NEOM and its centerpiece 'The Line,' Saudi Arabia's flagship megaproject under Vision 2030.
The engine reads it as a fake-front modernization — a huge, visible money pit meant to signal progress while the actual building falls apart.
Originally pitched as a 170km linear city for 9 million people, it was quietly scaled down to 2.4-5km for 300,000 by 2030. The Saudi wealth fund wrote off $8B in August 2025 and construction was suspended for review. Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti was killed in 2020 resisting eviction for the project. The gap between the grand announcement and the thin reality is what the engine treats as the actual data point.
It shows how a state can manufacture the appearance of a bold future while delivery — and human cost — tells the opposite tale.