Pentagon's "Deal Team Six" has big-money ambitions
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The director of the Pentagon's Economic Defense Unit has heard your "Deal Team Six" jokes. He thinks the nickname is both fun and fitting.
- "Economic warfare has been a part of all successful nations for thousands of years," George Kollitides, who's months into the job, told Axios at the Milken Institute Global Conference in California.
The big picture: Dealmaking is synonymous with national security. There is no missile production, no shipbuilding, no crazy venture valuations, no European rearmament and no American reindustrialization without it.
- Inside the EDU, markets and investments are a domain just like land and sea.
State of play: The unit is relatively new, mentioned first, perhaps, in a November acquisitions-reform memo. It was allocated hundreds of millions of dollars in the fiscal 2027 budget blueprint, which totaled $1.5 trillion.
- Kollitides said the money would be spent motivating defense contractor output, studying what the U.S. lacks, doing due diligence, hiring experts and conducting "sensitive activities" that he declined to further detail.
- "We're trying to accomplish a lot," he said.
- "POTUS has made it clear that he thinks taxpayers should be getting a good deal and that government should not just be giving the money away."
Zoom out: Trump 2.0's Pentagon is peppered with businesspeople. That includes Deputy Secretary Steve Feinberg, with whom Kollitides has worked closely for years, and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll.
- Up until last month, the list also included John Phelan.
What we're watching: Where and how American and Chinese economic influence collide. Washington for years outsourced manufacturing and labor. Meanwhile, Beijing extended its tendrils via the Belt and Road Initiative.
- "Our primary adversary has been successfully waging economic warfare against us for close to 30 years now," Kollitides said.
Go deeper: Defense contractors sidestep Trump chatter of partial ownership
