67 lines
11 KiB
Markdown
67 lines
11 KiB
Markdown
---
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category: "Private Organization"
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tags:
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- Organization
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- SecretSociety
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- PeterThiel
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- SiliconValley
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- Elites
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- Bilderberg
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- Surveillance
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alias:
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- Dialog Society
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- Dialog (organization)
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summary: "Dialog is an invitation-only secret society cofounded in 2006 by Peter Thiel and Auren Hoffman that convenes U.S. officials, foreign government figures, and Silicon Valley executives at off-the-record annual retreats, and whose 2026 retreat roster of 222 registrants was leaked to WIRED in June 2026 by the hacktivist maia arson crimew."
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location: "United States (founded); rotating annual retreat sites; planned Washington, D.C.-area campus"
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created: 2026-06-17
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updated: 2026-06-17
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---
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Dialog is an invitation-only network cofounded in 2006 by [[Peter Thiel]] and [[Auren Hoffman]] that convenes U.S. government officials, foreign government figures, and [[Silicon Valley]] executives at off-the-record annual retreats. The organization operated with no public website and a deliberately concealed membership for roughly two decades, drawing comparisons to the [[Bilderberg Group]] and the [[World Economic Forum]] as a transnational elite-gathering institution. In June 2026 a trove of internal records, including the registration list for the 2026 retreat (222 names), was published by the Swiss hacktivist [[maia arson crimew|crimew]] and separately provided to *WIRED*, which named members including [[Elon Musk]], [[Sam Harris]], [[Jim Himes|Representative Jim Himes]], [[Cory Booker|Senator Cory Booker]], [[Ted Cruz|Senator Ted Cruz]], [[Jared Polis|Governor Jared Polis]], [[Jonathan Levin]] (president of [[Stanford University]]), and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe [[Alexus Grynkewich|General Alexus Grynkewich]].[^1]
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The leak exposed the intersection of three networks that are otherwise studied separately: the [[PayPal Mafia]] commercial clique around Thiel, the federal-contracting and intelligence community served by [[Palantir Technologies]], and the consumer-data-brokerage industry built by Hoffman through [[SafeGraph]] and [[LiveRamp]]. Dialog convenes principals from all three networks in a single off-the-record setting, and the 2026 registration list is the first primary record of its attendees.
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### Founding and Format
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Dialog was founded in 2006 by Thiel and Hoffman. Thiel is the cofounder and chairman of Palantir Technologies and the central figure of the PayPal Mafia; Hoffman is the founder of the location-data broker SafeGraph and the identity-resolution firm LiveRamp. The two structured Dialog as a recurring in-person retreat rather than a conventional industry conference: registrants pay a fee, reported by statistician [[Andrew Gelman]] on his [[Columbia University]] blog *Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science* in April 2022 as exceeding 16,000 U.S. dollars, for access to multi-day gatherings whose proceedings are conducted under off-the-record rules. The fee and the closed-door format distinguish Dialog from industry conferences, which trade attendance for sponsorship and press access.[^1][^2]
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The retreat format mixes panels, small-group discussions, and informal socializing. *WIRED* reported that the 2026 retreat agenda, scheduled for August 12 through 16 at a site near [[Dublin]], included sessions on artificial intelligence disruption, cult-building, sexuality, and preparation for [[World War III]]. The cult-building session sits within a recurring Thiel-network treatment of cult dynamics that runs from his book *[[Zero to One]]*, which describes the best startups as "slightly less extreme kinds of cults," through the [[Hereticon]] conference and the [[Rationalist Community]] he funded from 2005.[^1][^8]
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An associated mobile application offers matchmaking functionality among members, routing introductions between registrants. The app extends the in-person retreat into a persistent member network between gatherings, operating as a fee-gated private club with off-the-record rules rather than as an open conference.[^1]
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### Membership and the 2026 Leak
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Dialog maintained its membership list as confidential from founding through 2026. Two separate disclosures broke that posture in June 2026. The hacktivist crimew located a membership directory embedded in the source code of the Dialog website, reflecting the site's access controls, and published a subset of the names. Separately, a source provided *WIRED* with the complete registration list for the 2026 retreat, naming 222 registrants. The two leaks are distinct in mechanism and scope: the website-source disclosure exposed the access-controlled directory, while the registration list exposed a single year's confirmed attendees.[^1]
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The confirmed 2026 registrants, as reported by *WIRED*, spanned U.S. partisan politics, the technology industry, finance, media, and the military. Beyond the headline figures, the list included [[Chamath Palihapitiya]] (founder of Social Capital), [[Neal Mohan]] (chief executive of YouTube), [[Peter Attia]] (physician and author of *Outlive*), [[Scott Belsky]] (partner at A24, former chief strategy officer and chief product officer at Adobe), and six members of the PayPal Mafia. *WIRED* additionally identified "sitting [[Donald Trump|Trump]] administration officials" and "a former [[Middle East]] chief" among the registrants without naming them in the published text.[^1]
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*WIRED* and [[Gizmodo]] drew the explicit Bilderberg comparison on the basis of the roster's breadth: sitting U.S. senators of both parties, an active four-star military commander, sitting technology executives, and venture capital figures. Unlike Bilderberg, Dialog is a privately held U.S. entity with no disclosure obligations, no published attendee list, and no press access. Himes (the ranking member of the [[House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence|House Intelligence Committee]]) and Grynkewich (the NATO SACEUR) appear on the same off-the-record roster as the executives whose firms contract to the agencies Himes oversees and Grynkewich commands.[^1][^3]
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### Prior Outings: The 2013 Invite and the Gelman Post
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Dialog's secrecy was breached twice before the 2026 leak, without producing a comprehensive membership disclosure. In April 2022 the statistician Gelman published a Dialog invitation to his Columbia University blog, describing the registration fee and format; this is the source of the published fee figure of more than 16,000 dollars. Gelman's post was a limited disclosure, naming the event and its cost but not the attendees.[^2]
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Earlier, a 2013 Dialog retreat invitation surfaced in the U.S. Department of Justice document release from the [[Jeffrey Epstein]] files. The invitation had been forwarded to Epstein in November 2012, placing him on the circulation list for a Dialog event, and listed roughly 130 past participants as social proof of the gathering's prestige. The document (indexed as D-23831 in the [[Epstein Files|Epstein document release]]) established that Dialog's historical invitee network overlapped with the Epstein contact network at least a year after Epstein's 2008 federal non-prosecution agreement. Thiel separately met with Epstein in 2014, according to records reviewed by the *New York Times*, and the 2013 invite shows the channel ran through Dialog's own circulation list.[^1][^4][^5]
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### The D.C. Campus
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In August 2025 *Axios* reported that Dialog was preparing a permanent campus in the [[Washington, D.C.]] metropolitan area, with land in [[Northern Virginia]] under purchase. The campus is intended to host Dialog's gatherings on a fixed site rather than the rotating retreat locations used since 2006. The shift converts Dialog from an annual event into a standing physical institution, with the staffing, property records, and local footprint that a permanent site entails.[^6]
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The timing, in the first year of the second Trump administration, placed the expansion adjacent to the federal contracting and intelligence communities that constitute Dialog's government-side membership. *Semafor* confirmed the land acquisition the following day. A fixed campus in Northern Virginia places Dialog physically within the same corridor as the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]], the [[National Counterterrorism Center]], the [[Office of the Director of National Intelligence]], and the [[Pentagon]]-adjacent defense-contracting belt that anchors Palantir Technologies' government business.[^6][^7]
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### The Gawker Litigation and Press Suppression
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Between 2007 and 2016 Thiel secretly funded the [[Bollea v. Gawker|Hulk Hogan lawsuit]] against [[Gawker Media]], retaining the lawyer [[Charles Hard]] and covering approximately ten million dollars in litigation costs. The resulting 140 million dollar judgment drove Gawker Media into bankruptcy in 2016. Thiel publicly acknowledged the funding in a *Forbes* interview, framing it as a response to Gawker's 2007 outing of him.[^1]
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Thiel paid the plaintiff's costs through a dedicated litigation vehicle, removing the settlement constraint that normally disciplines plaintiffs' lawyers, with [[Hulk Hogan|Hogan]] as the proxy whose own interests aligned with carrying the litigation to verdict. *WIRED* identified the outcome as a factor in Dialog's low public profile in the years that followed.[^1]
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### Footnotes
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[^1]: Cameron, Dell, and Yulia Almazova. "Leak Exposes Members of Peter Thiel's Secretive 'Dialog' Society." *WIRED,* June 16, 2026. https://www.wired.com/story/leak-exposes-members-of-peter-thiels-secretive-dialog-society/
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[^2]: Gelman, Andrew. "Dialog conference." *Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science* (Columbia University blog), April 2022. Referenced via *WIRED*; the original post is no longer available at statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu.
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[^3]: "Secretive, Peter Thiel-Founded 'Tech Bilderberg' Group Is Moving Up in the World." *Gizmodo,* August 2025. https://gizmodo.com/secretive-peter-thiel-founded-tech-bilderberg-group-is-moving-up-in-the-world-2000640214
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[^4]: U.S. Department of Justice, Epstein document release. 2013 Dialog retreat invitation forwarded to Jeffrey Epstein, November 2012. Document D-23831. https://epsteinexposed.com/documents/d-23831
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[^5]: "Peter Thiel Is Latest Billionaire Said to Have Met With Jeffrey Epstein." *New York Times,* May 18, 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/18/business/jeffrey-epstein-peter-thiel.html
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[^6]: Fisher, Dan, and Lachlan Markay. "Scoop: Dialog, a secretive forum, plans D.C.-area campus." *Axios,* August 7, 2025. https://www.axios.com/2025/08/07/dialog-secret-network-thiel-hoffman
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[^7]: "Private club founded by Peter Thiel, Auren Hoffman eyes campus near DC." *Semafor,* August 8, 2025. https://www.semafor.com/article/08/08/2025/private-club-founded-by-peter-thiel-auren-hoffman-eyes-campus-near-dc
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[^8]: Thiel, Peter, and Blake Masters. *Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future.* Crown Business, 2014.
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