Opinion | But why Bezos?
One speculative trail leads to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Post columnist who was a fierce critic of the Saudi regime until his death just months after Bezos’s handset was broken into
Could ownership of The Washington Post be proving costly for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos? Allegations have surfaced that his phone was hacked in 2018 via a bug planted by a video clip he got on WhatsApp from the account of Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. The Saudi embassy in Washington has denied any role of the kingdom in such an intrusion.
Digital forensic sleuths, meanwhile, are trying to determine the motive. One speculative trail leads to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Post columnist who was a fierce critic of the Saudi regime until his death just months after Bezos’s handset was broken into. The newspaper has a record of putting governments under a scanner. However, by all accounts, Bezos’s 2013 investment in it was a regular business decision, though many saw it as a white knight effort to save a favourite pillar of the print media starved of funds. That Riyadh is no fan of free speech has long been in evidence, but there is little to suggest that Bezos has anything to do with the paper’s functioning. What, then, explains the hacking of his phone? It could be a simple misinterpretation of US media culture by someone. Or does it go deeper?
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