Paramount's acquisition of Warner Bros. faces a Qatar problem. It might also have a China problem. But no one in Washington is scrutinizing either of them.
In December, as Paramount’s $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. was still under negotiation, Members of Congress wrote to Treasury Secretary Bessent, demanding a national security review of the foreign financing. Bessent waited until the day after the deal closed to respond and declined to commit to a review. With the Trump administration actively courting Gulf sovereign wealth across every sector of the American economy, a review that could complicate a $24 billion Gulf investment is clearly not one this Treasury Department intends to conduct.
To understand what is being waved through, consider what the deal involves. The combined company would own Warner Bros., HBO, CNN, CBS, and Paramount Pictures. But the asset that dwarfs all of it is the archive: the pre-1986 MGM catalog, the complete RKO library, and the full Warner vault — Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, The Wizard of Oz, Singin’ in the Rain, North by Northwest, Blade Runner, Goodfellas, and tens of thousands more. It is the largest collection of American cinema ever assembled under one corporate roof. These are the films that defined this country’s image of itself and the world's image of America at the apex of the 20th century.
In November, Paramount denied any involvement by a Gulf sovereign wealth fund in its Warner Bros. bid. The following month, it sheepishly confirmed that the Qatar Investment Authority, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, and Abu Dhabi's L’imad Holding Company were contributing a combined $24 billion in equity. Now, having won the bidding war, Paramount won't specify what each party is contributing to the final structure. The company hopes that this strategy—denial, partial confirmation, silence—will work as intended, and the deal closes before the public has any clear picture of who will own what.
When Japanese investors purchased Rockefeller Center in 1989, the backlash wasn’t about the legal details of the deal. It was about perceptions: a symbol of American culture, clearly and undeniably in foreign hands. Paramount keeps the specific figures hidden and the owners anonymous to prevent the country from having to associate Qatar's name with its purchase.
Qatar is not a conventional sovereign investor with incidental media interests. It is the Muslim Brotherhood's most important state patron and the host of Hamas’s senior political leadership. Paramount's position is that none of it matters because its Gulf investors have agreed to forgo board seats and voting rights.
That argument has two problems.
The first is legal. Federal law defines foreign control as any capacity to influence important matters affecting a U.S. business. An investor providing $7 billion that the acquiring company cannot afford to lose influences important matters by that fact alone, whatever the SEC filing says about voting rights.
The second problem is structural. Paramount’s primary financing vehicle, RedBird Capital Partners, already has four of its people on Paramount's ten-member board, including RedBird’s founder, Gerry Cardinale, and its chairman, John Thornton. RedBird contributed roughly 25 percent of the equity in the original Paramount-Skydance acquisition and operates a cooperative investment relationship with the Qatar Investment Authority. The Gulf money doesn't need its own board seat, because it already has four.
Thornton's position on that board extends the problem into different territory. He serves on the advisory council of China’s sovereign wealth fund, a state-owned entity chartered to advance China’s national interests. He is simultaneously a trustee of Tsinghua University, which operates under Communist Party governance and enforces mandatory Xi Jinping thought indoctrination. China’s sovereign wealth fund has a history of using joint ventures with well-connected American financial firms to move investments past national security review — a strategy it developed in partnership with Goldman Sachs, where Thornton spent the bulk of his career.
In 2023, the British government moved to block RedBird from acquiring the Daily Telegraph on the grounds that Gulf state money should not control a major media outlet. The reasoning wasn’t complicated: Qatar doesn't need to issue editorial directives to get what it wants from an institution it finances. This happens not because anyone issues demands, but because institutions don't maintain positions that endanger relationships they can’t afford to lose. Britain blocked the deal because it understood that a newspaper works the same way. What Washington is now being asked to wave through is two studios, a news network, a premium cable channel, a broadcast network, and the largest film archive in the world.
During negotiations, Warner Bros.’ board flagged an internal concern that Paramount was “taking money from the Middle East and China” as a material deal risk. The people running the target company saw the problem, but Washington has not.
David Reaboi is the president of Strategic Improvisation, a communications firm focused on national security, counterterrorism, and political warfare. He’s on X at @davereaboi and writes at Late Republic Nonsense at Substack.
