Blood and Oil Quotes

“Only a month before Americans were due to go to the polls, the UAE—and later joined by a coalition of Islamic countries—gave Kushner the greatest gift of his four years as advisor to the president by agreeing to normalize relations with Israel. Behind the scenes, the leaders of the UAE and Israel had developed strong intelligence and security ties over more than a decade, but this was a public coming-out ceremony that put Abu Dhabi in the hot seat as far as much of the Arab world was concerned.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power

“All success stories start with a vision, and successful visions are based on strong pillars,” the Vision 2030 statement said.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power: 'The Explosive New Book'

“Mohammed proposed he only pay the consultants based on results. “I’ll pay you when you reach the KPIs”—in 2030, the prince said.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power: 'The Explosive New Book'

“Instead of providing dry updates and patting themselves on the back and praising the vision of their glorious leaders, ministers were expected to present in stages a vision for their ministries, a strategy for achieving it, and then updates on their progress. Before they could even present, they had to get past a special group within the council that vetted presentations. The then-thirty-year-old Mohammed would ask questions”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power: 'The Explosive New Book'

“Under Mohammed, the ministers would each get several million dollars a year. But they would have to meet their KPIs, and the government would no longer turn a blind eye to kickback schemes.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power: 'The Explosive New Book'

“Mohammed didn’t respond to strategies that weren’t backed up by numbers.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power: 'The Explosive New Book'

“Mohammed bin Salman developed a fascination with consultants when he was setting up his own companies and his MiSK foundation before his father became king. One idea he loved was the creation of key performance indicators,”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power: 'The Explosive New Book'

“that required turning the vision into a specific plan, with numbers to demonstrate how it would work and international buy-in to show that it would help boost the kingdom’s global status. He knew where to turn for help.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power: 'The Explosive New Book'

“Things changed radically between the early 1990s and 2019. The spread of fracking turned the United States into the world’s biggest oil producer by 2013. The American economy wasn’t dependent on Saudi oil anymore. Now it could pump its own. Then Barack Obama made the nuclear deal with Iran, alienating Saudi leaders. Mohammed had high hopes that Donald Trump, with his visit to the kingdom early in his presidency, would renew the kind of relationship Saudi Arabia had under previous presidents. But as Trump showed Mohammed in that embarrassing White House visit, when the president displayed a poster board showing arms sales to the kingdom, this new White House was purely transactional. The decades-long US-Saudi alliance didn’t mean much to Trump and his deputies, and many of the old officials who kept that alliance going for both sides, men like Mohammed bin Nayef and former CIA director John Brennan, had been sent off to retirement, or worse.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power

“Each of the men Mohammed would meet in the United States had some vision for how he could use a huge Saudi investment and little to say about putting his own money into the kingdom. The studio chiefs hoped Mohammed would back new movie projects. Silicon Valley wanted capital to further inflate bubbles like WeWork and the dog-walking app Wag. Even the curious magazine that showed up across the United States celebrating the prince’s visit seemed to be a sales pitch.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power

“has no culture of ambling around for pleasure;”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power

“The new generation of Saudis are not like the old generation. They have no nostalgia for Lebanon,” Yacoubian says. “It was their oasis of freedom.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power

“To understand why Mohammed kidnapped the leader of Lebanon, it’s necessary to go back a half century, to 1964. That’s when a young Lebanese accountant named Rafic Hariri decided he couldn’t make enough money at home to support his young family. So he moved to Saudi Arabia, where burgeoning oil wealth was funding roads, hospitals, and hotels, and all sorts of companies were springing up to build them. Saudi Arabia in the 1960s had lots of oil and money but not much to show for it on the ground. The kingdom’s population was smaller than that of London. The royal family was intent on using the kingdom’s oil income to build new infrastructure across the country, but few domestic companies could handle big construction projects. And there were few universities to produce graduates who could run such companies.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power

“Nearby countries like Lebanon had the opposite problem. Lebanon had plenty of educated would-be professionals. The country’s colonial ties to France and long relationship with the United States meant many of those professionals had the language skills to work with foreign partners. But Lebanon didn’t have cash. Its slow-growing economy provided little opportunity for these graduates to work their way toward prosperity.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power

“A veteran of Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds who has grown cynical over the years explains how it works for Gulf investors. All the best deals and opportunities are seized upon by big American institutions with the help of New York City banks. The second-tier deals go to the Europeans. And the lemons are packaged up and rebranded for what derisive bankers call the “dumb money” in the Middle East. “They don’t care about us,” he says. “They only want our money.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power

“While titans of finance were gravitating toward the kingdom, Mohammed started to develop some nagging suspicions about the consultants he’d been relying on to formulate his vision. The McKinsey and BCG people were certainly smart, but such consultants were also mercenaries, and they had an intrinsic conflict of interest: It never behooved the consultants to say no. If the prince asked whether some outlandish scheme was feasible it would always be in their interests to say yes. Consultants make money by getting assigned to giant projects, not by telling their employers that such projects are bad ideas.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power

“setting up a peaceful nuclear energy program, building a New York University outpost that accepts mainly students from abroad, often on full scholarships, and the creation of a Louvre museum on an island near the city’s main island.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power: 'The Explosive New Book'

“MBZ is a man of contradictions.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power: 'The Explosive New Book'

“Consultants make money by getting assigned to giant projects, not by telling their employers that such projects are bad ideas.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power: 'The Explosive New Book'

“Mohammed bin Salman developed a fascination with consultants when he was setting up his own companies and his MiSK foundation before his father became king. One idea he loved was the creation of key performance indicators, soon to be known throughout the ministries and government-linked companies as “KPIs.” Mohammed didn’t respond to strategies that weren’t backed up by numbers. He had an impressive memory for them as well, often recounting to underlings forecasts they had showed him months beforehand to prove he had a strong understanding of the underlying issues.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power: 'The Explosive New Book'

“Capitalism doesn’t incentivize charity unless it’s a relatively small marketing expense.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power: 'The Explosive New Book'

“The kingdom’s population was growing, costs were rising, and the rest of the world was talking with more urgency about using less oil. What would happen when oil prices dropped? To ward off a catastrophe, Alwaleed argued, Saudi Arabia needed to diversify, invest in solar and nuclear energy, and start moving some of its oil wealth abroad so it would have diversified sources of income.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power: 'The Explosive New Book'

“The startling juxtaposition between Davos in the Desert and the Ritz’s transformation into a prison—and the reversal of so many extraordinarily wealthy men’s fortunes—make the crackdown a singular event in recent world political and business history. Never have so many billionaires, titans of finance who could move heaven and earth with their immense wealth, been deprived of their liberty and treasure so abruptly.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power: 'The Explosive New Book'

“I don’t believe in that,” Kushner said. “You don’t believe in what?” Bannon responded. “In history,” Kushner said. “I don’t read history. It bogs you down.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power

“Saudi Oger’s Saad Hariri, a dual citizen who also happened to be the prime minister of Lebanon, was struggling to keep the cash flowing too. The Oger business was poorly managed, so it had little cushion for a slowdown in payments. Saad desperately tried to win Mohammed bin Salman’s approval, building an extension to King Salman’s expansive seaside palace in Tangier for Mohammed. And when Mohammed suggested he’d like a more direct passageway in the Royal Court to access the foyer of his cousin Mohammed bin Nayef’s section, Saad himself stayed up through the night with workers to cut through marble and concrete to get the job done. Mohammed thanked him but clearly felt no exchange had taken place. Saad hadn’t won any goodwill.”
― Bradley Hope, Blood and Oil: Mohammed bin Salman's Ruthless Quest for Global Power