Sheikh Tahnoon: the most powerful man you’ve never heard of – podcast
The UAE’s spymaster is also one of the richest financiers on the planet. Now he has his sights on AI dominance. Jack Shenker explores the sheikh’s shadowy world When we think about the world’s most powerful people, a few names will inevitably spring to mind: Trump, Putin, maybe some of the tech bros such as Elon Musk or Sam Altman. But what about the people we don’t see? The ones who prefer to stay in the shadows?
For the journalist Jack Shenker, this is the kind of power that most needs to be investigated. Over the past few years, his reporting has led him back, time and time again, to one man – a man who not only controls $1.5tn on the international markets but is his country’s spymaster and one of the most influential diplomats in the Middle East. He also runs the security services in one of the most politically authoritarian countries on Earth.
Yet almost nobody outside the UAE knows his name: Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
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Sources and context
The GuardianSource headline and summary supplied via NewsData.io. First collected by NewsJaws on 2026-11-03. This is an automated news brief, not original NewsJaws reporting. Dates reflect the source publication. Feed delays may apply.