[Peace-discuss] NYT op-ed on Khashoggi

[David Green]

The author was recently interviewed by Doug Henwood on his book--

*Silicon Valley’s Saudi Arabia ProblemSilicon Valley’s Saudi Arabia Problem*

Technology companies can no longer turn a blind eye to the human rights
abuses of one of their largest investors.

*By Anand Giridharadas <https://www.nytimes.com/by/anand-giridharadas>*

Mr. Giridharadas is the author of “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of
Changing the World.”

Somewhere in the United States, someone is getting into an Uber en route to
a WeWork co-working space. Their dog is with a walker whom they hired
through the app Wag. They will eat a lunch delivered by DoorDash, while
participating in several chat conversations on Slack. And, for all of it,
they have an unlikely benefactor to thank: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Long before the dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi vanished
<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/09/world/middleeast/jamal-khashoggi-timeline.html?module=inline>,
the kingdom has sought influence in the West — perhaps intended, in part,
to make us forget what it is. A medieval theocracy that still beheads by
sword
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/26/saudi-arabia-criticised-over-executions-for-drug-offences>,
doubling as a modern nation with malls (including a planned mall offering
indoor skiing
<https://www.thenational.ae/business/maf-to-build-saudi-arabia-s-first-ski-slope-in-its-riyadh-malls-projects-1.207714>),
Saudi Arabia has been called “an ISIS that made it.
<https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/21/opinion/saudi-arabia-an-isis-that-has-made-it.html?module=inline>”
Remarkably, the country has avoided pariah status in the United States
thanks to our thirst for oil
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/30/us/trump-oil-saudi-arabia.html?module=inline>,
Riyadh’s carefully cultivated ties with Washington
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/18/world/middleeast/jared-kushner-saudi-arabia-arms-deal-lockheed.html?module=inline>,
its big arms purchases
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/us/politics/us-arms-sales-saudi-arabia-.html?module=inline>,
and the two countries’ shared interest in counterterrorism
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-islam.html?module=inline>.
But lately the Saudis have been growing their circle of American enablers,
pouring billions into Silicon Valley technology companies.

While an earlier generation of Saudi leaders, like Saudi Prince Alwaleed
bin Talal
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-arrests-alwaleed-newsmaker/saudi-prince-alwaleed-has-invested-billions-in-companies-around-globe-idUSKBN1D50FO>,
invested billions of dollars in blue-chip companies in the United States,
the kingdom’s new crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has shifted Saudi
Arabia’s investment attention from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. Saudi
Arabia’s Public Investment Fund
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-08/what-now-for-saudi-arabia-s-planned-2-trillion-fund-quicktake>
has become one of Silicon Valley’s biggest swinging checkbooks, working
mostly through a $100 billion fund
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/technology/masayoshi-son-softbank-vision-fund.html?module=inline>
raised by SoftBank (a Japanese company), which has swashbuckled its way
through the technology industry, often taking multibillion-dollar stakes in
promising companies. The Public Investment Fund put $45 billion
<https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/14/softbank-and-saudi-arabias-pif-planning-100bn-tech-fund/>
into SoftBank’s first Vision Fund, and Bloomberg recently reported
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-05/saudi-arabia-doubles-down-on-softbank-bet-with-extra-45-billion>
that the Saudi fund would invest another $45 billion into SoftBank’s second
Vision Fund.

SoftBank, with the help of that Saudi money, is now said to be the largest
shareholder in Uber
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-softbank-tender/softbank-is-now-ubers-largest-shareholder-as-deal-closes-idUSKBN1F72WL>.
It has also put significant money into a long list of start-ups
<https://www.recode.net/2018/2/5/16974032/this-is-where-chart-softbank-vision-fund-masayoshi-son-venture-capital>
that includes Wag
<https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/30/on-demand-dog-walking-app-wag-raises-300-million-from-softbank-vision-fund/>,
DoorDash
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-01/softbank-leads-535-million-investment-in-doordash-delivery-app>,
WeWork
<https://www.recode.net/2018/10/9/17957916/softbank-wework-vision-fund-talks>,
Plenty
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-19/softbank-s-vision-fund-leads-200-million-bet-on-indoor-farming>,
Cruise
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/31/business/dealbook/gm-softbank-cruise.html?module=inline>,
Katerra
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/business/dealbook/katerra-softbank-vision-fund.html?module=inline>,
Nvidia <https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/07/softbank-nvidia-vision-fund/> and
Slack
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-slack-fundraising/slack-valued-at-5-1-billion-after-new-funding-led-by-softbank-idUSKCN1BT0KO>.
As the world fills up car tanks with gas and climate change worsens, Saudi
Arabia reaps enormous profits — and some of that money shows up in the bank
accounts of fast-growing companies that love to talk about “making the
world a better place.”

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Mohammed bin Salman has carefully crafted a public image of himself as a
reformer
<https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-model-for-a-saudi-reformer-1531868178>,
distancing himself from Saudi leaders of the past. During a recent visit to
Silicon Valley
<https://www.recode.net/2018/4/6/17206358/saudi-crown-prince-visit-tech-silicon-valley>,
reportedly
<http://fortune.com/2018/04/08/tim-cook-and-sergey-brin-met-with-the-saudi-crown-prince-in-silicon-valley/>
to discuss “potential cooperation between American tech companies and Saudi
Arabia,” the Saudi ruler did away with his traditional white robes as he
met with executives and investors. On his tour, he was seen walking around
with Sergey Brin of Google
<https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/07/heres-a-look-at-who.html>, exchanging
smiles with Mark Zuckerberg while exploring Facebook
<http://english.alarabiya.net/en/business/technology/2016/06/22/Saudi-s-Deputy-Crown-Prince-meets-Facebook-founder-Mark-Zuckerberg.html>,
and sitting down with Jeff Bezos of Amazon
<http://www.arabnews.com/node/1276676/saudi-arabia>, who owns The
Washington Post, for which Mr. Khashoggi wrote
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/10/06/read-jamal-khashoggis-columns-for-the-washington-post/?utm_term=.b845287a644b>
until he vanished.

The crown prince’s visit to Silicon Valley appears to have paid off for all
involved. Silicon Valley celebrated one of its largest investors, the crown
prince cemented his public image as a progressive start-up investor, and
several of the executives he met have since joined the advisory board
<https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-execs-named-saudi-board-controversy-jamal-khashoggi-disappearance-2018-10>
of Neom
<https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/10/saudis-500-billion-mega-city-neom-is-attracting-overwhelming-interest-from-investors.html>,
his $500 billion megacity project. A former United States energy secretary,
Ernest Moniz, suspended his involvement in Neom earlier this week, telling
Axios
<https://www.axios.com/obama-energy-secretary-suspends-role-saudi-project-a2c0c3c4-2a71-487f-8aab-6580da5dc1e0.html>that
he has concerns “about the disappearance and possible assassination of
Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.” Y Combinator’s
president, Sam Altman, also suspended his involvement in the megacity
project, saying that he doesn’t “plan to comment on the case until the
investigation is finished.” Many other Neom advisory board members —
including Marc Andreessen of the famed Silicon Valley investment firm
Andreessen Horowitz; the former Uber C.E.O. Travis Kalanick; and the Boston
Dynamics C.E.O., Marc Raibert — remain on the board
<https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/silicon-valley-leaders-disassociate-saudi-arabia-board-neom>
as of now.

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<https://www.nytimes.com/subscription/multiproduct/lp8HYKU.html?campaignId=7QFKX>

The bond between Saudi Arabia and Silicon Valley will be further
strengthened later this month, at the Future Investment Initiative in
Riyadh — also known as “Davos in the Desert
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-11/saudi-davos-prep-overshadowed-by-outcry-over-writer-s-fate>.”
Speakers listed on the conference website
<http://futureinvestmentinitiative.com/en/2018/speakers> as of this writing
include the Lucid Motors C.T.O., Peter Rawlinson; the Google Cloud C.E.O.,
Diane Greene; the Magic Leap chief product officer, Omar Khan; and Vinod
Khosla of Khosla Ventures. They will be joined by hundreds of other
investors, executives, and government officials, including the president of
the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, and the United States Treasury secretary,
Steve Mnuchin. According to its website
<http://futureinvestmentinitiative.com/en/home>, the event is “powered by
the Public Investment Fund.” Several speakers have dropped out
<https://www.axios.com/companies-saudi-arabia-conference-khashoggi-disappearance-153deaec-1282-4723-91f2-2ea8998d5fe2.html>,
including the Uber C.E.O., Dara Khosrowshahi, who stated that he was “very
troubled by the reports to date about Jamal Khashoggi.”

The kingdom’s influence in the United States government has long bought a
certain amount of silence, which was evidenced most famously in the
so-called “28 pages
<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/15/us/document-september-11-28-pages.html?module=inline>”:
a classified portion of Congress’s investigation of the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks that disclosed Saudi linkages to the hijackers that were
suggestive, if hardly conclusive, of official support — pages that victims’
families long struggled to get declassified
<https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/282378-9-11-families-plead-with-white-house-to-release-secret-28-pages>.
But the push into Silicon Valley — into companies whose technology is used
by millions — represents a potentially dangerous new front of Saudi
influence-peddling: Riyadh underwriting ever more of our daily
conveniences, making us complicit in the regime’s deeds.

The facts of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance remain a
mystery. But if he was, as Turkish officials have suggested
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/09/world/europe/jamal-khashoggi-turkey-saudi-arabia.html?module=inline>,
murdered at the behest of the Saudi kingdom, it wouldn’t be out of
character. Despite image-burnishing attempts like the crown prince’s
Silicon Valley tour, Saudi Arabia remains a paragon of human rights abuse.
It continues to use punishments outlawed elsewhere, carrying out 48
beheadings in the first four months of 2018
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/26/saudi-arabia-criticised-over-executions-for-drug-offences>.
In August, it was reported
<https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/saudi-arabia-seeks-unprecedented-death-penalty-woman-activist-n902771>
that Saudi prosecutors were seeking unprecedented authority to behead a
female activist for nonviolent offenses, which included protesting against
the government.



Saudi Arabia’s laws treat women as second-class citizens, only recently
granting
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/04/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-drivers-licenses-women.html?module=inline>
them the power to drive — and only once it had become clear that this
freedom would be short-lived, thanks to Silicon Valley’s driverless car
technology, in which the Saudi fund has invested. The Saudis have fueled a
civil war in Yemen that is reported
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/28/world/middleeast/un-yemen-war-crimes.html?module=inline>
to have cost at least 16,000 lives; a report
<https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23479&LangID=E>
from the United Nations Human Rights Council suggests that Saudi Arabia may
be guilty of war crimes for its involvement in the civil war of its
southern neighbor. And, thanks to the world’s need for its oil, the kingdom
has enjoyed a stunning immunity from justice for its role in financing
Islamist extremism around the world
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-islam.html?module=inline>
.

As Saudi Arabia establishes its new role as one of Silicon Valley’s most
prominent investors, the risk grows that its investments will purchase
silence. Companies that pride themselves on openness and freedom may find
themselves unable to speak ill of one of their largest investors.

Fearing that this would be so, I reached out to several of the technology
companies that have received significant cash from Saudi Arabia’s Public
Investment Fund
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-08/what-now-for-saudi-arabia-s-planned-2-trillion-fund-quicktake>.
I asked Uber, Wag, DoorDash, Katerra, WeWork, Slack and Plenty if there was
any aspect of Saudi Arabia’s conduct in Mr. Khashoggi’s apparent murder
that the company disavowed. “Or,” I asked, “does the investment from PIF
come with an expectation of remaining silent about Saudi conduct?” All of
the companies either declined to respond at all, or responded with a
refusal to comment on the record about the Saudi kingdom’s behavior.

Silicon Valley has enough issues already: Tech companies are compromising
our elections
<https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election>,
upholding monopolies
<https://nypost.com/2018/02/03/big-techs-monopolistic-rule-is-hiding-in-plain-sight/>,
and profiteering from the abuse of privacy
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/10/tech-companies-data-online-transactions-friction>.
There is no need to add to that list by becoming a reputation-laundering
machine for one of the least admirable regimes on earth — a regime that
would seem to violate all the values that Silicon Valley is proud of
trumpeting.

Arvind Ganesan, director of the business and human rights program of Human
Rights Watch, told me in an email that the Riyadh conference “will be a
litmus test for businesses’ willingness to go along with a Saudi narrative
that is increasingly disconnected from reality.” Foreign businesses “risk
more than reputational harm,” he added. “They’re enabling part of his
narrative.”

If the Valley is sincere that it will “change the world” and “do the right
thing, period
<https://www.fastcompany.com/40572751/ubers-new-mantra-is-do-the-right-thing-employment-lawyers-are-still-waiting>,”
then the Saudi government’s billions of dollars in investment capital
should be returned, and Silicon Valley companies should refuse any further
investments. Every business leader and news organization of conscience
should pull out from the Public Investment Fund-powered conference and
suspend any involvement with Saudi-funded projects like Neom — at the very
least, until the disappearance and potential murder of Mr. Khashoggi have
been suitably investigated, but perhaps beyond that, given the regime’s
broader human rights record. (I became aware during the writing of this
piece that The New York Times had been listed among the conference’s
sponsors but has since withdrawn
<https://twitter.com/grynbaum/status/1050157874662531072>.)

Mr. Khashoggi couldn’t be intimidated by his country. He might have given
his life for his bravery. Silicon Valley must choose where it stands on the
questions of lies and truth, cowardice and courage that defined his work.
Turning a blind eye to the human rights abuses of Saudi Arabia is no way of
“changing the world.”

Anand Giridharadas is the author of, most recently, “Winners Take All: The
Elite Charade of Changing the World.”


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/12/opinion/silicon-valley-saudi-arabia.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
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