Sleeping with the devil

What Hacker News says

1. arethuzaApr 2016
   I can recommend Bob Baer's book "Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude":

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_with_the_Devil

   Also the excellent Adam Curtis BBC documentary Bitter Lake - which is probably the best thing I've watched in the last year:

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Lake_%28film%29

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2. bradleysmithNov 2014
   His 'Sleeping with the Devil' on the US-Saudi connection was pretty damning for its time too. No pun intended.

   http://www.amazon.com/Sleeping-Devil-Washington-Saudi-Crude/...

   I grew up in Saudi, and got my undergraduate degree in intelligence studies. From my perspective, Baer was quite in touch with modern politics. A bit bombastic, but always a seemingly strong understanding of the political landscape.

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3. scott_sFeb 2016
   Robert Bear, a former CIA case officer, wrote a book with this theme called "Sleeping With the Devil". He gives a history of the country, US relations with it, and argues that the situation in Saudi Arabia is not sustainable.

   Bear might be better known as the author of "Hear No Evil", a memoir of his time in the CIA, which the movie Syriana was loosely based on.

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4. codybOct 2015
   And it looks (at least in Saudi Arabia's case) that they were trying to diversify towards renewables in a vast way [0], although my google search also turned up more recent articles indicating they're pushing that back [1]. The thing about the Saudi Arabian royal family is that they're all guaranteed allowances and the family grows at a near exponential rate since they all have multiple wives. I couldn't find any good sources on numbers but in a book about Saudi Arabia by former CIA operative Robert Baer "Sleeping with the Devil: How the US Sold it's Soul for Saudi Crude" [3] [4] I believe he estimated the current number to be about 60,000 (Wikipedia estimates 15,000 so I may be remembering that wrong [5]), aka an unsustainable population growth in royal family members.

   [0] - http://www.arabnews.com/news/458342 [1] - http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/news/2015/01/saudi-arabi... [3] - http://www.amazon.com/Sleeping-Devil-Washington-Saudi-Crude/... [4] - (heartily recommended, although because most of these things are classified, truly it is his word. In his other book about Iran, his conclusion was to bring Iran to the playing table and recognize them as a regional and world power, so it doesn't seem to follow a strictly American narrative, and in my opinion, gives him a bit of credence. Others may beg to differ, I'm not sure.) [5] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Saud

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5. knight17Oct 2015
   The Fall of the House of Saud

   The Atlantic. May 2003 http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/05/the-fall...

   "A former CIA operative argues, in an article drawn form his new book, Sleeping With the Devil, that today's Saudi Arabia can't last much longer—and the social and economic fallout of its demise could be calamitous.

   Five extended families in the Middle East own about 60 percent of the world's oil.

   The Saud family, which rules Saudi Arabia, controls more than a third of that amount.

   In the air in Riyadh and Jidda is the conviction that oil money has corrupted the ruling family beyond redemption, even as the general population has grown and gotten poorer; that the country's leaders have failed to protect fellow Muslims in Palestine and elsewhere; and that the House of Saud has let Islam be humiliated—that, in short, the country needs a radical "purification."

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6. arethuzaOct 2014
   What do you think of the books by Robert Baer e.g. "See No Evil" and "Sleeping with the Devil"?

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Baer

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