for a while In the mid-2000s, a box the size of a refrigerator was considered the greatest in Abu Dhabi chess player in the world. its name was hydraAnd it was a tiny super-computer – a cabinet filled with industrial-grade processors and specially designed chips, linked together with fiber-optic cables and connected to the Internet.
At a time when chess was still the main gladiatorial arena of competition between humans and AI, Hydra and his exploits were briefly the stuff of legends. the new Yorker published A 5,000-word reflective feature about its budding creativity; WIRED declared Hydra “ScaryAnd chess publications covered its victories with the violence of wrestling commentary. Hydra, he wrote, was a “monstrous machine” that “slowly strangles” human Grand Masters.
Despite being created as a monster, the Hydra was also different and strange. Other advanced chess engines of the time – rivals to Hydra – ran on ordinary PCs and were available for anyone to download. But the full power of Hydra's 32-processor cluster can only be used by one person at a time. And by the summer of 2005, members of Hydra's development team were also struggling to move their creation forward.
That's because the team's mentor – the then-36-year-old Emirati man who hired them and put up the money for Hydra's souped-up hardware – was too busy reaping his reward. On an online chess forum in 2005, Hydra's Austrian chief architect, Chrisley Doninger, described the philanthropist as the greatest “computer chess freak” alive. “The sponsor,” he wrote, “likes to play day and night with Hydra.”
Under the username zor_champ, the Emirati sponsor will log into the online chess tournament and play as a human-computer team with Hydra. Most of the time, they lost in the competition. “He loved the power of man and machine,” one engineer told me. “He loved to win.”
Hydra eventually outgrew other chess computers and was discontinued in the late 2000s. But Zor_Champ became one of the most powerful, least understood men in the world. His real name is Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
A bearded, lean figure who is almost never seen without dark sunglasses, Tahnoun is the national security adviser of the United Arab Emirates – the intelligence chief of one of the world's wealthiest and most surveillance-happy small countries. . He is also the younger brother of the country's hereditary, autocratic President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. But perhaps most importantly, and most bizarrely for a spy master, Tahnoun maintains official control over the majority of Abu Dhabi's vast sovereign wealth. Bloomberg News reported last year that he directly oversees a $1.5 trillion empire — more cash than any other person on the planet.
In his personal style, Tahnoon comes across as one third Gulf royal, one third fitness-obsessed tech founder and one third Bond villain. Among his many business interests, he chairs a huge tech group called G42 (a reference to the book). The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which “42” is a super-computer's answer to the question “Life, the Universe and Everything”. The G42 has a hand in everything from AI research to biotechnology – with particular areas of strength in state-sponsored hacking and surveillance technology. Tahnoun is a fanatic of Brazilian Jiujitsu and cycling. He also wears sunglasses in the gym due to his sensitivity to light, and he surrounds himself with UFC champions and mixed martial arts fighters.
According to a businessman and a security consultant who have met Tahnoon, visitors who get past his loyal gatekeepers may only get a chance to talk to him after cycling with the sheikh around his private velodrome. The consultant says he has been known to spend hours in a flotation chamber, and has flown health guru Peter Attia to the United Arab Emirates to offer guidance on longevity. According to a businessman present at the discussion, Tahnoun even inspired Saudi Arabia's powerful Prince Mohammed bin Salman to join him in his quest to cut down on fast food and live to 150.