Foreign Countries That Made A Deal, Then Bought America.
I still remember the night of the Las Vegas shooting in 2017…not just the horror of it, but the confusion. The videos, the angles, the rumors. Online, people swore a Saudi prince engaged in a firefight at Mandalay Bay. Others said it was a coup spillover. None of it was ever proven, but the fact that so many Americans believed it tells you something deeper about where we were as a country. We were already living in a world shaped by foreign money, foreign interests, and political leaders who treated global power like a private marketplace. When something didn’t make sense, people filled the silence with whatever explanations felt closest to the truth they already sensed: that something bigger was happening behind the curtain, and we weren’t being told.
And honestly, can you blame anyone for feeling that way? Look at what was happening around that same time. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund was suddenly everywhere, pouring billions into American companies, tech firms, entertainment, real estate, and even political circles. It wasn’t subtle. Its actions made it clear that it was present. It was just wrapped in the language of “investment” and “partnership,” as if those words magically erased the power imbalance. A foreign monarchy with unlimited capital was buying stakes in the very industries Americans depend on: transportation, data, energy, defense, and we were told it was good for us because it “created jobs.” Meanwhile, the people making these deals were the same ones who could pick up the phone and get a private meeting with the White House.
That’s the part that sticks with me. Not the rumors, not the conspiracies, but the way foreign money moves through our system like water through cracked concrete. It finds every opening. It reshapes the foundation. And the people living in the house are the last to know anything has shifted.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund isn’t just a bank account. It’s a geopolitical tool. When they invest in an American company, they’re not doing it because they love our innovation or want to help our workers. They’re doing it because ownership is leverage. Influence. Access. And when American politicians on both sides start treating these foreign investors like partners instead of power players with their own agendas, it creates a situation where the average American becomes an afterthought in their own country.
You can see it in the way our priorities have flipped. We’re told there’s no money for healthcare, no money for disability support, no money for housing, no money for mental health, no money for the basic things that keep a society stable. But there’s always money for defense. Always money for: surveillance, money for foreign deals and foreign bases, foreign partnerships, foreign crises. It’s like the government has become a global landlord, and the citizens are just tenants who get whatever scraps are left after the international business is handled.
And while all this is happening, regular people are losing their jobs to automation and AI systems we never asked for, systems that were funded by the same foreign capital flowing into our tech sector. We’re being replaced in our workplaces, monitored in our neighborhoods, priced out of our homes, and told to be grateful because “the economy is growing.” Growing for whom? Because it’s not growing for the people who are getting eviction notices, or medical bills they can’t pay, or pink slips from companies that just announced record profits.
It feels like the country is being run for investors, not citizens. And when you look at who the biggest investors are, sovereign wealth funds, multinational corporations, foreign governments with their own agendas…it becomes painfully clear that the American people are not the priority. We’re the labor force. We’re the consumer base. We’re the tax revenue. But we’re not the ones being protected or prepared for whatever is coming next.
And that’s the part that keeps me up at night. The drills on civilian land. The sudden expansions of surveillance infrastructure. The data centers are popping up everywhere like mushrooms after rain, sucking up power and water while offering nothing back to the communities they land in. The secrecy around what these facilities are actually for. The way every crisis… foreign or domestic…is used as justification for more control, more monitoring, more militarization, but never more support for the people who actually live here.
It’s hard not to feel like something is being built around us, not for us. Like the government is preparing for a future where the public is a problem to be managed, not a population to be cared for. And when you combine that with foreign money shaping our policies, foreign interests influencing our leaders, and foreign governments buying stakes in our critical infrastructure, it becomes impossible to ignore the question that sits at the center of all of this: who is America actually being run for?
Because it’s not the families working two jobs and still falling behind, it’s not the people losing healthcare or disability support. It’s not the communities being hollowed out by automation and rising costs. It’s not the people who show up, pay taxes, and follow the rules who still get left behind.
It feels like the country is being steered by a small circle of powerful people… some American, some not, who see the world as a series of deals and assets, not as a place where real human beings live and struggle and hope. And the rest of us are just expected to keep quiet, keep working, and keep believing that everything is fine, even when every instinct in our bodies tells us it’s not.
Author Note:
This piece is commentary based on publicly available reporting, my own observations, and the patterns I’ve watched unfold over the last decade. I’m not claiming insider information, and I’m not presenting any of this as secret knowledge. Everything I’m talking about here comes from mainstream journalism, government reports, and open‑source analysis. If you want to dig deeper into any part of it, I’ve included sources below so you can read the original reporting for yourself and come to your own conclusions.
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My goal isn’t to tell anyone what to think. It’s to put words to the uneasiness a lot of us feel when we look at the gap between what’s happening in our government and what’s happening in our actual lives. If anything here resonates with you, follow the links, read more, and keep asking questions. We deserve transparency. We deserve honesty. And we deserve a country that puts its people first.
Sources & Further Reading
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) and U.S. Influence
- New York Times-“Saudi Arabia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund Is Reshaping the World”
- Wall Street Journal-“Saudi Arabia’s PIF Invests Billions in U.S. Tech and Entertainment”
- Reuters-“Saudi Arabia’s PIF Expands U.S. Investments Across Tech, Energy, and Real Estate”
- Financial Times-“How Saudi Arabia Uses Its Sovereign Wealth Fund as a Geopolitical Tool”
Jared Kushner’s $2 Billion Saudi Investment
- New York Times-“Saudi Fund Invested $2 Billion in Jared Kushner’s Firm Despite Concerns”
- Washington Post-“Ethics Experts Question Kushner’s $2B Deal with Saudi Sovereign Fund”
Trump, MBS, and U.S.-Saudi Relations
- BBC News-“Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Announce Major Arms and Investment Deals”
- Associated Press -“Trump Defends Saudi Crown Prince After Khashoggi Killing”
- Politico -“Trump’s Close Ties to Saudi Arabia Raise Questions About U.S. Policy”
Foreign Influence in U.S. Politics
- Center for International Policy-“Foreign Funding and Influence in Washington”
- OpenSecrets-“Tracking Foreign Lobbying in the United States”
- Brookings Institution-“How Foreign Governments Use Money to Influence U.S. Policy”
AI, Automation, and Job Displacement
- MIT Technology Review-“AI Is Already Eliminating Jobs-and the Impact Is Accelerating”
- Pew Research Center-“Americans’ Concerns About Automation and the Future of Work”
- McKinsey Global Institute-“The Future of Work in America: Automation, AI, and Inequality”
Data Centers, Surveillance, and Infrastructure
- The Atlantic -“The Hidden Costs of America’s Data Center Boom”
- Wired-“How Data Centers Are Quietly Reshaping American Communities”
- CNBC-“Why Tech Giants Are Building Massive Data Centers Across the U.S.”
Defense Spending vs. Social Spending
- Congressional Budget Office (CBO)-“Trends in U.S. Defense Spending”
- Kaiser Family Foundation-“Medicaid Cuts and Their Impact on Americans”
- Economic Policy Institute-“How Federal Priorities Shifted Away from Workers and Toward Defense”
-Las Vegas Shooting (Factual Reporting) (These are for grounding- not for the rumors, but for the real timeline.)
- FBI Final Report-“Las Vegas Shooting: Behavioral Analysis and Findings”
- Las Vegas Review‑Journal -“What We Know About the Mandalay Bay Shooting”
- Associated Press-“Authorities Conclude Las Vegas Gunman Acted Alone”
