A Training Proposal Military vocational training stemmed from the need to develop the capabilities of the youth and make job opportunities available to them. Many young Saudis flocked to military colleges to ensure their future employment. With this in mind, we put forward a proposal for 30,000 high school graduates, regardless of their performance, to be trained by the National Guard, the Ministry of Defense, and the Ministry of Interior for one year. The goal of the program was to tap into the skills of the Saudi youth. Under the proposal, top performers of the program would be selected for entry into one of the country’s military colleges. Second -tier graduates would be sent abroad to address military needs in the field of technology, third-tier graduates would be placed in local colleges of technology, and the rest would enter the labor force. Importantly, all the graduates would learn discipline through their military training.
The vision was, unfortunately, never implemented as originally planned. I hope for it to be revisited, evaluated, and developed to realize the goals we had aimed to achieve.
Meeting Bill Gates In 1998, I visited Microsoft’s headquarters in Seattle, Washington, USA and met with the company’s co-founder Bill Gates. The meeting had been arranged by King Abdullah with an aim to discuss a potential collaboration software for use by the Saudi government that aligns with the World Trade Organization’s requirem ents. King Abdullah had requested that I speak to Gates on two topics: the Y2K programming glitch, which at the time was expected to wreak havoc on computer systems at the turn of the millennium, and the role that Microsoft’s systems can play in allowing Saudi women to work from home and generate additional income. Gates was excited by the second topic and promised to send a Microsoft delegation to the Kingdom to discuss it further with Saudi officials. Before I ended my visit, I presented him with a decorated letter opener, designed after the Saudi traditional sword and crafted in Makkah. While I was proud of the gift as it came from the Holy City, I suddenly became aware of the irony of giving a letter opener to someone leading the information and digital revolution. Laughing, I apologized and said: “Well, it appears I have brought you the wrong gift,” to which he replied : “On the contrary, I will keep it to open the most important letters!” Only a few weeks after our meeting, Gates sent a delegation of top company officials, including the head of their Europe and Middle East divisions, to Saudi Arabia where they met King Abdullah, along with ministers and prominent businessmen, at the National Guard headquarters. The delegation submitted a proposal to King Abdullah on 11 th May 1998 outlining a future collaboration with the following objectives: • Developing interest in and awareness of the importance of using genuine software and protecting intellectual property rights • Providing practical solutions to government institutions for using genuine software • Providing training and technical and advisory services to government institutions • Creating an attractive environment for investments in the software and information industries, particularly Arabic software • Creating a supportive environment to qualify the Kingdom to negotiate with international entities related to the World Trade Organization
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