In June 2026, the list of invitees for a gathering of members and guests of an exclusive society known as Dialog was leaked. The invitation list for the gathering, scheduled for August 2026 in Dublin, Ireland, includes top corporate, political and military figures from several countries.

Although the tech sector is well-represented at this annual gathering, the participants do not belong to a particular industry, field, or nationality. Nor are they engaged in solving a singular common issue facing the world. Overall, the only commonality among the participants appears to be the possession of immense wealth and/or political power, and in a few cases, cultural and media power.

What is the function of such a gathering? Dialogue has no public website, and simply bills itself as “an invite-only community of CEOs, founders, public intellectuals, government leaders, investors, artists, and more who gather for off-the-record conversations to learn from one another.” Wired magazine revealed some of the topics scheduled for discussion for the 2026 meeting, which include “Money (Does?) Buy Happiness”, “Navigating WWIII,” “Battlefield Technologies,” and “Build-a-Cult”. Dialog has even established an internal dating site offering “meaningful connections for exceptional people”. Networking at a very personal level appears to be one of the goals of the society.

Dialog is just one of several known gatherings that provides networking opportunities for people who have exceptional levels of wealth and power. This article explores such networks and their reasons for being.

Networking at the WEF annual meeting, Davos, Switzerland (Photo: World Economic Forum / Flickr [CC BY-NC-SA 4.0])

Dialog

Dialog has been holding such social events since 2006. The events are thought to generally take the form of two-day retreats of roughly 150 people. The organization was first established by Peter Thiel, a billionaire who co-founded companies such as the money transfer service, PayPal, and the data analysis corporation, Palantir. Among regular attendees at Dialog are former colleagues who were involved in establishing PayPal, including Elon Musk and Reid Hoffman. These wealthy inidividuals, who have gone on to establish other powerful tech companies, are collectively known as the ‘PayPal Mafia’.

It is perhaps natural that former co-workers operating in the same sector would remain close, and would continue to network professionally. But as noted above, networks such as Dailog go far beyond any such industry-specific connections, and their objectives are global. An invitation to a 2014 Dailog gathering found in the emails of US financier, Jeffrey Epstein – made public by the so-called Epstein Files – billed the gathering as “a participatory and entrepreneurial conversation on changing the world.”

Nor are their participants restrained by national boundaries. While the participants in Dialog 2026 are dominated by wealthy individuals and policymakers from the US, there are also participants listed from countries such as Germany, Japan, Kuwait, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the UK.

Other elite networks

Activities aimed at connecting people who have wealth with people who have political power has a long history. The Bilderberg Meetings, for example, have been held since 1954. These informal and secretive annual meetings, bring together approximately 130 “political leaders and experts from industry, finance, labour, academia and the media”, primarily from Europe and North America. These meetings are perceived primarily as networking opportunities – there is no detailed agenda, and no decisions are made. But there case in which the networking can lead to real-world results. One former chairman of the Bilderberg Meetings, for example, has suggested that the meetings laid the groundwork for the creation of the euro.

Bilderberg meeting, St Moritz, Switzerland 2011 (Photo: swiss-truth / Flickr [CC BY 2.0])

The annual meetings of the World Economic Forum (WEF) held at Davos, Switzerland, are another venue that has, since 1971, brought together political and economic elites for informal discussions. The Davos meetings are much larger and much more public than the Bilderberg meetings. The gatherings are dominated by powerful political representatives and wealthy CEOs from countries in the Global North – leading to the coining of phases such as ‘Davos Man’ and ‘Davos Woman’, and the ‘Davos class’. This ‘class’ has been characterized as “a hyper-connected network of banking and tech billionaires, elected leaders who are awfully cosy with those interests, and Hollywood celebrities who make the whole thing seem unbearably glamorous.”

The Trilateral Commission, established in 1973 by investment banker David Rockerfeller and other private citizens from Japan, North America, and Western Europe, forms the hub for a similar type of elite network, bringing together “senior policymakers, business leaders, and representatives of media and academe”. The Commission bills itself as “an important venue to incubate ideas and form relationships across sectors and geographies.”

Some of these elite gatherings focus less on political power, and more on economic power, as well as people perceived to be in positions of cultural power. One such relatively small-scale gathering is the ‘Billionaires’ Dinner’, which was run by an organization known as Edge annually between 1999 and 2015. It claimed to be a “remarkable gathering of outstanding minds – the people who are rewriting our global culture. ”

It is worth noting that there is considerable overlap in the participants of such meetings. Jeffrey Epstein, for example, is known to have attended meetings of Davos, the Trilateral Commission, and the Billionaires’ Dinner. There is also a myriad of smaller and informal transnational elite networks. Epstein’s emails reveal a seemingly never-ending stream of lunches and dinners that brought together small gatherings of political, economic, academic and cultural elites from a variety of fields, national affiliations and backgrounds.

Transactional networking

A broad overview of the incentives for people with wealth and power to come together is in order at this point.

Generally speaking, it can be surmised that people with wealth want to keep and expand that wealth. Policymakers can play an important role in this pursuit. They have the power to strengthen government corporate regulation that is beneficial for the owners of corporations, such as patent protections. On the other hand, they can weaken regulation that hampers the expansion of corporate and personal profit, such as the imposition of taxes, as well as labour and environmental protections. Corporate owners often lobby policymakers in an attempt to secure such favourable policy outcomes.

Palantir’s Peter Thiel meeting with Japanese Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, 2026 (Photo: Kantei (The Prime Minister Office of Japan) / Wikimedia Commons [Public Data License (Ver.1.0)])

Furthermore, policymakers have the power to award large-scale government contracts to corporations for a variety of goods and services. Thiel’s Palantir is a prime example of one such beneficiary. This data analysis corporation evolved from a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) project, and continues to rely heavily on contracts from government agencies around the world. Governments also allocate large amounts of taxpayers’ money for corporate subsidies or bailouts. The US government spent hundreds of billions of dollars, for example, in bailing out corporations making up that country’s financial system in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. A large portion of this money has not been repaid.

Those with wealth are not only looking for favours from those with political power. Economic elites are also interested in building networks with each other. This may be about looking for ways to expand their businesses or diversify their streams of income. It may also be about finding creative ways to avoid taxes. Economic elites may also seek to join forces with others in similar positions as themselves to collectively lobby politicians for the realization of policies that are mutually beneficial.

Meanwhile, those with political power generally want to keep that power. In democratic systems of government, this requires costly political campaigns. Wealthy individuals and corporations thus become important players in this process through their ability to provide political donations.

But a politician’s position in power will at some point come to an end. Many politicians thus seek to leverage the political and corporate connections they cultivated while in office to generate streams of wealth after they leave office. The sharp rise in wealth of former UK prime minister Tony Blair after leaving office is a case in point. For others a lucrative advisory position at a single corporation may suffice.

For some political actors, such networking may help pave the way for career advancement within the political realm. Bill Clinton, for example, was the governor of Arkansas when attended the Bilderberg Meetings in 1991. Months later, he launched his campaign for president of the US. One observer noted that this turn of events “exemplifies how global forums provide networking opportunities for emerging political leaders”. Some researchers have also found circumstantial evidence that networking at the Bilderberg Meetings helped Ursula von der Leyen to become the head of the European Commission, and James Wolfensohn the head of the World Bank.

US Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke, at a Bilderberg Meeting, 2008 (Photo: Shepherd Johnson / Wikimedia Commons [CC BY-SA 2.0])

Converging interests

As seen above, relationships between those with wealth and power can appear to be transactional. But they are much more than simple exchanges of favours, or one-off interventions aimed at promoting or resisting a specific policy change, or a single election.

Politicians are involved in a vast array of broad and long-lasting policy choices that govern how society functions as a whole. This includes issues such as taxes, military spending, social welfare, and corporate welfare, as well as the degree to which corporations are allowed to privatize public goods, or infringe upon the privacy of citizens. By maintaining a close proximity with the ruling class, the ultra-wealthy are able to promote their policy preferences as a whole, and cultivate allies among political elites that serve their long-term interests.

In this way, political and economic elites end up speaking and acting in the same arena. One observer opined that “the most dangerous legacy” of the WEF is “what can be called Corporate Capture. Through the soft language of ‘stakeholder governance,’ the WEF has normalized the idea that multinational corporations should have the same voice as sovereign states in global decision-making.” In taking their place as such tables, wealthy individuals may also develop – and seek to realize – grand visions of how they think the world should be governed or restructured.

In many areas, interests, objectives and ideologies are shared by political leaders and wealthy individuals. Such class solidarity can be seen, for example, in the phenomenon known as the military industrial complex, in which growing military budgets are frequently seen as being beneficial for both groups. Additionally, as seen in the revelations surrounding the relationship between Epstein, the US bank JP Morgan, and former UK business secretary Peter Mandelson, politicians may show solidarity with the economic elites of other countries, even if it appears to be detrimental to the interests of their own country.

This can be further complicated by a blurring of the line separating the individuals comprising the political and economic elite. We have seen already seen political leaders seeking wealth after leaving office, but there are also many cases of wealthy individuals seeking political office.

The US president with Elon Musk in conversation with the Saudi Crown Prince, 2025 (Photo: The White House / Wikimedia Commons [Public domain])

The social function of elite networking

For those starting on the outside or on the fringes of the network, getting access to the network can in itself be a major objective. Entering an elite network is likely to mean introductions to other wealthy, powerful, and famous people. It may also be experienced as the achievement of a new level of social status – a sense of being part of an elite ‘club’ or a ‘gang’.

For many, having access to snippets of information that might not otherwise be available, is also a part of the allure of the network. This could be information perceived as giving them an edge in their respective fields, but participants may see value simply in having access to information that others do not. Journalist Anand Giridharadas, having read a large portion of the Epstein emails, observes that “the more accessible information becomes, the more precious nonpublic information is. The more everybody insta-broadcasts opinions, the dearer is the closely held take. The emails are a private, bilateral social media for people who can’t or won’t post”.

It is also important to note that networks are not set in stone. They require building, maintaining, and refreshing. The social activities and rituals of these networks help not only to create new connections, but also to align and assimilate the thinking of the participants.

As a study of Bohemian Grove, another US-based organization facilitating elite networking, noted, “social interaction serves to develop ruling-class cohesion”. In a similar vein, a journalist who investigated Dialog in depth saw the organization as “a kind of machine designed to search the realm of power and influence to find candidates who might already be like-minded, and for those who are not, to initiate them into the core network’s worldview, perspective, and goals.”

Police guarding a Bilderberg meeting, 2011 (Photo: swiss-truth / Flickr [CC BY 2.0])

Towards accountability?

The outcomes of many of the discussions between wealthy and the powerful individuals – held behind closed doors at gatherings such as Dialog, Bilderberg Meetings and the WEF meetings at Davos – will undoubtedly be eventually felt, in some form, by the multitudes of people excluded from them.

The news media is one of the few actors with the potential to serve as a watchdog against such concentrations of unaccountable elite power. But as we have already seen, representatives of the media are frequently invited into these networks. Bringing influential journalists inside of such exclusive groups as participants, and making them a part of ‘the club’, can serve to secure uncritical or even sympathetic coverage of the ruling class. This helps to legitimize the gatherings and the interests of these elites to a broader audience.

The publication of the Epstein Files could have served as an opportunity for those outside these networks to bring light and accountability to these increasingly concentrated centres of power. It is an opportunity that we appear to be missing.

Writer: Virgil Hawkins