Venture capital is only involved with a fraction of development in Silicon Valley. It may be a large and very loud fraction, but it is still just a fraction. On top of that these well known attention getting firms are just another fraction of the whole. Again, very large and loud, but still just a component.

Just to call out one potentially interesting exception, much medical device development goes on in Silicon Valley. Medical development is much less sexy because it tends to be used as needed and is typically only marketed to medical providers. Medical devices need to function rigorously and demand for radical new developments is moderated by pervasive caution. As a result there is not a great deal of Saudi money in medical device development, or at least not in an obvious and influential way.

So the headline is way off. People would be well served by dealing with Silicon Valley as if it were something big and complex with many involve inputs and factors rather than something simple that you can recognize immediately because you access the Internet on a laptop and can do some basic research.