The difference in media coverage and the reaction that follows when folks in the West (say, Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates) dream up ambitious future, and when folks in the East do so, is quite telling.
The difference between those people is not east and west. It's that the first three built their own companies using their own skills and experience in the face of an awful lot of people saying No, while the last one was born a prince to a Trillion-air royal family and grew up surrounded by people terrified to say anything but Yes.
But that's really beside the point. The real issue is this project is a monumental waste of resources. Innovating on advanced technology takes a huge amount of investment, but it doesn't follow that a huge amount of investment, by itself, will result in useful advanced technology.
Ya, I think ideas coming from someone who calls himself "his royal highness" deserve some extra scrutiny.
It's so strange seeing these futuristic dystopian ideas coming from a ruling monarch that was born into the position. It's like they are preserving the worst of humanity's past and preparing to carry it directly into a dystopian future.
He's much louder than Bezos. The upside (EV's going mainstream, reusable rockets, full-globe high-speed low-latency internet connectivity) of Musk also seems bigger.
The amount at least is very disproportionate. He seems to get a more vitriol than Xi Jinping, the Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch, Andrew Wilson, Bill Gates, the Sacklers, Hillary Clinton and Larry Elison combined. Despite far lesser crimes (by the standards of those who dump on Musk).
