The Global Elite Just Gathered at a Secretive Mini Davos

It was past midnight on Friday when the Swiss investor Guy Spier finally left the James Joyce pub in Zurich, after a night of carousing with luminaries of finance, government, and academia. The group had assembled for World.Minds—an under-the-radar fraternity for the global elite—which had just concluded its annual symposium.

The summit fashions itself as “the thinking man’s Davos,” one staff member told The Daily Beast. This year, scientists presented research on nuclear fusion and forensics, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert detailed a peace plan for the Middle East, and members discussed the crisis in Ukraine.

“I have three friends that I made at World.Minds,” Spier said after a few glasses of wine. “Two are Fields Medalists.”

With just 1,500 members, World.Minds is a concentrated collective of wealth and power with a roster that includes former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and retired Gen. David Petraeus, philosophers Peter Singer and Daniel Dennett, and billionaires Bill Ackman, Henry Kravis, and Alex Karp. Under its charter, at least 51 percent of the community must work in the sciences to ensure that it doesn’t “devolve into a business club.”

World.Minds does not accept membership applications, its website coldly states: “Unless you are an international scholar, do not contact us. We will contact you.” Never mind that there is no email address or phone number listed.

“We don’t make a big fuss,” founder Rolf Dobelli told The Daily Beast.

The discretion has fostered a comfortable space for power brokers to mingle without scrutiny or unwanted attention. “Nobody’s going to solicit you. You can talk normally as if you’re [with] your friends,” one participant said.

The group employs the so-called “Chatham House Rule,” meaning that members are permitted to recount internal discussions as long as they don’t disclose who said what.

Very rarely, however, details bleed out. As New York magazine reported in February, Ackman and his wife—embattled former professor Neri Oxman—recently held a World.Minds gathering at their home, at which Ackman pontificated on his war with Harvard’s then president, Claudine Gay. The billionaire had sent Gay a six-page letter railing against her leadership, and he wondered whether she would respond.

“I’m a theoretical physicist, so I get paid to make predictions,” Harvard professor Avi Loeb recalled of his response to Ackman; he speculated that Gay would not reply. (At another point that night, Loeb shared his “personal belief ” that “the Messiah will arrive, not necessarily from Brooklyn, as some Orthodox Jews believe, but rather from outer space.”)

The Davos summit, founded in 1971, remains the premier site for the global nobility to talk policy, though it has grown increasingly corporate and overcrowded. “It’s a warning for us to never go that way,” Dobelli said. World.Minds’ lofty mission—creating “a bridge between the science, business and cultural communities”—suggests that it is trying to recreate Davos’ early, more intimate days, if not supplant its larger rival entirely. But Dobelli insists he is simply trying to nurture intellectual curiosity.

“There’s a lot of companies [and] organizations that say, ‘We want to make the world a better place,’ like the World Economic Forum,” he said. “We are a little bit more humble. We first want to understand the world before we claim to improve it.”

One scientist who has attended World.Minds events lauded that mission and described Dobelli as “very enthusiastic about knowledge.” But he said the group’s obsession with credentials can lead to a “circle jerk” atmosphere, and he found the scientific discussions frustratingly superficial.

He recalled listening to a prominent psychiatrist’s lecture on diagnoses. “Some of the questions were like, ‘Aren’t we all sort of crazy? Isn’t that what makes us special?’”

Dobelli said that World.Minds has almost “no rate of attrition,” and many members of the community, like Spier, are highly engaged.

“I ended up having coffee a couple of days ago with a professor of history,” Spier said. “Forgive me, it was orgasmic for me. It was just so wonderful.”

He had arranged the meet-up himself, but similar cross-pollination between industries happens at World.Minds “all the time,” he said. Spier argued that the summits are unpretentious, informative, and fun.

“I’m a guy who runs money. And I go to World.Minds and I have friends who are mathematicians or physicists,” he continued. “All you have to do is meet one or two or three people, and the world becomes different.”

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