Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. We
Speaker 1: are bringing you today another one in our Drilling Deep
Speaker 1: series from Adam Lewinstein, where Adam talks to authors of
Speaker 1: interesting new books on climate, or politics, or the combination thereof.
Speaker 1: Today a conversation with Karen Elliott House, author of the
Speaker 1: new book The Man Who Would Be King Mohammed Bin
Speaker 1: Salman and the Transformation of Saudi Arabia. Of course, Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 1: as Americans are being reminded these days, is not the
Speaker 1: only increasingly authoritarian nation reliant on oil extraction, determined to
Speaker 1: disrupt global climate negotiations, or obsessed with energy ravenous Ai.
Speaker 1: But as Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and former Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal publisher House makes clear, it is a crucial one.
Speaker 1: House has been traveling to Saudi Arabia for more than
Speaker 1: four decades and has borne witnessed both its power and
Speaker 1: its contradictions. She spent hours interviewing the Crown Prince and
Speaker 1: other Saudi officials for this book. But House also has
Speaker 1: quote a number of personal friends who have literally disappeared
Speaker 1: without any official explanation. She writes in June, Adam Lowenstein
Speaker 1: spoke with House about how Saudi Arabia has changed under
Speaker 1: the Crown Prince, whether MBS is gamble on economic and
Speaker 1: social freedoms alongside civil and political repression, is politically or
Speaker 1: environmentally sustainable, how Saudi Arabia's oil and petrochemical industries serve
Speaker 1: its geopolitical interests, and why the kingdom's promises about transitioning
Speaker 1: away from fossil fuels might be a bit less green
Speaker 1: than climate advocates would hope. Conversation is coming up after
Speaker 1: this quick break.
Speaker 2: So you've been I learned in the book you've been
Speaker 2: going to Saudi Arabia for more than four decades, and
Speaker 2: I'm curious what originally piqued your interest about the kingdom.
Speaker 3: The first time I went was in May of nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy eight, and Saddad had been to Jerusalem in November
Speaker 3: of seventy seven, So the Middle East was a big issue,
Speaker 3: and the foreign editor of the Wall Street Journal told me,
Speaker 3: go see these places you're going to write about. So
Speaker 3: I went to Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 3: and Saudi Arabia then was a more normal country than
Speaker 3: it was for most of that forty years. When I arrived,
Speaker 3: I was taken to the oil Minister's house for what
Speaker 3: I hoped was an interview. It turned out to be
Speaker 3: a dinner party, and so there were women all dressed
Speaker 3: and bejeweled and alcohol, and we watched the World Cup
Speaker 3: soccer final on you know, satellite TV. It was a
Speaker 3: very It was the kind of event that the religious
Speaker 3: police deplored. And shortly thereafter after the attack on the mccamosque,
Speaker 3: of course, that kind of thing disappeared in Saudi Arabia
Speaker 3: and men and women were segregated and all of the
Speaker 3: stuff that you know that people know for most of
Speaker 3: the last forty years, until King Settleman and his son
Speaker 3: took over and took the religious police off the street.
Speaker 3: Let women drive, let women work, are trying to modernize
Speaker 3: and change the economy and the culture.
Speaker 2: One of the things I've struggled to parse in terms
Speaker 2: of what's real and what is hype, what is marketing,
Speaker 2: is the scale of the transformation in Saudi Arabia over
Speaker 2: the last decade. And there's been a lot of talk
Speaker 2: about some of the efforts to allow women to drive,
Speaker 2: to increase the availability of entertainment, to scale back the
Speaker 2: presence of the religious police. But there's also kind of
Speaker 2: a relentless fire hose of promotion, in part from a
Speaker 2: lot of wealthy, self interested Western investors who would like
Speaker 2: to do business with the kingdom. And so I had
Speaker 2: a hard time understanding what is real and what is not.
Speaker 2: But one of the main arguments of your book is that,
Speaker 2: at least in terms of social and economic freedom, this
Speaker 2: transition is real and legit and consequential. Can you talk
Speaker 2: about that a little bit? Just how much the country
Speaker 2: has changed over let's say the last decade or so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think as I try to what interested me
Speaker 3: is how where did Mohammed ben Salmon, who's now thirty
Speaker 3: nine and was roughly twenty nine when he began changing
Speaker 3: the kingdom? Where did he get these ideas? Because most
Speaker 3: Saudis he grew up in the very conservative, heavy handed religion,
Speaker 3: and that's apparently partly what motivates him to change that.
Speaker 3: He was a young kid who you know, the only
Speaker 3: thing he could do was play video games because there
Speaker 3: was no other entertainment, which is true, there was nothing
Speaker 3: really except kids could kick a soccer ball around in
Speaker 3: a field of garbage here and there in town he has.
Speaker 3: He is motivated. He understands that they can't live off
Speaker 3: of oil revenue forever and that people have to be
Speaker 3: motivated and educated to work. So he is determined to
Speaker 3: bring more resources into the world of work. And women
Speaker 3: are a major educated resource, and they're much more motivated
Speaker 3: than most men because they haven't had the opportunity to
Speaker 3: do anything other really than to teach school. There are
Speaker 3: a few doctors here and there, but the only career
Speaker 3: that was sanctioned for women really was breeding children or
Speaker 3: teaching children. And he is not He has obviously set
Speaker 3: back political freedom. In the days when I went there
Speaker 3: under King Fahd, under King Abdullah, you weren't ever supposed
Speaker 3: to criticize the king. But in the newspapers, you know,
Speaker 3: you could read the health ministry failed at this, the
Speaker 3: defense ministry failed that. I mean, you know, mild criticism,
Speaker 3: and you didn't wind up in in prison. And I think,
Speaker 3: you know, he feels that I'm doing these things fast.
Speaker 3: I can't. I don't have time to have everybody telling
Speaker 3: me how to do it and getting in the way.
Speaker 3: So and I think, you know, he thinks he he
Speaker 3: thinks he knows what to do. His whole philosophy is
Speaker 3: that what's wrong with the world is incremental thinking. You
Speaker 3: have to have out of the box thinking, and that
Speaker 3: that's something. As you noticed in the last chapter of
Speaker 3: the book leak On, you also had that the Singaporean
Speaker 3: Prime Minister had that view that I'm in charge here.
Speaker 3: I know I've got to drive you hard to get
Speaker 3: you where you ought to be. But the changes are
Speaker 3: truly significant. This country is still conservative, so you still
Speaker 3: see most women wearing a bias, but you don't have to.
Speaker 3: The last time I saw the Crown Prince, he said
Speaker 3: to me, I was still wearing my black abiah when
Speaker 3: I walked into his office, and he said, you don't
Speaker 3: have to wear that, and I said, I know, and
Speaker 3: sat down and started asking questions. But I think back
Speaker 3: to your point about how much marketing hype there is.
Speaker 3: The Crown Prince himself is a marketer. That was my
Speaker 3: impression of him in our first meeting. He is, and
Speaker 3: I don't mean in a kind of cheap hypey way,
Speaker 3: but he is self confident and he is charismatic, and
Speaker 3: he is out to convince you that, you know, here's
Speaker 3: the way things are going to be, and here's what
Speaker 3: I'm doing to get them there. I mean, he's he
Speaker 3: likes to sell and he's quite effective at it, I think. Plus,
Speaker 3: they have all this money and they hire everybody in
Speaker 3: the world to tout what's going on in the kingdom.
Speaker 3: Like Lionel Messi, the soccer player. They tried to hire
Speaker 3: him for their soccer club. He said no, but they
Speaker 3: pay him twenty five thousand dollars a year to promote
Speaker 3: their attempts to get the World Cup, which they did,
Speaker 3: and to promote the country's tourism business.
Speaker 2: One of the things I found most remarkable in the
Speaker 2: book was the fact that most Saudis had not even
Speaker 2: heard of MBS as recently as I think twenty fifteen
Speaker 2: and a decade later. You describe him as having pretty
Speaker 2: much total control over the government over the country. He
Speaker 2: chairs the Public Investment Fund. You know he's hiring Saudi Aramco.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about how he has managed to There's
Speaker 2: obviously lots of internal machinations in internal politics, which you
Speaker 2: describe in detail in the book, But from a I
Speaker 2: guess maintaining the consent of the governed perspective, how's he
Speaker 2: maintained that that kind of absolute power over so many
Speaker 2: aspects of the country in such a short time.
Speaker 3: I think essentially in at least two ways. One, most
Speaker 3: of the sixty percent of the country is under thirty
Speaker 3: years of age, so they want change, most of them,
Speaker 3: not all of them. Some of them are conservative, but
Speaker 3: most want change. So he has offered them entertainment and jobs.
Speaker 3: And for those who are less enamored, he's offered strong
Speaker 3: political suppression. Well, he, as you know, put the most
Speaker 3: of the senior royals in the ritz Carlton along with
Speaker 3: prominent business people, forced them to pay what he said
Speaker 3: was ill gotten gain, and it probably was. The country
Speaker 3: was a very corrupt country in under Abdullah. Most people
Speaker 3: said that up to thirty percent of the budget was
Speaker 3: just taken, you know, on this and that project. So
Speaker 3: he tried to intimidate the royals, remove the religious police
Speaker 3: from the streets, and the religious scholars who didn't agree,
Speaker 3: some of them found themselves also in prison. And then
Speaker 3: the old Saudi way of buying people to keep people happy.
Speaker 3: The religious police are still paid, they're just not allowed
Speaker 3: to go out on the street and arrest anyone. So
Speaker 3: with a combination of intimidation and entertainment for the young
Speaker 3: and his father obviously agrees with these things, or at
Speaker 3: the beginning. I don't know how active is or alert
Speaker 3: his father is now. But when he first became king,
Speaker 3: he obviously supported MBS, and that was a big part
Speaker 3: of his ability to consolidate control. And his father got
Speaker 3: rid of the first crown prince and put in a
Speaker 3: second one, and then got rid of that crown prince
Speaker 3: and put in his son, Mohammed. So his father has
Speaker 3: been instrumental in helping him consolidate power. But he has
Speaker 3: the reputation of willingness to use whatever means is necessary
Speaker 3: to get and retain control so that he can reform
Speaker 3: and transform the country in the way he believes it
Speaker 3: ought to go. But he he he uh is the emphasis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you mentioned leak One, you the former strong man
Speaker 2: leader of Singapore, and he you compare MBS to him
Speaker 2: a few times in the book. It was interesting. It's
Speaker 2: interesting because leak One you beloved by in particular Western
Speaker 2: executives and investors and business leaders who prize above all
Speaker 2: else the freedom, the free flow of financial capital, and stability.
Speaker 2: One way to preserve stability within a society is through
Speaker 2: autocracy and not permitting any democratic processes, any political process stifling,
Speaker 2: you know, all kinds of political activity and criticism and dissent.
Speaker 2: And you point out throughout the book that even as
Speaker 2: these social and economic freedoms have genuinely increased within Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 2: the political climate has gotten even more repressive. In your
Speaker 2: travels there, because this is something I've written about. Lots
Speaker 2: of Western journalists have reported on this, lots of human
Speaker 2: rights groups doing really important work in terms of covering
Speaker 2: political repression within Saudi Arabia. What is the political climate
Speaker 2: within the country itself, among the people of Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 3: You know, fundamentally, there's no history in Saudi Arabia of
Speaker 3: people having any control of their lives. I mean mostly
Speaker 3: these were Bedouin tribes and the chief was in charge,
Speaker 3: and the social contract was keep me from starving and
Speaker 3: I give you my loyalty. And that's been the social
Speaker 3: contract with the Alsaoud for the three hundred roughly years
Speaker 3: that they've been in charge of Saudi Arabia. So people
Speaker 3: want they want government where they can count on a
Speaker 3: decent life. They don't want to, you know, an enormous
Speaker 3: amount of corruption. I mean, when I wrote my first book,
Speaker 3: Saudi's were so upset with the royal family taking so
Speaker 3: much of everything that people used to steal the sheets
Speaker 3: off their hospital bed on the theory that if the
Speaker 3: Royals can steal, so can I you know, just frustration
Speaker 3: at the fact that they felt it was an unfair system.
Speaker 3: They don't purport to know how to lead or want
Speaker 3: to or want to vote on somebody. They just want
Speaker 3: government that's not that's transparent and accountable. So I think
Speaker 3: he has tried to provide more of that, the transparency,
Speaker 3: having key performance indicators for all the ministers and tracking
Speaker 3: them and publishing here's what we're trying to do, here's
Speaker 3: what we've done, Here's what we haven't done. I mean,
Speaker 3: he's he's not afraid of the report card, but you know,
Speaker 3: he is the he is the superintendent, the principal, and
Speaker 3: the star pupil, mister everything people call him because they
Speaker 3: you know, he did kind of come from nowhere. I mean,
Speaker 3: he was the sixth son of his father, so he
Speaker 3: shouldn't have amounted to anything in a hierarchical society, and
Speaker 3: Saudi's were kind of where did he come from? Because
Speaker 3: he had he had government jobs, but they weren't prominent ones,
Speaker 3: so people didn't know much about him, and then suddenly
Speaker 3: he's reshaping the government and he's the deputy of Crown Prince,
Speaker 3: and then he's the Crown Prance, and then he's in charge,
Speaker 3: as you said, of the Public Investment Fund a RAMCO,
Speaker 3: everything in the country, every entity in essence reports to him.
Speaker 2: You mentioned KPIs. I get the impression that NBS personally
Speaker 2: is quite interested in the prestige and the reputation of
Speaker 2: firms like McKenzie, who played a big role in Vision
Speaker 2: twenty thirty, and lots of other Western consulting firms. I've
Speaker 2: written a lot about the some of the Western pr
Speaker 2: firms in public affairs and lobbying shops that have secured
Speaker 2: some quite new gritive contracts with the PIFF and ARAMCO
Speaker 2: and other parts of the Saudi government. You make a
Speaker 2: few references throughout the book to the role of foreign
Speaker 2: consultants in the country, and I'm wondering if you could
Speaker 2: just talk a little bit about how and why, I
Speaker 2: guess these Western firms are so involved in so involved
Speaker 2: in the government of Saudi Arabia under Mohammed ben Solman.
Speaker 3: You know, as you've already said, the Western firms all
Speaker 3: see Saudi Arabia as a place they can make money.
Speaker 3: That he's trying to modernize. So you know, I'll get
Speaker 3: in there. I've got ideas, and he is happy to hire.
Speaker 3: I mean, his whole philosophy, as I say in the book,
Speaker 3: is it's better to attempt a hundred things and succeed
Speaker 3: at fifty than attempt five and succeed at four. You
Speaker 3: know that trying to change everything is a good idea.
Speaker 3: And so because of that, you know, he has a
Speaker 3: reason to hire uncteen advisors consulting firms to advise on this,
Speaker 3: that and the other. I mean, the the line the
Speaker 3: big city that they're building or planning.
Speaker 2: To build, right, important distinction.
Speaker 3: It's not yes, it's not there yet. You know. They
Speaker 3: they hired I guess five different architectural firms, not one,
Speaker 3: and then they kind of put them all together, and
Speaker 3: you know, you let the architects debate each other, and
Speaker 3: then Mohammed debates with them, and then that's the that's
Speaker 3: the end of the the debate. I mean, he he decides.
Speaker 3: As somebody used to say or said to me, we
Speaker 3: used to debate and never decide. Now we decide and
Speaker 3: never debate, which is a kind of interesting, succinct summary.
Speaker 3: But all those firms are there to make money in
Speaker 3: because he's trying to do literally mouths thousand, let a
Speaker 3: thousand flowers bloom. He's trying to let a thousand projects bloom.
Speaker 3: So you know they're all rushing in to get a
Speaker 3: piece of the money. I'm sure that you know much
Speaker 3: of what they do is overcharge and underperform. But I mean,
Speaker 3: the only one of these I've ever read was the
Speaker 3: McKenzie Vision twenty thirty document, so, and I guess a
Speaker 3: lot of that. The things proposed are really in the
Speaker 3: many five year plans that the country had from nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy on. But they produced a plan every five years
Speaker 3: and put it on the shelf. Very little of it
Speaker 3: ever got done. So probably McKenzie went back and read
Speaker 3: all the five year plans. I don't know, but that
Speaker 3: would be a good place to start, just to know
Speaker 3: what's been proposed before. I don't know that they did
Speaker 3: or didn't, but I know that the five year plans
Speaker 3: mostly were put on the shelf and not execute it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you mentioned in the book the succession of five
Speaker 2: year plans for transitioning the Kingdom away from relying so
Speaker 2: much on oil, and how those five year plans you know,
Speaker 2: like you said, have been published time and time again
Speaker 2: and never nothing has fundamentally changed. I think a lot
Speaker 2: of people hear about obviously, we hear about the climate crisis.
Speaker 2: We hear about ARAMCO in Saudi Arabia playing a role
Speaker 2: in global climate negotiations as kind of a baseline for
Speaker 2: where we are right now. Can you talk about where
Speaker 2: here in twenty twenty five, where the kingdom is at
Speaker 2: in its reliance on oil and the scale at this
Speaker 2: point of that reliance, and I guess where they are
Speaker 2: in the transition that has been talked about, as you mentioned,
Speaker 2: for many, many iterations of five year plans and is
Speaker 2: obviously a big part of Vision twenty thirty. And what
Speaker 2: you hear from NBS and other government officials today.
Speaker 3: Well, obviously oil is still the major source of revenue.
Speaker 3: It used to be about seventy eighty percent of the
Speaker 3: budget revenue, forty percent of the GDP of the country.
Speaker 3: The goal is to get non oil to sixty I
Speaker 3: think sixty five percent of GDP, but right now it's
Speaker 3: only they haven't made that much progress yet, but they are,
Speaker 3: and I believe sincerely they are trying to do a
Speaker 3: develop renewable energy because the Saudis are the most profligate
Speaker 3: energy users in the world. They use like three point
Speaker 3: seven million barrels a day for twenty million, thirty million people,
Speaker 3: and they use much more than anybody except China and
Speaker 3: the US, who have vastly, vastly greater populations. So they
Speaker 3: want to have renewable energy so that they can keep
Speaker 3: some of the fossil fuels to sell to the world,
Speaker 3: because their oil is the cheapest in the world to produce,
Speaker 3: so when it's I think it's roughly three dollars a
Speaker 3: barrel is my recollection. So when it's selling at eighty,
Speaker 3: I mean, that's that's huge profit. So they don't want
Speaker 3: to run out of the ability to have oil to sell. Secondly,
Speaker 3: they're in a climate that is incredibly hot, so they
Speaker 3: already have according to a rand study and one by
Speaker 3: their own King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, they
Speaker 3: have ninety five days a year that are the temperatures
Speaker 3: above one hundred. So it's hard to develop tourism when
Speaker 3: you have such excessively hot days, and tourism is one
Speaker 3: of the industries they're trying to grow, and according to Rand,
Speaker 3: there are going to be one hundred and eighty days
Speaker 3: over ninety five degrees by twenty thirty, so they do
Speaker 3: need to do what they can to try to keep down.
Speaker 3: Nothing they're doing is going to meet the Paris Accords.
Speaker 3: Don't have more than one point five degrees celsius rise.
Speaker 3: I mean, China's running that various others. But they do
Speaker 3: have an incentive, I think to produce as much renewable
Speaker 3: energy as they can, both to reduce the greenhouse gases
Speaker 3: they produce and to have oil that is replaced by
Speaker 3: sun and wind so they can sell it for more money.
Speaker 3: So they're producing, as I said in the book, they're
Speaker 3: putting a chip on every possible option for energy production
Speaker 3: green energy, solar, wind, and the two are not mutually incompatible.
Speaker 3: I mean, the State of text is one of the
Speaker 3: few places that has managed to reduce the role of
Speaker 3: oil and its GDP, so it is still America's largest
Speaker 3: energy producer and also America's largest the state producer of
Speaker 3: renewable energy. And I think that's exactly you know what
Speaker 3: MBS's goal is is we want to be a big
Speaker 3: producer of renewable energy, and we want to and we can.
Speaker 3: We need it, we use it, and we can try
Speaker 3: to sell it. And we also want to be a
Speaker 3: major producer of oil and gas because the world is
Speaker 3: going to need it far beyond twenty thirty forty fifty,
Speaker 3: so that they have more time, they believe, to get
Speaker 3: the economy off oil, but they need to keep the
Speaker 3: ideally keep the country from being seen as too hot
Speaker 3: to visit.
Speaker 2: At one point in the book, you describe them as
Speaker 2: trying to be or striving to be the last oil
Speaker 2: producer standing. And I'm wondering, is it a fair assertion
Speaker 2: to say that they're trying to do two things simultaneously.
Speaker 2: One is reduce their own reliance on oil, while at
Speaker 2: the same time doing what they can to preserve global
Speaker 2: demand for oil as long as possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's I would say that's fair. They want to
Speaker 3: reduce their own demand for oil so they can yes
Speaker 3: have it to sell to the world. As you recall
Speaker 3: in the book, Prince Abdelaziz, the energy minister, says, we
Speaker 3: have to not write off the Third world. We can't
Speaker 3: be so pure and holy about our air climate change
Speaker 3: that we in essence say the rest of the seven
Speaker 3: hundred million people who still burn sticks for heat, that's
Speaker 3: the only heat they can have. They're not going to
Speaker 3: be able to have oil because they deserve a chance
Speaker 3: to develop and burning oil is less abusive, he says,
Speaker 3: to the atmosphere than you know, burning wood. I'm not
Speaker 3: an expert on that, but you know, he's very big
Speaker 3: on the idea that you can't tell most of the
Speaker 3: world they have to stop their development right where they
Speaker 3: are because we elite Western nations don't want any more
Speaker 3: greenhouse gases released. So, I mean, it's a it's a
Speaker 3: point that Dan Jurgen makes too, the energy Guru.
Speaker 2: One thing that you talk about in the book is
Speaker 2: the some of the consequences geopolitically, but also for the
Speaker 2: purposes of this conversation from an energy and climate perspective
Speaker 2: of Saudi Arabia's growing relationship with China, particularly in petrochemicals,
Speaker 2: and you write at one point that Aramco believes the
Speaker 2: market for turning oil into chemicals will last beyond the
Speaker 2: uses of oil for gasoline. I think the oil for
Speaker 2: gasoline is what we often think of as the source
Speaker 2: of the climate crisis, at least from a day to
Speaker 2: day individual perspective, But what does it mean for this
Speaker 2: growing investment in petrochemicals, and particularly between two countries Saudi
Speaker 2: Arabia and China that are huge users and consumers of energy.
Speaker 3: Saudi Arabia I think is determined. They have a distrust
Speaker 3: of the United States from at least the Obama administration forward.
Speaker 3: But even with George w they told told him not
Speaker 3: to go into it rock and he did so. They
Speaker 3: they're nervous, and Mohammed Ben Salman wants to be a
Speaker 3: big man on the world stage, so he has to
Speaker 3: deal with Russia to control global energy prices. He deals
Speaker 3: with China because China is the biggest buyer of oil
Speaker 3: and Saudi oil as well as the Iranian oil that
Speaker 3: they're buying at cut rate prices. So I think, you know,
Speaker 3: he he wants a relationship with China. So investing in
Speaker 3: China and having China invest in Saudi is something that
Speaker 3: I think he sees as a good geopolitical investment. I
Speaker 3: don't know if it's a good energy investment. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's kind of beyond my paygrade to argue on that,
Speaker 3: but I mean the Chinese are doing all kinds of
Speaker 3: work in Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis seem to just
Speaker 3: be investing money in, you know, in petrochemical plants there.
Speaker 3: I don't think the Saudis actually need China for petrochemicals.
Speaker 3: They've got their own, so I think personally, I think
Speaker 3: it's more of a political investment than an energy investment.
Speaker 3: And the Crown Prince, as you may know, has mandated
Speaker 3: teaching Chinese in addition to English in Saudi schools, and
Speaker 3: I'm told that his own children study Chinese, so you know,
Speaker 3: he's got he's got something invested in that, I think
Speaker 3: the Chinese. But the Chinese and the Saudis have a
Speaker 3: compatibility because the Chinese resident is an autocrat and he
Speaker 3: sees himself as the head of a great civilization. NBA
Speaker 3: sees himself as the head of a great civilization Islam.
Speaker 3: They both feel that the US is trying to tell
Speaker 3: them all the time that human rights are universal and
Speaker 3: they don't buy it. And they also believe that the
Speaker 3: repression of your people politically is the right thing to
Speaker 3: do to hold the society together, to have the unity.
Speaker 3: So I mean, I think they have a lot of
Speaker 3: compatibility that you wouldn't normally think of between a young
Speaker 3: man and an old man, and a religious or Islamic
Speaker 3: government and an atheistic government. But I think they I
Speaker 3: think they're quite compatible, and they're look on individualism is bad.
Speaker 3: It's the health of the group, the unity that should
Speaker 3: be paramount.
Speaker 2: I wanted to ask you about Jamal kas Showgi because
Speaker 2: you knew him pretty well, right, or at least you'd
Speaker 2: met with him a number of times over the years.
Speaker 2: I'm just wondering just from a kind of an individual perspective.
Speaker 2: You also mentioned in the book that you've gotten to
Speaker 2: know a number of other Saudis who have been imprisoned.
Speaker 2: Some of them are still imprisoned for criticism or alleged
Speaker 2: criticism of the government or I think you describe it
Speaker 2: as threatening national security, being one of the kind of
Speaker 2: catch all allegations against critics. So yeah, I just wondered
Speaker 2: if you could talk a little bit about your relationship
Speaker 2: with Jamalka Shogi.
Speaker 3: And under King Abdullah, he was a journalist in various
Speaker 3: newspapers and interviewed Osama bin Lad but King Abdullah's government
Speaker 3: seemed to use him to, you know, for foreigners like
Speaker 3: me to talk to, you know, if you want to
Speaker 3: talk about society and Saudi Arabia. So you know, I
Speaker 3: had dinner with him in Jed a couple of times,
Speaker 3: once with his wife, and you know, saw him in
Speaker 3: Riod also, you know, and saw he worked for Prince
Speaker 3: Al Walid bin ta Laal, the rich Saudi prince that
Speaker 3: is investor in a lot of American companies, and they
Speaker 3: were trying to start a new TV channel in the
Speaker 3: Middle East, which began right after King salt Mine came
Speaker 3: to power and it was shut down immediately. But anyway,
Speaker 3: the last time I saw him, uh, we had lunch
Speaker 3: in the Ozama Hotel in Riod, which has since been
Speaker 3: torn down. But you know, he never said anything in
Speaker 3: my recollection of the twenty years I knew him. He
Speaker 3: didn't criticize the royal family, but he was he was
Speaker 3: confident enough to explain things in a you know, not
Speaker 3: a tentative way, a confident way, and he did not
Speaker 3: criticize the Crown Prince. In that last lunch he was
Speaker 3: he expressed his unhappiness that he was not being allowed
Speaker 3: to write anymore, and he said, I would prefer to
Speaker 3: have democracy, but at least we have KPI's key performance
Speaker 3: indicators for accountability that he would prefer the ballot for accountability,
Speaker 3: but at least there was some account of ability. I mean,
Speaker 3: he had a good sense of humor, as illustrated by that.
Speaker 3: And then he left not too long there after to
Speaker 3: come to the United States and became a columnist. And
Speaker 3: I never saw him again when he was in the US.
Speaker 3: I mean I would see him on TV from time
Speaker 3: to time, but so yeah, it was for me a
Speaker 3: big shock when you see him after the death walking
Speaker 3: into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul along the film and
Speaker 3: not walking out. I mean, it still seems to me
Speaker 3: such a stupid thing. But you know our view. I
Speaker 3: have never had power like Mohammed benzel Mine, so who
Speaker 3: knows how I would use it, but I don't believe
Speaker 3: I would have done that. And as I said in
Speaker 3: the book, the only genuine human rights activist I ever
Speaker 3: knew was Mohammed Katani, who worked for the government, and
Speaker 3: he was determined to change Saudi Arabia through its own law.
Speaker 3: So he wasn't somebody calling for protests, etc. He planned
Speaker 3: to do it legally, but he criticized. He asked the
Speaker 3: king to remove his half brother the Interior minister, and
Speaker 3: that was considered criticism near treason, and he was put
Speaker 3: in prison for ten years, and then when he was
Speaker 3: supposed to get out, he quote disappeared. But I was
Speaker 3: told that was in the fall of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: I was told in March this year when I was there,
Speaker 3: that he is now and is at his apartment in Riod,
Speaker 3: not saying anything. So I believe that is probably true,
Speaker 3: but I have not been able to personally test it.
Speaker 3: And the other one was my translator for the first book.
Speaker 3: We worked together for five years, nearly six years. He
Speaker 3: was also working for the government, and I do have
Speaker 3: no idea what happened to him. Nobody professes to know.
Speaker 3: I have been unable. We kept in touch with each other,
Speaker 3: and then in the fall of twenty twenty one, when
Speaker 3: I tried to reach him on whats app, I never
Speaker 3: got an answer, and I never got an answer since.
Speaker 3: And this year when I tried again, as I do routinely,
Speaker 3: on that number, a man answered me and said, this
Speaker 3: is I am not Abdulahamri. This is my number. I've
Speaker 3: had it for six months. So I don't know what
Speaker 3: happened to Abdullah, And I still hope to learn, because
Speaker 3: he was definitely not a political activist, so I have
Speaker 3: no idea. And he had a family and you know, children,
Speaker 3: and he was a religious man, you know, and understood
Speaker 3: the system well. So I can't believe he did anything
Speaker 3: that would have gotten him in trouble because I never
Speaker 3: heard him, and you know, ten years of dealing with him,
Speaker 3: say anything critical about any of the royal family. So
Speaker 3: but that part is sad to see people disappear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was struck in the book by the extent
Speaker 2: to which MBS seems to be really focused on how
Speaker 2: he and the kingdom more broadly, but he in particular
Speaker 2: is perceived. And I wondered if you thought that there
Speaker 2: was a that might explain some of the willingness to,
Speaker 2: you know, to lock up people who like a Twitter
Speaker 2: user who has nine followers, you know, these people who
Speaker 2: pose clearly pose no threat to the regime or to NBS.
Speaker 2: But this combination of spending so much money on consultants
Speaker 2: and pr gurus to create a certain image of the
Speaker 2: kingdom internally but also externally to investors in companies and
Speaker 2: potentially tourists, and also policing the speech so aggressively, particularly online,
Speaker 2: which is where perceptions are often created these days. And
Speaker 2: I'm just wondering if you see a link between those
Speaker 2: two and this kind of this almost obsessive focus on
Speaker 2: how the kingdom is perceived.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, you know, he clearly does have a
Speaker 3: obsession with how he and the kingdom are perceived, because
Speaker 3: I think it's like the old French line, what is it,
Speaker 3: Todd sainmois, you know, the state? He is the state,
Speaker 3: and so it is important that he be positively perceived
Speaker 3: because that's, in essence, the only way the state can
Speaker 3: be positively perceived in his mind. And I think it's true,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean that the you can't separate in
Speaker 3: a monarchy like that, the you know, we have a
Speaker 3: great king, but the state stinks, or vice versa. You
Speaker 3: know that the king stinks in the state is great.
Speaker 3: So I think, yeah, that he has spent a lot
Speaker 3: of money on consultants, et cetera. But my view is
Speaker 3: that he believes himself to be more the vision, you know,
Speaker 3: the need to project the country. He doesn't do a
Speaker 3: lot of public speaking. I think he does see people,
Speaker 3: you know, more the one on one influence, the opposite
Speaker 3: of Donald Trump. He is not out talking all the time,
Speaker 3: posting all the time, preening all the time. He is
Speaker 3: more private in that sense. Some of the people who
Speaker 3: work for him say he is shy. I don't see that,
Speaker 3: but I mean, he doesn't seemed to like public speaking
Speaker 3: a lot. He doesn't show up at the UN and
Speaker 3: get speeches like Nata Yahoo or you know, Trump or
Speaker 3: other people. So I think he you know, he was
Speaker 3: obviously bothered by the the way the world treated him
Speaker 3: right after the Kashogi event. And I still have this
Speaker 3: picture that not only the high five with Putin, but
Speaker 3: he stood there at the G twenty with his fish
Speaker 3: wrapped around him and his arms folded, and the other
Speaker 3: heads of state walked by him without saying anything. But
Speaker 3: he stood there, and it's his view. I think also
Speaker 3: is the best defense is a good offense. Don't disappear,
Speaker 3: you know, hold your hold your ground, and it will
Speaker 3: eventually get better. And you know, I think it has
Speaker 3: that he You know, when Joe Biden came to Saudi
Speaker 3: to ask for more oil, he just said no, given
Speaker 3: the way by treated him. So you know, he he
Speaker 3: has he has a strong I think he has a
Speaker 3: strong sense of confidence about what he's trying to do,
Speaker 3: and so he doesn't wilt and melt when he comes
Speaker 3: under fire. I mean, I think any politician arm monarch
Speaker 3: has to have a pretty strong sense of self confidence.
Speaker 2: To hold up the idea that anyone could run a
Speaker 2: country requires a certain level of ego that most people,
Speaker 2: probably for good reason, don't. Don't have. You spent quite
Speaker 2: a bit of time with him for this book, and
Speaker 2: for you've interviewed him a number of times. Right, do
Speaker 2: you think you will be invited to speak with him
Speaker 2: again after this book comes out?
Speaker 3: I have no idea. I mean, it was not written
Speaker 3: to uh savage him, and it was not written to
Speaker 3: save him. I've tried to be very analytical because I
Speaker 3: think that he is so much better for the country
Speaker 3: than another old man that he is. He's not the
Speaker 3: perfect leader, but none of us have the perfect leader.
Speaker 3: So I you know, if I had a vote between
Speaker 3: him and his uncle Mugrin that his father fired, or
Speaker 3: you know, or even Mohammed ben Nigh of his cousin,
Speaker 3: Uh He's got much more dynamism and drive and determination
Speaker 3: and courage than most Saudis do, and I think the
Speaker 3: country needs a you know, a real kick forward. I
Speaker 3: said in my first book that the risk to the
Speaker 3: kingdom was it would go the way of the old
Speaker 3: Soviet Union, with one old man after another Brezhnev Chernenko
Speaker 3: and drop off. And but the time they got to
Speaker 3: the next generation Gorbachev, it was too late. Or maybe
Speaker 3: Gorbachev just wasn't smart enough. I don't know, but you
Speaker 3: know in that the risk in Saudi Arabia was the
Speaker 3: same Abdullah Sultan Naya Salmon, and you know that the
Speaker 3: country was uh sclerotic and needed the arteries cleaned out.
Speaker 3: And I said, they still have time, and they have
Speaker 3: a lot of money for surgery and stints, but is
Speaker 3: there a daring doctor who could perform the operation? And
Speaker 3: I think MBS is as close to the daring doctor
Speaker 3: as I've seen. I met Mohammed bin Naya for the
Speaker 3: first book when he was running the rehabilitation of terrorists,
Speaker 3: Saudi terrorists. I don't know anybody that's got the confidence
Speaker 3: and drive. I've never met another Saudi with the confidence
Speaker 3: and drive other than a man who's in prison now,
Speaker 3: Salman auDA, who was one of the Awakening shakes in
Speaker 3: the mid nineties and was put in prison by King
Speaker 3: Faha then let out and under Abdullah became quite a
Speaker 3: you know, had a weekly TV show and magazines and
Speaker 3: you know, it was a media mog almost And he
Speaker 3: I don't know what he did, but he is in prison.
Speaker 3: The he believes from what his son says, that he's
Speaker 3: there because he is accused of criticizing the government, the
Speaker 3: Crown Prince for severing relations with Cutter. But anyway, he is.
Speaker 3: He is a truly charismatic, confident man. Impressive I always thought,
Speaker 3: and I uh, unabashedly say, I think MBS, while coming
Speaker 3: with a lot of baggage, comes with this drive and
Speaker 3: determination to move the country forward and it needs that
Speaker 3: very much. And I know a lot of Saudis don't agree.
Speaker 3: I get mail from I got an e mail from
Speaker 3: I don't know who he is, but just saying to me,
Speaker 3: I don't want my wife working with strange men. You know,
Speaker 3: this is not what we want. And I know there
Speaker 3: are people there that think that because I lived with
Speaker 3: a very religiously conservative lady when I was doing the
Speaker 3: first book, so and I'm from a very religiously conservative family,
Speaker 3: so I have never felt, you know, intimidated in Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 3: by the fact that you know, there are people who
Speaker 3: believe deeply and believe that you shouldn't be focused on
Speaker 3: the things of the world. My father didn't let us
Speaker 3: wear shorts, our pants are, We had no TV, no telephone,
Speaker 3: we could not date, you know, all the he was
Speaker 3: a good Saudi father.
Speaker 2: Do you think that that experience growing up drove you
Speaker 2: consciously or not to be interested in Saudi Arabia all
Speaker 2: those years ago?
Speaker 3: It probably did, because I was just truly fascinated by
Speaker 3: the country, and that first time I went, I met
Speaker 3: some professional women, So people like that existed in limited numbers.
Speaker 3: But you know, I also heard, you know, from people
Speaker 3: what what religion was like. And then in subsequent visits
Speaker 3: after it became even more important. And I got you
Speaker 3: stopped on the streets of for wearing a dress that
Speaker 3: came below my calves. But the religious police guy said,
Speaker 3: in perfect English, what is this? What is this? Pointing
Speaker 3: at my ankles, and told the man I was with
Speaker 3: a businessman. Get her in the car, you know, But
Speaker 3: I didn't. Somehow, I don't know the religio. The religious
Speaker 3: excess didn't turn me off on the country because I
Speaker 3: had grown up in a town where the only thing
Speaker 3: there was to do town of nine hundred people with
Speaker 3: five churches was go to church. You know, we did
Speaker 3: have a drive in theater, but we weren't very often
Speaker 3: able to go to it unless my father took us
Speaker 3: to see the Ten Commandments or something like that.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 3: But you know, so it didn't. It didn't frighten me.
Speaker 3: It intrigued me.
Speaker 2: It was not unfamiliar.
Speaker 3: It sounds like, yeah, it was familiar.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for this conversation, Karen. I appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Thank you.