What Are the Dimensions of the Ongoing Conflicts Between KSA and UAE?

The cat-and-mouse game continues between Saudi Arabia and the UAE over struggles and acquisition of regional leadership in the Arab region and the Middle East.

Riyadh has recently entered into new challenges with Abu Dhabi, over the city that will be a cyber center in the region.

Saudi Arabia’s efforts to develop its cyber capabilities began to bear fruit but not the case for its neighbor and rival, the UAE.

The kingdom is determined to play a greater regional role, using “soft as well as hard power” to enhance its efforts to attract the latest technologies.

 

Sector Reinforcements

Dubai is no longer the only focus of the cyber sector in the Gulf region, which it had controlled for years after Riyadh entered the line.

This became evident through the negotiations that took place between the organizers of the International Forum on Cybersecurity (the leading trade fair in the French cyber sector) and Saudi officials.

This came during the launch of the International Cybersecurity Forum (FIC) in the capital, Riyadh, on November 9, 2022, in the presence of the kingdom’s senior leaders and under the supervision of the Prince of Riyadh, Faisal bin Bandar bin Abdulaziz.

On January 5, 2022, Intelligence Online stated in its report on the cybersecurity sector in the Gulf and the Arab region that the French Gendarmerie is supervising, with the French Avisa Partners group of companies for corporate intelligence, the organization of the current session of the Cybersecurity Exhibition.

The magazine reported that the French company is considering organizing a new version of the exhibition in the Middle East, but it has not yet decided where it will be held. The UAE has proven a clear leadership in this sector, but Saudi Arabia is striving to strengthen its own local cyber sector with full force, according to the magazine.

Trade exhibitions such as those held by Avisa Partners symbolize the battle for cyber influence between the Gulf countries, which is part of the soft power strategy used by Saudi Arabia against the dominance of its neighbor, the UAE.

The French magazine cited that to challenge the GISEC trade for cybersecurity in Dubai, Saudi Arabia held the Black Hat conference in Riyadh from November 15 to 17, 2022, in partnership with the Entertainment Authority and organized by the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming and Drones, and the American company, Informa.

Intelligence Online commented that the Saudi version is the equivalent of the American Black Hat, one of the largest cybersecurity conferences in the world.”

Such events give a clear example of Riyadh’s long-term policy to enhance its role as a new center for the cyber sector in the Gulf region and Africa.

 

Influence Struggle

As part of Riyadh’s relentless pursuit of achieving its goals, it has begun to force companies in the technology sectors in general and cybersecurity in particular, wishing to work in Saudi Arabia, to establish a representative office in the kingdom.

This method aims to counter the strategies of many large companies that have established a representative office in Dubai to serve the Saudi market.

This rule is scheduled to enter into force in January 2024, and the Japanese company, Trend Micro, has already agreed to establish its main office in the Middle East and Africa in Riyadh under the supervision of Moataz BinAli, the former local agent for Microsoft, IBM, and SAP companies.

The Russian Kaspersky group also opened an office in Riyadh in April 2022.

In a similar context, other companies, such as American Intel471, decided to give priority to the Saudi market instead of the UAE, which remained dominant and concluded on November 24, 2022, a special agreement with Riyadh to enhance cooperation.

With Saudi Arabia’s late arrival in the cyber sector after years of UAE hegemony, its sovereign funds began making huge investments, especially the Public Investment Fund, as MBS plans to reorganize the sector and strengthen its centralization.

Like UAE, Saudi Arabia has not forgotten the cyber offensive side of the business, as it strives to develop its own cyber sector.

This aspect of the business was partially awarded to the “Haboub” company, which was established in 2018 by order of the former advisor to bin Salman, Saud al-Qahtani, one of the defendants in the case of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Riyadh attracted the best hackers, by order of the Royal Court, led by Saleh Alhaqbani, to carry out cyber-attack operations for the kingdom under the supervision of the central authority.

 

Abu Dhabi Is Resisting

While Saudi Arabia is strengthening its efforts to attract the cybersecurity sector and achieve progress and dominance, during 2022, the UAE was interested in a different aspect of the sector.

The UAE’s defense and cybersecurity sectors have reversed their dependence on imports in favor of an export drive.

Through the business network established by the National Security Adviser, Tahnoon bin Zayed, the UAE is putting the final touches on several key economic sectors, including the cyber sector.

This led to the creation of state-owned conglomerates such as EDGE and Group 42 that specialize in artificial intelligence, which has helped redirect R&D spending and investment out of the country.

This export campaign primarily targeted countries in Asia, particularly Malaysia and Indonesia, where the company CPX, which specializes in cyberattack, and its CEO Khaled al-Melhi hosted an Indonesian delegation on December 22, 2022, and then the EDGE group established a new department in this field for export.

 

Bin Salman Arsenal

Bin Salman, known for his poor track record of tracking, monitoring, and suppressing opponents, prioritizes the cybersecurity sector.

He established the National Cybersecurity Authority on October 31, 2017, a governmental body specialized in cybersecurity.

On January 27, 2020, Bloomberg published its report on Saudi Arabia’s cyber arsenal and said that while countries such as Russia, China, and North Korea invested in developing powerful electronic weapons, Saudi Arabia chose to buy the final products from this industry.

The agency stated that the electronic arsenal in the countries of the Middle East consists primarily of spying tools and software that seek to mislead public opinion on social media.

Bloomberg quoted John Bateman, a worker in the cybersecurity department at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as saying that these cyber weapons purchased by the kingdom are very complex but limited in scope.

Although the kingdom has tools that can be technically complex, countries that have invested in developing indigenous offensive and defensive capabilities—such as Iran and “Israel”—possess a greater range of weapons and electronic technologies, according to him.

Bateman pointed out that the tools Riyadh is buying are effective means of imposing control by using them in spying on Saudi dissidents and journalists.

Bloomberg also cited the opinion of Andrew Grotto, a fellow at Stanford University, who emphasized that recent years have witnessed the rise of cyber technologies offered for sale due to the development of companies specializing in this field.

He also said the purchase of electronic weapons is not limited to Saudi Arabia, as many countries seek to buy these weapons, such as Vietnam and the UAE.

Grotto emphasized that Abu Dhabi, in particular, relies its defense budgets on outsourcing electronic arsenals with the aim of surveillance and espionage.

 

Dangerous Weapon

In this context, human rights activist Mustafa Ezz el-Din Fouad said: “Despite the great importance of cybersecurity…it must not be overlooked that it is a double-edged sword that repressive states and authoritarian regimes can use to crush opponents and create international crises.”

In an interview with Al-Estiklal, Fouad recalled the electronic attacks launched by the countries blockading Qatar, specifically Saudi Arabia and the UAE, to penetrate the Qatar News Agency and government agencies in 2017 to broadcast false news.

He continued: “The crisis at that time would have escalated to dire consequences, had it not been for the intervention of large regional countries such as Turkiye, the United States, and the European Union.”

Fouad pointed out that “the UAE, for example, uses highly accurate spyware, and in 2017 it was ranked as the most spying country in the world.”

He continued: “Even Human Rights Watch and 19 human rights organizations sent a letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, in 2020, protesting the Emirati Ahmed Nasser al-Raisi’s assumption of the presidency of Interpol, and they justified one of the reasons for their objection to the Emirati cyber breaches and violations, and the tracking of opponents.

As for Saudi Arabia, Fouad said: “It is not less dangerous, even if it increased during the reign of bin Salman, who not only hacked the phones of journalists and dissidents, but also hacked the phone of Amazon founder and president Jeff Bezos, as well as the dissident Omar bin Abdulaziz, the late Khashoggi and others.”

He stressed that “just as human rights organizations criticized Western countries for selling weapons to Saudi Arabia and the UAE that were used in the Yemen war and human rights violations, espionage technology and the cybersecurity sector must be treated to this degree, and be subject to censorship, so that it is not used in wars or expected future conflicts.”