Right now, Saudi Arabia is burning
hundreds of billions of dollars building an absolutely insane sci-
fi eco region in the middle of the desert. Billed as the future of human-centered
urban living inside of a futuristic hub
for business and technology. It's called Neom. Neom has been getting a ton of media
hype recently, driven by badass renderings of planned features
like a ski resort in the desert, a line-shaped horizontal city, and an upside-down
skyscraper in a mountain. But I have to say, even after seeing
all these cool pics me still confused. Which is why I've decided
to launch an investigation titled. Neom is currently the biggest construction
project in the world, which is impressive considering that
it's mostly just a hole in the sand. However, the plan for Neom is to become
a collection of distinct regions, each with their own fun vibe that defy
the laws of science and architecture.

Take a look. This is Oxagon, the world's largest floating structure, Trojena, a year-round mountain destination. Aquellum is built inside the mountain. The Line! A 500-meter high, 200-meter wide, 170-kilometer long city of the shape of, well, a line. Alright. But I mean, who among us hasn't created an unrealistic to-do list? Now, there's been a ton of reporting on Neom’s wild architectural ambitions. One of my favorite pieces so far comes from fellow A-list sex symbol Patrick Boyle, whose recent dive into Neom’s design was a big honkin hit. I invited Patrick to walk us through his favorite elements of Neom’s urban planning. Hi Dan. Neom truly is an amazing project. Included in it is a city called The Line, which will be only 200 meters wide but 170 kilometers long. This is quite an egalitarian plan, given that now everyone in the city.

will have a bad commute
rather than just some people. There are other great ideas in the city
too, such as the robot dinosaur park, giant artificial moon
hovering over the city, which will livestream
images from outer space. There's going to be a beach
with glow-in-the-dark sand. There'll be schools with holographic
teachers, a metaverse platform, a digital asset
marketplace for crypto and NFT trading, a Hyperloop, mixed reality,
social media experience, flying autonomous taxis,
artificial rain, human gene editing, robot cage fighting, a sport
that's really growing in popularity. Robot Maids,
which might just be one of those robot vacuum cleaners,
but I think it'll likely be much better. And best of all, 24-hour surveillance with face recognition cameras and drones,
along with AI-powered health care systems
and judiciary systems. But for me, it'll be all about the robot cage
fighting and the giant artificial moon.

You just can't get that stuff in places
like London or New York. Hell, half of the time,
I can't even hail a carbon-neutral flying autonomous taxi around
here. Neom is clearly the place to be. Back to you, Dan. Right-o, thanks, Patty. But why build all of these robot
dinosaur parks and glow-in-the-dark beaches like you're a Middle Eastern Walt
Disney on trucker meth? Neom is the brainchild of Saudi
Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. MBS is the autocratic leader
of Saudi Arabia, and other than murdering journalists, his big thing
is something called Vision 2030. Right now, Saudi Arabia is the world's
number one oil exporter. It also owns the world's
biggest oil company, Aramco. Vision 2030 is a grand economic plan to diversify
the kingdom's dependence on oil before the world transitions off of fossil fuels,
and oil becomes worth a whole lot less.

The idea is to diversify the Saudi economy
by investing their oil money in a bunch of different stuff. US tech stocks, sports leagues,
AI development, green energy infrastructure, and yes, futuristic sci-fi cities in the middle of the desert. And this is all with the goal
of creating a vibrant, thriving economy where tourists will flock and foreign
corporations will want to set up shop for decades to come. Now, Neom is the keystone to this plan,
and MBS hopes that his G-Fueled Sand Atlantis will follow in the footsteps
of places like Dubai and Singapore. Non-Democratic city-states without much land or resources,
but whose rulers turn them into zones with business-friendly laws
so that foreign investment will flow in. If you look at a place like Dubai,
Saudi Arabia, or to a lesser extent Singapore or China, Hong Kong,
these are all places that are actually non-democratic forms
of capitalism. Quinn Slobodan is an author and historian
whose latest book, Crack Up

Capitalism argues that when it comes to capitalism, instead of countries, there's another increasingly important way to understand how the world is organized: a patchwork of small economic zones that money moves through, where democratic politics don't matter as much as corporate-friendly laws and investor returns. They are also the places that have been some of the most high-performing, high-growth, high-revenue-producing parts of the world in the last several decades. And they're looked at with greater and greater admiration and envy by some people on the conservative right. When MBS sold Neom as part of this big vision 2030, we're going to sort of kickstart a move away from oil dependence in Saudi Arabia, one of the things he said that was kind of the most striking is we're going to build this new city and it's going to be a totally private city. That city is none other than the line, which you recall is that horizontal

sprawling megalopolis. You're going to be able to invest in Neom,
where the line exists. Like a company. It'll also be a free trade zone
with its own set of bespoke laws, completely separate
from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Which is attractive for global investors
who are generally super horny for things like free trade zones
and tax havens, and generally not so horny for things like Sharia
based legal systems. It's a sort of one of these ideologies
that's kind of on the rise, whether a total privatization
of all state services from security to health to border
to arbitration and contract could all be somehow done
by private service providers, something that previously had
in the realm of science fiction. That's right. Everybody. Science fiction business cities with CEOs
instead of mayors and legal systems that prioritize investor interests
instead of democratic rights are here. Hell to the fuck yeah. And it's not just Neom.

cities with private governments
embodying the movement. Quinn writes about are starting to happen in reality, years after being
just a fringe libertarian idea. Like in Honduras, where
a group of investors and venture capital firms, including Peter Thiel and Marc
Andreessen, have created a private city and special economic zone called Prospera
on an island off the coast. What I wouldn't give to spend a day
on a libertarian island, just shooting guns and drinking Red stripe and peeing
wherever the government says, I can't. In this context, Neom’s
launch--a splashy TED talk announcement, a good looking pitch
deck, and blasting promo videos from your social media accounts before you've actually made
anything--starts to look a little bit less like how you build a city,
and more like how you launch a startup. Well, I mean, a lot of it I think
is just the outcome of the early 2000s.

hype world of Silicon Valley.
The idea is really come up with a cool name,
come up with a good concept and, you know, make a good pitch deck, and then,
you know, figure out the rest later. If you look at the things
that were supposed to happen, there was going to be supposedly
big green hydrogen plants involved there. There was going to be
a massive desalination plant. They were going to have this sort of super high tech
new logistics hub and deepwater port. And despite many of the good intentions,
Neom says it has, it turns out that turning sci-fi into reality is really hard
and really expensive. MBS once said that
he expected the first phase of Neom to cost about $320 billion by 2030. So far,
Neom is estimated to cost $500 billion, and most people think
that's a gross underestimation. And maybe it would seem worth it if the desert was littered
with these kickass cyborg palaces.

we were promised, but so far,
that ain't how the cookie’s crumbled. Construction has only really started
in earnest in two out of the ten developments that Neom has announced,
Sindala and The Line. But the line's first phase
has been downsized from ten miles to 1.5 miles, and its long term goal remains
105 miles total. Meanwhile, estimates were to have 1.5
million people living there by 2030, and now that's been downsized
to only 300,000 people. But this hasn't stopped the kingdom
from continuing construction, while also pushing out thousands of natives
who already lived in the region and murdering one tribal leader
who protested eviction. Neom even has plans to host
the Asian Winter games in 2029 at the Trojena, a mountain resort
that doesn't even exist yet. So, like the Who, who told MBS
that they could pull this off?

on paper,
they had their consultants lined up. We meet again. You pencil-pushing rattlesnakes. I knew there was something evil
lurking in this project. But the question is,
will the kind of froth of high oil prices be enough to carry them into that future,
or will they start to pare away all the interesting things, the frankly important things,
like big green hydrogen breakthroughs, and turn it into basically
just another high-end resort for the wealthiest people in the world. And I think that given
the kind of direction of travel of everything
in global capitalism, it will probably just end up being like
Instagrammable kind of yacht marina for rich nepo kids,
rather than anything else. This does feel very Fyre Festival. Totally. Yeah. And, folks, I don't want to stand here and act like
I'm a hater against big dreams like Neom. I mean, who wouldn't love
to drive their yacht into Oxagon, Norlana.

or Aquellum,
before hitting the slopes on Trojena, swimming on the chemically
glowing beaches of Sindala, and catching an opera at Utamo,
just to tuck into your futuristic hotel room by nightfall
at Leyja, Serana, or Epicon? Or maybe you spend a night at your pied
a terre at mile 84 of The Line? I certainly would,
and I say that all the time, but this entire operation
sounds like it's using the same tactics ripped from Silicon Valley's playbook. Talk a big game about improving the world and humanity first, and figure out
how to do all that shit later. What matters
now is getting investors in the door and seeing how high this rocket can fly,
baby. MBS, I like your style, compadre. But as an early Theranos investor,
I gotta say, I feel like I've heard this song before,
and it doesn't end well. Although, if I'm wrong,

you know where to find me. And as Neom continues to expand, the Saudi Arabian government is excited to announce its latest city to add to our burgeoning economic zone: New Jersey. New Jersey is a dynamic, sexy, and multicultural hub overflowing with innovation and tropical getaways. In a recent deal made with the U.S. government, America will slice out New Jersey and ship it to the Red Sea. In return, the U.S. will get Cristiano Ronaldo. Hello, truthers, interrupting that Neom ad to announce that I, Dan Toomey, was recently on a game show called The Getaway, which is streaming now on Nebula. In a desperate attempt to pay back my credit card debt, I traveled with a bunch of other creators across the American desert, competing for a pile of money through a series of games that I was told would be fun, but instead left me severely emotionally damaged.

Nebula is the internet's independent home
for high-quality original shows, documentaries, and even films
like The Getaway, the travel game show Jet Lag, and an upcoming documentary
called Boomers. Neat! Episodes of The Getaway
will be coming out weekly, and you can subscribe to Nebula through
the link in our description to watch. For only five bucks a month
or 30 bucks a year. And in between episodes of The Getaway,
you can go to nebula.com/slash. Good work to watch
all of our videos ad-free. Thanks, everybody.
I'll see you on the other side.

Saudi Arabia’s goin sicko mode on its sci-fi city-state

"Fake business news." Dan Toomey and the incredibly serious Good Work Investigative News Team plunge into the dark world of business and finance.
