Opinion | Why Do We Tolerate Saudi Money in Tech?

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Why Do We Tolerate Saudi Money in Tech?

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An old cliché goes that you rob banks because that’s where the money is, so it stands to reason that you find every which way you can to plunder Google and Facebook and Twitter and Amazon because that’s where the golden veins of data are.
Increased vetting of tech workers by the companies is likely.
I have gotten many tips over the years of potential spies inside the major tech companies, and I cannot imagine how hard it is to ferret them out internally.

Let me underscore that: all of humanity. Everything we do and everywhere we go. An old cliché goes that you rob banks because that’s where the money is, so it stands to reason that you find every which way you can to plunder Google and Facebook and Twitter and Amazon because that’s where the golden veins of data are

That’s why the developing case at Twitter will be important to watch.
The complaint accuses him of spying on three accounts for the Saudis.
The other alleged principal perpetrator, Ali Alzabarah, a Saudi citizen who worked at Twitter as a site reliability manager, seems to have been more industrious in his spying.
He is apparently in Saudi Arabia now and is accused of sneaking around more than 6,000 accounts on behalf of higher-ups in Saudi Arabia who appear connected to Prince Mohammed.
While Twitter noted this week that it restricted access to sensitive information to a “limited group of trained and vetted employees” and that more generally, as a platform, it remains committed to those who take great risks to hold power accountable, the vulnerable points for entering these platforms are too irresistible and too numerous.
Then again, you can also just walk in the front door, as Saudi Arabia did at Twitter.
In 2015, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, who had already invested $300 million in Twitter through the Kingdom Holding Company in 2011, upped his investment and became the second-largest shareholder, a stake bigger than Mr. Dorsey’s.
He was briefly jailed by Prince Mohammed in 2017, was freed in 2018 and has since been making more tech investments.
And Twitter has not been the only tech giant fueled by Saudi money.
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign Public Investment Fund put up nearly half of the money for SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund in 2016

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