As the 72nd Bilderberg Meeting convenes in Washington D.C. (April 9–12, 2026), it’s worth examining the structures behind it. Not as conspiracy theory, but as documented reality: four organizations — Bilderberg, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Trilateral Commission, and the World Economic Forum (WEF) — have formed an interlocking network for decades that shapes political careers before voters are even asked.
And right in the middle: Jeffrey Epstein. Not as a footnote, but as an active connecting node between financial power, academic elites, and geopolitical influence.
Bilderberg: The Talent Factory of Power #
The Bilderberg Conference was founded in 1954 by Józef Retinger, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, and David Rockefeller — with active CIA involvement. Walter Bedell Smith, then CIA Director, was involved from the beginning. The first meeting took place at the Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek, Netherlands, giving the organization its name.
Since then, 120–140 individuals from politics, business, finance, media, and academia meet annually under the Chatham House Rule: content may be used but not attributed. No agenda, no votes, no minutes — officially.
The pattern that has emerged over decades is difficult to dismiss as coincidence:
- Bill Clinton: Attended 1991 as Governor of Arkansas — one year before his election as US President (TIME, 2016; Clinton Presidential Library)
- Tony Blair: Attended 1993 as Shadow Minister — four years before becoming British Prime Minister (CNBC, 2016)
- Emmanuel Macron: Attended 2014 as Deputy Secretary General of the Élysée — three years before his election as French President (Le JDD, 2023; Reporterre, 2016)
- Angela Merkel: Attended 2005, became German Chancellor the same year
Bilderberg 2026: Washington D.C. #
The current 72nd meeting runs from April 9–12, 2026 in Washington D.C. The official participant list from bilderbergmeetings.org includes:
- Albert Bourla — CEO Pfizer
- Mark Rutte — NATO Secretary General
- Kristalina Georgieva — IMF Managing Director
- Alex Karp — CEO Palantir
- Douglas Burgum — US Secretary of the Interior
- David Lammy — British Prime Minister
- Rob Jetten — Dutch Prime Minister
- Eric Schmidt — former Google, now Relativity Space
- Mathias Döpfner — CEO Axel Springer
- Christian Sewing — CEO Deutsche Bank
- Roland Busch — CEO Siemens
- Oliver Zipse — Board Member BMW AG
- Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg — Spitzberg Partners LLC
- Gundbert Scherf — Co-CEO Helsing GmbH (AI defense)
- Jeannette zu Fürstenberg — General Catalyst
- Uwe Horstmann — Stark
- Jack Clark — Co-founder Anthropic
- The King and Queen of the Netherlands
Official agenda topics: AI, Arctic Security, China, Digital Finance, Energy Diversification, Europe, Global Trade, Middle East, Russia, Transatlantic Defense Industry, Ukraine, Future of Warfare, The West.
Noteworthy: Gundbert Scherf, co-founder of Helsing GmbH — one of Europe’s leading AI defense companies — sits at the table while “Future of Warfare” is on the agenda.
CFR: The Invisible Engine of US Foreign Policy #
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) was founded in 1921 and is the oldest of these power circles. With approximately 5,000 members and the influential journal Foreign Affairs, it is less secretive than Bilderberg but potentially more influential.
The numbers speak for themselves: nearly every US Secretary of State since World War II has been a CFR member. Under the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidencies, an estimated 40–50% of senior State Department officials were CFR members.
Barry Goldwater wrote in his 1979 memoir With No Apologies: “When a new President comes on board, there is a great turnover in personnel but no change in policy.”
The key figures are the same as in Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission: David Rockefeller was CFR chairman. Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Madeleine Albright, Lawrence Summers — all CFR members, all active across multiple networks.
Trilateral Commission: “An Excess of Democracy” #
In 1973, David Rockefeller founded the Trilateral Commission with Zbigniew Brzezinski as its first director. Goal: coordination between North America, Western Europe, and Japan.
Two years later, in 1975, the Commission published The Crisis of Democracy — authored by Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, and Joji Watanuki. The core finding: governance problems “stem from an excess of democracy.” The recommendation: restore the authority of central institutions.
This document is not a leak or a conspiracy theory. It is freely available on archive.org and remains discussed in political science to this day. It openly articulates what the structure of these networks implies: democratic participation can be a problem — from the perspective of those who wish to govern.
WEF and the Young Global Leaders: “We Penetrate the Cabinets” #
Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum launched its “Global Leaders for Tomorrow” program in 1993 (renamed Young Global Leaders in 2004). The inaugural class of 1993 reads like a who’s who of future world leaders:
- Angela Merkel — German Chancellor 2005–2021
- Tony Blair — British Prime Minister 1997–2007
- Nicolas Sarkozy — French President 2007–2012
- Viktor Orbán — Hungarian Prime Minister since 2010
- Gordon Brown — British Prime Minister 2007–2010
- Bill Gates — Microsoft founder
- Larry Summers — US Treasury Secretary under Clinton
- José Manuel Barroso — European Commission President 2004–2014
Later classes include Emmanuel Macron, Justin Trudeau, Jens Spahn, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, and Olaf Scholz.
In 2017, Schwab stated at Harvard’s Kennedy School — captured on video and widely verified:
“What we are really proud of now with the young generation like Prime Minister Trudeau, President of Argentina and so on, is that we penetrate the cabinets. […] It is true in Argentina and it is true in France now.”
The program includes approximately 1,400 members and alumni across 120 nations, according to WEF’s own figures.
The Interlocking Directorate: Rockefeller, Kissinger, and the Nodes #
What matters is not that these organizations exist. It is the overlap in leadership:
- David Rockefeller (1915–2017): CFR Chairman, Trilateral Commission founder, decades-long Bilderberg attendee
- Henry Kissinger (1923–2023): Bilderberg regular since 1957, Trilateral founding member, CFR member, Klaus Schwab’s mentor
- Zbigniew Brzezinski (1928–2017): First director of the Trilateral Commission, CFR member, Bilderberg attendee
- Henri de Castries: Bilderberg Steering Committee chair, 2026 attendee, early Macron supporter
These are not four separate organizations. They are one network with different formats but overlapping membership and a shared agenda: shaping the transatlantic order — beyond democratic mandates.
Epstein: The Lubricant at the Center #
Jeffrey Epstein was not an outsider to these networks. He was a connecting node between finance, academia, and politics — with documented connections in every direction.
JPMorgan: The Bank That Knew Everything #
JPMorgan Chase was Epstein’s bank — even after his 2008 conviction for sex offenses. In 2023, the bank paid a total of $365 million in settlements: $290 million to Epstein’s victims and $75 million to the US Virgin Islands. The lawsuits documented that the bank had ignored warning signs for years.
Gates, Harvard, and MIT #
Epstein was not just a financier but an active intermediary for donations:
- Harvard: $9.1 million total from Epstein, including $6.5 million for Martin Nowak’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics. Harvard closed the center in 2021 and sanctioned Nowak.
- MIT Media Lab: $850,000 directly, plus donations from major donors brokered by Epstein. Epstein directed a $2 million donation from Bill Gates to MIT. Director Joi Ito resigned in 2019 after The New Yorker exposed the concealed relationships.
- Bill Gates: Multiple documented meetings with Epstein, even after his conviction. Gates is scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee on June 10, 2026 regarding his Epstein connections.
Bilderberg 2012 and the Greece Connection #
The Epstein files released by the US Department of Justice contain an email dated May 29, 2012, addressed to Peter Mandelson — former EU Commissioner, British Lord, and Bilderberg attendee. The email contains a briefing document for the 2012 Bilderberg Conference in Chantilly, Virginia — with instructions to “proactively seek out people who need to hear it.”
The content: a strategy to influence negotiating positions with a new Greek government after the June 17, 2012 elections. It concerns the HRADF (Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund) — Greece’s privatization fund. The email recommends specifically targeting the ECB and the Bundesbank.
Marcus Klöckner analyzed this email in detail for NachDenkSeiten. The word “Greece” appears 1,553 times across the Epstein files — with correspondence about bailouts, sovereign bonds, and investment opportunities in Greek financial instruments from 2012 to 2015.
Mandelson appears 5,896 times in the Epstein files. After their release, he resigned from the Labour Party and the House of Lords.
The picture that emerges: Epstein was not merely a financier with a criminal private life. He was an operator at the intersection of financial capital, political influence, and academic reputation — with direct access to the structures holding this network together. More on this in our series “The Network” and the analysis of the Gates-CEPI circle.
The Question That Arises #
None of these organizations is illegal. The participant lists are (now) partially public. The personnel overlaps are documented. The programmatic statements — from “The Crisis of Democracy” to “We penetrate the cabinets” — are not leaks but open declarations.
The question is not whether these networks exist. The question is why they are so rarely treated in public discourse as what they are: a parallel system of personnel selection that operates alongside — and often ahead of — democratic processes.
Someone invited to Baden-Baden in 1991 as an unknown governor from Arkansas who becomes US President a year later was not discovered by voters. Someone sitting in Copenhagen in 2014 as a deputy secretary who governs France three years later did not merely write a good campaign platform.
This does not mean elections are meaningless. It means the selection of candidates who stand for election has often already been made — in conference rooms that know no cameras.
This article is part of the series “The Network”, documenting connections between the Epstein network, the philanthropy complex, and political power. See also: Epstein, Gates and the Pandemic as a Business Model and Melania, Epstein and Congress.
