Bradley Hope - Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salmans Ruthless Quest for Global Power

We started this project because Mohammed bin Salman is one of the worlds most important new political and business figures, but he remains a mystery to those affected by the huge decisions hes making every few months. Whether its Middle Eastern countries adjusting to his brusque use of power, technology companies growing thanks to billions of dollars he has invested, families of dissidents and regime critics whose lives have been upended, or people affected by his decision to start using oil as an economic weapon in early 2020, no one really has a clue whats driving his decision making or how he was able to rise so rapidly.

We are investigative reporters who focus on moneyhow its spent, where it flows, and what its used forso we entered into this project believing we needed to unlearn everything we thought we knew about Saudi Arabia and Mohammed, start from scratch, and follow the money. The further along we got in our reporting, the more thankful we were for having done that at the outset. So many things we thought we knew about him were caricatures of the truth and often spun in a way to exaggerate aspects of his personality to make him seem deranged, heroic, or out of control.

Of course, this comes with the territory of writing about a new ruler imposing rapid transformation on a country that hadnt changed much in decades, but whats lost is deeper knowledge of the person at the center of the storm. Without getting a better understanding of his personality, his family, his motivations, his stratagems, and the details of the battles he fought to get where he is, everyday observers wont have the information needed to help them come to a conclusion.

Thats not to justify, apologize for, or laud decisions and actions Mohammed has taken over the past five years. This is the best account we could muster of his rise to power based on our reporting, beginning with our work at the Wall Street Journal in 2017, when we were both covering aspects of his economic reform plans from London and taking reporting trips to the kingdom.

Researching Mohammed bin Salman is a tricky task. It sounds counterintuitive, but being based in London and New York has been one of the greatest advantages in finding the revelations we were seeking. Few powerful figures based in the Persian Gulf countries would feel comfortable speaking openly about the crown prince at home, for fear of being electronically surveilled (a likely possibility) or simply observed having meetings with suspicious people like us. Those same people on trips to London, Paris, or Manhattan feel a huge weight lifted from their shoulders, and the facts slide out a little easier.

The other reason being based in these two world capitals is useful is that the story of Mohammed bin Salman from his earliest days in the Royal Court is entangled with business and finance. Few world leaders are so entranced by and involved with issues of global business as Mohammed. The Al Saud family rule Saudi Arabia absolutely, so theres an element of everyday governance akin to running a family investment office, but from an early age Mohammed was transfixed by stories of entrepreneurs and tycoons, as well as famous strongman political figures from history. To understand him, its imperative to know that hes not just the day-to-day leader of the kingdomhes also the CEO of Al Saud Inc.

This book is the product of years of reporting, but especially that done in 2019, when we dedicated ourselves to interviewing everyone we could find who interacted with Mohammed over the years as we traveled from country to country, unearthing old financial filings and confidential government records that document his growing personal and political empires, and read everything we could dig up that had been written about Mohammed and Saudi Arabia.

Most of our sources spoke to us on background, a kind of anonymity that protects them from being identified by name. That required us to be especially diligent about finding multiple people with experiences of the same events to feel certain of their veracity. Every anecdote is based on the recollection of multiple sources and, as often as possible, backed up by emails, legal documents, photographs, videos, and other records. The quotes and conversations rendered here were reconstructed from participant notes, recollections, recordings, and other supporting material. We also mined public databases, many of which held clues to Mohammeds personal business networks in plain sight.

We hope this book brings a new understanding of one of the worlds most ambitious young leaders, one who could be in charge for decades to come.