Blood and Oil review by Josh

I doubt Mohammed is going to be buying copies of the book to hand out to his friends, but it seems like a pretty fair biography to me. MBS comes off as a paranoid machiavellian schemer, but so do all autocrats.

Hope also acknowledges Mohammed's positive contributions. He's generally been a liberalizing force in the kingdom. He curtailed the power of the clerics, expanded women's rights, cracked down on corruption by the royal family, and is trying to to reduce the economy's dependence on oil and build a more normal economy.

On the other hand, the approach he's taking to build the economy is typical for rich autocrats: mega-vanity projects (Google vision 2030 projects). Unsurprisingly they projects have been a boon for consultants like McKinsey (of course), but their role is clearly to do what the prince tells them rather than questioning the wisdom of his ideas.

One of his biggest economic bets has been his partnership with Mayoshi Son - investing $40b in the first Softbank Vision fund. The funniest moment in the book comes when Son, announcing the $500b NEOM project said that once it was complete "Saudi Arabia will have not one, but two Meccas." The prince immediately jumped in to to explain that Son just meant the project would be an important place.

Unlike democratic leaders, MBS could well retain his power for another 50 years, and it may take that long before we know for sure whether his economic and business schemes worked out. It seems unlikely that they will perform well enough to justify their enormous costs, but we'll see.