Just curious, it wouldn’t surprise me but wasn’t sure.
like it's big, elaborate build outs, nothing delivered, and some sort of under the table deal nuclear with Trump's brother in law that got him a Billion. the Iranians have, or can rapidly enrich, and Israel is popping off again (and may have ~100 nukes), so Saudi has means, motive, opportunity.
infrastructure required to build silos, and infrastructure required to build the City Of The Future are going to look more or less the same for 3-4 years -- lots of big holes, running trenches, piping and power, etc. -- and after a few years they can call it a failure and quietly sweep it under the rug with the rationalization that it's been a failure and they're ashamed of it.
This comment is 100% ridiculous speculation.
That's not to say they don't have a nuclear weapons program - they probably do - but needing a mega-project to cover it up is just silly.
And even that could still very much be worthwhile, as in generate business for the company, sell off the company to external investors based on those numbers and later phase out the artificially generated demand.
Furthermore, we live in a globalized world. In 2024, almost every country is dependent on international investors bringing in liquidity. Graft is fine, so long as execution happens.
This means you have multiple different firms joining in these kinds of infra investments. Some are international investors (eg. Citigroup, HSBC, Jardins), some are regional investors (eg. SNB, SAB), some are family offices, and some are the government itself.
The international investors are used to maintain international credibility, the regional investors are used as fixers by the international investors, the family offices are those regionally prominent members who can make or break procurement, and the government investment funds that act as the lubricant to manage all these different factions.
Basically, these investments are used to not only show off regional power, but also pay off regionally prominent factions via Family Offices or minority ownership.
This happens from Saudi Arabia (eg. Neom) to Japan [0] to South Korea [1] to Poland [2]. This is very common in newly developed countries as well as developing countries (eg. CCDI's crackdown on land corruption in China, the Odenbrecht scandal in Brazil, the various Adani linked scandals in India).
> as in generate business for the company, sell off the company to external investors
There's no reason to. Once a connected company executes successfully on large regional projects, they can become international players. This is what happened to Reliance in the 2000s, Adani in the 2010s, Odenbrecht in Brazil in the 1990s-2000s, Polimeks in Turkiye in the 2000s, Wanda Group in China in the 2000s, etc.
[0] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-19/japan-s-k...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-korea-indic...
[2] - https://www.oecd.org/corruption/poland-s-fight-against-forei...
I'm sure a lot of underlings are making a fortune out of the budget, but I don't believe that was the initial motivation for the project. Consider yourself in the shoes of bin Salman. Why would you need to funnel money away, when you are the absolute monarch and the whole country is yours? It makes about as much difference as taking coins out of your left pocket and shoving it back to the right pocket.