Multinational Technocratic Elites Gather for Annual Bilderberg Meeting

The World Economic Forum rightfully sucks up a lot of attention these days, but it’s not the only shadowy gathering of unelected technocrats by a long shot.

For decades since 1954, the post-World War II transatlantic Bilderberg group has met each year at ritzy retreats to coordinate between nationally elected politicians, multinational bankers, various Fortune 500 CEOs, and other major players in the budding technocracy.

It’s famously insular and secretive, never publishing any meeting minutes or publicizing its agenda beyond a bullet-point list of items, which, for this year, according to the organization’s press release, include:

• AI
• Banking System
• China
• Energy Transition
• Europe
• Fiscal Challenges
• India
• Industrial Policy and Trade
• NATO
• Russia
• Transnational Threats
• Ukraine
• U.S. Leadership

The group bills itself as “an annual conference designed to foster dialogue between Europe and North America. Every year, between 120-140 political leaders and experts from industry, finance, labour, academia, and the media are invited to take part in the Meeting. About two-thirds of the participants come from Europe and the rest from North America; approximately a quarter from politics and government and the rest from other fields.”

To sell the concept of secrecy, despite the presence of public officials who are theoretically accountable to the publics of their respective countries, the group incredibly claims that the meeting participants are attending in a private capacity and are therefore not obligated to disclose the details of their activities there: “Thanks to the private nature of the Meeting, the participants take part as individuals rather than in any official capacity, and hence are not bound by the conventions of their office or by pre-agreed positions.”

In fact, the meeting participants are explicitly barred by the by-laws of the organization from revealing the identities of other participants or what they discuss in secret: “The meetings are held under the Chatham House Rule, which states that participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s) nor any other participant may be revealed.”

This is obviously disingenuous sophistry; none of those participants would be there if they didn’t wield enormous influence over public policy. Their private lives are irrelevant to the purpose of the meeting.

Per reporting from The Epoch Times, this year’s esteemed participants include NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, U.S. director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, senior director for Strategic Planning at the National Security Council Thomas Wright, OpenAI CO Sam Altman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, among others.

One might mistakenly assume that the mainstream media would be all over the annual get-together. Instead, they largely pretend it doesn’t exist, occasionally lifting their soft ban on coverage to deride anyone who reports on it as a “conspiracy theorist.”