Ted Cruz

Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz (born December 22, 1970, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada) is an American politician and lawyer who has served as a U.S. Senator from Texas since 2013. In June 2026 Cruz was named by WIRED among the figures surfaced in the leak of Dialog, the invitation-only society cofounded by Peter Thiel and Auren Hoffman. Cruz's 2016 presidential campaign was an early client of Cambridge Analytica, the data firm financed by the Republican donor Robert Mercer, and Thiel was among Cruz's largest financial backers in his early statewide campaigns.¹²³

Education, Solicitor General, and the Senate

Cruz graduated from Princeton University in 1992 and earned a law degree from Harvard Law School in 1995. He clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, worked at the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, and served as solicitor general of Texas from 2003 to 2008, arguing cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012, taking office in January 2013, and was reelected in 2018 and 2024.⁴

Cruz built a national profile within the Republican Party as a confrontational conservative, leading the 2013 effort that produced a federal government shutdown over the Affordable Care Act and mounting a presidential campaign in 2016 in which he finished second to Donald Trump for the nomination. His Texas campaigns drew heavily on out-of-state conservative donor networks, including Club for Growth and the family of Robert Mercer.³⁴

Peter Thiel's Early Donations

Thiel was an early and substantial financial backer of Cruz. In 2009 Thiel gave 251,000 dollars to Cruz's aborted run for Texas attorney general, a sum reported as roughly nineteen percent of Cruz's fundraising for that campaign. In the 2012 Senate race Thiel contributed the individual maximum of 5,000 dollars directly to Cruz and gave one million dollars to the Club for Growth Action super PAC supporting him, the largest single contribution to that committee at the time.³

The relationship drew criticism inside Texas Republican politics because Thiel publicly supported same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization, positions opposed to Cruz's platform. A spokesman for Cruz responded that "Ted's record of defending marriage between one man and one woman is as clear and unwavering as his commitment to reduce the size of government," while the campaign of his primary rival David Dewhurst called the donor relationship "hypocritical and deceitful." Cruz described Thiel as a friend.³

Cambridge Analytica and the Mercer Network

Cruz's 2016 presidential campaign was the first major American political operation to deploy Cambridge Analytica, the data-analytics firm whose primary investor was the hedge-fund executive Robert Mercer and whose vice president was Steve Bannon. Federal Election Commission records show the Cruz campaign paid Cambridge Analytica more than 5.8 million dollars for data analysis and online advertising during the 2016 cycle, with an additional 570,000 dollars paid by the pro-Cruz super PAC Keep the Promise II. Mercer donated approximately eleven million dollars to super PACs supporting Cruz's presidential bid.²⁵

The firm built psychographic voter profiles, dividing the electorate into psychological categories, work later tied to the harvesting of data from tens of millions of Facebook users. After Cruz dropped out in 2016, Mercer, Bannon, and Cambridge Analytica shifted to the Trump campaign. When the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal broke in March 2018, Cruz said the firm had assured his campaign its methods were legal: "Cambridge Analytica represented to the campaign that all data in their possession were legally obtained and that they were in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations, and the campaign relied on those representations." His spokeswoman, Catherine Frazier, said the campaign had included explicit contractual language requiring lawful conduct.²⁵⁶

The 2026 Dialog Leak

The June 16, 2026 WIRED report identified Cruz on the Dialog roster as "U.S. Senator (R-TX)," listing him among the sitting senators of both parties surfaced when the hacktivist crimew located a member directory in the source code of Dialog's website and a separate source provided the publication with the 222-name registration list for the society's retreat near Dublin, scheduled for August 12 through 16, 2026. WIRED placed Cruz alongside Senator Cory Booker and Colorado governor Jared Polis among the political figures on the list.¹

Cruz had received Thiel's financial backing in earlier cycles and has acknowledged a personal friendship with Thiel, the chairman of Palantir Technologies and cofounder of Founders Fund.¹³