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I actually really like the line. It's a good idea, although I grant that it isn't perfect.
@garybenade Says:
Kowloon Walled City v2
@roybrown4944 Says:
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
@cernos7230 Says:
Bruh, just give me the 1 Billions dollars
@toddfallon179 Says:
...wait...
"...the most beautiful nature in the world"
Its a desert, right? (As beautiful as a dried out banana peel) Sand, sun, more sand, more sun, spiders, more sand...
There's something else about deserts... wtf was that? OH! Dry
Really dry
Chapped lips and all other orifices dry...
OK
Now add in their 'renewable water' plan...
Its pee, isn't it? The sick-fuck billionaires want everybody to drink their own pee... 🤦♂️
@MatthewPercival888 Says:
Before investors or governments endorse or fund any of these futuristic mega-projects, they should really run it by some skeptical real scientists first to see if fundamentally these projects are realistic or feasible.
@cyphaborg6598 Says:
It's amazing the things you can achieve when powered by CGI.
@shaider1982 Says:
Now, the line is being cancelled.
@foxredt2 Says:
Now its the same with hyper Loop. Project cancelled
@Yosory Says:
You called it.
@suopo32 Says:
gotta love when barbarians wants to look good but cant help but to kill a critic in a brutal way. stay classy sandman
@Zaluskowsky Says:
Just in case anyone forgot this super-duper-project (like me) ... Focus put up an Article mentioning 1000 of Firings, downsizing to 2,4 kms (thats 1.5 Freedomunits) and they shut down Megna or somesuch too
@6teeth Says:
i dun give a shit about sustanability. Not one bit.
Sod sustainability.
@DemetriosMPapadakes Says:
I love watching Phil's videos while munching on popcorn, but this debunking video has completely missed the point. Not because the debunking isn't accurate. It very much is. But because debunking it is totally besides the actual point.
Saudi Arabia’s NEOM megaproject, and especially its centerpiece — *The Line*, the BS proposal for a supposed 170 km linear city cutting inland from the Gulf of Aqaba — was of course dismissed as unbuildable fantasy from the very beginning by anyone with half a brain cell. Critics immediately pointed to its cost, scale, and implausibility as evidence of Saudi Prince Salman’s overreach, and supposed illusionary vaingloriousness. BUT...
Such criticism misses entirely the deeper geopolitical point. *The Line* was never, ever, intended as a literal line city. It is best read as a **geopolitical billboard**: a cartographic performance announcing Saudi Arabia’s intent to dominate the hinge between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, while simultaneously shielding Israeli ambitions for a Red–Med canal.
---
Layer One: Corridor-Claim
The geography is pivotal because the Gulf of Aqaba is a narrow throat where Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia converge, serving as one of the Red Sea’s critical entry points. The proposition of a straight inland "city" beginning precisely at that junction, Riyadh, inscribes a symbolic axis: **a ruler-straight incision from Aqaba into the Arabian interior**. This is not city planning but corridor-claim, a way of saying that the only viable inland route from Aqaba is Saudi-owned.
Beneath the utterly utopian renderings lies a far more pragmatic project: a **land bridge** connecting the Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea by rail. This vertical land-rail spine would allow goods from India, Pakistan, Iran, and Southeast Asia to bypass the Hormuz and Iran, bypass the Bab el-Mandeb chokepoint and move directly across the Arabian Peninsula by land on magtrain rail (saving time and cost).
Once anchored at NEOM’s port on the Aqaba coast, such cargo could be dispatched either west into Egypt’s Suez Canal or northwest into any future Israeli canal.
In other words, Saudi Arabia positions itself not merely as a participant but as the **arbiter** of both canals: the junction-node where shippers must choose their route, with Riyadh dictating terms of access and price.
This yields a fourfold payoff. First, it **denies Israel monopoly** leverage of digging an alternative canal to that of Suez: any new canal would be conditioned by Saudi intermediation. Second, it **checks Egypt’s dominance**: Suez would no longer be singular, but continued access to it need necessarily go through Saudi arbitration, or it shifts to Israel. Third, it **forks the Silk Road southwestward**: Belt and Road flows would pass through Saudi territory, elevating Riyadh’s role. Fourth, it **enhances great-power leverage**: both Western projects such as the India–Middle East–Europe Corridor (IMEC) and Asian trade strategies must account for Saudi gatekeeping.
The strategic symbolism of the nonsense around a "line City" is reinforced by spectacle. Critics fixate on feasibility — mirrored skyscrapers in the desert, futuristic renderings — all of it bullshit – yet this is deliberate misdirection, and totally besides the point. All the while everyone's attention is drawn to nonsense science-fiction visuals, the underlying logistics infrastructure advances quietly: the Saudi Landbridge railway, IMEC linkages, and Red Sea port development.
In other words, *The Line* functions as billboard and distraction, dramatizing Saudi Arabia’s intent to arbitrate global flows while the practical rails are laid beneath.
---
## Layer Two: Canal-Decoy
The deeper layer of this billboard logic also emerges in relation to Israel’s long-floated **Ben Gurion canal** proposal, intended as an alternative to Suez. This is because any such canal must necessarily traverse the southern Israeli coastline — and, critically, the Gaza Strip. For Israel, the project’s feasibility is inseparable from Gaza’s conquest or permanent subjugation. The canal is not simply an engineering dream but a territorial-political imperative.
Here *The Saudi Line* also serves as a **shield and decoy**. Saudi Arabia, is one of Israel’s few Arab-muslim partners, but could not openly defend an Israeli conquest of Gaza for the canal project without immense backlash. Instead, by announcing a wildly-insane ambitious mirrored city, Riyadh absorbs global attention and deflects scrutiny from Israel’s canal ambitions. Everyone knows about this crazy project at the South entrance of the to-be dug Israel canal, but no one focuses on what's happening in Gaza as being the true reason for the northern entrance of the to-be dug canal.
NEOM’s futurist bullshit hype dominates headlines, while the explosive reality — that an Israeli megaproject canal absolutely depends on Gaza’s total subjugation — recedes from all public discourse. Also, by making the Saudi project about some bullshit line City, the general public doesn't suspect the connection. At all. If it were announced as a megaport extension, everyone would clue in. In this thread there are hundreds of comments and some very smart people, but hardly anyone had any idea this is what's going on behind the scenes.
This billboard, therefore, performs a double function: it projects Saudi Arabia’s corridor-claim while simultaneously **camouflaging Israel’s strategic project**. For global observers, focus shifts to Saudi spectacle, not Israeli militarized geography. For Israel, the arrangement is convenient: Saudi Arabia carries the burden of visionary overreach, while the canal question fades into the background of media cycles and is completely invisible to the general public, whilst those in the know are very much getting the message. For Riyadh, the gain is twofold: it demonstrates friendship with Israel while avoiding the political costs of directly legitimating Gaza’s dispossession.
In other words, debunking this buillshit is completely moot. It was never about building a 170 km line City there to begin with.
@NightfallShadow Says:
Well, this city is built now. I went there but there was no city. I didn't even see any construction. It was just sand and on the horizon with my spyglass I could see some travelers on camels and what looked like an oasis or encampment. No city. Looked for at least 20 miles where it should had been at least 10 miles and nothing there either.
@EnclaveZA Says:
16:53 What in the click your heels 3 times is this? They've managed 0 G between buildings? That in itself would bankrupt Saudi!😂
@EnclaveZA Says:
" Now that's walking around money" Yeah for sure! Walking on Mars! Walking on your private space station! At very least Walking on your own private land mass!😂😂😂 I've loved this channel for years it never ceases to expand the mind!
@steampog Says:
Most of the budget went to the bullshit marketing campaign with awesome graphics
@BoogieDaCat Says:
It's 2025 and I'm enjoying my new life in a cult.
@ATL45 Says:
This video aged beautifully
@migotauerredpilladometedor4818 Says:
great projectg. They should add energy vaults every 500 meters though
@merylcruz3820 Says:
If I had Neom money I'd build a nice little town somewhere up past Solvang on a grassy hill with a clock tower town hall and a 24 hour library and cute little cottages all smooshed together like in Europe...
Then I could just give the rest away to solve world hunger or something.
@FizzleFX Says:
1:40 its 2025. They still got 9 months! YOU WILL SEE, infidel!
@bakonfreek Says:
1:30
Well, it's 2025 now...
Looks like they gotta make the 2030 goal.
@DukeAstoreth Says:
We need an update on this topic sir, apparently they are doubling down on it.
Dysfunctional cities, with deomcracy.
Not in a dictator state. What do you prefer.
@fig-hood7834 Says:
happy 2025
@Tony-ne7hd Says:
Before you even get to the technical problems and cost the concept is unworkable
The realestate at each end will be least valuable and the middle will be most valuable so the land Next to the middle will also be more valuable so the most logical place for future expansion is….
@guydreamr Says:
This is such a fantasy project that not only are they flying vehicles but people as well (woman stepping onto the roof literally out of thin air in the intro and outro).
@diffuusio4852 Says:
If they make the line short enough, they will have their square.
@gabiausten8774 Says:
Funnily enough, if they had created a 5-mile-long test city, it might have actually attracted visitors as a super-controlled, hyper-Orwellian, techno-city of the future.
They could have used all this money to attract the best scientists in the world and create a science hub that civilization hasn’t seen before, literally creating the future of humanity. But, wait… that would make too much sense, wouldn’t it?
@WORKERS.DREADNOUGHT Says:
Problems with Mars also include no magnetosphere & average temperature -60 Celsius.
@andrewpyrah Says:
8:04 370 metres to feed one person? Data taken from the 70s?? Oh come on stop cherry picking and apply modern data and growth methods.
Or ask any home grower or farmer.
You stack up claims but when any are checked they are bs.
@andrewpyrah Says:
7:35. 63 litres. Not "about 100" as you say. Is maths that hard? Its kind of important for, you know, telling the truth.
@andrewpyrah Says:
You almost lasted 7 minutes without criticising Elon Musk or spacex.
Why do you hate space flight and the spread of humanity so much?
@andrewpyrah Says:
6:40. They were built on water because of boat transport. That's it.
@Baba4536yaga Says:
They forgot the flying carpets!
@orpheus0108 Says:
Has anything with purely CGI video, upbeat violin music and an unpassionate narrator ever delivered on anything? That should be red flag #1
@wirebrushproductions1001 Says:
Do some math. Take that 500 million. Divide by 170 to get the price per kilometer. Divide by 2 to get the cost of one side. Assume 150 stories, and divide by that. Assume the buildings are 30 meters wide and divide by that. Divide by 1000 and you get the money available per square meter. It's about 500 bucks a square meter, or 50 dollars a square foot. That is just for the building. Apparently the farms, solar panel farms, energy storage facility, and a desalinization plant putting out 9 billion liters of water per day will be free.
@dany_fg Says:
the li(n)e
@roysmallian2889 Says:
The line serviced by a super fast hyperloop. Ridiculous!
@ferer57 Says:
Wow, it's so futuristic, even the slaves are allowed to gush about it!
@lordofelectrons4513 Says:
All dreamed up by idiots, all reliant on fake or unproven technology.
@EleanorPeterson Says:
Meanwhile, James Dyson is giving up making vacuum cleaners and is going to build a great big hollow sphere around the Sun.
@cornpopper4921 Says:
Mohammed Bone Saw's done it again! He's cut the budget by 98%.
@arielle-sasha Says:
Neom will have best sewage system on Earth!
@neilgillespie7435 Says:
Do enjoy your work
@karu6111 Says:
A grift for the ages.
@JdlL-v4w Says:
Looks very energy efficient/sustainable! Too much surface area is exposed to the elements.
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