[schalab]

Explanation 1:

Lauren Sanchez(bezos' new girfiend) along with her brother Michael(who is also her agent), leaked the story to force Bezos to divorce his wife and get along with her.

Explanation 2:

The crown prince of Saudi Arabia personally sent a trojan file, downloaded all the data, distributed it through a gossip rag he happens to be friends with, for some kind of revenge/message

I get why Bezos has to go with explanation 2 because explanation 1 would indicate the girl he wants to have sex with or her brother is manipulative. I dont see why the rest of us have to go along with this. Even this anonymous source says he has "high confidence" not anywhere near certainty.

[streb-lo]

Is explanation 2 supposed to be outlandish?

A country like Saudia Arabia is going to use every tactic possible to combat their asymmetry with the West. It's not the crown prince personally having someone cook up a trojan for him -- it's their national apparatus deciding that free potential leverage over influential Americans is a worthwhile pursuit.

[tiles]

If you take into account that MBS murdered an employee of Bezos, explanation #2 sounds plausible.

[AshwinDurairaj]

The motives for explanation 2 are currently not known. MBS might have had numerous reasons, ranging from WaPo or AWS. But regardless, there could have been many reasons to target Bezos. The part that doesn't sit right with me is the leaks, since it would have burned the 0day and connected Saudis to hacking phones which I doubt they would have wanted.