The Guy Who Runs the Pentagon Used to Own the Companies Bidding on the Pentagon’s Biggest Contract

Corruption of Power GriftMatrix

Steve Feinberg, Golden Dome, and the art of the conflict nobody’s allowed to call a conflict

The guy overseeing a $151 billion Pentagon project owns the companies bidding on it.

Steve Feinberg co-founded Cerberus Capital Management in 1992, ran it for over 30 years, and built it into a $65 billion private equity empire with a long history of buying defense contractors. Then Trump made him the second-highest-ranking official in the Pentagon. Now Cerberus-owned companies are among the 2,000-plus firms that have already been awarded contracts for the Golden Dome for America project – the missile defense fantasy modeled on Israel’s Iron Dome that has been allocated up to $151 billion and could end up costing, per Pentagon budget analyst Todd Harrison, somewhere between $252 billion and $3.6 trillion over 20 years.

The Cerberus-linked firms with Golden Dome contracts so far include North Wind, Stratolaunch, Red River Technology, and NetCentrics Corp. The Pentagon won’t say how much each contract is worth, citing national security. How convenient.

Feinberg filed paperwork saying he divested from Cerberus. What that actually means is he handed assets into irrevocable trusts for his adult children, which ethics experts say undermines the intent of the law while technically complying with it. It’s the political equivalent of saying you gave away the car but handed the keys to your kid.

He also promised to stop using Cerberus for tax and accounting services and healthcare by April 2026. Then he asked for an extension – with no end date – because he “has been unable to find a company to provide the services that I need.” A man with at least $2 billion in listed assets, who founded one of the largest private equity firms in the country, can’t find a tax accountant who isn’t on his own payroll. Sure.

The person now in charge of the Golden Dome office reports directly to Feinberg. The Pentagon, when asked whether Feinberg plays any role in awarding contracts, said he doesn’t have “direct responsibility” for acquisitions, and then refused to answer any follow-up questions about whether his office has met with any contractor representatives. Which is a very specific kind of answer.

He’s not alone. Marc Berkowitz, confirmed in December as assistant secretary of defense for space policy, listed Golden Dome as one of his top priorities at his confirmation hearing. He previously worked at Lockheed Martin, receives two monthly pensions from Lockheed, and owned between $1 million and $5 million in Lockheed stock when he took the job. Lockheed was awarded Golden Dome contracts days before his confirmation. He’s now supposedly recusing himself from Lockheed matters until his shares are sold. Well, that’s reassuring.

All this info comes from a new report released today from ProPublica. The Trump administration’s spokesperson, Sean Parnell, called ProPublica’s questions “fake news” after saying the ethics framework is “rigorous.” The White House added that Trump is leading “the most transparent administration in history.” That line was delivered with an apparently straight face.

What makes this particular situation different from run-of-the-mill revolving door nonsense is the scale and the deliberate removal of the mechanisms that were supposed to catch it. On day one, Trump rescinded Biden’s ethics pledge that barred appointees from working on issues tied to former clients for two years. He then fired 17 inspectors general. Then he removed the head of the Office of Government Ethics, which is now operating without a director or a chief of staff. It’s not that the safeguards failed – it’s that the safeguards were specifically dismantled before the deals were made.

ProPublica released nearly 3,200 financial disclosure records covering more than 1,500 Trump appointees, and the patterns are consistent across agencies. The U.S. Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer, withheld the names of more than 50 former clients from his time at the law firm King & Spalding – the firm that represents some of the most powerful corporations in the world in exactly the kinds of trade disputes he now adjudicates. His senior adviser kept 52 former client names secret. The EPA scientists who just downgraded the health risk assessment for formaldehyde had previously held senior positions at the chemical industry’s trade group. Todd Blanche, the number-two at the Justice Department, owned at least $159,000 in crypto assets when he shut down federal investigations into crypto companies.

Trump told the New York Times he was fine with his family enriching itself while he’s in office because “I found out nobody cared, and I’m allowed to.” Which is one of the more honest things he’s said. He also accepted a $400 million Boeing 747 from Qatar and transferred nearly a billion dollars from a nuclear weapons program to retrofit it.

Virginia Canter, who served as a White House ethics lawyer under four presidents from both parties, put it plainly: “Ethics is in the toilet.”

The defense industry has noticed. Palantir, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Lockheed Martin all donated money to Trump’s White House renovation project while waiting for Golden Dome contract decisions. Which is, technically, legal now.

Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex in 1961. The current situation is what happens when the military-industrial complex stops pretending it isn’t one.

Sources