To the rest of the world, Saudi Arabia may seem like an almost medieval kingdom where women are still fighting for basic rights, where bearded clerics lead the courts and where convicts are routinely beheaded by sword in public. But the Saudi monarchy – like its neighbors in Dubai and Abu Dhabi – has long had dreams of jumping into a high-tech future. The last Saudi king created plans for six new cities in the desert, all heralded as transformative steps towards a world beyond oil.
Now the Saudis have announced a fantasy that makes all of their previous efforts seem harmless. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler, released a short film in January outlining his plans for Line, a postmodern ecotopy to be built on the northwest coast of the kingdom. It will be a narrow urban strip of 106 miles long, with no roads, no cars and no pollution. MBS, as the Crown Prince is known, plans to inject $ 500 billion into Line and related projects, which is a lot of money, even by Saudi standards. He calls the Line a “civilizational revolution” to be inhabited by a million people “from all over the world”. Why anyone would want to move there and why a city should have the shape of a capellini cord, no one knows.
To watch the Crown Prince’s promotional video is to be immersed in a distinctly Saudi form of arrogance, combining religious triumphalism and royal grandeur. The film begins with a quick montage of the greatest scientific and technical discoveries of the 20th century, including an incongruous image of the founding king of Saudi Arabia – as if he were a Steve Jobs-style innovator, rather than a desert riding a Warrior camel. Dates flicker on the screen in a vintage font when we see images of the first commercial radio broadcast (1920), the first color TVs (1953), the first successful kidney transplant (1954), the first man on the moon (1969 ), the birth of the internet. After quickly passing through the glories of YouTube and virtual reality, the screen goes blank and the words appear, white on a black background: “What’s next?”
Cut to MBS on a stage in her white dress down to the floor. He gives a brief lecture in the TED style, while behind him we see a topographic model of what appears to be the darkened lunar crust. A thin stream of bright green fire cuts through him, and for a moment I almost waited for Godzilla to appear and fight the prince. The monster of Japanese cinema, born of the fear and enthusiasm of post-World War II about the power of technology, would be strangely appropriate here. But no: that green beam must represent the Line.
While MBS evokes this brave new world – no journey will take more than 20 minutes! zero carbon emissions! – you have the feeling that your boldness is nothing short of metaphysical. He seems to believe that nature itself is under his command. This shouldn’t be entirely surprising, because MBS has been promoting equally bizarre ideas since 2017, when it introduced Neom, the broader futuristic development of which Line is a part. (The name is a briefcase of Greek and Arabic words for “new” and “future”.) The Neom prospect described “a new way of life, from birth to death, achieving genetic mutations to increase human strength and IQ”, according to a 2019 article report in The Wall Street Journal. Sowing clouds would bring rain to the desert. The project includes serious and realistic planning on desalination, alternative energy and desert agriculture, Ali Shihabi, a member of Neom’s advisory board, told me. But these ideas were overshadowed by fierce conversations about high-speed trains, robotic employees and beaches with shiny sand.
The arrogance underlying these proposals, fueled by generations of yes men (including well-paid Western consultants), will be familiar to anyone who has spent time in Saudi Arabia. Still, you may have expected a little more caution from MBS, at least now. This is the man accused of ordering the horrific murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who was lured to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018, then strangled and quartered with a bone saw by a team sent from Riyadh. Khashoggi dared to write slightly critical columns in The Washington Post. The details of his brutal killing shocked the world and made MBS an outcast. He condemned the murder and denies any role in it. (The CIA disagrees.)
Humility is not in the MBS genes, for better or for worse. He continues to chase and arrest his critics as if Khashoggi’s murder had never come up. But his boldness allowed him to restrict Saudi Arabia’s religious system, putting an end to the longstanding promotion of the kingdom of poisonous Islamic doctrine. He is relaxing the rigid restrictions of cultural life, and this has made him immensely popular, especially among young people.
MBS ‘bizarre promotional film is not just a reflection of his real ambitions. Your technophilia resonates with many young Saudis, and you really can’t blame them. Their own cities sprang up almost overnight in obscure stretches of desert. His grandparents watched in awe as black ooze poured from the sand, instantly transforming one of the poorest countries in the world into one of the richest. Why shouldn’t they believe in flying taxis and artificial moons?
The last part of the Line video hits a surprising note: images of congested urban roads and overpasses that resemble the 1982 dystopian film “Koyaanisqatsi”, which presented modernity as a betrayal to Earth. The Line, according to the video, will save humanity from this nightmare, eliminating traffic and pollution and preserving 95% of nature within its limits.
What the prince does not say is that there are already thousands of people living in harmony with nature in the same area: a tribal community that has existed for centuries and is now being replaced by the project. One of these tribesmen made videos of protest against the evictions – videos of a different kind, you can imagine, than what MBS produced. He was shot dead last year in a confrontation with Saudi security forces.
Anyone who has spent time in existing cities in Saudi Arabia can sympathize with the desire to start over. They are dusty and ugly. Narrow-minded clerics preside over corrupt bureaucracies that are resistant to change. But the Saudi landscape is already dotted with failed or abandoned megaprojects. Some Saudis responded to the MBS film with acid comments about the need to renovate existing cities and neighborhoods in the country before throwing billions into another Xanadu. Jamal Khashoggi suggested this in a column written with a co-author a few months before he was murdered.
After MBS finishes its presentation, a warm female voice describes life on the Line. Urban dystopia recedes and happier images parade before us: misty mountain tops, waves crashing on an untouched coast.
The final words of the film, said as a multicultural parade of faces flashing on the screen, are delightfully absurd: “A home for all of us – welcome to the Line.” Upon hearing it, I couldn’t help wondering about the woman who said those words. Would she think of moving to a remote desert town, being subject to 24/7 surveillance and the whims of a murdering prince? My guess is that she did what so many others who work for the Saudis did: she spoke her lines, took the check and ran away.