Rory Jones (Middle East Correspondent)
Appearances
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
Reporter Rory Jones. Like he is a doer who is going to execute and he's going to bludgeon his way through whatever project he's working on and he's going to get it finished on budget and on time. And this is the kind of guy that MBS brings into the project pretty early on.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
A lot of the comments were bordering on disbelief, essentially. One of them I remember was like, cost will be astronomical.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
You know, people are saying like, we're really not like building something here that people are one are going to live and work in. We're really letting our imagination drive the thinking here.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
We heard this recording of Nadmi describing how he runs projects, and he says, I drive my people like slaves. That's how I get my projects done.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
Within weeks, Nadmi leaves as the CEO. Reporter Rory Jones again. The sort of exact details about what happened and why and whether he was pushed isn't clear. But what is clear is that there is this coming out party for Neom that MBS doesn't turn up at. And then weeks later, the CEO of Neom is gone.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
Yeah, it's a good question. I think partly it's about the juxtaposition between that sort of culture of the hard charging exec and the idea for NEOM. NEOM is supposed to be this place where people go and they're free thinking. The whole essence of NEOM is it's going to be more liberal than the rest of the kingdom and it's going to be progressive. And
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
A lot of the people that go there are buying into that idea and they really do think of themselves as interested in creating the future. So you've got these types of people that are then coming into contact with a CEO that is more in a traditional mold that believes that he can sort of shout and belittle people and that's going to motivate them. And there's just a complete culture clash there.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
He opens cinemas. He allows live music. He allows men and women to mingle. And that just creates a completely different environment in other parts of the kingdom like Jeddah and Riyadh. And so now it's like one of the coolest places to be in the Middle East.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
Absolutely, yeah, definitely. I think MBS has really initiated a bunch of changes in the rest of the kingdom that mean the raison d'etre for Neom, you know, isn't as strong. How would you describe Neom's trajectory now?
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
Neom's not going to go away or going to be canned completely. MBS has tied his reputation to Neom, and so it's still an important project for him. It's just like the scale and ambition of it is likely to be scaled back and look totally different than what was first laid out. And I sort of go back to that idea that MBS has constantly been sort of saying for almost 10 years.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes
It's like, if we can just... do 50% of what we set out to do, then, like, we'll have completely changed our country.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 1: Skiing in the Desert
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. MBS does want to create this city-state that drives economic change and reform in his kingdom and that allows the kingdom to diversify away from oil. But at the same time, he wants to make his mark and he wants to do that in a very, very eye-catching kind of way.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 1: Skiing in the Desert
MBS pulls out two phones. One is like the, I think it's like a Nokia 6210 or something, you know, we all had in the 90s or 2000s. Like the one you can play Snake on or whatever, right? That's exactly right, yeah. And he pulls out an iPhone, smartphone, and he says, you know, he compares Neom and the Kingdom with the technological leap of those two phones.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 1: Skiing in the Desert
MBS wanted to create this place that was going to be a mix of the French Riviera, where people would go on vacation there, and it was going to have touches of Silicon Valley. Companies are going to want to set up there and create businesses of the future. And then it was going to have splashes of Dubai, where is this sort of melting pot of different cultures.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 1: Skiing in the Desert
And so, yeah, I remember hearing about Neom and thinking, wow, like this is like a huge, huge change. But I also remember thinking, like, I'm not quite sure what this is.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 1: Skiing in the Desert
I find everything interesting about the NEOM story. It's the ambition. Like, it is a very, very ambitious project. It's one of the world's most ambitious projects. It is currently the world's biggest construction project. And so, you know, you could throw as many superlatives at it as you want, but it's a big deal.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 1: Skiing in the Desert
MBS was still in his early 30s when he assumed de facto control of Saudi Arabia. His father, King Salman, named him crown prince in 2017.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 1: Skiing in the Desert
— The kingdom faced a number of challenges that really were almost like a sort of ticking time bomb for a country that they'd have to solve. — Problem number one was demographic. Saudi Arabia's population was young and growing. — 70% of the kingdom's population were under 30, so MBS had to find ways to employ those people.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 1: Skiing in the Desert
70% of Saudis were also employed by the government at that point. And why was that? It's because most of Saudi Arabia's revenues at the time were derived from oil.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 1: Skiing in the Desert
He could see on the horizon a time when the demand for oil would dry up. And so he understood that he needed to diversify his economy. He needed to diversify the government's revenue streams. He needed to create jobs for all these young people in his country. And he needed to get more people out of the public sector into the private sector.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 1: Skiing in the Desert
He allowed men and women to mix freely in public. He opened cinemas for the first time in like 40 years, which was like a huge moment.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 1: Skiing in the Desert
So he's also thinking about, well, is there anywhere in the kingdom that I can just start with a blank canvas? And so as the story goes, he's looking at a map of Saudi Arabia and he's looking at all the different areas of his country. And he sees that there is this part of northwest Saudi Arabia where it's vastly populated.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 1: Skiing in the Desert
That's the place. And he understands that it has a lot of the natural ingredients to make a new, exciting city-state within his kingdom.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 1: Skiing in the Desert
Neon brought in McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Oliver Wyman, like a who's who of the management consulting world. Part of the reason he turns to management consultants is because there wasn't a lot of expertise in particular industries that he wanted to create at Neon. There wasn't really a tourism industry. There wasn't a tech industry.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 1: Skiing in the Desert
And so he needs outside expertise to try to help him deliver on this vision. And what these management consultants do is they put all their ideas together down in more than like 2,000 pages of planning documents for what Neon might look like.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 1: Skiing in the Desert
Wow. Yeah, it was like the Wall Street Journal got access to these in around 2019. I remember the first thing I remember thinking is, how am I going to get through all these 2,000 pages to read all this stuff?
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 1: Skiing in the Desert
This is an idea for like a Jurassic Park, like a theme park of robot dinosaurs.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 1: Skiing in the Desert
Robots that would clean your house for you while you're out at work. Classes taught by hologram teachers. More Michelin-starred restaurants than anywhere else in the world.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 1: Skiing in the Desert
These documents show how he, in board meetings, is like putting forward ideas for what he wants. You know, he wants a beach that will glow like your watch glows in the dark. And he's also keen on this idea of a moon that can rise with drones every night at NEOM and become this sort of showpiece. This sounds like Las Vegas on acid. That is a great way of describing it. Yeah, yeah.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 1: Skiing in the Desert
There's this big video of what the northwest of his country is going to look like, and he's going to build Neom there, and it's going to be this futuristic city.
The Journal.
Neom, Pt 1: Skiing in the Desert
Yeah, it's a good question. I think it's early on in the planning of NEOM, in a meeting MBS goes to his urban planners, I want to build my pyramids. He's essentially thinking about NEOM in the context of the pyramids of Giza, which have been around for thousands of years. He wants to make that kind of physical mark on the land