THE WORLD’S RICHEST SPY

The 56-year-old Tahnoun—nicknamed the “spy sheik”—controls more money than almost anybody on the planet, as the chairman of two Abu Dhabi wealth funds with an estimated $1.5 trillion in assets and the steward of an enormous personal fortune.

                                                     Eliot Brown and Berber Jin[1]

“In his personal style, Tahnoun comes across as one-third Gulf royal, one-third fitness-obsessed tech founder, and one-third Bond villain.”

                                                      Bradley Hope[2]

My last couple missives have been about personal mentors and friends who have influenced my life—Dr. John David Broome and Harriette E. Burns-Hursh.

This missive will be a bit different.

It concerns His Highness Sheik Tahnoun bin Zayed al Nahyen, part of the ruling family of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE), and younger brother of the hereditary and autocratic president of UAE, Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan.[3] Most importantly, for the purposes of this missive, Tahnoun has served as the country’s national security adviser and intelligence chief since early 2016, handling sensitive portfolios such as relations with intelligence services in Israel,[4] Saudi Arabia, China and the U.S.

Even more important, the tech-loving sheik spymaster wields official control over much of Abu Dhabi’s vast sovereign wealth funds (thus controlling an empire estimated by Bloomberg News at $1.5 trillion). The Sheik’s life and influence—far beyond the borders of UAE—illustrates what I have come to believe are four important pillars of today’s world: nothing is as it seems; billionaires of all stripes are increasingly exercising control of the world in which we live; and an underworld of intelligence linkages controls the fabric of political reality. Finally, an exponentially growing and sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly undergirds the other three pillars.

For example, Sheik Tahnoun floats beneath the headlines and the crust of the rich and famous, and his access to wealth means he is wined and dined by tech billionaires from Silicon Valley to Beijing. In addition, his control of UAE’s intelligence network provides him an important seat at the table for all regional peacekeeping negotiations, and he has become the UAE’s public and covert face of UAE’s attempt to become a powerhouse in today’s AI world.

For many of you, he is probably the most important person you’ve never heard of …

As you can expect, Tahnoun is also a lightning rod of controversy. He reportedly violated EU sanctions against the former Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, spied on political opponents in Project Raven, orchestrated deals to re-sell Russia’s “Sputnik vaccine” to poor countries at a substantial mark-up, pushed Qatargate,[5] and a smear campaign in France against Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood (as revealed in the 2023 “Abu Dhabi Secrets”—an international investigation based on documents obtained by Mediapart and analyzed by the European Investigations Collaborative media network).[6]

All questionable feathers in the cap of one of the world’s most cagey spymasters.

And those are Tahnoun’s activities that have come to light.

I’m sure they represent only the tip of the iceberg.  

At any rate, I think the sheik is one of the most interesting—and influential—individuals in today’s world.

Sheik Tahnoun, first and foremost, is a product of the byzantine underground in Abu Dhabi. As an aside, I have several scenes of my new book set in Dubai, the Emirates largest city. About an hour and a half south of Dubai, located on an island in the Persian Gulf, is the UAE’s capital city of Abu Dhabi, home of the dazzling Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque, spectacular sports venues, the Louvre Abu Dhabi (the largest art museum in the Middle East), and several theme parks and waterparks.

All that is what floats on the surface.

Eye candy.

Tourist stuff.

Underneath the oil-lubricated façade of modern glass-and-steel skyscrapers and five-star hotels of Abu Dhabi, is a dark and seamy underside—the world of cyberespionage, hacking, monitoring of potential dissidents, dynastic family rivalries, and international intrigue.

The world where Tahnoun cut his teeth.

And, in the process, built one of the world’s greatest personal fortunes.

As any student of Middle East power dynamics will tell you, there are typically four threats to the control exercised by the regional autocratic family dynasties: 2011-type popular uprisings, uncertainties in the Sunni-Shi’ite rivalry, impediments to the flow of oil revenue, and questions revolving around succession issues.

Especially the latter.

In Abu Dhabi for example, Tahnoun and his brother (the current president) are both sons of UAE’s first president, Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan—an iconic figure revered as the father of the nation. Before Zayed came to the throne, two of the last four sheiks of Abu Dhabi were assassinated by their brothers, another was killed by a rival tribe.

In this world, survival—and identifying potential adversaries—is the prime objective.

Today, Sheik Tahnoun’s wealth and influence is the result of a behind-closed-doors agreement he made with his brother after the death of their father. He renounced claims to being named Crown Prince—his brother named his son to the position instead—in return for controlling the Emirate’s intelligence operations and the keys to UAE’s sovereign wealth funds.  

Today, the Sheik—due to an eye condition—is always photographed indoors wearing sunglasses. That only adds to his aura of intrigue.[7] This tough guy image (a common trait in the covert intelligence world), as well as his reclusiveness, shape his clandestine reputation in the region and elsewhere. 

At the same time, Sheik Tahnoun is a true fitness and health nut. He is a fanatic practitioner of Brazilian jiujitsu and surrounds himself with UFC champions and mixed martial arts fighters. Those lucky enough to visit the sheik reportedly must make their way past a phalanx of bodyguards and squeeze in a few minutes as you join him on a cycle at his private velodome. He also is known to spend hours in a flotation chamber and follows a rigid dietary regime, reportedly even convincing his friend the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) to cut back on fast food.

Before I leave the topic of MBS—another wealthy mover and shaker in the Middle East—he and Tahnoun have apparently agreed to take steps to live until the age of 150. In this vein, Sheik Tahnoun regularly holds sessions with the world’s best-known longevity gurus.

Why do I mention this? The quest for longevity is a trait Tahnoun shares in common with several of his billionaire and elite friends around the globe. One reason for this quest, in my view, is that individuals such as Tahnoun view themselves as critical (and, in fact, indispensable) to the future of the human race. Much more so than the rest of us ordinary plebes. But then again, perhaps they are just afraid to die!

I’ve said all this to get to my main point. Sheik Tahnoun has carved out for himself a key role in today’s high-stakes AI tech war. His desire for developing a future AGI originally stemmed from his passion for human-computer chess excellence. This quest began with the small refrigerator-sized Hydra supercomputer, which morphed into his involvement with a sprawling tech conglomerate called G42. (The name is taken from the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which “42” is the supercomputer’s answer to the question of “life, the universe, and everything.”)[8] Eventually, G42—funded by Sheik Tahnoun—blossomed into a tech-conglomerate with its hands in everything from AI research to biotechnology, specializing in state-sponsored hacking and surveillance. These days, it seems Sheik Tahnoun seeks nothing less than to turn Abu Dhabi into an AI superpower, with the U.S. tech industry as a teammate.

Sheik Tahnoun has positioned Abu Dhabi (and himself) to take advantage of the next step in AI development—the quest for mind-boggling amounts of investment capital, land for data centers, water, and electricity. In this regard, the AI tech titans in Silicon Valley are attracted to Abu Dhabi’s wealth, brand-new nuclear power supply and relatively sophisticated AI-tech sector.

But there is only one snag.

To deal with Abu Dhabi, you have to go through Tahnoun. For many years that was problematic because of the Sheik’s long-standing and close ties with China, forged through his intelligence and business connections and ideological preference for high-tech state control. For example, a G42 subsidiary (Presight AI) was headed by a noted Chinese technocrat and sold surveillance systems abroad to law enforcement facilities similar to those used by Beijing’s leaders. Moreover, Huawei’s engineers moved freely through G42’s most sensitive tech facilities and helped design massive AI training centers.

More recently, Sheik Tahnoun made a major pivot following the Biden administration’s restrictions on exports of Nvidia GPU’s to the Middle East (which G24 desperately needed) and continuing sanctions on Huawei. In early 2024, G24 announced it was severing ties with China, would return Chinese equipment, and forced an exodus of Chinese technicians and other experts. At the same time, Abu Dhabi tech experts conducted a full court press inside the Washington DC beltway to convince administration officials that Tahnoun-related cyber enterprises were trustworthy partners. A huge spigot of Emirati money flowed into the coffers of American AI tech companies. Tahnoun himself participated in the charm offense: last year he visited Elon Musk in Texas, joined a jiujitsu session with Mark Zuckerberg, met with the likes of Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, and Jeff Bezos; attended White House sessions with President Biden, and his national security adviser Jake Sullivan.[9]

All good news, right?

As Lee Corso says, “not so fast my friend.”

The best spymasters excel in creating appearances. And Tahnoun is one of the best. Knowledgeable observers have noted that Beijing’s leaders “didn’t make a peep” when Tahnoun booted out Huawei and ripped out their equipment—an uncharacteristic silence when looking at Beijing’s treatment of other countries—and suggests some sort of backdoor understanding had been made. In this vein, US Congressmen have urged appropriate “guardrails” accompany any sale of GPUs or other AI-related equipment to the UAE, largely due to lingering uncertainties about Tahnoun’s reputation.

Sheik Tahnoun now plays a vital role in AI’s transformational and exponential growth around the globe. And that, my friends, is a big deal. As one informed observer asserts: “with a growing position in the AI global arms race, Tahnoun’s empire also includes a stake in humanity.”[10]

And as techno-futurist Ray Kurzweil recently said last week at a global gathering (WMC25) of leading technocrats, “by 2030, your phone and AI will be inside you.”[11]That is only five years away.  

In sum, the Sheik Tahnoun story combines three of the most intriguing modern-day topics: the mad rush by technocrats, scientists, and billionaires[12] alike to attain singularity, AI-enhanced superintelligence,[13] and immortality; the history of wealthy royal dynasties in the Middle East; and the state of today’s spycraft. In terms of the latter, Sheik Tahnoun is an effective practitioner of the traditional “art” of intelligence—both in its covert and analytic aspects—now utilizing state-of-the-art AI systems. As such, he stands at a historic global and regional crossroads amidst powerful winds of change in the Middle East and the broader international order.

Now for the $60,000 question. How will the likes of Sheik Tahnoun fare in the age of Trump? In many ways, the world that was has been turned on its head. But spymasters rarely change their stripes and always hedge their bets. Inside Tahnoun’s inner circle, for example, they are convinced that the new administration will be flexible toward UAE’s AI ambitions (as long as they remain separated from China). Perhaps in an arrangement to secure this end, the UAE has joined Qatar and Saudi Arabia in a $2 billion contribution to Jared Kushner’s private equity fund, guaranteeing the fund some $20-30 million in annual management fees. Moreover, UAE officials have conducted a series of discussions with Kushner and other Trump insiders.[14]

I wish I could be more encouraging …

But spies will be spies, secrets will be secrets, AI will continue to march forward, and business will be business.

“Sigh.”

A thought to ponder: it remains to be seen if Sheik Tahnoun’s reputation and fortune will survive unscathed in a changing intelligence world—and tumultuous region—now strewn with so many “strategic intelligence failures.”[15]    

[1] Eliot Brown and Berber Jin, “The ‘Spy Sheik’ Taking the World By Storm,” The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 26, 2025.

[2] Bradley Hope, “The Sheik’s Gambit,” WIRED, Feb. 2025.

[3] Although Tahnoun and Mohammed have several brothers, their birth-mother was Fatima bint Mubarak al Ketbi, their father’s favorite wife. Tahnoun himself is married with two children; his wife—Khawla Ahmed Khalifa Alsuwaidi—is a poet and master calligrapher and, like her husband, reportedly uses shell companies to own real estate in affluent parts of London.

[4] In mid-August 2020, for example, Tahnoun received Yossi Cohen, the head of Israel’s Mossad, following the UAE-Israel peace accord.

[5] A political scandal involving allegations that European Parliament officials, lobbyists and families were influenced by the governments of Qatar, Morocco and Mauritania, thus engaging in corruption, money laundering, and organized crime. 

[6] See Wikipedia’s article on Sheik Tahnoun for more.

[7] Brown and Jen, “The ‘Spy Sheik.’”

[8] Hope, “The Sheik’s Gambit.”

[9] Several press stories have noted Sullivan’s efforts in convincing the UAE to side with Washington in the AI wars. See, among others, Edward Wong, “Jake Sullivan, White House National Security Adviser, Reflects on China Policy, The New York Times, Jan. 19, 2025.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Rick Wiles, et.al., “MWC25: Wrap-Up, TruNews, Mar. 7, 2025.

[12] There are reportedly 2,781 billionaires worldwide (April 2024) and these figures omit people like Sheik Tahnoun who control the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds. John D. Rockefeller was the first confirmed billionaire in 1916. In 1987, when Forbes first published a billionaires list, there were 140 individuals with a combined wealth of $295 billion. Elon Musk, for example, one of 16 “centi-billionaires” (with a personal wealth of at least $100 billion) is worth more than 20 times the wealth of the world’s richest man in 1987 and enjoys wealth more than two million times as much as the median net worth of an average American household (according to global wealth intelligence firm Altrata). More than half of the 24 superbillionaires are individuals who made their money as tech entrepreneurs or involved with AI-type tech advances. See, Katherine Clark, “Meet the World’s 24 Superbillionaires,” The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 25, 2025.

[13] This week the CEO of Anthropic said that AI could be smarter than humans by next year and further predicted that superintelligence (which he defines as Ais more capable than Nobel prize winners in most fields) could arrive as soon as next year. See, Danny Fortson, “Anthropic chief: ‘By next year, AI could be smarter than humans,” The Sunday Times, Mar. 2, 2025.

[14] Hope, “The Sheik’s Gambit.”

[15] An interesting discussion of this topic—based largely on recent Israeli intelligence failures—can be found in Lieber, “Oct. 7 Adds to Long History.”