Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has appointed Marc Andreessen and Blake Masters to the Defense Policy Board, a key Pentagon advisory body. Both men have financial connections to 1789 Capital, a venture fund where Donald Trump Jr. serves as a partner, according to reporting that cross-referenced investment portfolios.
Andreessen’s firm, Andreessen Horowitz, co-invests with 1789 Capital in at least three defense contractors: Anduril Industries, an autonomous weapons manufacturer; Hadrian, an aerospace-and-defense company; and SpaceX. These companies have collectively received billions in federal contracts and loans since the start of the second Trump administration. Masters sits on the boards of three ventures tied to 1789 Capital through Colombier blank-check companies. The appointments have drawn scrutiny from government ethics observers, who note that advisory board members often have financial interests in the sectors they advise on.
Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, stated that such conflicts are common and raise concerns about whether appointees may be seeking to advance their employers’ business interests. The Defense Policy Board, established in 1985, advises the defense secretary on strategy and national security matters. Although it does not set policy directly, the board has been influential and occasionally controversial, most notably in the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion when a significant portion of its membership had ties to defense contractors.
Andreessen has become a prominent Republican donor and political participant in recent years. He and his wife have contributed more than $43 million to political causes this cycle, and he was appointed to the President’s Council Advising on Science and Technology in March. His venture firm has invested heavily in autonomous weapons and surveillance manufacturers that sell to the U.S. military, domestic agencies, and foreign governments including Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
Masters, a protégé of tech billionaire Peter Thiel, ran unsuccessfully for Senate in Arizona on a platform that included calls for mass deportations and other positions critics characterized as promoting conspiracy theories. The overlapping financial and political networks connecting the two appointees, the Trump family, and the defense contractors they advise on have prompted ethics concerns from observers tracking potential conflicts of interest.
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