for a while In the mid-2000s, a refrigerator-sized box in Abu Dhabi was considered the best chess player in the world. It was called Hydra, and it was a small supercomputer: a cabinet full of industrial-grade processors and specially designed chips, connected with fiber optic cables and connected to the Internet.
At a time when chess was still the primary gladiatorial arena for competition between humans and AI, Hydra and its exploits were briefly legend. The New Yorker published a contemplative 5,000-word article on his emerging creativity; WIRED declared Hydra “fearsome”; and chess publications covered their victories with the violence of wrestling commentary. Hydra, they wrote, was a “monstrous machine” that “slowly strangled” human grandmasters.
True to its monster form, Hydra was also isolated and strange. Other advanced chess engines of the time (Hydra’s rivals) ran on regular PCs and were available for anyone to download. But the full power of Hydra’s 32-processor cluster could only be used by one person at a time. And in the summer of 2005, even members of the Hydra development team were struggling to get a spin on their creation.
That’s because the team’s sponsor, the 36-year-old Emirati man who hired them and put up the money for Hydra’s upgraded hardware, was too busy reaping his reward. On an online chess forum in 2005, Hydra’s Austrian chief architect Chrilly Donninger described this benefactor as the biggest living “computer chess fan.” “The sponsor,” he wrote, “loves playing day and night with Hydra.”
Under the username zor_champ, the Emirati sponsor logged into online chess tournaments and, with Hydra, played as a human-computer team. More often than not, they beat the competition. “He loved the power of man plus machine,” one engineer told me. “He loved to win.”
Hydra was eventually surpassed by other chess computers and was discontinued in the late 2000s. But zor_champ became one of the most powerful and least understood men in the world. His real name is Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyan.
Tahnoun, a wiry, bearded figure rarely seen without dark sunglasses, is the national security adviser to the United Arab Emirates, the intelligence chief of one of the richest and most pro-independence small nations. surveillance of the world. He is also the younger brother of the country’s autocratic and hereditary president, Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan. But perhaps most importantly, and most bizarrely for a spymaster, Tahnoun exercises official control over much of Abu Dhabi’s vast sovereign wealth. Bloomberg News reported last year that he directly oversees a $1.5 trillion empire, more effective than anyone else on the planet.
In his personal style, Tahnoun presents himself as one-third Gulf royalty, one-third a fitness-obsessed tech founder, and one-third Bond villain. Among his many, many business interests, he presides over a sprawling tech conglomerate called G42 (a reference to the book He Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which “42” is a supercomputer’s answer to the question of “life, the universe and everything”). The G42 intervenes in everything from artificial intelligence research to biotechnology, with special areas of strength in state-sponsored hacking and surveillance technology. Tahnoun is a fan of Brazilian jiujitsu and cycling. He wears sunglasses even at the gym due to his sensitivity to light and surrounds himself with UFC champions and mixed martial arts fighters.
According to a businessman and a security consultant who met with Tahnoun, visitors who manage to get past his loyal guards might have the opportunity to speak with him only after riding their bicycles with the sheikh around his private velodrome. He has been known to spend hours in a floatation chamber, the consultant says, and has brought health guru Peter Attia to the United Arab Emirates to offer guidance on longevity. According to a businessman who was present at the discussion, Tahnoun even inspired Mohammed bin Salman, the powerful crown prince of Saudi Arabia, to cut back on fast food and join him in his quest to live to be 150.