Oblong Media Global Intelligence.
In modern Washington, war is rarely only about missiles, soldiers and strategy. It is also about contracts, supply chains, venture capital, political access and those who stand close enough to power to profit from the machinery of conflict.
Independent reporting by Reuters, Associated Press and ABC News confirms that Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have become linked to a growing cluster of drone and defence technology investments at the same time the U.S. government is aggressively expanding drone procurement.
Reuters reported that Aureus Greenway, a golf club company backed by the Trump sons, announced plans in March 2026 to merge with Powerus, a drone technology company, in a deal designed to take Powerus public. Reuters also reported that this followed Eric Trump’s investment in a $1.5 billion merger involving Israeli drone maker XTEND and Florida based JFB Construction Holdings.
The timing is politically sensitive. The Pentagon’s Drone Dominance Program is not a minor procurement exercise. A February 2026 Department of War release described it as a $1.1 billion programme aimed at rapidly fielding low cost one way attack drones at scale, with hundreds of thousands of weaponized drones expected by 2027. XTEND Reality Inc. was listed among the 25 vendors invited to compete in Phase I.
ABC News reported that the Trump administration’s December 2025 restrictions on foreign made drones and critical components created new opportunities for domestic drone firms. Dylan Hedtler Gaudette of the Project on Government Oversight told ABC that the deals “at a minimum present the appearance of impropriety,” warning that procurement officials would know which companies carried Trump-family connections.
The Associated Press went further into the conflict of interest question, reporting that Powerus, backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, was seeking to sell drone interceptors to Gulf countries while those countries were under Iranian attack and dependent on the U.S. military led by their father. Former White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter told AP that the arrangement creates the danger of a presidential family profiting from a war launched without congressional approval.
Powerus denies wrongdoing and presents itself as part of America’s urgent effort to catch up with Chinese and Russian drone capacity. Brett Velicovich, a Powerus co founder and Army veteran, told AP the company was demonstrating interceptor technology across the Middle East and argued that the drone arms race demands fast American manufacturing.
There is also a broader ecosystem at work. Powerus lists Brett Velicovich as president and COO, and General Keith Kellogg as a strategic adviser for national security and defence. The company’s own leadership page presents Kellogg as a retired three star general and former national security figure.
This is where the public interest question becomes unavoidable. Nobody has proven that the president personally directed contracts toward companies connected to his sons. But that is not the only standard by which democratic accountability should be judged. The issue is whether public policy, military escalation and private family investments have become dangerously entangled.
When the same political family sits near the commander in chief’s chair, the defence contracting pipeline, the drone manufacturing boom and foreign governments seeking protection, the appearance alone is corrosive. It tells the world that war can become a marketplace, and that those closest to power may be positioned to benefit first.
The Trump family insists there is no conflict. Yet the facts confirmed by independent media raise a serious question: in the new age of AI warfare and drone dominance, who is truly shaping national security policy military necessity, or private capital wearing the uniform of patriotism?
Oblong Media Global Intelligence
OBLONG MEDIA GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE 
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