And there are American oligarchs, like the founders of Andreessen Horowitz, whose multi-billion-dollar venture funds receive huge amounts of cash from Saudi Arabia, providing yet another Saudi financing vehicle for Musk and X. As I’ve tried to
emphasize (and will have more on in my next book), the Saudi-Twitter/X connection is particularly complex and disturbing. The ascendant tech reactionaries see dictatorships like Saudi Arabia as good partners for business. “Saudi has a founder,”
Ben Horowitz said at a 2023 conference. “You don’t call him a founder. You call him his royal highness.”
As important as Saudi Arabia is, there was a reason why I chose the below photo to headline the article. It’s a photo of Elon Musk, a bunch of Qataris (on whom he’s financially dependent), and the creepy specter of Jared Kushner, who’s pocketed billions in funding from Saudi Arabia. This isn’t just about one or two oligarchs. It’s about how American tech oligarchs, with Musk at the top of the shaky pyramid, have made financial and political alliances with dictatorships, illiberal regimes, and authoritarian billionaires all over the world. That, I hope, is one of the lessons of this shareholder list being unsealed.