What binds the list more than any position or title is a shared concern with artificial intelligence, longevity and the near future. When asked on a sign-up form to predict the future, registrants returned to the same theme over and over again: that artificial intelligence will change work, war, education and faith within a few years. Some involve massive labor movements and a return to unions and government programs; others predict an “AI winter,” domestic terrorism targeting data centers, defendants choosing AI attorneys over public defenders, or a religious revival sparked by the disruption.
“Social degeneration,” predicted one man, “will continue to accelerate.”
Members also list talents such as “building fun houses,” imitating accents, skiing, exploring cities, and “meditative and psychedelic exploration of the nature of reality”; one offers “compassion and existential dread,” the other “dinner, keeping secrets, remembering birthdays.” Their book recommendations lean toward the canonical and optimization-minded Marcus Aurelius and Milan Kundera, along with Annie Duke’s Thinking in betsPeter Atia Surviveand, from at least one participant, Thiel’s own Zero to one.
The dialogue also plays matchmakers. Its participant form asks registrants if they are “looking for love” and offers to include “single men,” “single women,” or “other” respondents in “future matchmaking.” separate site, dating.dialog.orghosts a program called “Meaningful Connections for Exceptional People.”
The form also collects confidential responses, including each registrant’s “political affiliations,” which Dialog promises will “NEVER be shared within the program or with other participants.” This data, along with matchmaking search responses, was exposed during the leak.
The records are on Airtable, a commercial database. For each member, Dialog logs membership status, every retreat the person has attended, a biography, hometown, and a personal access token. WIRED does not publish tokens that function as login credentials or personalized links to accounts that contain them.
The leaked registration list also mentions senior figures not on the public directory 113: Randy Crosner, the former head of the Federal Reserve who now serves on the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee; Holly Hoffman, former general counsel and acting chief of staff for the Drug Enforcement Administration; Jonathan Greenblatt, executive director of the Anti-Defamation League; Peter Goettler, president of the Cato Institute; Ryan Stowers, Executive Director, Charles Koch Foundation; and Roger Myerson, a Nobel laureate in economics from the University of Chicago.
It also lists a group of Google and Google DeepMind executives, including Tom Liu, who leads global affairs for the company’s frontier AI division, and one working journalist, Suad Mehenet, national security correspondent for The Washington Post. (She is listed as the organizer of an event called the Ulysses Book Club.)
Other members include hedge fund and private equity billionaires, current and former foreign officials, network television actors, best-selling authors and religious leaders.
One of several internal Dialog documents left open in the same online database that held registration records is a guide for event moderators, urging them to remind attendees that everything is “off the record” and that comments should be concise and “non-obvious.” He also trains them to simulate short introductions to “avoid signaling status” in a room full of senators, dignitaries and tycoons.