The 72nd meeting of the Bilderberg group, the elite and secretive policy conference that is the longtime subject of endless conspiracy theories, was held at the weekend in Washington DC. A security cordon went up around the opulent Salamander hotel for the notoriously media-shy summit, which was packed as ever with prime ministers, military leaders, tech billionaires and the heads of giant investment companies.

Bilderberg, which since the 1950s has been the intellectual engine room of Nato, took place this year at a time of immense crisis and uncertainty for the alliance. In recent weeks, with Trump threatening at every turn to withdraw from the “paper tiger” of Nato, the “Trans-Atlantic Defence-Industrial Relationship” (as it’s called on the agenda) has reached a strained breaking point.

The head of Nato and Bilderberg regular Mark Rutte arrived at the conference fresh from a “very frank” conversation at the White House. But away from Trump’s bluster, and for all his rhetoric about abandoning Nato, there were no signs that the Americans are withdrawing from Bilderberg. Far from it – the Americans were there in force.

Wall Street titans, including the CEOs of KKR and Lazard, and the heads of huge corporations like Pfizer, met behind closed doors with a delegation of senior politicians close to the president. Big business lobbying in private is Bilderberg’s speciality, and this secretive mix of the private and public sectors fits perfectly with Trump’s brand of crony-capitalism.

Trump’s trusted secretary of the interior, Doug Burgum, was attending, alongside his favourite trade guru, Robert Lighthizer. They were joined by Trump’s economic ally Jason Smith, the chair of the influential House ways and means committee, and his secretary of the army, Dan Driscoll, known as Trump’s “drone guy”.

Read More: Secretive Bilderberg group just met – but who knows what global elite said?