapes, but here's what they reveal. Inside the consulate, a team of 15 hitmen, Saudi security officers were waiting for Khashoggi. One of them says, has the sacrificial animal arrived?

Ramtin Arablouei (41:36)

And they all laugh when Khashoggi 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.

Rund Abdelfattah (41:45)

At first, Khashoggi resists. Then his voice changes, growing more fearful. Are you going to give me an injection? He asks. Yes, the hitmen respond.

Ramtin Arablouei (41:57)

They grab Khashoggi. He's beaten and tortured before finally being strangled.

Rund Abdelfattah (42:03)

His last words are, I can't breathe.

Ramtin Arablouei (42:06)

One of the men, a forensic pathologist, then cuts up Khashoggi's body with a saw.

Bradley Hope (42:12)

And then somebody actually put on his clothes and walked around Istanbul acting as if they were him.

Rund Abdelfattah (42:19)

To this day, authorities have never recovered his body.

Ramtin Arablouei (42:24)

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 Khashoggi was murdered inside the

Ali Al Ahmed (42:41)

Saudi consulate in in Istanbul.

Jacob Silverman (42:43)

I think it certainly opened some Americans eyes as to how brutal this regime could be and how aggressive MBS could be.

Ramtin Arablouei (42:50)

And there were calls for accountability. Congresspeople drafted bills to stop US 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 Saudi summit for the global financial elite.

Ali Al Ahmed (43:06)

They reduced it to one person as there's only one issue. Oh, it's just one guy. No, it's not one guy.

Rund Abdelfattah (43:13)

Ali Al Ahmad A fellow Saudi dissident and journalist knew Khashoggi personally.

Ali Al Ahmed (43:19)

We have people who are much more important than Jamal Khashoggi who were killed in Saudi Arabia.

Rund Abdelfattah (43:25)

He says Khashoggi wasn't the first or last person the Saudi regime targeted. And even with the fallout from Khashoggi's murder, mbs, he didn't seem to break

Bradley Hope (43:35)

a sweat and 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.

Rund Abdelfattah (43:48)

He pumped more money into Saudi Arabia's infrastructure and began clearing the way for a city of the future called Nome. It's meant to be in the desert. It's a linear city that is clad between two mirrored walls. The original plan for it was supposed to be 170km, which we should note led to the displacement of around 20,000 Saudis.

Bradley Hope (44:11)

There have been other foreign artists who

Ali Al Ahmed (44:13)

have performed in the kingdom.

Rund Abdelfattah (44:15)

He began paying big bucks for American celebrities to come to Saudi Arabia.

Bradley Hope (44:19)

People like Mariah Carey and Enrique Iglesias and the Backstreet Boys.

Rund Abdelfattah (44:24)

And Saudi Arabia continued to make big deals with Silicon Valley, building an especially close relationship with Elon Musk.

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Documents show Elon Musk has raised more than $7 billion from investors, including a Saudi prince, to help finance his purchase of Twitter.

Jacob Silverman (44:41)

They became regular investors in his companies.

Rund Abdelfattah (44:44)

And when the AI race started to heat up, Musk began depending even more on Saudi money to compete.

Jacob Silverman (44:51)

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.

Ramtin Arablouei (45:01)

The heads of other AI companies traveled to Saudi Arabia to meet with MBS, too. OpenAI's Sam Altman, Palantir's Alex Karp.

Jacob Silverman (45:10)

The tech industry has hardly wavered in kind of its loyalty and alignment with mbs.

Ramtin Arablouei (45:15)

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

Jacob Silverman (45:25)

the Ritz, which to me feels haunted. I mean, I don't think I would even want to step foot in there. But who knows if they're even thinking of the history of that place.

Rund Abdelfattah (45:34)

The Trump family also ramped up its business with Saudi Arabia. After Trump left office.

Jacob Silverman (45:40)

He would talk to Jared Kushner a lot. They would talk over WhatsApp.

Rund Abdelfattah (45:43)

Trump's son in law, Jared Kushner, signed a $2 billion deal with MBS.

Bradley Hope (45:49)

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.

Rund Abdelfattah (46:02)

In 2025, Trump again chose Saudi Arabia as his first overseas trip after coming back into office. He'd arrived 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 US for the first time since Khajogi was killed.

Ali Al Ahmed (46:24)

We have a extremely respected man in the Oval Office today and a friend

Ramtin Arablouei (46:30)

of mine for a long time.

Bradley Hope (46:31)

MBS really had a very in control kind of feel about him. He also made jokes during the dinner.

Ramtin Arablouei (46:39)

So I want to tell them, sorry,

Ali Al Ahmed (46:40)

you lose the bet.

Bradley Hope (46:43)

When I saw the picture of the dinner, everyone was sitting around in their black attire and everything. I just thought to myself, this is a complete 360 moment. Everything is back to what it was like before.

Ali Al Ahmed (46:54)

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.

Jacob Silverman (47:05)

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.

Bradley Hope (47:19)

People like the Trump administration think of themselves more like sheikhs 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.

Ramtin Arablouei (47:30)

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 2026 began.

Rund Abdelfattah (47:44)

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.

Ramtin Arablouei (47:55)

In February, the Board of Peace met for the first time to discuss future development plans for the reconstruction and and governance of Gaza. Among the board members are Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff.

Jacob Silverman (48:07)

Steve Witkoff, a close friend of Trump's, also his top diplomatic envoy and a

Ramtin Arablouei (48:13)

co founder of World Liberty Financial, the

Jacob Silverman (48:15)

main Trump crypto company.

Rund Abdelfattah (48:17)

Witkoff 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 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 said he doesn't care personally about the Palestinian issue, though a Saudi official later disputed 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

Bradley Hope (49:11)

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 Witkoff 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 in Saudi Arabia.

Rund Abdelfattah (49:35)

MBS is already doing some business discreetly with Israel, especially in the cybersecurity and surveillance sector.

Ramtin Arablouei (49:47)

And now there's a new superpower that it seems like everyone is racing towards AI.

Rund Abdelfattah (49:55)

For us, like the average people, a lot of us are interacting with AI in terms of chatbots 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.

Jacob Silverman (50:13)

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.

Ramtin Arablouei (50:24)

The police will be on their best behavior because we record. 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.

Jacob Silverman (50:41)

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 you know, how is AI being used now? Well, it's being used in Gaza to pick out targets for the IDF 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.

Ali Al Ahmed (51:22)

The greater Silicon Valley is supported by dictatorships who want these surveillance tools.

Rund Abdelfattah (51:31)

Hailey Al Ahmad 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.

Ali Al Ahmed (51:47)

I want to be with my parents and with my family. I love my country. I love my land.

Rund Abdelfattah (51:54)

He's received threats from the Saudi government and also offers.

Ali Al Ahmed (51:59)

I got offers of millions of dollars. This is because they do not fathom anyone outside and inside to speak freely.

Rund Abdelfattah (52:11)

But Ali isn't a deal guy.

Ali Al Ahmed (52:14)

I can sleep on the floor. I can eat a piece of 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.

Rund Abdelfattah (52:44)

And that's it for this week's show. I'm Rund Abdelfattah.

Ramtin Arablouei (52:47)

I'm Ramtin Arablouei and you've been listening to Throughline from npr.

Rund Abdelfattah (52:52)

This episode was produced by me and me and Julie Kane, Anya Steinberg, Casey Minor, Christina Kim, Devin Kadayama, Irene Noguchi, Kiana Mogatam, Thomas Coltrane.

Ramtin Arablouei (53:05)

Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Voelkel. Also, thank you to the national news Vivian Nerim, Natasha Tikku, Johannes Durgi, Dylan Kurtz, Rebecca Farrar, Liana Simstrom, Beth Donovan and Tommy Evans.

Rund Abdelfattah (53:21)

This episode was mixed by Robert Rodriguez. Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band Drop Electric, which includes Naveed Marvi, Sho Fujiwara, Anya Mizani.

Ramtin Arablouei (53:35)

And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write us@throughlinepr.org thanks for listening.

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This message comes from Prolon Feeling heavy and depleted, Prolon's five day Fasting Mimicking Diet aims to make it easy to reset your body habits and energy. Developed at USC's Longevity Institute, the goal of Prolon's nutrition program is to rejuvenate you from within by working at the cellular level to support fat loss, glowing skin and Sharper Focus. Get 15% off plus a bonus gift when you subscribe at prolonlife.com NPR this message comes from Sony Pictures Classics With a magnificent life, Marcel Penyol must write a column about his accomplished past, confront his childhood self and relive his most cherished memories. From the director of the Triplets of Belleville in select cities March 27.

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