Saudi Money Fuels the Tech Industry. It’s Time to Ask Why

The author and many others don't like Saudi Arabia and Russia. That's the main reason for advocating a boycott of their investment money, because while the author mentions the poor human rights records of those two countries as the reason, there are plenty of other countries with such records. The main example of which is China, which is of course not mentioned.

The US itself has a poor human rights record on many things, and especially given our current president, had the author been writing from any other country, the US might have been on the list of countries whose money should not be accepted.

I'm not saying the US is as bad as China and Russia and Saudi Arabia. I'm not even saying China is as bad as Russia and Saudi Arabia. I am saying that if you care deeply about this, you should mention more than the easiest targets, if only to avoid the appearance of bias.

The bias also shows itself by considering an entire country as a single entity, when the author says we should not accept Russian investors' money. To justify it, the author says that if a Russian investor has ties to Kremlin-backed companies, they should be off limits. But that probably encompasses a large number of Russian investors. Same as the group of investors with ties to companies funded by US government money (DARPA, NSA, CIA, etc.).

There is a lot of Saudi money and they are willing to invest it. And their money is just as good for hiring programmers and renting servers as anyone else's.

That's simultaneously a reference to George R. R. Martin and Toys for Bob!

The purpose of political rhetoric is political. The purpose of pro-human-rights language in the west is to change the political order in the west to the advantage of the orators. It is NOT to make things pro-human-rights.

So you're violating the rules. You propose actual change. This is not allowed. You only get to propose putting the current favorites into "power" (for them of course the same rules apply: they don't get to make actual change except on the edges of the sidelines. E.g. assign construction projects to their favorites).

This is as true in San Francisco as it is in Washington.