There was a time when a gathering of 200 of America’s richest and most powerful people, from Peter Thiel and Elon Musk to Jared Kushner and Ted Cruz, might have sparked protests or expulsion from certain spaces. In the US, those days were before, or during, Donald Trump’s first presidential term, but that's hard to envision happening in the US today, as people have largely become inured to the fact that these figures represent the apex of American power. The Irish, however, were having none of it.
When news broke that the Thiel-founded secret members club Dialog was hosting its August conference at the ritzy Powerscourt Estate outside of Dublin, the Irish, including the estate itself, got to work speaking out against the gathering, eventually resulting in its cancellation. (A person familiar with Dialog said a hotel refusing to host has never happened in its 20-year history.) Amid a newscycle filled with humanoid robots, synthetic life, AI moviestars, and one president’s meme coin loot, there’s something quaint about the genuine Irish outrage over a meeting of some of the world’s most influential minds.
I’m Vanity Fair staff writer Clara Molot, filling in for Julia Black. You can read my story below.
Mentioned in this issue: Peter Thiel, Jared Kushner, Ted Cruz, Elon Musk, Alexus Grynkewich, Scott Bessent, Nick Thompson, Ezra Klein, Cory Booker, Wes Moore, Eric Schmidt, Peter Thiel, Sergey Brin, Donald Trump, Auren Hoffman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, $TRUMP, Anthropic, and more…
