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The Journal.

Neom, Pt 2: The Emperor’s New Clothes

The Journal.

The Wall Street Journal

Daily News, Business News, News

4.25.3K Ratings

🗓️ 26 April 2025

⏱️ 41 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Andy Wirth and Tony Harris moved halfway across the world to help build Neom: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s futuristic new city in the Saudi desert. But what they found wasn’t the desert utopia of Neom’s marketing. Instead, they found a project bleeding cash, led by a screaming CEO, where very little was actually being built.  WSJ’s Rory Jones and Eliot Brown explain how Neom fell years behind schedule – and went billions of dollars over-budget – thanks to a culture of runaway spending and never telling the boss “no.” Hosted by Ryan Knutson.  Further Listening: - Neom, Pt 1: Skiing in the Desert  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Tony Harris, the education expert you heard from in the last episode, was just a few months into his job at Neum

0:14.5

when he got his first real impression of the project's CEO, Nadmi Al Nassar.

0:19.9

He called all of us together, and at that point, I think they were brought between 4 and 500 people at the camp at that time.

0:29.1

The denizens of Neum piled into the camp's cafeteria, Saudis, expats.

0:35.2

He called everyone together, and he literally started screaming and shouting. It was as though your

0:43.9

four-year-old was having a tantrum on the floor. What was he saying when he was yelling? He was

0:50.4

admonishing people for not working hard enough. Essentially was his message.

0:57.0

And what was going through my mind was,

1:01.8

this can't actually be happening.

1:04.8

And I thought to myself, okay, very soon what's going to happen?

1:07.8

He's going to stop his performing.

1:10.0

And somebody's going to come in, and there's going to happen, he's going to stop his performing, and somebody's going to come in,

1:11.7

and there's going to be some interesting intervention, and there's going to be some little

1:16.7

lesson about how not to manage. But, oh no, this was for real. This was for real. I was

1:23.3

for real. I was shocked. I mean, you know, I have lived all over the world.

1:32.5

I've taught all over the world.

1:36.0

I've encountered people from different cultures.

1:39.3

I've never seen anything like this.

1:46.0

Nadmian Nassah has built a reputation over the decades of getting things done.

1:52.0

Reporter Rory Jones.

1:54.0

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,

2:01.3

and he's going to get it finished on budget and on time.

...

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