Saudi Arabia’s ambitious Neom project was billed as a civilizational leap—a 100-mile mirrored city rising from the desert, promising a new way of life engineered by technology and human ingenuity. Now, reality is intruding. Reports indicate the kingdom is quietly retreating from The Line as originally envisioned, pivoting instead toward transforming Neom into a massive hub for AI infrastructure and data centers. What was once marketed as a utopian city for millions is being reimagined as a digital engine room, designed less for people and more for processing power.

This shift exposes the fragility beneath grand technocratic visions. As oil revenues decline and the price tag of Neom balloons, Saudi leadership appears eager to salvage the project by hitching it to the global AI gold rush. Data centers—water-hungry, energy-intensive, and strategically powerful—offer a way to monetize the dream, even if the dream itself must be radically downsized. The move underscores a broader global pattern: governments are racing not merely to build cities, but to control data, computation, and the digital infrastructure shaping the future world order.

SOURCE: FT