The Pentagon’s deputy undersecretary of defense, Stephen Feinberg, has quietly taken control of the military’s vast procurement network, installing former colleagues from his private equity firm in key positions and directing billions of dollars in spending, according to a Guardian investigation that drew on interviews with more than 10 officials and industry figures.
Feinberg, 66, has been so reclusive that since his confirmation hearing in February 2025 he has not testified to any congressional committee or held a news conference. His press spokesperson left the government months ago and has not been replaced. Yet current and former Pentagon officials described his influence as surpassing that of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“Everything is centered around Feinberg,” one veteran Pentagon bureaucrat told the Guardian. A financier familiar with the department’s operations said, “I don’t think there’s anything that goes on that he doesn’t have a stake in.”
Feinberg has seeded the department with loyalists from Cerberus, the firm he founded in 1992. Among them is George Kollitides, a senior executive adviser who, according to SEC filings, maintains his seat on an investment company’s board of directors. Two sources said Kollitides holds the status of “special government employee,” allowing him to work for the federal government while continuing private sector employment. Others include Tomas Rakusan, a former CIA case officer turned senior adviser, and David Lorch, a Cerberus managing director running a multibillion-dollar office to invest in critical minerals and strategic industries. John Gallagher, another Cerberus managing director, was also brought in by Feinberg.
Kollitides oversees the Economic Defense Unit and serves as vice chairman of the investment committee of the office of strategic capital. The unit, created by law, reports directly to Feinberg’s office. Through these structures, Feinberg and Kollitides can spend billions not as traditional government contracts but as actual equity investments and loans. Last year, the office of strategic capital approved a $620 million loan to Vulcan Elements, which is partially owned by Donald Trump Jr. Another Pentagon fund put $15 million into Kopin Corp, a display company associated with Unusual Machines, a company partially owned by Don Trump Jr. In January, the department also put $1 billion into L3Harris in the form of preferred shares to form a new company, making the U.S. a partial equity owner of a solid rocket motor manufacturer.
A newly formed British Virgin Islands company, D Boral Acquisition I, launched an effort in February to raise a quarter of a billion dollars. Its board includes Kevin McGurn, an adviser to Trump Media and Technology Group, and Kollitides, who was already working for Feinberg at the Pentagon. The SEC filing described Kollitides as “Senior Executive Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of War.”
Critics say the arrangement deepens potential conflicts. Sen. Elizabeth Warren wrote to Feinberg in April that companies affiliated with Cerberus have been awarded contracts related to the “Golden Dome” missile defense system. “The award of contracts to Cerberus-linked companies raises serious conflicts of interest concerns,” she wrote. In a statement to the Guardian, Warren said, “In the latest Trump Administration giveaway to Wall Street, the Department of Defense appears to be setting up a unit staffed almost entirely by employees of one private equity firm, which could make our nation’s defense industrial base Wall Street’s latest playground.”
The Pentagon strongly disputed any conflicts. “The Deputy Secretary is a man of integrity who has conducted himself ethically throughout his entire career and has had a generational impact on the Department of War,” spokesperson Sean Parnell told the Guardian. Parnell added that “the Department of War maintains a rigorous, multi-layered ethics framework that includes financial disclosure reviews, divestitures where appropriate, and screening to prevent conflicts of interest.” Feinberg certified in March 2025 that he had divested his stake in Cerberus.
A retired military officer who works with the Pentagon said the concentration of Cerberus personnel is unprecedented. “There have been revolving doors before. Frequently. But we haven’t ever had a concentration like this in the hands of one company. This is different. It’s one organization’s core team.”
Feinberg graduated from Princeton University in 1982, where he captained the tennis team, and began his career at Drexel Burnham Lambert. He founded Cerberus in 1992 and quickly became known as a vulture investor. In a rare 2006 disclosure, he was quoted joking that “we try to hide religiously” and that any employee whose picture appeared in the paper would be more than fired. Cerberus’s historical investments include the Freedom Arms gun group — which owned Bushmaster, maker of the AR-15 used in the Sandy Hook shooting — and the Steward Health Care system, which declared bankruptcy in 2024. Feinberg told his Senate confirmation hearing that Cerberus did nothing wrong in those ventures.
There is no evidence that Feinberg is personally profiting from the current arrangements, and supporters describe him as a patriot working diligently to fix longstanding Pentagon problems. But a former Pentagon official who knows Feinberg said the revolving-door conflicts that would have drawn scrutiny in previous administrations are barely remarked upon now.