States, Scarcity, and the Future Under Construction

A kilometer into the sky. Why are the Saudis building this tower?

A kilometer-high giant is rising in Jeddah, a metropolis of 4 million people known as the “gateway to Mecca.” For now, its builders are roughly halfway there, having recently passed the 100-floor mark. If they manage to complete the project, the Saudi skyscraper will be taller than Dubai’s famous Burj Khalifa by almost 200 meters.

Of course, Saudi Arabia does not truly need skyscrapers this tall. Jeddah is not New York, where every square meter of land costs a fortune. The kilometer-high Jeddah Tower is above all a marketing project, designed to draw big business and tourists to Saudi Arabia. The megatower is meant to make Jeddah Economic City famous: another enormous business hub the Saudis are building to drive the country’s future once “black gold” stops flowing from the sands of Arabia.

The great plans for that time are taking shape above all in the mind of a man known as MBS. Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, is still, in theory, waiting to take the throne. In practice, he already rules this immensely wealthy kingdom. His 90-year-old, ailing father Salman is still king, but everyone knows he is not the person behind the key decisions.

Saudi Arabia and economic strategy after oil

It was MBS who announced the famous Vision 2030 plan a decade ago. Its aim was to transform Saudi Arabia from a state dependent on a single source of income into a country that would attract foreign companies with megaprojects such as “The Line,” advertised as a tower-city 170 kilometers long, 200 meters wide, and more than 500 meters high. “The Line” is part of Neom, a region in northwestern Saudi Arabia where MBS is building vast logistics hubs, tourism and sports centers, industrial zones, and that gargantuan skyscraper.

Huge quantities of construction equipment and armies of workers were sent into the desert. Yet after only a few years of Vision 2030, it became clear that Neom’s plans would have to be revised downward. Very far downward. Even a country that earns around 1 billion dollars a day from oil sales cannot finance a plan this ambitious. Building “The Line” alone, which was supposed to house 9 million people, would require Saudi Arabia to divert its entire national budget to that single goal for at least several years.

As The Wall Street Journal showed in its August report on Neom, the megaproject had been micromanaged from the start by MBS, who wanted to dazzle the world. After several years, however, those fantastical plans had to collide with reality.

The world’s tallest skyscraper versus reality

Although Neom in its original form already belongs to the past, Saudi Arabia is still pursuing projects that sound far more realistic and are meant to prepare the kingdom for a time when petrodollars no longer guarantee prosperity. Data centers for AI models, as everyone knows, require vast amounts of energy. Saudi Arabia, with its oil infrastructure and stretches of desert being turned into huge solar farms, has ideal conditions in this respect.

Humain, a company founded by the Saudis a year ago, received an extremely ambitious task from the central authorities: through this company, Saudi Arabia is soon supposed to become the third-largest player in the AI sector, after the United States and China. Humain faces virtually no serious limits when it comes to financial stability. Behind the company stands the Public Investment Fund, or PIF, the powerful Saudi sovereign wealth fund worth nearly 1 trillion dollars, meaning 1,000 billion dollars.

The megacity faltered. Now they are betting on AI

Saudi Arabia wants to repeat the success of the United Arab Emirates, which has long been associated with many profitable sectors, not just oil. To a greater or lesser extent, other Persian Gulf states are also trying to diversify their economies in anticipation of life after the “end” of oil. Yet no other country in the region can afford investments on the scale Saudi Arabia can.

All these grand plans, however, now stand under a large question mark because of the still unresolved war between the United States and Israel on one side and Iran on the other. If Tehran ultimately gains hegemony in the region, the Saudis may have to revise their great ambitions once again, and this time even more drastically downward.

Singapore wants to become a country no one can replace

Singapore, located at the tip of the Malay Peninsula, built its power on geography and bold vision. The Strait of Malacca has for decades counted as the world’s most crowded maritime “intersection,” and Singapore, with only 4 million inhabitants, lies at one of its ends. Lee Kuan Yew, 1923–2015, the first prime minister of Singapore and often described as the “father” of the city-state, decided to turn it into a logistics, financial, and industrial center by attracting global giants.

Today, however, global trade routes no longer look as certain as they once did. Tensions between economic giants create repercussions in smaller countries, threatening to push corporations toward safer locations. In response, Singapore is trying to become absolutely indispensable to the global economy. And it wants to be indispensable to every side of the great geopolitical rivalry. Given its small population, Singapore has no choice but to prioritize quality over quantity.

In June this year, Singapore’s authorities published the Economic Strategy Review, a comprehensive economic plan designed to improve this ambitious country’s place in the world economy. Naturally, the AI revolution occupies the center of the plan. But unlike many other states, Singapore’s government is making very concrete moves.

Singapore’s chips are meant to matter even more

On one hand, the residents of this city-state receive active encouragement from the authorities to keep improving their ability to use AI tools. It is worth remembering that this is a highly disciplined society. On the other hand, the state wants to climb even higher in the global semiconductor “ecosystem.” Already, 1 in 10 microprocessors made in the world comes from Singapore. The country’s authorities want to improve that result by encouraging global leaders in the sector to build factories there.

As recently as July, United Microelectronics Corporation, the second-largest Taiwanese semiconductor producer after the famous TSMC, opened its factory in Singapore. Intensifying rivalry between the United States and China favors diversification in this field and the relocation of production facilities away from the most exposed regions. Singapore may benefit enormously. Its authorities, in somewhat simplified terms, want to become a second Taiwan: a place where complex products are made, products that the major powers also cannot do without.

Singapore has found another great business

It is worth noting that Singapore is also becoming a kind of “Mecca” for people fascinated by the vision of radically extending human life. Its medical sector has specialized heavily in various therapies aimed at prolonging life, something noticed by one of the movement’s gurus, the American Bryan Johnson.

A symbolic gesture of appreciation for this state of affairs came in 2024, when Johnson organized an event called the “Don’t Die Summit” — roughly, a summit devoted to not dying. The prestigious Financial Times reported in December last year: “Singapore has become a model for the medical industry specializing in life extension.”

Korea is racing against its own demography

South Korea, one of Poland’s main arms suppliers, became known after the Second World War as a global industrial giant with renowned brands such as Samsung, LG, Hyundai, and Kia. A country that was one of Asia’s poorest regions just after the war repeated the economic “miracle” of Germany or Japan.

Today it is a global powerhouse not only in high technology, the automotive industry, AI, and microprocessor production. Yet Seoul wants its plans for the coming decades to move beyond the last 2 areas, which appear most often in the economic strategies of other states.

In mid-August, South Korea’s authorities presented a plan that global media widely described as exceptionally ambitious. Announced by President Lee Jae Myung, the program was named in English the “7 SEED Projects,” with SEED standing for Strategic Emerging Engines for Disruptive Innovation.

The Moon, quantum technology, and the human brain

If South Korea succeeds in implementing the plan, it will be able to compete with world powers in new economic fields. Under the initiative, Seoul intends to land on the Moon by 2030 and build a powerful quantum computer by 2029, a machine with computing power incomparably greater than that of “traditional” computers. It also plans, within a decade, to bring to market interfaces that directly connect the human brain with a computer.

The plan also includes the development of nuclear fusion technology, SMR reactors, and the extraction of rare minerals critically important to industry.

South Korea’s technology is meant to buy it time

South Korea’s science minister, Bae Kyung-hoon, described the logic of the program in agricultural terms: “We will help these seeds grow so that, through them, we can build a South Korea that no one will be able to rival over the next 10 or 20 years.”

For Seoul, the urgency is demographic as much as technological. In the decades ahead, South Korea may lack the social and economic strength to shift its economy onto new tracks. Their society is aging faster than any other in the world. Time is not on their side, so they want to carry out their ultra-ambitious plans as quickly as possible. For them, economic strategy has become a way to make demographic catastrophe less devastating than it might otherwise be.

Read this article in Polish: Ropa, chipy, demografia. Trzy strategie na świat, który dopiero nadchodzi