Tech-Future Complicity in Saudi Brutality

The second of two pieces on how we normalize authoritarian violence globally

In my last piece, “Canadian Complicity in Saudi Brutality”, I mentioned that what I’d originally planned as commentary on a recent British documentary, ITV’s Kingdom Uncovered: Inside Saudi Arabia, spiralled into a larger set of thoughts. Just talking about Canada’s complicity in the actions of an authoritarian regime took up the whole essay.

And we didn’t even get into the documentary itself!

Today, we will talk about the documentary, but again in a broader context. The crux of my concern ties into a theme I’ve discussed before, in “The Digital Tech Utopia We Didn’t Build—and Maybe Couldn’t”. I’ve made Part 1 and Part 2 free-to-read because the topics are important. In them, I discuss five reasons for our failure to build a better world with online tech:

1. We couldn’t stop rushing toward new tech if we tried.

2. Our litigious culture was not prepared for the pace of tech advancement.

3. We were not prepared for our litigious culture.

4. We were not prepared for the resilience of other institutions.

5. We were not prepared for everyday people who do not care.

Today’s piece is a continuation of #5, but in a way that hits closer to home—because many people in my industries and circles could be counted among that number, even if we really don’t like to think of ourselves as complicit in greater suffering.

I’m a writer of speculative fiction, which sometimes leads people to think that I must be a techno-optimist: that is, someone who believes most of the world’s problems can be solved with more elaborate material inventions, and who thus ignores all the other technologies—sociopolitical, ecological, human-behavioural—that could help to lessen suffering and increase agency in our hurting world.

This misinterpretation led to a little friction at times, when I was writing for a startup, OnlySky, that aimed to advance a more secular-forward perspective on mainstream news. I was often encouraged to write about exciting technological “what-ifs”; and yet, my brand of atheism has made me extremely suspicious of hagiography—religious and secular alike. My brand of media literacy also always has me looking closely at the sources for so-called “breaking news”, especially in the fields of technology, medicine, and foreign policy. Who benefits from this latest press release? Who’s not included in the spin cycle emerging from it?

Sadly, most of the work I wrote for that site did not survive to its new incarnation, which focuses even more on what-if news, and I still have to revamp my website and rehouse all my articles there. However, I can tell you offhand that I looked with sharp scrutiny at news items like Alzheimer’s drug hype (and its toll on desperate families), de-extinction projects only in the news because their companies were using university connections to signal-boost press releases to rustle up more funding, and… The Line: a grand architectural feat in the NEOM mega-city project, which is guided by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) as part of the country’s “Vision 2030”.

I know my editor wanted me to be excited about the technological possibilities of this futuristic desert city, a trillion-dollar project that was supposed to run 170 kilometres in length (200 meters wide, 500 meters high) and offer an entirely car-free, eco-resilient home to at least 1.5 million by 2030. It’s one of a few projects in the NEOM wheelhouse, all promoted around the world to drum up further investment. In theory, too, it would indeed be something special if Saudi Arabia could redirect its economy from oil wealth into more constructive and sustainable business strategies.

In practice, though, Saudi Arabia joins many other countries and wealthy private citizens in hyping mega-city projects in special economic zones that more consistently serve as excellent money-laundering sites, and harbour dangerous and exploitative business practices. Time and again, the world of the affluent pretends to care about things like “bettering humanity” when, really, it’s more concerned with finding ways to get around regulations to shore up and expand upon existing wealth.

In one of my pieces for OnlySky, I made the argument that buying into media hype around projects like The Line does not serve everyday human interests. We shouldn’t be normalizing excitement over billionaires and autocrats giving themselves massive government breaks to build whatever urban and tech playgrounds they see fit. All the money that ends up dumped into these half-finished alternate cities and ports would be better spent on improving conditions for human beings in existing sites instead.

But that wouldn’t be as ego-flattering, now would it?

Where’s the sexy legacy in simply helping people here and now?

Today, The Line is another one of those miserably stalled projects of the future—to the surprise of very few people with any experience in urban planning, sociology, and architecture. (Indeed, even the concept of a “line”-shaped city should give one pause, as it entirely antithetical to human behaviour.) Instead of that 170-km dream, around 2.4 km is expected to be finished by 2030, yielding an occupancy of up to 300,000.

But what The Line has successfully done is contribute to our normalization of human rights abuses, if they can be seen as serving some grander, more exciting end.

I say “contribute”, though, because The Line and NEOM couldn’t do this on their own. They’re just doing the promo-work one can always expect from big business.

The fault also lies with any media that parrots their PR uncritically.

And so the fault lies with us, too, whenever we lull ourselves into presuming good intentions from billionaires using their net worth (including liquid wealth and investments that are under-taxed but also ready-and-waiting to be leveraged for a wide range of loans) anywhere but in furtherance of the public trust.

“But but but!” a Devil’s advocate might protest: “MBS changed the law to let female Saudis drive! And NEOM’s promo materials talk about building a sustainable future!”

Parasocial behaviour is a trip, no?

It is so easy for humans to latch onto a couple of nice things we’ve heard in relation to a famous person, and use them to excuse the rest. It might be hard to imagine that a person who could change the law in a way that helps women could also be involved in a crackdown on women’s movements, and a near-doubling of annual executions. So, instead of coming to the more pragmatic conclusion that these sets of actions are all related (i.e., together, they tell Saudi citizens that whatever change comes to the country will come through MBS, or not at all), some will romanticize the situation. They’ll assume that because MBS has done and said some favourable things, all the awful things he’s also involved with are just manifestations of “the system” keeping this poor crown prince and prime minister down.

Saudi Arabia’s eco-nightmare

However, when we look more comprehensively at Saudi Arabia today, we can get around that parasocial impulse to act as though we “know” the true motives of a major figure just because we’re familiar with some aspects of his public performance.

For example, yesterday at COP29, an international climate change conference that routinely caters to the interests of oil giants, Saudi Arabia didn’t even try to hide its resistance to reform. Instead, Albara Tawqif from the Saudi delegation announced that “[t]he Arab group will not accept any text that targets any specific sectors, including fossil fuels” in the middle of a discussion about reaffirming COP28’s meagre and bitterly won pledge to “transition away from fossil fuels”.

This claim from the Saudi delegation emerged to the frustration of many, but also to the support of China and Bolivia, whose governments view this move from fossil fuels as an attempt to suppress poorer countries—even while the vast majority of the Global South, including countries imperilled through rising coastlines and extreme weather events, is pushing for the rest of the world to do everything it can to mitigate the impact of climate change before it’s too late for more of them.

No one who remembers COP28 is surprised by this Saudi declaration, though. Last year, the Centre for Climate Reporting released the results of an undercover investigation that got Saudi officials to admit to a massive state campaign to increase petroleum markets, by exploiting developing countries in Africa and Asia.

As the team reported,

The Oil Demand Sustainability Program (OSP) is a vast government program with dozens of projects aimed at embedding a high-carbon, fossil fuel-dependent development model in countries across Africa and Asia. This includes meticulously researched plans to drive a major increase in gasoline and diesel-fuelled vehicles and boost jet fuel sales via increased air travel.

 “There’s a fundamental policy aim, which is to burn and exploit all Saudi’s oil reserves until the last drop”

It brings together the most powerful arms of the Saudi state, including the $700 billion Saudi Public Investment Fund; the world’s largest oil company, Saudi Aramco; petrochemicals giant, Sabic; and the Kingdom’s most important ministries – all under the auspices of the Crown Prince’s supreme committee of hydrocarbon affairs.

When asked by an undercover reporter whether the aim of the program is to artificially stimulate oil demand to counter global efforts to reduce oil consumption and tackle climate change, a Saudi official responded: “Yes… it is one of the main objectives that we are trying to accomplish.”

So, no, no one should be surprised by Saudi Arabia “being Saudi Arabia”.

But as we started to explore yesterday, when looking at Canadian complicity in Saudi brutality through arms trade, our lack of surprise should extend a lot further.

It’s not just that Saudi Arabia is “being Saudi Arabia”.

It’s also that many in other countries are going along with its extremes.

And that’s the sort of reckoning ITV’s Kingdom Uncovered: Inside Saudi Arabia is ultimately calling for. When this documentary aired just weeks ago, the piece discussed a great deal of migrant abuse within the Saudi kingdom, along with violent treatment of dissidents and minorities—but it did so while calling attention to the luxury and techno-optimism that Saudi officials use to distract and excite international actors into ignoring everything else.

So let’s look at both, shall we? The human rights abuses, and the hype.

Because as much as I come into this theme frustrated by our media economy, I’m not simply writing on this topic to rap knuckles. It is easy for speculative writers, and other people besotted by notions of “the future”, to forget the wide range of technologies that difficult times require.

However, we can also make a different choice at any time.

Instead of letting ourselves get tricked by fancy promises of new material inventions, we can remind ourselves of the broader definition of technology, and rebuild enthusiasm for forms of human and environmental “tech” that will actually help us to meet human and ecological need where it exists—at least, in circles close to home.

Saudi suffering in ITV’s Kingdom Uncovered

Kingdom Uncovered starts with a woman calling a Saudi Arabian prison to see if her sister is still there, and still alive. It’s a frustrating conversation, followed by a broader look at how Mohammed bin Salman’s rise to the throne ushered in a confusing new era of state policies. MBS came to power over a country with demographics that skew very young, so his outward-facing promises of human-rights reforms and his commitment to more entertainment events make sense. However, the former mostly amounted to better PR-management over rights abuses that continued apace—or, in the case of detentions and executions, even accelerated behind closed doors.

NB: What the documentary doesn’t discuss is the complex internal power-plays underpinning Saudi politics—which has a fairly withdrawn king, a more active crown prince who also serves as prime minister, and a number of members of Saudi royalty who used to run their own fiefdoms in various government departments and councils, but whose power has been significantly curtailed by King Salman and his son in recent years, with the future yet uncertain.

From here, this documentary explores the challenge of entering Saudi Arabia to do journalistic work at all, since dissent is thoroughly suppressed through threats of severe punishment. An actress on screen gives us a body to go with the words of an undercover journalist, “Noura”, who entered and recorded footage of the immense poverty afflicting 1 in 7 people of this affluent nation, before talking to contacts labouring for NEOM and related state projects.

Here, we learn about the even deeper suffering for migrants, who make up 75% of the workforce and are critical to Saudi Arabia’s construction work for the FIFA World Cup. Many workers haven’t been paid for months for their labour, but are also stuck in compounds that often lack water and electricity (because the prominent company isn’t paying its other bills, either). These migrants come from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and are stranded in the desert—sometimes unto death, because their employers won’t provide sufficient medical aid. This state of affairs persists despite claimed changes by the government to labour laws in 2021.

As FairSquare human rights campaigner Nicholas McGeehan notes,

One of the distressing things about this subject is: you see young men and women giving the best years of their lives to prop up the economy in Saudi Arabia—and they do! You know, without migrant workers, the country would cease to function, grind to a halt almost immediately. And yet, what they get in return is abuse and exploitation. I think it’s correct and appropriate to look at it through the lens of slavery. I think when you look at the international law on slavery and the way that slavery’s defined, I think it clearly conforms to that.

Our journalist follows the journey of one body returned to his family, so that we can sit with the human cost of these labour practices through the story of Raju and his grieving loved ones in Nepal, along with migrants who stage a dangerous protest in Saudi Arabia after his death from company negligence. As we learn during the funeral,

More than 2,000 Nepali workers have died in Saudi Arabia since Vision 2030 launched eight years ago. A third of those deaths appear to be unexplained.

More than 5,000 Bangladeshi and 14,000 Indian workers reportedly died over the same period.

Anurag Devkota, Human rights lawyer: Raju’s case is just one emblematic case. Migrant workers are leaving this country every day for a better future for their family members and a better future for their country. In return, what we are getting is the[ir] dead bod[ies] in the wooden boxes.

When the documentary explores Vision 2030 and The Line, it also looks at aggressive government campaigns to eradicate locals living on designated project land. Bulldozers moved in to destroy massive sections of existing urban landscape, after a million people were evicted on only a few days’ notice.

But even that wasn’t as bad as what happened to an Indigenous community living on land that MBS claimed as a “blank canvas” for The Line. As the BBC reported in May, and as this documentary continues with a military interview, Saudi authorities were given permission to use lethal force to evict members of the Huwaitat tribe, who have lived in the Tabuk region for generations. In April 2020, the state order for military action identified locals as rebels and/or terrorists, and thus made them legitimate targets for lethal force (execution) if they stayed in their homes.

In Kingdom Uncovered, we hear directly from Colonel Rabih Alenezi, former Saudi Intelligence Officer—so I’m not going to polish up his English. He gets the gist across just fine when he explains:

I was asked by Ministry of Interior to clear this space from houses. The order said use lethal force against those innocent people, shooting not on the hand, not on the leg, but on this area [pointing to his chest] or this area [pointing to his face]. I think Ministry of Interior cannot issue this order without MBS. I just called the Ministry of Interior, “Guys, forgive me, I apologize, I cannot go, I am injured”—I exaggerate my medical condition. If I said this directly, “I don’t like to go on this mission because of human rights violation,” in this case I will be killed.

And those who weren’t killed directly during evictions might instead have been arrested, according to Lina Al-Hathloul (a Saudi human rights campaigner for ALQST). While talking about 50 people seized for refusal to leave their homes, she noted that their charge sheets named criticism of NEOM as justification for arrest. Many received prison sentences of 15 to 50 years. Five were given death sentences.

Working for The Line and related NEOM projects is also arduous labour, with routine violations of workers’ rights, leading to plenty of on-site accidents. This documentary moves from a review of those awful conditions to the end results that similar projects support, like this year’s Grand Prix event in Jeddah, before bringing us back to the rest of the story of the woman whose sister is now in prison: a tale of happy young people leaning into public-facing permissions for women to have more bodily autonomy—before punishing women like Manahel Al-Otaibi for buying into state propaganda that change was welcome on anyone else’s terms.

This brings us to an even deeper level of suffering among migrants, because if the men are treated like scum on their job sites, you’re darned skippy that life for female workers, especially domestic help in Saudi homes, is a whole other nightmare. If a woman tries to flee abuse, she is in violation of the conditions of her visa, and subject to even greater levels of physical and sexual abuse for whatever work she can find thereafter. In the case we follow, a woman dares not risk deportation after assault, because her father is desperately sick and needs the money her work abroad provides.

And that’s if one is sent home directly. As we hear from one of the women trapped in this nightmare, the greater fear is ending up indefinitely in a migrant detention centre—so that’s where we visit next, to see the horrific conditions for people caught in MBS’s eight-million-person crackdown on undocumented immigrants: a campaign that has also swept up many people who came to the country legally, too.

The conditions for families and individuals held here are cramped and harsh, sleeping together on the floor with black bin-bags for blankets, or even next to overrun sewage. Beatings by the guards and other inmates, rampant disease, detainees pleading for food and medicine… Videos smuggled out about this horrific state of affairs yielded global outcry, which in turn led the Saudi government to promise to do something about it. What it chose to do was crack down on phones in the prisons.

No footage, no problem!

And so, we close with a return to imprisoned and murdered journalists, including Jamal Khashoggi, and a reflection on the Saudi human rights activists still fighting for women’s rights and greater Saudi freedoms, despite the constant threat of suppression if not outright execution. As Lina Al-Hathloul explains,

The first image that people used to have about Saudi is public executions. And now, it’s not that you don’t have executions anymore—you have more executions—but they’re held behind closed doors. It’s not really about reforming the country. It’s about hiding the abuses now.

And so, as our narrator concludes,

For the last eight years, Mohammed bin Salman has sold the world a dazzling dream of reform. His vision has been eagerly embraced by politicians, corporations, and stars. But as the price being paid by some inside his kingdom becomes clearer, is it time for the West to think again?

Well, sort of.

The real question is: How much—and why—did we buy into the hype before?

Saudi luxury, and global complicity

Saudi Arabia is absolutely rich enough through oil profits to uplift its own citizens, and to improve life in the kingdom more expansively. It can afford better legal protections for migrants, and combat homelessness and child labour on its streets.

But just as much of the Global North is enamoured by spectacles of affluence and the promise of endless growth, so too has Saudi Arabia prioritized extravagant displays on the world stage over the far less sexy work of steady, community-oriented reforms. As Kingdom Uncovered explored, Saudi officials have worked hard to create entertainment alliances around the world, in music and sports especially. This summer, Saudi Arabia secured a 12-year agreement with the International Olympics Committee to host Olympic Esports Games. Last fall, Saudi Arabia entered the only legitimate bid to host FIFA 2034. Earlier this year, along with the aforementioned Grand Prix event, the Saudi kingdom also hosted a major heavyweight championship battle—which only came together because officials offered reluctant fighters and skittish sanctioning bodies too much money to turn down.

This is why critics accuse Saudi Arabia of “sportswashing” its reputation—but this is a slippery, uni-directional claim, because Saudi Arabia can’t “sportswash” on its own.

The real problem is that people who want to support meaningful reforms in oppressive states struggle with the difference between effective boycotts and embargos that simply isolate average citizens further from the world—and there are no easy answers to that divide. Nicki Minaj cancelled a planned appearance in Saudi Arabia in 2019, citing a desire to show “support for the rights of women, the LGBTQ community and freedom of expression”. Nevertheless, the K-pop band BTS went forward with their own performance, on direct invitation from MBS, and Eminem is slated to perform there this December. Even for artists who won’t simply ignore ethical concerns for a solid payout, there are strong differences of opinion with respect to what will effectively empower a civic base to pursue sociopolitical reforms.

Saudi women, after all, only gained the right to be in such stadiums in a gradual roll-out from 2017 through 2019—and even then, not without push-back, as one woman in the ITV documentary found herself in detention for posting a video of herself dancing at one of the country’s concerts. This wavering around actual freedom is in keeping with the country’s ongoing oppression of (if not outright violence toward) other forms of human expression. In 2019, at least five men were executed for homosexuality, and at least one more arrested for indecency for sharing a photo of himself in shorts on a beach. In 2021, MBS announced some changes to the law that on the surface seemed to promise more autonomy for women, but which in 2023 amounted to a codifying of male guardianship and legal precedence in many circumstances, according to Amnesty International. Even an attempt to set a minimum age for marriage includes a massive loophole that allows the country to look like it’s reforming, while continuing child marriage practices behind closed doors.

But while I’m probably preaching to the choir when it comes to Saudi Arabia’s ongoing oppression of its citizens and other residents, the real point here is one of global complicity. International corporations are party to these injustices, and our governments are, too; and in part, this is because the alternative—a complete embargo on Saudi Arabia—is neither feasible nor necessarily useful, when it comes to helping struggling citizens under this oppressive regime. It is simplistic to suggest that one should “just” do anything to fix a global human rights nightmare, when it comes to corruption this deep and all-encompassing. So, I won’t.

However, there is something we can do—right now, and going forward.

We can stop playing into techno-optimist hype cycles for projects like The Line, so-called AI, and mega-cities conveniently zoned in economic territories that carve out judicial exemptions for big business and create nightmares for migrant labour pools.

Just—stop sharing the articles. Stop playing into the what-ifs. Stop engaging credulously with these news items as they arise, and start asking more questions about the sources used to excuse any related signal-boost to “breaking news”.

I know, I know: like I said, I’m a speculative-fiction writer, too. I’ve been known to write and enjoy art that involves future-tech. And I do enjoy celebrating innovation. I’m hugely in favour of thinking about technologies that can improve human thriving and rehabilitate our relationship to our environment.

It’s just that my notion of technology doesn’t stop at, or centrally covet, elaborate and “shiny” inventions over the sociopolitical and ecological uses of scientific knowledge that can also help us to solve our most pressing problems.

And yours doesn’t need to, either. We’ve been sold the big lie long enough: that new luxury projects will solve everything, and thus “make up for” all the horrific human costs along the way. They won’t—they can’t—and they don’t.

But we can choose a different story. We can do our part to make those hype cycles flop—maybe not everywhere, but locally, in the communities with which we most closely identify. We can refuse to perpetuate any rhetoric around immigrants that shifts blame for human suffering away from the states, corporations, and individuals who operate with staggering levels of impunity at their expense. We can champion people trying to elevate news of oppression in their part of the world, and strive to keep them safe from deadly state and private reprisals. And we can save the lion’s share of our delight for feats of fair taxation and public-infrastructure investment, rather than word of yet another billionaire’s vanity tech projects, no matter how many “cool” new innovations might emerge in the process.

More to the point: this is what we’re going to have to do, as global citizens—at least, if we want to say, “We tried.”

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Be well, be kind, and seek justice where you can.

ML