This story has frustrated me from the very first Bezos blog post [1] as a fairly obvious counterintelligence operation.
Now a year later the story has resurfaced and it’s all the same conspiracy theories based on nothing.
This report demonstrates as clearly as you could hope that there was no real analysis and no real evidence of any of the absolutely extraordinary claims made by Besos and de Becker. [2]
From what I can tell, the only reasonable conclusion is that this whole thing was a retaliatory attack on MBS and on AMI. Yet a year later, the news headlines are all parroting that the report proves MBS personally orchestrated this exploit.
We are now at the point of theater of the absurd. This story has been a smoldering load of garbage from the very beginning. [3] I can’t believe it keeps coming around.
The closest I can find to an honest accounting is this WSJ op-ed [4], which many here won’t like because it ties the totally flawed reporting on this story back to similar flaws in the Russiagate reporting. That is, a story the media wants to be true just a bit too badly.
The media doesn't shy even from starting wars over this stuff (the gas attacks that weren't in Syria, WMD in Iraq, etc.). Expect them to make many layers of conclusions like this to support some goal in, I dunno, replacing MbS with someone they like better after a while.
Now a year later the story has resurfaced and it’s all the same conspiracy theories based on nothing.
This report demonstrates as clearly as you could hope that there was no real analysis and no real evidence of any of the absolutely extraordinary claims made by Besos and de Becker. [2]
From what I can tell, the only reasonable conclusion is that this whole thing was a retaliatory attack on MBS and on AMI. Yet a year later, the news headlines are all parroting that the report proves MBS personally orchestrated this exploit.
We are now at the point of theater of the absurd. This story has been a smoldering load of garbage from the very beginning. [3] I can’t believe it keeps coming around.
The closest I can find to an honest accounting is this WSJ op-ed [4], which many here won’t like because it ties the totally flawed reporting on this story back to similar flaws in the Russiagate reporting. That is, a story the media wants to be true just a bit too badly.
[1] - https://medium.com/@jeffreypbezos/no-thank-you-mr-pecker-146...
[2] - https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeff-bezos-investigation-finds...
[3] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19535965
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19539943
[4] - https://www.wsj.com/articles/jeff-bezos-tries-to-wag-the-dog...