Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host who recently won confirmation as secretary of defense, has no background in weapons development and has said little about the topic. However, Trump's choice as deputy secretary (and Hick's replacement) is billionaire investor Stephen A. Feinberg who, as chief investment officer of Cerberus Capital Management, acquired the military startup Stratolaunch -- suggesting that he might favor extending programs like Replicator.
In a sense, the Trump moment will fit past Washington patterns when it comes to the Pentagon in that the president and his Republican allies in Congress will undoubtedly push for a massive increase in military spending, despite the fact that the military budget is already at a staggering all-time high. Every arms producer is likely to profit from such a move, whether traditional prime contractors or Silicon Valley startups. If, however, defense spending is kept at current levels -- in order to finance the tax cuts and other costly measures favored by Trump and the Republicans -- fierce competition between the two versions of the military-industrial complex could easily arise again. That, in turn, might trigger divisions within Trump's inner circle, pitting loyalists to the old MIC against adherents to the new one.
Most Republican lawmakers, who generally rely on contributions from the old MIC companies to finance their campaigns, are bound to support the major prime contractors in such a rivalry. But two of Trump's key advisers, J.D. Vance and Elon Musk, could push him in the opposite direction. Vance, a former Silicon Valley functionary who reportedly became Trump's running mate only after heavy lobbying by Peter Thiel and other tech billionaires, is likely to be encouraged by his former allies to steer more Pentagon contracts to Anduril, Palantir, and related companies. And that would hardly be surprising, since Vance's private venture fund, Narya Capital (yes, another name derived from The Lord of the Rings!), has invested in Anduril and other military/space ventures.
Named by Trump to direct the as-yet-to-be-established Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, like Anduril's Palmer Luckey, fought the Department of Defense to obtain contracts for one of his companies, SpaceX, and has expressed deep contempt for the Pentagon's traditional way of doing things. In particular, he has denigrated the costly, generally ill-performing Lockheed-made F-35 jet fighter at a time when AI-governed drones are becoming ever more capable. Despite that progress, as he wrote on X, the social media platform he now owns, "some idiots are still building manned fighter jets like the F-35." In a subsequent post, he added that "manned fighter jets are obsolete in the age of drones anyway."
His critique of the F-35 ruffled feathers at the Air Force and caused Lockheed's stock to fall by more than 3%. "We are committed to delivering the world's most advanced aircraft -- the F-35 -- and its unrivaled capabilities with the government and our industry partners," Lockheed declared in response to Musk's tweets. Over at the Pentagon, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall had this to say: "I have a lot of respect for Elon Musk as an engineer. He's not a warfighter, and he needs to learn a little bit more about the business, I think, before he makes such grand announcements as he did." He then added, "I don't see F-35 being replaced. We should continue to buy it, and we also should continue to upgrade it."
President Trump has yet to indicate his stance on the F-35 or other high-priced items in the Pentagon's budget lineup. He may (or may not) call for a slowdown in purchases of that plane and seek greater investment in other projects. Still, the divide exposed by Musk -- between costly manned weapons made by traditional defense contractors and more affordable unmanned systems made by the likes of Anduril, General Atomics, and AeroVironment -- is bound to widen in the years to come as the new version of the military-industrial complex only grows in wealth and power. How the old MIC will address such a threat to its primacy remains to be seen, but multibillion-dollar weapons companies are not likely to step aside without a fight. And that fight will likely divide the Trumpian universe.
Copyright 2025 Michael Klare
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