Key Trump allies and Musk on leaked list for secretive Peter Thiel retreat

Peter Thiel at a conference in Japan in 2019. Photograph: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images View image in fullscreen Peter Thiel at a conference in Japan in 2019. Photograph: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images Key Trump allies and Musk on leaked list for secretive Peter Thiel retreat Figures including Jared Kushner and Scott Bessent named in directory of Dialog participants that was exposed online A website leak has exposed participants in the secretive, Peter Thiel-founded Dialog retreats which includes top politicians from across the American divide, officials from foreign countries, other titans of the tech industry world and prominent media figures. The annual Dialog retreats, which have been compared to other quasi-secret elite conferences like the Bilderberg Group and Bohemian Grove since they began in 2006, have had some participants revealed in previous media reports. Fairly little is known about the invitation-only event, which is usually held at luxury establishments around the world and features organized discussions on global affairs. The list indicates an organization capable of mustering a unique mix of government, corporate and cultural power, though many names on the list likely attended Dialog events prior to Thiel’s association with the political right and the Trump era. The list was exposed, apparently accidentally, in the Dialog website’s source code, and was visible in an Internet Archive snapshot of the site archived on 15 June. It was first noted by a hacktivist on BlueSky. The leak was snapshotted on the Internet Archive on Monday, where the Guardian was able to independently verify the information. Thiel is a secretive and influential billionaire political svengali and tech investor who recently hit the headlines for hosting a series of lectures philosophizing about who the antichrist could be and warning that Armageddon is coming. Thiel has also recently become powerful in conservative politics with close ties to Donald Trump and JD Vance and has helped bankroll Republicans’ 2026 midterm campaigns. The leaked Dialog list includes governors, senators and congresspeople from both US political parties, leaders and officials from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the United Kingdom and Japan and prominent opinion writers from outlets including the New York Times, among many others. It’s not clear when the names were added to the list and under what circumstances, and in what capacity those listed participated in Dialog. The list has already been the subject of media reports, but it remains unclear whether all the individuals on it have the same degree of involvement with Dialog. Some of those on the list whom the Guardian contacted were prepared to defend Dialog and its mission, which the organization’s website characterizes as the promotion of non-ideological, non-partisan conversation. Others took pains to distance themselves from the elite networking gatherings, and claimed to have had only fleeting involvement with the ga