Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is crafting plans to build a city-state on the edge of his kingdom that outdoes any urban center in existence in opulence and technology.
MBS has hired American consultants to plan out a $500 billion city-state on a largely empty expanse of coastline in northern Saudi Arabia. The city-state, which would be named Neom, would stretch over 10,000 square miles and feature “Jetsons-style” technology and infrastructure, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The crown prince hired consultants from Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Co., and Oliver Wyman to detail plans for Neom in a confidential packet totaling 2,300 pages. The consulting firms finished the plans in September 2018 and showed the finished product to the Wall Street Journal.
The plan outlines a futuristic totalitarian state with flying cars, geoengineering, and cameras and sensors that monitor every person in Neom at all times.
“This should be an automated city where we can watch everything,” the founding board of Neom said in the documents. Neom will be a city “where a computer can notify crimes without having to report them or where all citizens can be tracked.”
The city-state will have flying taxis, dinosaur robots in a futuristic Jurassic Park-style zoo, glow-in-the-dark beach sand, and an artificial moon. The city is supposed to attract the “world’s greatest minds and best talents” away from places such as Silicon Valley to create the most dynamic economy in the world.
In order to construct the sprawling techno-police state, MBS intends to forcibly relocate the people and tribes that live within Neom’s planned borders.
