Feb. 2, 2026, 5:32 p.m. ET
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth traveled to one of Jeff Bezos’ space facilities in Florida on Feb. 2, as the military awards contracts to the owner of Blue Origin and other tech billionaires who have worked to burnish a chummy relationship with the Trump administration.
Hegseth’s visit is part of his “Arsenal of Freedom” speaking tour, part of his campaign to reform the Pentagon’s relationship with the “defense industrial base” – its system for handing out contracts to build weapons.
“We will unleash our companies, unleash industry, unleash the competitive spirit that allows America to come out on top,” Hegseth told the crowd.
“No more business as usual, which I know, Mr. Bezos, is music to your ears,” he said.
Bezos’ Blue Origin has become famous for offering pay-to-ride trips to space for ultrawealthy customers. But the company has also received billions of dollars in defense contracts to build high-tech projects such as nuclear-powered spacecraft, communication technology that uses space lasers and a processing facility for satellites.
The Pentagon and Blue Origin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hegseth tours Musk’s and Bezos’s rocket factories
Hegseth’s tour also included a Jan. 12 stop at a Texas facility of SpaceX, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, who has played an even larger role in the Trump administration as its former head of the Department of Government Efficiency. At Musk’s direction, the Department, abbreviated DOGE, took an axe to the federal government early last year, wiping out thousands of jobs and entire agencies.
“We want to have epic, futuristic spaceships with lots of people in them traveling to places we’ve never been to before,” Musk said as he introduced Hegseth on stage. “That’s the goal. And that’s what I think the public thinks of when they think of Space Force,” he added, touting the military’s space-focused branch.
During the visit, Hegseth also announced that Grok, the chatbot run by Musk-owned social media platform X, would be integrated into internal Pentagon systems. The AI chatbot has been embroiled in ongoing controversy over its generation of sexualized images of children on X.
Bezos and Musk, who both stand to profit handsomely from contracts worth billions of dollars, are among the tech tycoons who sidled up to Trump after he was elected to a second term. Both billionaires reportedly rushed to Mar-a-Lago to dine with Trump weeks before his inauguration, and Amazon, which Bezos owns, donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
After news outlets reported in April that Amazon would display the additional cost that Trump’s tariffs added to prices on its site, Trump called Bezos, and Amazon quickly backed down.
Greg Williams, director of the Project on Government Oversight’s Center for Defense Information, said the conflict of interest concerns precipitated by Hegseth’s speeches at SpaceX and Blue Origin were not “particularly novel,” and that the risk of corruption in the Pentagon’s dealings with defense contractors was “structural and unavoidable.”
But his presence is “calling attention to a situation of unprecedented conflict of interest” in the Trump administration.
Trump and his officials have come under continual scrutiny over their refusal to divest from for-profit companies and lucrative back-door deals with foreign officials. The Wall Street Journal reported in recent days that Emirati officials bought a large stake in Trump’s cryptocurrency company shortly before the administration granted the United Arab Emirates coveted American AI chips.
“In the Pentagon, many individual stakeholders and private entities are cultivating personal relationships with the president while they seek government contracts,” Williams said.
Amazon recently bought the rights to “Melania,” the newly released documentary about first lady Melania Trump, for $40 million, making it the most expensive documentary in history. Of that amount, $35 million was spent on promotion for the film, raising questions about whether the hefty sum was an attempt by Bezos and his company to curry favor with the president.
“By spending a tiny amount of money to buy the rights” to the Melania documentary, Bezos “potentially gets a much larger return” in the form of Blue Origin’s billions of dollars in defense contracts and other possible government windfalls, Williams said.
Musk’s SpaceX will see even more money pour in from defense contracts this year. Three days before Hegseth’s visit to SpaceX, the military’s Space Systems Command announced it had awarded the company another $739 million for missile warning and tracking systems. The company had already clinched the vast majority of launch contracts from Space Force for 2026. It won a $5.9 billion contract in April for Space Force launches through 2029. (Blue Origin won $2.3 billion in the same tranche.)
Musk’s companies have been bolstered by around $38 billion in government contracts and subsidies, according to the Washington Post. The full scope of Bezos’ and Musk’s defense contracts is unknown, since some of the deals are classified.
As Musk’s aides fired thousands of workers and seized Americans’ sensitive personal data last year, Hegseth welcomed DOGE to the Pentagon to continue its stated mission of cutting wasteful spending.
Nevertheless, the total savings from that effort came to just $6 billion in this year’s defense budget. By comparison, this fiscal year’s defense budget is an unprecedented $1 trillion and Trump said he would ask for $1.5 trillion for next year, a 50% leap.
