Dialog: the secret society where the AI and power elite meet behind closed doors — and the leak that exposed it

For twenty years, the people who move the world's technology, money, and wars met without leaving a trace. The club is called Dialog: a private, invitation-only organization cofounded in 2006 by billionaire Peter Thiel (PayPal, Palantir) and data broker Auren Hoffman. It convenes US officials, foreign government figures, and Silicon Valley executives at off-the-record annual retreats, where the rule is that nothing said can be attributed to anyone. (Source: WIRED.)

In June 2026, that silence broke. A directory embedded in the code of its own website (dialog.org) was left exposed to anyone who viewed the page source. It was surfaced by Swiss hacktivist maia arson crimew —who in 2023 exposed the US government's "No Fly List"— acting on an anonymous tip. Separately, a source handed WIRED the registration list for the 2026 retreat: 222 people, with membership status and personal details they had been promised would stay private. (Source: WIRED.)

What binds them isn't a title — it's a shared obsession: artificial intelligence. Asked on the sign-up form to predict the future, members returned again and again to the same theme: that AI will reorder work, war, education, and even faith "within a few years." The August retreat near Dublin, Ireland, features sessions on AI, geopolitics, and modern warfare, with titles like "Navigating WWIII," "Battlefield Technologies," "Bring Back Nuclear," and "How's Your Sex Life?" (Source: WIRED.)

WIRED's second report revealed something colder: Dialog secretly grades its own people. An algorithm —and a handful of staff— rate each member with a letter A, B, or C based on wealth and fame (the top "C" reserved for the most famous), plus a "value-add" score from 1 to 4. That grade decides who you sit with, who you meet, how much you pay (fees reach tens of thousands of dollars), and whether you're invited back. An AI tool was used to assemble the dossiers on at least 26 people; actor Josh Brolin was tagged "VIP" for playing Thanos in Avengers. (Source: WIRED.)

Names confirmed in the leaked lists (WIRED / Forbes): General Alexus Grynkewich, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; Army Secretary Dan Driscoll; Senators Ted Cruz and Cory Booker; Representative Jim Himes; Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale; Dialog chairman and data broker Auren Hoffman (SafeGraph, LiveRamp); Google DeepMind executives; governors Wes Moore and Jared Polis; Anti-Defamation League chief Jonathan Greenblatt; and Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law. (Source: WIRED, Forbes.)

WIRED documented the conflict of interest that stings most: regulators seated beside the regulated. Data broker Auren Hoffman appears in the same club as the Treasury Secretary (who writes the rules on financial data) and Senator Cruz (who chairs the committee overseeing the FTC's privacy authority). Palantir's cofounder —whose software runs for ICE, the Pentagon, and the intelligence community— sits alongside the Army Secretary and the ranking Democrat of the House Intelligence Committee, which oversees agencies Palantir contracts with. None registered with a government email, placing their attendance beyond the reach of public-records laws. (Source: WIRED.)

How Dialog describes itself (dialog.org, verbatim): "an invite-only community of CEOs, founders, public intellectuals, government leaders, investors, artists, and more who gather for off-the-record conversations." It boasts no ideological agenda or partisanship, no acceptance of donations or investments, and no speeches, panels, on-the-record conversations, or self-promotion. To get in: "accomplish something amazing in the world, then get someone to nominate you."

VERIFIED FACT vs. SPECULATION. Verified by WIRED and confirmed by Forbes: the club's existence, its founders, the leak, the lists, and the ranking system. Speculation —unproven—: the popular reading (in comments and on social media) that Thiel is building a "shadow government." That is an interpretation, not a documented fact. One correction also matters: in the "Epstein files," a "Jeff Epstein" appeared tied to a 2014 retreat, but it is the former CFO of Oracle, not the deceased sex offender —WIRED corrected that conflation.

The damage isn't only reputational. Security specialists warned that, by including home addresses, private phone numbers, dates of birth, and emergency contacts of nearly 200 powerful figures, the leak works as "a perfect target list for espionage, influence operations, and blackmail." The secrecy discipline Dialog imposed inside its rooms was never applied to its own website: the directory sat in plain view, in dialog.org's source code, for anyone who looked. (Source: Security Affairs, The Nation.)

Why we're telling you this on Nodriza. Dialog is the mirror image of what we are. Them: closed invitation, no microphones, no record, for those who already hold power. Us: open, anonymous to protect you, and everything cited, with its source, because here nothing is invented. While the elite deciding the future of AI gathers in secret and promises each other that "nothing leaves the room," we do the opposite: we show the source and let you judge.