Billionaire Feinberg is tasked by Trump to speed up output of weapons of war
By Lara Seligman, Drew FitzGerald and Marcus Weisgerber
Soon after a July cabinet meeting ended at Camp David, the rustic presidential retreat in Maryland, President Trump turned to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth with an order: "Get Feinberg on the phone."
The Feinberg in question is Hegseth's deputy, Steve Feinberg, a private-equity billionaire who grew up in the Bronx. Trump asked Feinberg why he was still seeing media reports that the U.S. had paused attacks on Iran amid concerns about dwindling weapons stocks, given Feinberg's job was to improve those stocks.
"The president wants more. The secretary wants more. I want more," Feinberg recently said, explaining his approach in his first interview since taking the job last year.
As the U.S. expends thousands of missiles in the Iran war, Feinberg is trying to speed up the Pentagon's ability to get new weapons. The jury is still out on whether it will work.
Over the past year and a half, he has attempted a sweeping overhaul of the Defense Department's approach to weapons production, establishing a new procurement bureaucracy reporting directly to him and taking billions of dollars in government stakes in companies that supply critical materials, rocket engines and other key parts.
In large part, he has relied on companies and executives familiar to him from his time running the investment firm he co-founded, Cerberus Capital Management.
Some of Feinberg's bets will take years to pay off, and Congress has yet to fund many of them. Skeptics within the Defense Department worry that his Wall Street playbook isn't well suited for the world's biggest military.
"We have to address our production," he said. "I'm sure I'm going to make the mistakes, OK? And I'm sure everyone will talk about the mistakes when we make them. But that's part of trying to make changes and being urgent."
The efforts have included, according to people familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal:
-- Paying $300 million to corporate turnaround advisory firm Alvarez & Marsal, a longtime Cerberus partner, in addition to existing government employees.
-- Hiring about 300 retired auto and other executives, under a group called the Business Operators for National Defense, who are paid government salaries of $150-$170 per hour to visit the factories of military contractors and their suppliers and offer advice.
-- Providing up to $244 million to data-analysis company Palantir for a platform called War Machine to improve efficiencies at military contractors, in addition to the hundreds of millions of dollars the firm is separately paid by the department for other work.
Some officials have privately questioned why the Pentagon, rather than military contractors, should pay for some of those efforts. Feinberg said the added help addresses specific needs.
"There's a big shortage in the department of capable operators," he said. "Our acquisition teams and our department people are terrific, but they're not operational manufacturing people."
Some Trump allies have criticized Feinberg's Wall Street ties. They include Laura Loomer, who said in August that "Feinberg's mess" would be a problem for Trump and Hegseth if he wasn't "put on a tighter leash." In recent weeks, various media outlets have reported that White House officials interviewed possible replacements for Feinberg, which the White House has denied.
Feinberg said he had no plans to leave. "I have total support from the White House and the department, and I'm all-in to the end of the term," he said. White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said: "President Trump has full confidence in the Department of War under the stellar leadership of Secretary Hegseth."
At a ceremony Tuesday for a new Navy shipyard, Trump said he thought Feinberg was doing a fantastic job.
Preliminary deals
Under Feinberg, the Pentagon has also struck more than a dozen preliminary deals to prod weapons makers and their suppliers to speed up munitions production. But Congress has yet to fund most of it, as lawmakers haggle over details of the administration's $1.5 trillion defense budget request.
Todd Harrison, a defense-industry analyst at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute likened the preliminary munitions deals to "a plan to make an agreement." "None of that matters unless you have funding to get things started," he said.
Feinberg said the multiyear deals signal to defense firms that the Pentagon is committed to buying their products over the long term. Some companies have started expanding facilities to increase production.
A meeting last December laid bare the gulf between Congress and the Pentagon on actually funding Feinberg's requests.
The deputy called lawmakers to a secure meeting room and told them that the Pentagon urgently needed roughly $28 billion in additional funding to pay for new missile purchases, according to Pentagon and congressional officials. Lawmakers and aides found Feinberg's request out of touch with reality, the officials said, given that they had wrapped up funding bills for the year. They eventually added about $8 billion.
After Trump spoke to him from Camp David, Feinberg sent out a series of terse memos for military contractors.
One asked for quick-turnaround proposals to surge production of certain military technology like radars. Another demanded that contractors open up their accounting systems to provide "pricing transparency" to Pentagon officials, a particularly galling request of smaller companies that viewed it as adding more red tape to their work. A later memo reduced that burden for smaller companies.
Feinberg has stepped up his efforts to woo lawmakers in recent weeks. In early September, he met with Rep. Tom Cole (R., Okla.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and California Rep. Ken Calvert, chairman of its defense subcommittee, for a dinner at Calvert's house that lasted three hours. They dined on steak and smoked cigars while discussing the Pentagon budget.
The focus was "trying to figure out, honestly, ways to get them more money," Cole said. "That's the biggest thing that you need to do. You need to do it soon."
Cerberus ties
Well-known around the Pentagon for his love of chocolate cake, cookies and all other sweets, Feinberg took the job planning to stay behind the scenes. He says he was inspired to serve in government by his father and uncles who served in World War II. "I grew up in a humble, modest way. I want to help America," said Feinberg.
When he joined the department, Feinberg placed his Cerberus interests in an irrevocable trust for his adult children. Critics, including some Trump allies and Democrats, have pointed to potential conflicts of interest from Cerberus's portfolio, which includes companies that draw on U.S. national security spending, from hypersonic weapons to military logistics. The firm also launched a defense-focused venture capital fund in 2024.
In a July letter, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) told Feinberg she had "ongoing concerns" about the issue. During hearings, another Democrat, Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, has warned Feinberg against taking an overly broad, corporate-restructuring approach to the military's budget and workforce.
A senior Pentagon official said profits on national-security investments that would otherwise go to the trust will go to charity. A Cerberus spokesman said Feinberg "is not involved in the operations of Cerberus or its portfolio companies in any way."
Other companies from Feinberg's private-sector life are playing a role in the Pentagon's new efforts.
The department has hired the law firm that represents Cerberus, McDermott Will & Schulte, to help negotiate some deals. Some weapons makers have hired advisers including Feinberg's former bank, Goldman Sachs, to negotiate with the government. Such talks in the past didn't usually involve Wall Street firms.
A McDermott spokeswoman said the firm's Pentagon work is reviewed by U.S. ethics officials and it would be recused on transactions with a Cerberus affiliate. A Goldman spokesman declined to comment.
Senior deputies to Feinberg also have ties to Alvarez & Marsal, the consulting firm the Pentagon has hired. One, Pete Guinto, just left the department to work for the firm. Another, George Kollitides, was a partner at a separately managed investment firm associated with it called Alvarez & Marsal Capital.
A spokeswoman for the consulting firm said it is "proud to serve clients across all industries, and all levels of government." An A&M Capital spokeswoman said its "management and employees have no involvement in the day-to-day operations of the consulting business, and vice versa."
Some Pentagon officials said the work in part replicates work the department is already doing. The Pentagon has a separate in-house team to spur armaments production, and another office that has thousands of government employees working in contractor factories.
Feinberg said the military program managers still have a role in the department's work, and said that the Pentagon saved billions of dollars last fiscal year by "optimizing" the civilian workforce and making other budget cuts.
"I'm glad our bosses are also putting on the pressure," Feinberg said. "We have to perform."