Mohammed bin Saleh Al-Athel has been the deputy governor of the Saudi General Authority for Military Industries (GAMI) since May 2019. He was the secretary-general of the GAMI board of directors from November 2017 to October 2018 and was secretary-general and a member of the armaments contracts review committee at the Saudi Ministry of Defense, in Riyadh, between 2017 and 2019. For more than four years, Al-Athel worked as a project director at both Saudi Arabian Military Industries and the Kingdom’s Public Investment Fund. He has also been a board member at several institutions in Bahrain including Malath Cooperative Insurance Co., the Filing and Packing Materials Manufacturing Co., and Venture Capital Bank. Al-Athel obtained a bachelor’s degree in finance from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, in Dhahran, and a master’s degree from Smith School of Business at Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada. On Monday, GAMI confirmed that the Kingdom will increase support for scientific research from its military budget to 4 percent during the next 10 years, in order to convey technology, weapons industry and military industries in general. Talking to Arab News, Al-Athel said that the Kingdom had the world’s third-largest budget allocated to weapons, after the US and China, and was the largest importer of arms.