Imagine peering across the vast Saudi Arabian desert, mirages shimmering on the horizon. Then, a colossal, mirrored wall rises from the sand—The Line, a futuristic city stretching over a hundred miles. Now, erase that image. The dream of Neom, it seems, is trading people for processing power.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman once envisioned Neom as a utopian metropolis: zero streets, zero cars, and complete sustainability. A place designed to offer everything a person could desire. But according to a recent report in the Financial Times, those ambitions are being drastically scaled back, shifting from a human-centric hub to, well, a server farm for AI. Let’s examine why.
The Line, Neom’s flagship project, was conceived as a self-contained city, 177 kilometers (110 miles) long, with walls soaring 488 meters (1,600 feet) high, yet a mere 201 meters (660 feet) wide. The plan was to house nine million people, allowing anyone to traverse the entire city in 20 minutes via high-speed rail.
The Inevitable Reality Check
We’ve all seen it before: a grand plan hits the cold, hard wall of reality. Ground was broken in 2022, but the project has been plagued by delays, setbacks, and budget shortfalls. Developers reportedly balked at some of the more extravagant concepts, such as an inverted building suspended from a bridge. Last year, the CEO resigned abruptly, fueling speculation that the project would be scaled back to a mere prototype.
Now, even that seems too ambitious. According to the Financial Times, the project will be “far smaller” than initially planned and might not even be a city. The report suggests Neom could become a data center hub, aligning with Prince Mohammed’s ambition to make Saudi Arabia a leader in the AI sector.
Why the Shift to AI and Data Centers?
Consider the global race for AI dominance, where data is the new oil. Saudi Arabia, with its immense wealth, is eager to control a piece of this future. Transforming Neom into a data center hub, utilizing platforms like NVIDIA and the latest cloud infrastructure, offers a tangible path to achieving that goal. It’s a pivot from a people-centric vision to a profit-driven enterprise.
The Human Cost of a Digital Dream
It’s easy to view this as just another failed tech project. But this isn’t a Silicon Valley startup folding; this is a nation-state building (or un-building) a city. Securing land for Neom involved displacing communities and, reportedly, even executing three people for resisting eviction. Much of the construction has relied on migrant workers subjected to appalling conditions. Human rights reports detail dozens of deaths and countless serious injuries among the workforce.
What Impact Will This Have on the Saudi Economy?
The shift could have significant repercussions. A data-driven Neom might attract foreign investment and high-tech jobs, but at what cost? The original vision promised a diverse, sustainable economy. Will a cluster of data centers offer the same opportunities for Saudi citizens, or will it simply deepen reliance on foreign expertise and infrastructure? It’s a gamble with high stakes. This pivot is a high-tech Trojan Horse, promising progress while potentially masking deeper societal trade-offs.
Could This Project Still Deliver on Its Sustainability Promises?
Originally, The Line’s design focused on minimizing environmental impact. A city powered by renewable energy, with efficient public transport, could have been a model for urban sustainability. But massive data centers are notorious energy hogs, often reliant on fossil fuels for power. Even with renewable energy sources, the sheer scale of energy consumption raises concerns about the project’s overall carbon footprint.
All this, for algorithms. A tragic irony hangs in the air: a city meant to elevate human life, now seemingly destined to merely serve the cold calculations of artificial intelligence. Has the pursuit of technological advancement blinded us to the true cost of progress?