The sheikh, a master spy, controls a fortune worth $1.5 trillion. He wants to apply it to dominate artificial intelligence

For a while in the mid-21st century, a box the size of a refrigerator in Abu Dhabi was considered the world’s greatest chess player. It was called Hydra, and it was a diminutive supercomputer – a rack full of industrial-grade processors and specially designed chips, connected by fiber-optic cables and connected to the Internet.

At a time when chess was still the main arena for the fight between gladiators and artificial intelligence, Hydra and its exploits briefly became legend. “New Yorker.” published a contemplative 5,000-word article on emerging creativity; WIRED found Hydra “terrifying”; and chess publications described their victories with the brutality of wrestling commentary. Hydra, they wrote, was a “monstrous machine” that “slowly strangled” human great masters.

True to form as a monster, the Hydra was also isolated and strange. Other advanced chess engines at the time – Hydra’s rivals – ran on regular PCs and anyone could download them. However, only one person at a time could apply the full power of Hydra’s 32-processor cluster. In the summer of 2005, even members of the Hydra development team were having difficulty getting a return on their creation.

This happened because the team’s patron – the then 36-year-old Emirati man who had hired them and donated money for improved Hydra equipment – was too busy collecting the prize. On an online chess forum in 2005, Hydra’s chief Austrian architect, Chrilly Donninger, described the benefactor as the greatest living “computer chess geek.” “The sponsor,” he wrote, “loves to play day and night with Hydra.”

Under the username zor_champ, the Emirati sponsor logged into online chess tournaments and played with Hydra as a human-computer team. More often than not, they would beat the competition. “He loved the power of man and machine,” one engineer told me. “He loved to win.”

Hydra was eventually overtaken by other chess computers and was retired in the overdue 21st century. But zor_champ has become one of the most powerful and least understood men in the world. His real name is Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyan.

A bearded, wiry figure who is almost never seen without gloomy sunglasses, Tahnoun is the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser and intelligence chief of one of the wealthiest and most surveillance-loving diminutive nations in the world. He is also the younger brother of the country’s hereditary, autocratic president, Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan. But perhaps most crucial and strangest for the spymaster is that Tahnoun has official control over most of Abu Dhabi’s huge sovereign wealth. Last year, Bloomberg News reported that he directly oversees an empire worth $1.5 trillion, more cash than anyone else in the world.

In his personal style, Tahnoun comes across as one-third Gulf royalty, one-third fitness-obsessed tech founder, and one-third Bond villain. Among his many, many business interests, he heads a huge technology conglomerate called G42 (a reference to the book The The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which “42” is the supercomputer’s answer to the question “life, the universe and everything”). G42 has a hand in everything from artificial intelligence research to biotechnology, and its particular areas of operation include state-sponsored hacking and surveillance technologies. Tahnoun is a Brazilian jiujitsu and cycling fanatic. He wears sunglasses even at the gym due to his sensitivity to airy and surrounds himself with UFC champions and mixed martial arts fighters.

According to a businessman and security consultant who met with Tahnoun, visitors who manage to get through the layers of steadfast gatekeepers will only get a chance to talk to him after riding a bike with the sheikh around his private velodrome. The consultant says he spends many hours in a flotation chamber and has brought health guru Peter Attia to the United Arab Emirates to provide longevity tips. According to a businessman present at the discussion, Tahnoun even inspired Mohammed bin Salman, the powerful crown prince of Saudi Arabia, to cut down on quick food and join him in his bid to live to 150.