Question of the Day - 24 January 2026

On the Arabian Gulf's shores of Ras Al Khaimah, the northernmost emirate of the United Arab Emirates, is Al Marjan Island. This man-made archipelago that consists of four coral-shaped islands that host several resorts, beaches, and residential waterfront projects is one of the United Arab Emirates' top tourism spots. Rising 70 stories (not including the architectural spire) smack dab in the middle of the otherwise low-rise archipelago is Wynn Al Marjan Island.

Slated for completion and opening in spring of next year, this Wynn will feature 1,542 hotel rooms, 22 private villas, a 225,000-square-foot main casino, a couple of dozen restaurants, 160,000 square feet of retail space and 75,000 square feet of convention space. A second VIP casino on the 22nd floor has been dubbed the Sky Gaming casino, while at the top of the tower, 313 exclusive suites, called Enclave, will have a private entrance, pool, and beach. A 101-berth marina will accommodate superyachts up to 300 feet long (the length of a football field). 

Wynn Al Marjan isn't any ordinary luxury resort-casino. It will be the UAE's first legal gaming destination, in a sense the initial salvo of the Middle East's challenge to Macau. 

But that's all in the front of the house. In the back, we're looking at the poster child for a casino in the midst of a serious surveillance state. According to LeMonde, "The United Arab Emirates has pioneered the extensive use of surveillance technology to keep tabs on its own citizens. Data is being collected and analyzed on a massive and unprecedented scale, making people fear that nothing they say or write is truly private."

In the UAE, every road, hotel, mall, restaurant, and bank, along with the airport or course, plugs into a centralized surveillance grid, part of the infrastructure in the Emirates, as common as electricity and sewage. The Hemaya system, Arabic for “Safeguard,” ties together a network of more than 10,000 security cameras around the emirate; we've heard claims that the specialized optics can identify a face (with facial-recogware) at 300 yards and read a license plate at 1,000, over a half-mile. All the data is made available to the government. 

So the Wynn will have its own security and surveillance system, but it will be integrated into Hemaya, a node in a much larger reticulation. In the greater scheme of things, anyone foolhardy enough to commit a crime at the Wynn can and will be ID'd in the casino-resort, then tracked by countless cameras on and off Al Marjan.  

In terms of the more local scheme of things, inside the Wynn itself, the technology that will be used will be covered in tomorrow's QoD.