Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder and Trump backer, runs a secretive society called Dialog. Over 200 ultra-wealthy registered for a retreat featuring panels on cult-building, sex, and prepping for World War III. There's even a matchmaking app for attendees. The leak comes from Wired.
This is not gossip. It reveals the mindset driving a huge chunk of the US tech elite — people who decide VC funding, platform dominance, and global digital rules. If their Plan B is bunkers and sects, their Plan A for the rest of us is predictable: data hostage, monopolies, no accountability.
We, at Meteora Web, our position is clear: Europe cannot afford to look away.
This “we save the world, you pay” mentality is exactly the problem. While Thiel and friends debate surviving collapse, Italian SMEs struggle daily with bureaucracy, digital divide, and vendors who lock them into lifetime fees. We see it firsthand after nearly a decade: from Sciacca to Milan, those who own their tech stack have freedom. Those renting from Big Tech are at the mercy of logics that have nothing to do with local needs.
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The concrete takeaway? Elite matchmaking isn't just gossip. It signals that Silicon Valley is organizing for a post-democratic world where platform control equals human control. Europe tries to push back with the AI Act and DMA, but it's racing against an opponent playing by different rules.
For anyone running a digital business in Italy, the answer isn't “wait for laws”. It's: build your own ecosystem. Use open technologies, train your people, don't depend on a single US provider. We chose Laravel, WordPress, and self-managed solutions for this reason. Not because we're against innovation, but because innovation should serve businesses, not billionaire sects.
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What to do. If you run a company or digital project, ask yourself: how many of your tools are owned by third parties? How much do you pay yearly for licenses you don't own? Start with an audit of your tech providers. If you don't control the code or data, someone else does. And that someone might be at the Dialog retreat.
