Elon Musk isn’t the one tech billionaire with energy over the federal companies that regulate his companies. Since Donald Trump took workplace, greater than three dozen staff, allies, and traders of Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Palmer Luckey have taken roles at federal companies, serving to direct billions in contracts to their corporations.
Companies 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, in response to a Wall Street Journal evaluation. And they’re actively pursuing billions extra.
Those appointments, that are in departments that oversee, regulate, and award enterprise to the 4 males’s corporations, elevate plenty of purple 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 fee and scale. TechCrunch has beforehand reported on the entire individuals in Musk’s universe who’ve joined him at DOGE, the place he has shuttered federal companies and slashed workforces in departments that regulate his companies. At least 19 others with Silicon Valley connections, be they founders or traders, have additionally joined DOGE.
“The second Trump administration is definitely the primary lately to not impose any form of further ethics safeguards on high-level appointees,” Daniel Weiner, director of the Brennan Center’s Elections and Government Program, instructed TechCrunch. He famous that Trump fired the director of the Office of Government Ethics and 17 inspectors basic who served as watchdogs for fraud and abuse, instantly after taking workplace.
“It definitely does probably enhance the chance that you’ve got individuals engaged on issues that do affect, at the least not directly, their backside strains,” Weiner stated. “But this can be a long-term concern in our authorities that’s not distinctive to this administration.”
Innovation versus accountability
Some could argue that it is sensible for workers and associates of Musk, Thiel, Andreessen, and Luckey to affix authorities companies. Their insiders are gifted people who’re behind the cutting-edge know-how the federal government genuinely wants, they usually perceive find out how to innovate rapidly and compete globally.
More severe questions come up when favoritism threatens to undermine competitors, when coverage is created or destroyed to guard market dominance, or when laws that may serve the general public good are waylaid to advertise enterprise pursuits.
For occasion, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau not too long ago retreated from pursuing guidelines that may limit information brokers, regardless of rising privateness issues — a shift that stands to profit corporations concerned in AI, surveillance, and information analytics. Another instance is DOGE’s firing of staffers on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration who examine autonomous car security, together with a number of probes into Tesla.
“One of the defining structural challenges the federal government of the United States has proper now could be that we’ve got a system by which the very wealthiest pursuits have a lot energy to form our elections after which flip round and form authorities coverage,” Weiner stated.
Another Silicon Valley appointee, Mike Kratsios — a former Thiel worker — is now main know-how coverage for the U.S. authorities. In an April speech, he spoke about throwing away unhealthy laws that “crush our innovators,” significantly those that are innovating in AI.
“Many individuals in Silicon Valley are inclined to suppose that no matter labored in Silicon Valley can also be going to work for administering the United States authorities,” Weiner stated. “And as we’re seeing now, the hazard is lots of people are going to get damage due to the assumptions they make.”
“The truth that you simply had a profitable startup after 5 others failed doesn’t essentially imply you know the way to run the Social Security Administration,” he continued.
A community inside and a payoff exterior
All of 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). Both of these VCs additionally backed Anduril, Luckey’s protection startup.
The overlapping community of founders, funders, and insiders extends into a number of federal companies. And in lots of instances, these companies are steering billions in federal contracts again to these corporations.
The Journal discovered that throughout Washington, individuals from Musk’s community, together with Tesla, X, and SpaceX, are in additional than a dozen companies, from the chief workplace of the president and Office of Personnel Management all the best way all the way down to the Department of Transportation and the Department of Energy.
SpaceX staff are additionally in companies that would present the corporate new enterprise. For instance, the Journal studies that SpaceX senior engineer Theodore Malaska obtained an ethics waiver in February that lets him take a short lived 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 stated on X the company has used Starlink to improve a weather-observing system in Alaska.
SpaceX can also be the principle business supplier that transports crew and cargo for NASA. Despite nationwide safety issues — like the corporate’s secret backdoor for Chinese 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. Space Force to launch Pentagon missions. The DOD, which is presently a Starlink buyer, additionally plans to purchase SpaceX’s Starshield satellites, a militarized model of the web satellites.
Employees at Thiel-backed companies have discovered themselves in roles within the State Department, the Office of Management and Budget, Health and Human Services, and Social Security, per The Wall Street Journal. Thiel’s Palantir has already been awarded almost $376 million since 2020 from the Department of Health and Human Services. In 2024, the corporate was additionally awarded at the least $1.2 billion in Department of Defense contracts in 2024 and is within the working for an additional $100 million deal.
Anduril, Palantir, and SpaceX not too long ago 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. Army. Recently, Anduril and Microsoft took over a 2021 contract price as much as $22 billion to develop AR headsets, per the Journal.
An Anduril government, Michael Obadal, has been nominated to a high position on the Department of Defense. 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 form of focus of personal wealth and political energy is in the end very dangerous for our financial system,” Weiner stated. “Because as an alternative of the federal government making choices which can be meant to foster competitors, foster financial progress, you run the true danger that authorities choices are going to as an alternative be structured round defending specific corporations and specific industries from full financial competitors.”
