Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 167 posts

Re: Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

#151

Post by Der_Einzige »

whywhywhydude wrote: post #69
dendrite9 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like this? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/09/technology/twitter-saudi-... A former Twitter employee was convicted on Tuesday by a jury in federal court of six charges related to accusations that he spied on the company’s users for Saudi Arabia. While at Twitter, Ahmad Abouammo, 44, managed media partnerships in the Middle East and North Africa. He developed relationships with prominent individuals in the region, rec…

That is really scary. They probably have insiders in their payroll in every major tech company.

I just assume that once you get into the FAANG caliber of compensation in the US tech industry (and possibly well before that), that suddenly the walls, and everything else starts listening and glowing.

Re: Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

#153

Post by FullMtlAlcoholc »

photochemsyn wrote: post #106

This has been going on for years, but now it's news? Here's a blurb from some random 2009 blog post on how this works (more about Iraq, but Vinnell has been training Saudi forces for years, and probably is involved with Yemen as well): > "The Pentagon has awarded a 48-million-dollar contract to train the nucleus of a new Iraqi army to Vinnell Corporation, a US firm which also trains the Saudi National Guard. The Fair…

> It's just so painfully obvious that these kind of articles wouldn't be getting published right now if the US government wasn't angry with Saudi Arabia about crude oil production.

It seems to me that the timing is the point and it is more relevant now that the relationship has become more adversarial. No one would've been paying as much attention in 2009 and rightfully so since those relationships wouldn't have as much of a conflict of interest.

And let's not forget that in 2009, MBS had yet to order Jamal Khasoggi to be killed by being cut in half by a bone saw.

Context matters.

Re: Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

#154

Post by Wyoming23 »

frereubu wrote: post #100
rafale wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diversity is incompatible with meritocracy. RAF is gonna pay the price for letting the politics du jour impact their performance based criterias.

The meaningful point of diversity intiatives is that they find people who are better than others but who would traditionally be overlooked because of their background. Some initiatives are better executed than others, but this comment comes across as a knee-jerk reaction.

No, what you're describing is non-discriminatory hiring. Removing bias and discrimination from hiring is non-controversial across the political spectrum.

Diversity initiatives are the opposite. It's explicitly not about who's best, it's about the unrelated goal of a workplace that is racially diverse.

Re: Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

#155

Post by europeanguy »

credit_guy wrote: post #148
europeanguy wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saudi Arabia hasn't really been a us ally since about 2016 when Saudi Arabia tried dumping oil price to ruin the us shale industry. Ever since the USA has been preparing to strike back. Look up the NOPEC bill. It looks like the USA plan is to charge Saudi Arabia with manipulating oil prices (being a cartel is literally the stated goal of OPEC). SA knows this and they're aligning themselves with Russia and China (with…

> Saudi Arabia hasn't really been a us ally since But then who has "really" been an ally since whenever? All sovereign nations have national interests, and they are not 100% allied with the US interests. Still, in the case of Saudi Arabia, their most important security concern is Iran. And there, they are aligned with the US. Also, the US is the most important security partner of Israel, and, according to wikipedia […

> But then who has "really" been an ally since whenever?

All I'm pointing out is that the relationship between US and SA is souring. Simple stuff. Who has "really" bla bla bla I don't know dude, I can't be bothered to fight over semantics.

Re: Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

#156

Post by imgabe »

FredPret wrote: post #145
imgabe wrote: post #136

If they're an ally, it's to our benefit that their military is strong. If they become an enemy, it doesn't hurt that we built their military and know everything about it inside out. If the US could make every other country's military a subsidiary of the US military, they would.

> If they become an enemy, it doesn't hurt that we built their military and know everything about it inside out. What if you know it inside out and all it benefits you is that you now know they have a competent and robust organization, whereas before they were bungling idiots and you only kind-of knew the extent of it?

You will know exactly how competent and how robust as well as exactly what their limitations and weaknesses are. You'll also know all their internal procedures, what decisions they'll make in a given situation before they make them (because you taught them what to do), the exact capabilities of their weapons, where they deploy their forces, it's information the military would literally kill for against any enemy.

Maybe they would have otherwise been bungling and inept, but that is pretty poor planning to to just hope that your enemy is incompetent. The more likely scenario is they would be competent and you just wouldn't know anything about them.

A competent enemy you can predict is probably better than an incompetent one you can't. Better to know in advance exactly what competent thing they will do so you can anticipate it. Incompetent people can still get lucky and can hurt you when they act in ways you don't expect.

Re: Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

#157

Post by aerostable_slug »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #98
aerostable_slug wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You honestly think an American flag officer would defect to Saudi Arabia? Really? Russia, China, or Iran would be a far "better" choice for a number of reasons, chiefly the fact that the Saudis might turn the turncoat back over to the US for any number of reasons — like pulling American maintenance contractors out of KSA, which would ground their air force in a matter of days and leave them very vulnerable to Iranian…

I was originally responding to your comment that: 'The security agreements they signed are sufficient to guard national secrets.' High ranking officers can just as much buy plane tickets as anyone else. Yes, including to countries that may not have entirely harmless intentions. Signatures on a piece of paper are not the final arbiter of disputes between countries, as demonstrated by the previous administration. Even…

And I was responding to the idea that a retirement package is a meaningful protection against espionage.

Even if a cleared military member gets nothing after their separation (perhaps do to a court martial or the like), there's still no justification in spying, especially not after the agreements and acknowledgements cleared individuals sign throughout their careers. Those documents are what put convicted spies in places like ADX Florence, and no degree of whining about one's pension changes that.

Re: Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

#159

Post by todorus »

melling wrote: post #17
edgefield wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps not unusual, but ethical? That’s a different matter. A former US general working for a theocratic, monarchy with a deeply concerning history on human rights raises some serious red flags in my mind.

I often wonder how people can not understand the world in which we live? Didn’t President of the United States just go to Saudi Arabia and ask them to produce more oil. Have we not supplied them weapons for decades? Does the world use 100 million barrels of oil a day? Let’s go throw something on a famous painting and maybe that’ll stop. Still waiting for the batteries and all the renewable energy to solve the problem…

It isn't lack of understanding that is being expressed, it is a lack of acceptance. I think that is a good thing.

And even if you would percieve ignorance instead, it doesn't mean that they need snark targeted at them. Please respect the community guidelines of this comment section.

Re: Retired U.S. generals, admirals take top jobs with Saudi crown prince

#160

Post by djbebs »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #150
raydiatian wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fuck is ethical about anything the US military has done since 1945?

Iraq 1 was justified imho

So justified they had to lie about babies in incubators to do it, right?
Post reply on HN