Elon Musk isn’t the one tech billionaire with energy over the federal businesses that regulate his companies. Since Donald Trump took workplace, greater than three dozen staff, allies, and buyers of Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Palmer Luckey have taken roles at federal businesses, serving to direct billions in contracts to their corporations.
Firms owned, based, or invested in by Musk, Thiel, Andreessen, and Luckey have collected greater than a dozen federal contracts totaling about $6 billion since Trump’s inauguration in January, based on a Wall Road Journal evaluation. And so they’re actively pursuing billions extra.
These appointments, that are in departments that oversee, regulate, and award enterprise to the 4 males’s corporations, increase a lot of crimson flags. They may violate conflict-of-interest legal guidelines or authorities ethics laws, each of which prohibit federal staff from utilizing public workplace for personal achieve.
And whereas it’s common to put in trusted allies in authorities roles, Musk’s community has moved in at an unprecedented price and scale. TechCrunch has beforehand reported on the entire folks in Musk’s universe who’ve joined him at DOGE, the place he has shuttered federal businesses and slashed workforces in departments that regulate his companies. At the least 19 others with Silicon Valley connections, be they founders or buyers, have additionally joined DOGE.
“The second Trump administration is actually the first in recent years to not impose any sort of additional ethics safeguards on high-level appointees,” Daniel Weiner, director of the Brennan Heart’s Elections and Authorities Program, instructed TechCrunch. He famous that Trump fired not less than 17 folks on the Workplace of Authorities Ethics, together with the director, instantly after taking workplace.
“It certainly does potentially increase the risk that you have people working on matters that do impact, at least indirectly, their bottom lines,” Weiner mentioned. “But this is a long-term issue in our government that’s not unique to this administration.”
Innovation versus accountability
Some might argue that it is sensible for workers and associates of Musk, Thiel, Andreessen, and Luckey to hitch authorities businesses. Their insiders are gifted people who’re behind the cutting-edge expertise the federal government genuinely wants, they usually perceive the best way to innovate shortly and compete globally.
Extra severe questions come up when favoritism threatens to undermine competitors, when coverage is created or destroyed to guard market dominance, or when laws that might serve the general public good are waylaid to advertise enterprise pursuits.
For example, the Client Monetary Safety Bureau lately retreated from pursuing guidelines that might limit knowledge brokers, regardless of rising privateness considerations — a shift that stands to learn corporations concerned in AI, surveillance, and knowledge analytics. One other instance is DOGE’s firing of staffers on the Nationwide Freeway Site visitors Security Administration who examine autonomous car security, together with a number of probes into Tesla.
“One of the defining structural challenges the government of the United States has right now is that we have a system in which the very wealthiest interests have so much power to shape our elections and then turn around and shape government policy,” Weiner mentioned.
One other Silicon Valley appointee, Mike Kratsios — a former Thiel worker — is now main expertise coverage for the U.S. authorities. In an April speech, he spoke about throwing away unhealthy laws that “weigh down our innovators,” significantly those that are innovating in AI.
“Many people in Silicon Valley tend to think that whatever worked in Silicon Valley is also going to work for administering the United States government,” Weiner mentioned. “And as we’re seeing now, the danger is a lot of people are going to get hurt because of the assumptions they make.”
“The fact that you had a successful startup after five others failed doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to run the Social Security Administration,” he continued.
A community inside and a payoff exterior
All the companies between Musk, Thiel, Andreessen, and Luckey are associated. Musk’s SpaceX was backed by Thiel’s Founders Fund and Andreessen’s a16z (which additionally invested in X and xAI). Each of these VCs additionally backed Anduril, Luckey’s protection startup.
The overlapping community of founders, funders, and insiders extends into a number of federal businesses. And in lots of circumstances, these businesses are steering billions in federal contracts again to these corporations.
The Journal discovered that throughout Washington, folks from Musk’s community, together with Tesla, X, and SpaceX, are in additional than a dozen businesses, from the manager workplace of the president and Workplace of Personnel Administration all the best way all the way down to the Division of Transportation and the Division of Power.
SpaceX staff are additionally in businesses that would present the corporate new enterprise. For instance, the Journal reviews that SpaceX senior engineer Theodore Malaska acquired an ethics waiver in February that lets him take a brief job on the Federal Aviation Administration whereas nonetheless working on the rocket firm. The FAA hasn’t given any contracts to SpaceX but, however Malaska mentioned on X the company has used Starlink to improve a weather-observing system in Alaska.
SpaceX can be the primary business supplier that transports crew and cargo for NASA. Regardless of nationwide safety considerations — like the corporate’s secret backdoor for Chinese language funding and Musk’s reported drug use — SpaceX in April received $5.9 billion of a $13.7 billion multi-year contract from the U.S. House Drive to launch Pentagon missions. The DOD, which is at present a Starlink buyer, additionally plans to purchase SpaceX’s Starshield satellites, a militarized model of the web satellites.
Staff at Thiel-backed companies have discovered themselves in roles within the State Division, the Workplace of Administration and Price range, Health and Human Companies, and Social Safety, per The Wall Road Journal. Thiel’s Palantir has already been awarded practically $376 million since 2020 from the Division of Health and Human Companies. In 2024, the corporate was additionally awarded not less than $1.2 billion in Division of Protection contracts in 2024 and is within the operating for one other $100 million deal.
Anduril, Palantir, and SpaceX lately submitted a multibillion-dollar proposal for Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile-defense program, which might additionally add to Anduril’s current contracts with the U.S. Military. Not too long ago, Anduril and Microsoft took over a 2021 contract price as much as $22 billion to develop AR headsets, per the Journal.
An Anduril govt, Michael Obadal, has been nominated to a high function on the Division of Protection. In his ethics disclosure, he said that he would retain his Anduril inventory if appointed.
TechCrunch has reached out to Anduril, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Palantir, and SpaceX for remark.
“This sort of concentration of private wealth and political power is ultimately very risky for our economy,” Weiner mentioned. “Because instead of the government making decisions that are intended to foster competition, foster economic growth, you run the real risk that government decisions are going to instead be structured around protecting particular companies and particular industries from full economic competition.”
