The budding bromance between authoritarianism and tech

A protester dressed as Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, demonstrates with members of the group Code Pink outside the White House. (Image: Getty)

The Washington Post

Mon, 02 Jun 2025

By Karen AttiahWhen he started as a Post contributing columnist in the fall of 2017, Jamal Khashoggi was trying, constructively, to pierce the futuristic illusions about Saudi Arabia that Mohammed bin Salman was selling to the world.MBS, as the Saudi crown prince is known, was pushing a gleaming vision of a cutting-edge Saudi Arabia, one with gaggles of robots, cities like something out of science fiction and tech investment galore. He was also ordering mass arrests across civil society, showing that his Saudi Arabia – present and fu...

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