for a while In the mid-2000s, a refrigerator-sized box was considered the greatest in Abu Dhabi. chess Players in the world. Its name was hydraAnd it was a tiny super-computer—a cabinet filled with industrial-grade processors and specially designed chips, connected by fiber-optic cables and jacked into the Internet.
At a time when chess was still the main gladiatorial arena for competition between humans and AI, Hydra and its exploits were briefly the stuff of legend. The New Yorker published a contemplative 5,000-word feature about its emerging creativity; Wired announced the Hydra “scary”; And chess publications covered its victories with the violence of wrestling commentary. Hydra, they wrote, was a “monstrous machine” that “slowly strangled” the human Grand Masters.
True to form as a monster, Hydra was also isolated and strange. More advanced chess engines of the time—Hydra’s rivals—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 get a turn with their creation.
That’s because the team’s patron—the then 36-year-old Emirati man who hired them and financed Hydra’s souped-up hardware—was too busy reaping his rewards. On an online chess forum in 2005, Hydra’s Austrian chief architect, Chrisli Donninger, described the donor as the greatest “computer chess freak”. “Sponsor,” he wrote, “likes to play with Hydra day and night.”
Under the username zor_champ, the Emirati sponsor would log into online chess tournaments and, along with Hydra, play as a human-computer team. More often than not, they outperform 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 discontinued in the late 2000s. But Zor_Champ went on to become one of the most powerful, underrated men in the world. His real name is Sheikh Tahnoon Bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
A bearded, wiry figure who is almost never seen without dark sunglasses, Tahnon is the national security adviser to the United Arab Emirates — the intelligence chief of one of the world’s wealthiest and most surveillance-happy small nations. is He is also the younger brother of the country’s hereditary, authoritarian president, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. But perhaps most importantly, and most peculiarly for a spymaster, Tahnon holds official control over much of Abu Dhabi’s vast wealth. Bloomberg News reported last year that he directly oversees a $1.5 trillion empire — more cash than anyone 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, many business interests, he chairs a giant tech group called G42 (a reference to the book). The The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which “42” is a supercomputer’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. Tahnon is passionate about Brazilian jiujitsu and cycling. He also wears his sunglasses at the gym because of 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 Tahnon, visitors who pass through his layers of loyal gatekeepers may only get a chance to speak with the sheikh after cycling around his private velodrome. . The consultant says he has been known to spend hours in a flotation chamber, and health guru Peter Attia has traveled to the UAE to offer guidance on longevity. According to a businessman present for the discussion, Tahnoon also inspired Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, to join the effort to cut back on fast food and live to 150.
