Hegeth's Venmo Shows Ties to Peter Thiel's Military-Industrial Complex 2.0

Former Fox News weekend host was in Brussels meeting with NATO leaders and said the alliance needs to be a "stronger, more lethal force."

Pete Hegseth, the new head of the Pentagon who once hit a West Point drummer with an axe while being a clown on Fox News, has a Venmo account that shows close ties to members of the military-industrial-complex 2.0—from Palantir to Anduril — companies already with deep ties to President Donald Trump and his administration.

The American Prospect reported last week that key concerns about possible conflicts of interest were hardly raised during his hearings in Washington after it was revealed contacts in his phone with ties to emerging companies vying for Defense Department dollars.

Venmo is an app similar to a public ledger of financial transactions. The report said individuals on his phone included “tech-centric defense contractors hailing from Silicon Valley.”

The potential conflict of interest is even more apparent given that Hegseth’s deputy is Stephen Feinberg, a billionaire investor who has backed tech start-ups with Defense Department contracts through his firm Cerberus Capital Management.

The American Prospect’s report noted that Hegseth’s contacts included officials with Peter Thiel’s Palantir and Trae Stephens’s Anduril Industries. (Stephens worked for Palantir before starting his own company and is a member of Thiel’s Founders Fund.)