ShortHand: ‘The Line’ - Saudi Arabia’s Futuristic Megacity

Summary

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RedHanded: ShortHand – ‘The Line’ Saudi Arabia’s Futuristic Megacity

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

Overview

In this ShortHand episode, the RedHanded hosts dive deep into “The Line,” Saudi Arabia’s ambitious, dystopian-sounding plan for a 100-mile-long, futuristic megacity in the desert. With trademark irreverence, skepticism, and gallows humor, they break down the history, the vision, the controversies, and the reality behind the project, tying together the threads of utopian ambition, human rights abuses, environmental concerns, and vanity projects gone awry.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. What is The Line and NEOM?

• Direct Naming and Scope:
  • "The crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, calls his master plan the Line." [00:44]
  • “It's a proposed 500 meter high megacity that will stretch 100 miles through the Saudi Arabian desert... promises a car free, carbon free utopian existence... 9 million residents... robot maids... gigantic fake moon.” [02:52]
• The Line is the centerpiece of NEOM, a $500 billion part of “Vision 2030” aimed at diversifying the Saudi economy away from oil.
• NEOM includes several mega-projects: Oxagon (floating city), Trojena (ski resort), Sindalah and Magna (luxury resorts), and The Line.

2. Saudi Arabia’s Transformation & The Man Behind It

• Saudi Arabia’s rapid transformation from a poor, tribal society to an oil-rich superpower began after oil discoveries in the 1930s.
  • “By 1930... Riyadh... just a few thousand people living in mud brick houses. And outside, that was just miles and miles of dry, empty desert...” [04:23]
• Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ("MBS") is the driving force behind these projects. Keen to modernize the country’s image, he's paradoxically presided over increased repression.
  • “In fact, human rights groups agree that despite MBS's shiny PR campaign, things have actually got worse under his reign.” [10:59]
• Saudi’s Global Freedom Index: 7/100. “To this day, Saudi Arabia has never, not once, not never elected a single official.” [10:14]

3. Human Rights Concerns

• Saudi’s abysmal human rights record: dissent is criminalized, women’s freedoms restricted, executions rising, migrants treated terribly.
• “All sexual activity outside of marriage is illegal and women must have a male legal guardian approve everything, including who they marry.” [10:47]
• Reference to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, with a suggestion to listen to a prior episode for more [11:39]:
  • “Within minutes, he was killed and dismembered with a bone sore. And the CIA believes that MBS was directly involved and gave the order.” [11:39]

4. The Glossy Utopia & Dystopian Doubts

• The Line is pitched as hyper-modern, sustainable, and equitable.
  • “A hyperspeed subterranean train… No roads, no cars, zero carbon emissions, and the entire thing will be fueled by wind and solar power... the most sustainable, livable and equitable society in human history.” [20:55]
• But the hosts repeatedly express skepticism—about logistics, desirability, and, chiefly, the contradiction between utopian branding and dystopian reality.
  • Memorable moment: “I think the word utopia should scare everybody... it’s about a warning to be scared of people who promise utopia. Because that's when shit gets fucked up.” [21:35 — paraphrasing Margaret Atwood]

5. Evictions and Violence in the Name of Progress

• The land for NEOM and The Line was not a true “blank canvas”—large-scale evictions of the Huwaitat tribe, with deadly force and no compensation.
  • “20,000 members of the Huaytat tribe have been forcibly removed without any adequate compensation... 63 entire neighborhoods had been completely reduced to dust... One Huaytat man refused to be evicted... he was shot and killed by authorities.” [22:42]
  • “A former Saudi colonel... told the BBC he was ordered to use lethal force on anyone who didn't move.” [23:15]
• Some architects and designers withdrew, but replacements jumped in.

6. Environmental Concerns & Greenwashing

• Sustainability claims are largely PR—real environmental costs are immense.
  • “How do you rewild a desert?” [24:41]
  • “Estimates say that upwards of 8.1 billion tons of embodied carbon dioxide will be produced in the build and that's more than four years of the total UK carbon emissions.” [25:36]
• “Greenwashing is second nature to the House of Saud.” [24:48]

7. Practicality & Plausibility

• Residents’ satisfaction depends on how spaces are managed, not just how they look.
  • “The chances of 9 million people surrendering their lives to this Saudi megaproject is slim. And that's before you get to the question of what everyone would do. At the moment, the only industry is, well, building the line.” [26:38]
• “Bloomberg journalist Vivian Nerum... says that a significant portion of the ideas are quite literally taken from science fiction books, from films and tv.” [27:18]
• Saudi is riddled with failed, abandoned megaprojects—King Abdullah Economic City is cited as an expensive ghost town. The Line’s own plans have been dramatically downscaled.
  • “More than US$50 billion have been spent so far, but its plans have been scaled back by 98%. And it's now aiming for a first phase covering just 1.5 miles to be ready for 2030.” [28:08]
  • “Of the 1.5 million people it wanted to house by 2030, the line now hopes... for about 300,000... Today, just 2,800 people live and work there—and every single one of them are staff.” [28:33]

8. Vanity, Power & Ozymandias

• The hosts suggest The Line and NEOM are more about MBS’s ego than real urban planning.
  • “Projections now estimate that Neom's plans would cost over US$9 trillion to complete. That's 25 times Saudi Arabia's current GDP.” [29:41]
  • “Even with the best will in the world, the projected timelines over the next hundred years assume total control... with funding drying up every time investors realize who they're dealing with, it's not looking good.” [29:53]
• “In Percy Shelley's poem Ozymandias... a cracked pedestal below reads: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. One of my favorite lines of all time.” [31:26]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "It promises a car free, carbon free utopian existence imagined from scratch, where everything its residents need is less than five minutes away... robot maids and bask in the glow of its gigantic fake moon.” – B [02:52]
• “Saudi Arabia has a total score of 7 out of 100” – B [07:20]
• “It's not about religion, it's not about men, it's about a warning to be scared of people who promise utopia. Because that's when shit gets fucked up." – A, paraphrasing Margaret Atwood [21:35]
• "Quite a lot of people already lived on that land. That, he said, was a blank canvas. The Huwaitat... 20,000 forcibly removed... 63 neighborhoods reduced to dust... one man shot and killed by authorities." – A [22:42]
• "Estimates say that upwards of 8.1 billion tons of embodied carbon dioxide will be produced in the build and that's more than four years of the total UK carbon emissions." – B [25:53]
• “There are several reasons why we're 100% certain that it won't happen. Firstly, there's the question of who would actually want to live in a tiny cube city in the middle of the desert.” – A [25:53]
• “More than US$50 billion have been spent so far, but its plans have been scaled back by 98%. And it's now aiming for a first phase covering just 1.5 miles to be ready for 2030.” – B [28:08]
• "In Percy Shelley's poem Ozymandias... My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye mighty and despair. One of my favorite lines of all time." – B [31:26]

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Timestamps for Significant Segments

• Origins & Introduction to The Line: [00:44] – [03:24]
• Saudi’s Oil Wealth & MBS’s Vision: [04:23] – [07:48]
• Human Rights & Dissent: [10:14] – [12:15]
• NEOM Components & Utopian Claims: [13:10] – [15:15]
• Evictions & Land Controversy: [22:09] – [23:58]
• Greenwashing & Environmental Impact: [24:07] – [25:53]
• Why It’s Unlikely to Happen: [25:53] – [28:21]
• Vanity Projects & Ozymandias: [29:38] – [31:41]

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Tone & Final Reflections

With dry British humor and a knack for deflating ridiculous grandiosity, the hosts paint The Line as a surreal intersection of dystopian sci-fi, autocratic ambition, and capitalist hubris—peppered with real-world tragedy and classic poetry. The episode is a rich tapestry of skepticism, dark comedy, and sharp critical insight—a must-listen for anyone curious about megalomaniacal urban planning and the (not so) brave new world of the Middle East.

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“Happy New Year.” – [31:41]

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Hello.

[B]

Hello.

[A]

Happy New Year. Welcome back.

[B]

I'm not back. I'm in Africa. Blessing the rains.

[A]

Wherever you are though. 2026. It's creeped up on all of us somehow.

[B]

And it says in my script that it's a brave new world of possibilities sitting here in November. Doesn't feel that way. But maybe it will be by then, the script says so it must be true. It's true crime, not made up crime.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

And if you're wondering what the glittering future holds, look no further than the arid deserts of Saudi Arabia, because some of the world's best architects and city planners are currently working on a project that they say will change the way we live on this planet. That's a quote. The crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, calls his master plan the Line.

[A]

It's not the most like magical name.

[B]

I think it's very direct though. Get straight to the point.

[A]

Okay. I thought it was more like the future planning committee. Don't look this way.

[B]

I quite like the Line.

[A]

It's very. It's very minimal. It's very. It's minimal, it's classy, it's sophisticated. It's just the way things are gonna be.

[B]

Johnny Cash song about it.

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Anyway, the Line is the crowning. I don't like it. I like the Line. It's the crowning. Glory of Neom.

[A]

Better. That's better.

[B]

An astoundingly ambitious megaproject that also includes a year round outdoor ski sclope ski slope. Did you know?

[A]

No, never heard of it. Ski slope? Is it a more curvy ski slope? I don't know.

[B]

A year round outdoor ski slope in the 50 degree Saudi heat, complete with fake snow.

[A]

That sounds gross.

[B]

I think fake snow is gross.

[A]

Fake snow is gross. I once went to like one of those fake ski places. I think it was in Milton Keynes and it was gross.

[B]

Oh, I know the one.

[A]

It was gross.

[B]

I'm familiar.

[A]

It was awful.

[B]

It's where the Beckhams taught their kids to ski.

[A]

Oh, is it gross? I still don't know how to ski.

[B]

Well, I recently found out that in Lesotho, which is the country that's in South Africa and it's just like a little ball of. Not South Africa, within South Africa. It snows there because it's really high altitude and they have a ski resort so you can learn to ski in sub Saharan Africa. Well, there you go. Where there'll be less smug Swiss people laughing at you.

[A]

Well, I don't know about that.

[B]

Anyway, the line itself is a proposed 500 meter high mega city that will stretch 100 miles through the Saudi Arabian desert. It promises a car free, carbon free utopian existence imagined from scratch, where everything its residents need is less than five minutes away. Its 9 million residents will be served by robot maids and bask in the glow of its gigantic fake moon.

[A]

Wow, 9 million.

[B]

How many people are in Saudi now?

[A]

Let's hold on, I don't know. That's the population of London though.

[B]

Okay. I was like, there's only four people in Saudi Arabia. No, there are 37.9 million people.

[A]

Oh, okay.

[B]

And that's not even counting all the slaves.

[A]

Sure. So yes, the plans are certainly impressive, but there have been a few hiccups. Saudi Arabia's rock bottom human rights record has turned a lot of its original investors and designers off. The whole project is already being referred to in the press as, quote, blood soaked. But construction is still underway.

[B]

He hasn't stopped them before.

[A]

And as if you're not going to find 9 million people, they're like, yeah, right. So will the crown Prince's futurist paradise become a reality? Or is it just another new money vanity project? Will the world's largest, most ambitious and most controversial building project ever be abandoned to the sands of time? Here's the shorthand to show just how.

[B]

Truly bonkers this idea is. We're going to quickly remind ourselves exactly where where we are. Until around 1930, Saudi Arabia was one of the poorest and least developed places on earth. Parts of Central Arabia had been ruled by the Saud family on and off since the mid-1700s. And they used their power to spread Wahhabism, which is their brand of hardline Islamic purity, as far as they possibly could. By the 1930s, the walled capital city of Riyadh held most of the country's population, which is just a few thousand people living in mudbr houses. And outside, that was just miles and miles of dry, empty desert and Peter o' Toole on a camel with practically zero water or farmable land. Scattered around the desert were nomadic Bedouin tribes who roamed the desert with camels and sheep. And Peter o' tool life was deeply traditional, run by old tribal codes and strict Islamic law. And that stayed the case until 1933, when the US company Standard Oil came a nooking.

[A]

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had been officially established just the year before, after a lot of infighting and civil wars. And this new stability meant that they could finally let the oil barons in to sniff around for any sign of the black stuff. And five years later, they found it quite a lot of turned out that the just a bit. It turned out that the land had more readily accessible reserves of oil than all of north and South America combined. In no time at all, this desert nation was injected with unthinkable wealth and became one of the richest and most influential states on earth. These days, the king is Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. But almost as soon as he got in, he started boosting the profile of his chosen heir. Not his eldest son, but his chosen one, Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud. Soon enough, mbs, as he has become known, was the de facto leader of the kingdom and he wanted to shake things up. Yes, the country was unthinkably rich. The problem was it was 100% dependent on oil. Anything that happened to oil prices happened to Saudi Arabia. In order to become the proper global centre of commerce MBS wanted it to be, things were going to have to change. He got a reputation as the business prince and started meeting up with Silicon Valley CEOs dressed all Western like in jeans and suits. To the rest of the world, MBS was keen to project an image of Saudi Arabia as a new, chill, Westernized society. But make no mistake, it is not one. So just before we get to his shiny new version of the future, let's take a look at exactly who MBS is and what exactly we're dealing with here.

[B]

The non profit Freedom House maintains a Global Freedom Index which gives country scores out of 100 based on civil liberties and personal rights. And right now, Saudi Arabia has a total score of 7 out of 100.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

I know that it's not the same country, but to get further that way, you quite often have to stop off in Doha if you're not stopping in Singapore.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And it always makes me laugh where they do this like ad reel for Qatar on the plane that's like, look how modern we are. Don't look at the crucifixions. Like women love it here. Would you like to buy some perfume?

[A]

Yeah. Wow, that's wild.

[B]

It's like, don't leave the airport and you'll be fine.

[A]

Exactly. Unless I am flying to a part of the world where I have no choice but to stop off in the Middle east for some particular reason, I'm just gonna avoid those parts of the world altogether, really. One time my family and I went to Dubai and it was because we were flying back from India after visiting family and we were just like, you know, let's just stop off in Dubai, we're flying With Etihad, it's making us do it anyway. We'll just spend a couple of days here. We did it. And I was like, oh, my God, this is fucking awful. We were there during Ramadan and I was like, I want to die. It was hideous. And then they were like, oh, do you want to take a little trip out? Maybe you could go to Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi? They were like, oh, you could take a day trip out to Abu Dhabi if you want. Because I was like, can we see like some markets or something like that? And they were like, oh, but you will have to cover your hair. And I was like, absolutely not. So we didn't go. I just stayed in the hotel there for the entire time. And you could only be in a swimming costume if you were in the private beach that was associated with the hotel and you couldn't walk through the hotel in, like a gown, like a dressing gown or anything. You had to get fully dressed on the beach before you came back in, which, like, fine, that's their business. I just didn't have fun. I didn't know.

[B]

That whole area of the world is a bit of a geographical blind spot for me. When I was an English teacher, like, you would get big money if you went to Saudi to teach, but I didn't know a single woman who went on her own and not as in, like, part of a couple. I don't know anyone who made it through their contract, but they take your.

[A]

Passport off you and they just end up living from people who I have met who were teachers in Saudi Arabia. You just end up living in, like, a compound and, like, making your own alcohol in the bathtub. Yes. And, like, having a horrible time because you're not actually allowed to, like, question the children, have, like, zero critical thinking skills because, like, that's. That's not priority there. And they were just like, whatever mental thing they say, you just have to be like, yeah, sure, cool. But anyway, seven out of 100.

[B]

Do you want to know what the UK's got?

[A]

29.

[B]

92 US is 80 something. I think 86. Anyway, Saudi seven. To this day, Saudi Arabia has never, not once, not never elected a single official. Any dissent is criminalised and harshly punished. Surveillance is everywhere. Working conditions for its massive migrant labour force are completely abysmal. Personal freedoms are in the toilet. All sexual activity outside of marriage is illegal and women must have a male legal guardian approve everything, including who they marry. In fact, human rights groups agree that despite MBS's shiny PR campaign, things have actually got worse under his reign. Thousands of dissidents, journalists and human rights activists are still to this day locked up just for speaking out. One blogger was sentenced to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison for insulting Islam and founding an online forum for political debate. And executions are on the rise, too. Between 2022 and 2024, the annual number of those put to death has almost doubled. There's no free press. Protesting in any form is completely illegal. And homosexuality is still considered not just sinful, but extremist.

[A]

And we don't have time to go over the killing of a journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. Please go back and listen to episode 184 of Red Handed for the whole unbelievable story on that. But the short version is in 2018, Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Within minutes, he was killed and dismembered with a bone sore. And the CIA believes that MBS was directly involved and gave the order. After that, investors in MBS's various projects got cold feet. World leaders promised to make MBS a pariah. But then Russia invaded Ukraine and everyone.

[B]

Deserves a comedy festival.

[A]

And then there was an energy crisis because of Russia invading Ukraine. And so the country with all the oil was swiftly forgiven. It's a constant, tricky dance of mbs, pushing his totalitarianism as far as he can while still courting business and culture from the rest of the world. So MBS produced Vision 2030, an insanely grand scheme to get the country where he wanted it to be by the year 2030. In 2019, he launched a visa program to push tourism. In the 2000 and twenties, he started spending massively on sport, paying crazy money to host the World cup in 2029, as well as courting big golf and Formula One events. And the crowning glory of all this is a global megacity, fittingly for Formula One, called neom.

[B]

Thank you for saying it properly. That is the correct pronunciation, is it? And it's more than a few luxury hotels. In fact, neom's PR calls it a roadmap for the future of civilization.

[A]

Wow. If that's true, God help us all.

[B]

I'm killing myself tonight. Yeah. Well, the plan was launched in 2017 and splits its world changing plans into 15 categories, from food, energy and water to sports media and well being. It promises a place that pushes the very limits of human knowledge. The total area being developed for NEOM is more than 10,000 square miles. And that's bigger than Wales. I really enjoy how Wales is just how we measure things.

[A]

Yes. How many whales how many whales?

[B]

The Saudi Public Investment Fund is contributing 500 billion with A B dollary dues and the rest is coming from private investors. The plan is for NIOM to exist completely outside the Saudi judicial system and it will be governed by a new autonomous legal system which will be decided on by its investors. And it promises a network of cosmopolitan megacities and business hubs, independent of the strict rules of the rest of Saudi Arabia. So mega Dubai is what we're talking about.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

Fuck with a fake moon.

[A]

NEOM is split into five Oxagon, Trojena, Sindalah, Magna and the line. Oxagon will be an octagonal city floating on the Red Sea. More than four miles across. It plans to be the largest floating structure in the world. It'll basically be a gigantic trading hub, helping Saudi Arabia become the actual literal center of the business world. And to be fair, this is the other thing that the Middle east can boast about, apart from oil. It is in the middle.

[B]

That's why I have to stop in Doha.

[A]

Thanks to the Pacific Ocean being so gigantic, there aren't many places in the world this well connected to, well, everywhere. Next up is Trojena and it's basically a ski resort. It promises year round skiing and is hoping to draw 700,000 tourists a year to shred down the slopes on its fluffy, ice cold manufactured snow. The race is on to get it ready to host the 2029 Asian Winter Games. The next two projects on the NOOM roster are Sindalah and Magna. And they are much more what we're used to from Middle Eastern developments, luxury island resorts and luxury communities. In the Red Sea there'll be a marina for 84 yachts, multiple golf courses and five star hotels, as well as a futuristic subterranean city built into the side of a mountain and invisible to the outside world. But even that pales in comparison to the biggest and most ambitious plan in the NEOM portfolio and maybe even in the world. The line. I would want to know more about the laws before I was, you know, holding the fact that I was financially rich enough to be offered a place there. I would want to know more about these laws because all they say is separate from the laws of Saudi Arabia. Yeah, but in which direction? I'd want to be clear about that.

[B]

Scary.

[A]

Because I do believe that the Saudis are just like, what's gonna make us loads of money? What's gonna make us loads and loads of money? Yeah. And like, that's what people want. I was watching an interesting little documentary the other day. Just on YouTube about the Maldives and how it is obviously like, you know, this idyllic, like paradise island. That's how we think of it. Kind of like this dream location for many people, like a once in a lifetime trip. How it is so segregated because it is very, very like strict, Islamically speaking, super, super controlled. Like they can't do anything, they cannot do it. Like alcohol is banned, like women are very, very controlled, all these things. But obviously if you go there on holiday, you can do whatever you want within like the five star resorts that you stay in. And a lot of the people who work there are locals, so they are front and center aware of every, all of the freedoms that the people coming there have. But they go home back to their houses where they have literally no freedoms. It's like a weird nightmare dystopia. And it's like the kind of dark side of the Maldives that people who go there are just totally not aware of. And why would you be. They do a very good job of hiding it, but I feel like that's what this would be.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Anyway, never mind.

[B]

They have a similar thing. Not similar, that there's a discussion in Cape Town at the moment. So currently if you fly in to the airport, you have to go past one of the biggest townships in the way to the city. And I think that's a really important thing that everyone should have to do because I believe that you have to see both sides of the coin. It shouldn't be hidden from you. It's part of the deal. Right. But currently there is a sort of discussion at the moment is building another airport in the northern suburbs so tourists wouldn't have to go through that way. And it's like a really huge debate at the moment. And I think, I mean, who cares what I think? But I think no, you should have to see it. You should have to accept that that's where you are. But they probably will build one and then you can just circumvent the whole thing. Anyway, if you have 17 hours free, you can watch the ad for the line and it describes a 500 meter high skyscraper running for 105 miles through the Saudi desert. For reference, imagine a perfectly straight mirrored building the height of the Empire State Building running uninterrupted for the distance of London to Bristol.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

I can't, I can't. And the mirrors have always bothered me. When light is refracted by a mirror, it makes fire. This is in the Saudi desert and it's 105 miles. Well, no, 210 miles. Because it's both sides of mirror in the desert. It's just gonna be a big fire. No. Am I misunderstanding?

[A]

AI woman's thought about it.

[B]

Don't worry, AI woman's fixed it already.

[A]

She's got a plan.

[B]

Well, actually it's two buildings running parallel and inside there's urban spaces, trees, plants and open space. Apparently, the Saudi authorities have hired the world's best architects, engineers, city planners and even theoretical physicists to fully reimagine a city from scratch. In the promotional material, Saudi points out the inefficiency of modern cities like London and New York, saying that since these cities are built around roads, civic life is a non stop nightmare of long commutes, traffic jams, pollution, isolation, inequality. So they aimed to turn all of that on its head or side. The idea being that by concentrating the space vertically, you can reduce travel time and return 95% of the land back to nature. So the plan is to build the line in connected modules. Each one will be self sufficient. Every single one of the line's 9 million residents will be a five minute walk or cycle from everything they could possibly need, including shops, schools, leisure centres, public spaces and more. Underneath all of that is a hyperspeed subterranean train connecting people to the rest of the line. No part of the entire complex will be more than 20 minutes by train. It's a fast fucking train. People will be able to get everywhere using lifts and the impossibly fast train and it's all going to be run by AI women. There'll be no roads, no cars, zero carbon emissions, and the entire thing will be fueled by wind and solar power. And they say it will be the most sustainable, livable and equitable society in human history.

[A]

No, thank you very much. I think the word utopia should scare everybody. I watched an interview with Margaret Atwood and she's talking about A Handmaid's Tale and she says people misunderstand the book. She says it's not about religion, it's not about men, it's about a warning to be scared of people who promise utopia. Because that's when shit gets fucked up. She doesn't. That's not a quote. But I think that is something maybe just worth bearing in mind when you think about moving to the line.

[B]

But if you do, you'll have equal access to healthcare and education at every possible level. And a robot mode.

[A]

Do you know what? Fuck what I just said. That's not great. Sounds impressive, right? And construction has actually already begun. And if you go onto the Internet, you can take a Look at how it looks right now. And what it looks like is a big fucking desert with what looks like some buns with a line in it. Basically what my kitchen looked like for the best part of a year. But before we start picking yet more holes in the plan itself, we should cover the controversy that built around the project before a single hole was even dug. In one of MBS's big grandstanding speeches about Neom, he said that the land he'd set aside for its development was the perfect blank canvas. The only thing was, quite a lot of people already lived on that land. That, he said, was a blank canvas. The Hue Tat, a nomadic tribe, had several settlements there. Human rights Campaigners say that 20,000 members of the Huaytat tribe have been forcibly removed without any adequate compensation. These were full towns with houses, schools and hospitals. 63 entire neighborhoods had been completely reduced to dust. One Huaytat man refused to be evicted and started posting videos online protesting the displacement. He was shot and killed by authorities. In April 2020, a former Saudi colonel who left the army and fled to London told the BBC he was ordered to use lethal force on anyone who didn't move. And quite a few architecture studios withdrew after word of these mass evictions and wanton killings came out. But wasn't long before others rushed in to plug the gap.

[B]

What did I think was going to happen?

[A]

I was gonna say, I was like, you might as well do it because someone's gonna do it anyway, mate.

[B]

And then there's the environmental stuff. Sustainability has been a huge calling card for this project. MBS himself called the line a journey to a greener future, which, coming from someone who's completely made of oil money, is fucking insane. Anyway, developers say that 95% of the area will be rewilded and preserved. How do you rewild a desert?

[A]

I was gonna ask, do they mean terraformed? I don't know.

[B]

It's just one cactus. A sad, sad cactus. Anyway, it might have something to do with cloud seeding, which is a weather modification technology that Saadi have invested in, which apparently can magic up clouds and make it rain. And all this sustainability posturing is probably the easiest thing to laugh off straight away. Greenwashing is second nature to the House of Saud. Fossil fuels, as I said, are their golden goose. And frankly, no one would expect Saudi Arabia to ever actually decrease oil production. But because a country's total emissions are counted by the fuel it burns, not the fuel it produces, it manages to blag a reputation for being super green and looking Ahead to a super sustainable future is noble, but the line will take a long, long time to complete and an astonishing amount of very ungreen construction to get there. Estimates say that upwards of 8.1 billion tons of embodied carbon dioxide will be produced in the build and that's more than four years of the total UK carbon emissions.

[A]

But you might be saying, let's think big picture on a long enough timeline. Surely all that initial upheaval will be worth it for a self sustaining, carbon neutral paradise. Well, yes, but that depends on it actually being built in the first place. There are several reasons why we're 100% certain that it won't happen. Firstly, there's the question of who would actually want to live in a tiny cube city in the middle of the desert.

[B]

Tiktokers.

[A]

Great. We'll put all of them there, just.

[B]

Ship them all out of Dubai. You just need to make the tax slightly more beneficial for them and they'll all be straight in the line.

[A]

Absolutely. I think like literally the way to do this is, yeah, tax literally just.

[B]

Make it more tax efficient to live there than live in Dubai and you'll be fucking fine.

[A]

Absolutely. So yes, if we say that that wouldn't be enough, like why would people want to live there? It's not just the total lack of freedom to do anything outside of your dystopian prison, but it all comes back to the way it's run. Professor of architecture Philip Oldfield told Deason. Even if these were built, the satisfaction of residents would mostly be informed by how such spaces are operated and managed, not by how dramatic they look. And the chances of 9 million people surrendering their lives to this Saudi megaproject is slim. And that's before you get to the question of what everyone would do. At the moment, the oni industry is, well, building the line. Bloomberg journalist Vivian Nerum spent half a year studying this project and she says that a significant portion of the ideas are quite literally taken from science fiction books, from films and tv.

[B]

And this kind of reveals what is really going on. It's not the first time we've seen a plan like this. In 2005, the then Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz announced his plans for the King Abdullah Economic City. It was projected to be a futuristic hub for world businesses. Fourteen years on, construction has ground to a halt. At less than 1% of its planned size, it's a pretty unremarkable small town now of about 7,000 people. And even now, eight years after the line's announcement, it is losing steam More than US$50 billion have been spent so far, but its plans have been scaled back by 98%. And it's now aiming for a first phase covering just 1.5 miles to be ready for 2030.

[A]

1.5 miles. That's it.

[B]

It's not many. No, it's almost no miles.

[A]

It's not even two. It's not even a couple. It's barely plural. That's mad.

[B]

And of the 1.5 million people it wanted to house by 2030, the line now hopes to crack on with about 300,000 people. Today, just 2,800 people live and work there, and every single one of them are staff working on the construction. And the dream is floundering in the rest of Neom too. That year round ski resort plan now plans to be usable for just three months a year. How? How?

[A]

Almost like a real ski resort.

[B]

Almost like what? It's. Yeah, like a fake snow is only usable for three months of the year.

[A]

I don't get it. Right. There's a great video from ABC called the World's Dumbest Megaproject, where presenter Matt Bevan called it a giant scam. But it's not a scam on us, nor on the architects and developers working on the project, because they're all being paid by the hour. If that means wasting years on a billionaire's doomed vanity project, then so be it.

[B]

It's not a bad point. No, that's actually made me feel loads better.

[A]

Bevan says that if anything, it's a scary scam on MBS himself. When this whole thing inevitably fails, he'll be billions of dollars lighter, with probably nothing to show for it. Projections now estimate that Neom's plans would cost over US$9 trillion to complete. That's 25 times Saudi Arabia's current GDP. And even with the best will in the world, the projected timelines over the next hundred years assume total control. The money needs to keep pouring in consistently for generations. And with funding drying up every time investors realize who they're dealing with, it's not looking good. Plus, money aside, life is not good for the average Saudi. Unemployment's in double figures, and MBS really isn't sharing the wealth. In a totally autocratic society, it's not hard for economic frustration to spill over into public unrest. That's not to mention the fact that they're still in a bloody war with the Houthis in Yemen. So the chances of the House of Saud being consistently showered with cash and left alone to beaver away on its sci fi City of the future are not good.

[B]

But despite all of that, MBS has lost zero momentum. Just this year he commissioned the construction of a chandelier bigger than a 15 storey building to hang above approaching superyachts. And just like the King Abdullah economic city that we mentioned earlier, the Middle east is littered with abandoned projects and ghost towns and MBS will join the long list of puffed up oil rich oligarchs looking to cement their place in history. In Percy Shelley's poem Ozymandias, a traveller comes across the ruined shards of a massive statue lying abandoned in the desert and a cracked pedestal below reads My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye mighty and despair. One of my favorite lines of all time.

[A]

It's a good one. Happy New Year.

[B]

Happy New Year. Oh God.

[A]

That was our first SHORTHAND Back for 2026, a very futuristic one I'm sure you'll agree with. And we will be back next week with another one, Goodbye and Flight.