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This discourse is all too common and may be true of much of the GCC but you targeted Dubai specifically, which essentially exists on the premise of diversification because they knew the oil would run out. The rulers we're literally spelling out that exact scenario as something that needed to be avoided.
What then is one to make of a place whose economy is now a mere 1% petrochemicals? Does that falsify your judgement or validate it?
I suppose one could make arguments around the strategic necessities of Abu Dhabi and of the ostensible tensions created by oil. But were there no oil there would also not be funding or motivation for this war.
Dubai has already had several huge pullbacks when the oil money was disrupted. The 1% number is inaccurate since it's pulling in oil money from across the region and still heavily subsidized by the Emirates who have larger amounts of oil.
As somebody who's seen the Dubai government investment process first-hand a lot of their future proofing efforts are more elaborate scams from the connected to absorb resources than productive endeavors
As someone who's seen many investment processes from the inside, that's essentially all of them and not really a good yardstick.
It's scams all the way down. Competence is really measured in how much you can wrangle the scammers into having to produce actual value.
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