Ali al-Ahmed didn’t blame Elon Musk for Twitter’s decline. He saw Musk as just another representative of an old system—one whose problems started long before Musk walked into Twitter’s headquarters in October 2022 carrying a porcelain sink. (Musk had joked about the moment online, posting a video with the caption: “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!”)
Ahmed was a Saudi journalist and analyst based near Washington DC. He founded the Institute for Gulf Affairs, a think tank focused on Saudi Arabia and human rights reporting. Journalists valued him as a source—passionate, principled, and always ready to talk.
For Ahmed, whose family members had repeatedly been imprisoned by the Saudi royal family, human rights work was a serious mission. Yet he was also warm and talkative, often sharing stories about his children or a gadget he invented to remind them to wash their hands—a reminder of the human lives at stake.
“Twitter is no different from Boeing or military contractors,” Ahmed told me. “They care about making money. Twitter and Facebook aren’t champions of human rights. These people are just money-grubbers.” His Arabic-language Twitter account, which had 36,000 followers, had been banned, though he was allowed to keep his English one.
I first spoke with Ahmed in 2021 while reporting on Saudi Arabia’s use of Twitter to identify and arrest critics. For the Saudi authorities, Twitter was a valuable asset in every sense. Billionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was Twitter’s largest outside shareholder, and the platform had become a key tool for government surveillance and control.
Ahmed believed his account had been compromised and feared that spies had access to it, putting his contacts at risk. This was a real concern. One of those contacts was Abdulrahman al-Sadhan, an aid worker abducted in 2018 for running a satirical Twitter account mocking the government. At 37, Abdulrahman was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
His sister, Areej al-Sadhan, who lived in the U.S. when we spoke in 2021, said Saudi Arabia was more repressive than ever. In the first three years after her brother’s arrest, her family received only two short phone calls from him. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman showed zero tolerance for dissent or mockery. Areej hadn’t heard from her brother in years and, in a 2023 court filing, said she wasn’t sure if he was still alive.
Despite presenting himself as a modern reformer, Prince Mohammed proved as repressive as past rulers, turning Saudi Arabia into a surveillance state where arbitrary arrests and disappearances were common. The brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi showed how far the Saudi state would go to silence critics, even abroad.
Prince Mohammed used the country’s vast oil wealth to spread influence across Silicon Valley, politics, sports, and other centers of power. Venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund were among the notable recipients of Saudi money, but they were just two of hundreds. In 2016, Uber received $3.5 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. Blackstone’s infrastructure fund got $20 billion. By 2018, Saudi Arabia had become the largest single source of funding for U.S. startups.
The relationship between Saudi Arabia and Silicon Valley reflected a convergence of shared interests. Like other Gulf dictatorships, Saudi Arabia leveraged its wealth to gain access and influence, embedding itself deeply into global networks of technology and power.Saudi Arabia aimed to launder its money, diversify its investments, strengthen ties with its key ally, expand its soft power, and improve its reputation, which had been tarnished by its role in the devastating war in Yemen. Silicon Valley provided all these opportunities, along with access to advanced technology and a growing business elite.
Nader Hashemi, a professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at Georgetown University, noted, “They are surveillance and police states. They seek to use the latest technology to maintain power and monitor their citizens. So, they have a vested interest in benefiting from high-tech advancements, hoping it will support their internal political control.”
The Saudi government held significant assets under the names of senior royals. Through his Kingdom Holding Company, Prince Alwaleed had stakes in companies like Lyft and Snapchat and was Twitter’s largest outside shareholder before Elon Musk. As Saudi Arabia became a leading source of capital for Silicon Valley, Alwaleed became its most prominent mogul, even taking a major shareholder role in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. By 2015, he owned about 5.2% of Twitter.
In November 2017, Alwaleed was arrested and detained at the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh as part of a widespread “anti-corruption” campaign that forced many wealthy Saudis and royals to surrender their assets to Prince Mohammed. This likely included Alwaleed’s Twitter shares.
According to a civil complaint filed by Saudi exile and filmmaker Omar Abdulaziz against Twitter and McKinsey, Prince Mohammed gained control over more Twitter stock than its founder by early 2018. Abdulaziz claimed the consulting firm helped identify him as a prominent online dissident, leading to his Twitter account being hacked. (In 2020, Canadian authorities warned him he was targeted by a Saudi assassination squad.) Abdulaziz’s complaint stated that major corporations had enabled Saudi efforts to suppress, torture, imprison, and kill dissenters worldwide, with Twitter extending the Saudi government’s reach globally.
Initially, Twitter seemed like “a great equalizer,” said Ahmed. With no independent media and restricted political expression in Saudi Arabia, social media offered a space for people to speak more openly, especially under pseudonyms. “But that didn’t last,” he added.
By the second Obama administration, Saudi Twitter had become a platform for propaganda, tracking dissidents, and identifying targets for Prince Mohammed’s enforcers. Many Saudis avoided posting under their real names, but the government still managed to uncover pseudonymous accounts and arrest their owners. For years, dissidents wondered how the government identified them and if there were ways to protect themselves. They assumed Saudi authorities had access to top Western security contractors and spyware, not realizing that Prince Mohammed and his associates had something even better: a spy within Twitter itself.
In June 2014, Bader Al Asaker, a Saudi official and head of Prince Mohammed’s Misk Foundation and private office, visited Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters. The tour was arranged by Twitter employee Ahmad Abouammo, whom U.S. prosecutors allege Asaker was grooming.Ahmad Abouammo was recruited by a Saudi official to spy on Middle Eastern media partnerships, gathering sensitive information such as email addresses, phone numbers, and private messages from Saudi dissidents, journalists, and other notable accounts. Over time, he received over $100,000 in cash and gifts for his efforts.
After Abouammo left Twitter for a job at Amazon, the Saudi regime enlisted Ali Alzabarah, a Twitter engineer with greater access to user data. Alzabarah proved to be an even more effective spy, tracking dissidents across borders and providing IP addresses that could reveal their locations.
In December 2015, the FBI informed Twitter about the Saudi espionage operation and requested no immediate action. However, Twitter, wary of government agencies pressuring tech companies for user data, suspended Alzabarah. According to a federal indictment, Alzabarah then urgently contacted his handler, who, with the Saudi consul general in Los Angeles, helped him flee to Saudi Arabia. There, he became CEO of the Misk Foundation and remained on the FBI’s most-wanted list years later, with his X account locked for privacy.
Abouammo was arrested in November 2019, found guilty on six spying-related charges, and sentenced to three and a half years in prison in December 2022.
Twitter, now rebranded as X under Elon Musk’s ownership, has never publicly addressed the Saudi spy ring or explained how it plans to prevent foreign agents from infiltrating its workforce.
Saudi doubts about Musk’s takeover were brief. Initially critical, Prince Alwaleed later supported the move, rolling his $1.89 billion in shares into the new venture. The Saudi official involved continued to use the platform for propaganda to his over 2.3 million followers.
Despite Musk’s promise to free users from Silicon Valley’s control, the user experience deteriorated. Musk appeared to prioritize business interests and personal whims over his stated principles, remaining silent on Saudi Arabia’s misuse of the platform. The company, once championing free speech, now relied on data collection and surveillance advertising, failing to protect users from breaches and making questionable deals with foreign governments.
As commentator Ali al-Ahmed noted, this was typical of a U.S. corporation, but one that had claimed a noble mission while operating in autocratic countries where using its product could put locals at legal risk.
For Ahmed, Abouammo’s conviction without a broader examination of Saudi influence at Twitter and in Silicon Valley was a failure. As a potential victim of the spy ring in the U.S., he offered to testify at Abouammo’s sentencing but was never called after a video chat with Department of Justice representatives.Ahmed responded, “It was obvious they just wanted to wrap this up. Think about it—if this guy had been working for the Iranians, he’d be facing 20 years in prison.” He pointed out that in the Jamal Khashoggi murder case, the Biden administration had granted Prince Mohammed sovereign immunity. The U.S. government also stepped into a lawsuit filed by Saad Aljabri, a former spy chief who defected to America. Ahmed called it a betrayal of justice, arguing that foreign influence and corruption had seeped into the court system.
Twitter’s ties with Saudi Arabia exposed its true nature. It wasn’t merely a platform for memes, gossip, or a billionaire’s fanbase; it was a key information battleground and a link between Silicon Valley and Gulf dictatorships. The company’s politics mirrored the false populism and opportunism seen in figures like Musk, Trump, and Maga supporters. Overlooking a major investor’s misconduct wasn’t unique to Twitter—it’s standard for big corporations, akin to oil companies bribing their way into foreign markets. Yet, the tech industry has long claimed to champion progress and human betterment through innovation, a notion shattered by the Saudi scandal.
Other spies might have infiltrated Twitter, just as foreign agents likely operate across Silicon Valley. Economic espionage is nothing new, but exploiting tech companies’ surveillance models to suppress dissent at home and abroad is a disturbing modern twist. Tech firms often face political pressure in foreign markets, leading idealistic companies to compromise on censorship to reach millions of users in countries like Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, India, or China. A cybersecurity expert known as Mudge, who advised Twitter, testified to Congress that Indian and Chinese agents within the company had extensive access to user data.
A month after Mudge’s testimony, Elon Musk rushed to acquire Twitter for $44 billion, taking on heavy debt and enlisting support from allies worldwide, including Riyadh. With the purchase, Musk inherited the Saudi spy scandal and its ongoing legal battles, along with a major shareholder who had spied on their own investment. Still, much remains unknown about Twitter, Saudi Arabia, and Musk’s dealings.
I sought to uncover who aided Musk in taking Twitter private and who now holds stakes in X. Who does this influential, unpredictable billionaire answer to?
Musk avoids the topic, having eliminated Twitter’s PR team. Publicly, he is synonymous with X—owning it, dominating its usage, setting policies, and stepping in for favored accounts. He feels no obligation to the media and seems to relish its decline.
After acquiring Twitter, Musk laid off thousands, sparking numerous lawsuits by early 2024 from ex-employees alleging denied severance, coercion, or being pushed to break the law to enforce his rules. Some plaintiffs are demanding X disclose its shareholders to address accountability questions: Who are Musk’s partners, and who might they be?Could a lawsuit against X be materially affected by the judge’s financial interests? Specifically, did the judge hold shares in Tesla or another company owned by Elon Musk? This was a valid question.
In 2023, Media Matters, a liberal media watchdog, released a report accusing the platform of placing ads alongside antisemitic content. Musk sued them, alleging they manipulated data to harm the platform. The case was filed in a northern Texas district where one judge, Reed O’Connor, owned up to $50,000 in Tesla stock when he began presiding over the lawsuit. Judge O’Connor ruled repeatedly in Musk’s favor, and the mounting legal costs forced Media Matters to lay off employees. By November 2024, X had updated its terms of service to require that all legal disputes be resolved in Judge O’Connor’s Northern District of Texas. (O’Connor stated his Tesla holdings were irrelevant to the case but recused himself from X’s suit against the World Federation of Advertisers.)
Requests for shareholder information like this are routine, and companies often seek to file such details under seal, keeping them hidden from the public and sometimes even the plaintiffs. In Anoke v Twitter—one of many civil cases stemming from Musk’s turbulent takeover and mass layoffs—X submitted its shareholder list under seal.
To request the list’s release, I contacted the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP), a First Amendment organization providing free legal aid to journalists. Founded in response to Nixon’s attempt to suppress the Pentagon Papers, RCFP has a strong record in First Amendment cases. They agreed to take on my case.
We identified several lawsuits where unsealing X’s shareholder list might be feasible. While the cases differed, the public interest argument was clear. RCFP lawyers built cases around X’s role as a public forum, media ownership issues, and concerns about foreign influence and national security. They notified X’s numerous high-profile attorneys of our intent to file unsealing motions and completed the necessary paperwork by early July. In July 2024, we formally filed a motion in the Northern District of California to disclose X’s shareholders in Anoke v Twitter.
Then, I waited.
Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter cost approximately $46.5 billion, funded by $20 billion of his own assets, $13 billion in loans from major banks (which struggled to offload them), $6 billion in personal loans to Musk, and over $7 billion from investors who became shareholders in the new private company.
A May 2022 financial filing with the SEC revealed some of Musk’s co-investors and their stakes, giving a partial picture of who backed the purchase. Saudi Prince Alwaleed, Twitter’s largest external shareholder, initially criticized Musk’s offer but later reversed his position and agreed to transfer his shares into the new company. Additional reporting uncovered more funding sources.
However, details were still missing. Once Twitter went private in October 2022 and Musk began dismantling divisions he disliked, there was no public record of shareholders or the legal entities holding their shares. Musk described himself as a “free-speech absolutist.”Elon Musk often presented himself as a champion of free speech, but his business operations were shrouded in the typical corporate secrecy—protected by legal threats, nondisclosure agreements, encrypted communications, and teams of high-powered lawyers that shield the ultra-wealthy. He publicly condemned “lawfare,” the practice of using lawsuits to target opponents, while frequently employing it himself. He banned journalists from X when they angered him and reinstated accounts belonging to Nazis, white supremacists, and a QAnon-linked influencer named Dom Lucre, who had once shared a screenshot from a video depicting child sexual abuse. (Lucre claimed he was raising awareness about child abuse.)
On August 20, 2024, Judge Susan Illston of the Northern District of California ruled in our favor in the case of Anoke v. Twitter. Shortly after the ruling, a document listing X’s shareholders was uploaded to the online court docket, accessible to anyone with a public court account. I’m still uncertain exactly how it happened, but it appears a court clerk accidentally changed the permissions on a restricted filing, possibly releasing the list prematurely. The mistake—if it was one—was quickly spotted by Washington Post reporters, who published an article detailing the list’s contents.
Soon, the list spread everywhere, featured in hundreds of media outlets and fueling debates, memes, misinformation, and—I hoped—scrutiny from researchers, regulators, and journalists investigating a major tech company openly supporting the Republican presidential candidate.
The document listed the legal names of roughly 95 entities with stakes in X (though not their share sizes), offering a glimpse into Musk’s financial backers and his network. It provided a window into a political and economic force gaining increasing influence in our world.
Of course, it all began with Elon Musk, the majority owner of X through a trust under his control. He was followed by Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s former CEO and a major shareholder who helped hand the company over to Musk. The list also included numerous other tech and finance figures, many of them venture capitalists and longtime investors in Musk’s ventures. Some of these firms had close ties to authoritarian governments like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which were direct investors in X. For instance, Andreessen Horowitz had received hundreds of millions from Saudi Arabia to invest in U.S. tech startups and was in discussions with the kingdom about creating a $40 billion AI investment fund.
Venture capital firms acted as laundromats for kleptocrats, princelings, and other global elites, allowing them to channel their wealth into one of America’s most celebrated industries. Silicon Valley investors and their foreign backers often shared a general disregard for democratic governance. In the Saudi crown prince, they saw a kindred spirit—someone who embodied the same top-down, authoritarian leadership style they practiced in business, but on a far grander scale with absolute power. Venture capitalists published lofty manifestos about their tech visions; Prince Mohammed offered his consultant-approved economic plan, Vision 2030. The two sides had much in common.
“Saudi has a founder,” Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz remarked at a 2023 tech conference attended by Saudi officials. (In tech lore, a “founder” holds elite status.) “You don’t call him a founder. You call him his royal highness.” In reality, Saudi Arabia’s ailing king and ambitious crown prince were hardly “founders” of a state established in its current form in 1932. But the flattery resonated in tech circles, where a growing number believed the U.S. would be better off under a dictatorial CEO rather than an elected president.If Trump were to be re-elected, Musk could have become a significant figure in that scenario. When Musk bought Twitter, there were concerns that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) might look into the deal. Senator Chris Murphy urged Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to launch a review, emphasizing the importance of Twitter remaining a neutral platform free from foreign influence for national security reasons. In his letter, Murphy pointed to worries that the Saudi government might use its investment to suppress critics and activists or spread state-backed misinformation. However, as reported by the Washington Post, no investigation took place.
X did not provide a comment on the matter. In 2021, a Twitter spokesperson stated that the company had taken quick action in 2015 upon discovering that malicious actors were accessing user data. They also affirmed Twitter’s commitment to safeguarding public discussions from abuse by state entities.
This is an adapted excerpt from “Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley,” available in audiobook and hardback from Bloomsbury Continuum. To support the Guardian, you can order a copy from guardianbookshop.com, though delivery fees may apply. For podcasts and weekly long-read emails, visit the provided links.
Frequently Asked Questions
Of course Here is a list of FAQs about the connections between Twitter and Saudi Arabia designed to be clear concise and informative
Beginner Definition Questions
1 What is the basic connection between Twitter and Saudi Arabia
The primary connection is a major financial investment In 2022 a Saudi conglomerate led by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal became one of the largest shareholders in Twitter after Elon Musks takeover
2 Who exactly invested from Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom Holding Company controlled by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and the Saudi Princes private office made a significant investment to help fund Elon Musks purchase of Twitter
3 Why is this connection considered close
Its considered close because a foreign government through its influential leaders now holds a substantial ownership stake in a major global platform for public conversation raising questions about potential influence
Motivation Strategic Questions
4 Why would Saudi Arabia want to invest in Twitter
Saudi Arabia is likely motivated by soft powerthe ability to shape its international image promote its economic agenda and potentially gain influence over a platform used by its citizens and critics
5 What does Saudi Arabia gain from this investment
Beyond potential financial returns it gains a strategic foothold in a key social media company offering leverage in public relations geopolitical influence and access to vast amounts of public data and trends
6 Is this just a business deal or is it political
While framed as a business investment the involvement of highranking members of a royal family makes it inherently political The lines between Saudi state interests and private business are often blurred
Concerns Problems
7 What are the main concerns about this connection
The biggest concerns are about freedom of speech user privacy and the potential for censorship Critics worry the Saudi government could pressure Twitter to silence dissidents activists or content critical of the Kingdom
8 Has there been a history of problems between Twitter and Saudi Arabia
Yes Before the investment Saudi Arabia was known for aggressively prosecuting critics on Twitter In a highprofile case two former Twitter employees were convicted of spying for Saudi Arabia by passing on private user data to the government
9 Could this investment affect what I see on my Twitter feed
Its possible
