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Trinity Audioplayer ready...By Nick Wadhams, Bloomberg Billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, the one-time Democratic supporter who switched his allegiance to [Donald Trump](/tag/Donald Trump/), got a spot with several other prominent Republican politicians and former officials on a top Pentagon advisory board.
The Defense Policy Board will be led by Robert Lighthizer, who served as Trump’s trade representative during his first administration, the Pentagon announced Monday. A fellow Republican convert, former Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, will be its vice chairman.
The Pentagon declined to comment on the decision-making process behind the board’s new appointees. Andreessen’s firm, Andreessen Horowitz, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday evening.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth disbanded the previous board several weeks after Trump took office in January 2025, an unsurprising move given that Obama and Biden era officials including Susan Rice and Colin Kahl were among its members.
The group also came into the crosshairs of Elon Musk, who as the head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency said a “reset was needed.”
Andreessen’s firm is a major investor in dozens of defense tech startups including SpaceX, Anduril Industries, Inc. and others that count the Defense Department as a major customer. His place on the board offers further evidence of the deepening ties between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley, where startups and major players alike have shed a historical aversion to defense work to become major recipients of weapons contracts.
That’s been accompanied by a broader rightward tilt among tech titans and venture capitalists including Andreessen, who has emerged as an increasingly vocal Trump backer and adviser in the president’s second term.
Others on the board include former Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters, Michael Anton, former director of the State Department’s policy planning office, and Michael Pillsbury, who led the board during Trump’s first term. It has no decision-making authority but is tasked with giving advice to the defense secretary and other top officials.
“It focuses on matters pertaining to strategic planning, the policy implications of US force structure and modernization, regional defense policies, and other defense policy and national security issues of special interest to the department,” according to a statement from the Pentagon.
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