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Comment by gnode | Hacker News Reader

I find it interesting that NSO, an Israeli surveillance technology company, was allowed to have such dealings with Saudi Arabia. Their statement that "the sole purpose of NSO is to provide technology to licensed government intelligence and law enforcement agencies [...]" implies that their technology is subject to export controls.

My understanding is that Saudi Arabia has poor diplomatic relations with Israel.

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It's complicated. Officially Saudi Arabia has no diplomatic relations with Israel and considers them as illegal occupiers in Palestine. But that's just for PR purposes in the Arab Muslim world. However behind the scenes they frequently cooperate and share intelligence on matters of mutual interest.

Thank you for bringing this up.

It reminds me of Canadian telecoms. While they officially compete to extract more cash from customers, they’ll also call each other up and share infrastructure instead of duplicating builds.

E.g. Telus built towers in its territory, and Bell did in its, and they just share them. Much cheaper than redundant builds and customers usually won’t notice when everyone in the car loses reception at the same time.

Then there’s the stuff that they just do through signalling. Huh, our “competitor” is going to start charging for incoming SMS and the billing vendor that we all use just rolled it out as a new feature. Great!

Sorry to say this but your understanding on Israel - Saudi relations is poor: they are excellent. I don’t blame you since the media usually carry that narrative.

Anyone who can protect the rulers from the people is in excellent terms with the rulers. The rest is just posturing.

Your understanding is wrong. Saudi Arabia has great relations with Israel - they're just not being officially flaunted that much. In fact, not only is Israel's politicians and state apparatus acting in synch with Saudi positions and interests, but even the media and academia are awash with pundits and so-called experts which are essentially parroting the skewed Saudi outlook: Demonization of Iran, presentation of almost every conflict in the region as Shiites vs Sunni, suppression of criticism of US/Saudi-supported regimes and strong men, ignoring the government's active support of Islamic fundamentalists etc.

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