According to a lengthy report by the New York Times, President Trump’s decision on June 22 to authorize airstrikes at nuclear sites across Iran was influenced in part by Fox News. For days, Trump was fed a steady diet of pro-war personalities on the cable channel, such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, and hardline anti-Iran congressional hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
However, according to an RS analysis, many other Fox guests were funded by the defense industry, which absolutely stood to gain from the shift to a hot war between Israel and the U.S. and Iran. One by one, these guests lined up on White House TV screens to praise Israel’s strikes and urge further U.S. involvement. As Palantir Founder and CEO Alex Karp put it bluntly back in 2022, “bad times are very good for Palantir.” Of course, many of these conflicts of interest were not disclosed on air.
One of Karp’s employees, former Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), appeared on Fox praising Israel’s war campaign against Iran. “I think beyond the physical destruction that Israel’s attacks have imposed, there is a sort of mental destruction underway, right? Taking out key leadership in the IRGC, taking out 8 of the 13 top Iranian scientists,” he said in a reference to the assassination of senior officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “I do think we’ve set the nuclear program back, but this is the early stage of what will be a multi-phase complex back and forth, and [it is] important that we, America, stand firmly behind our closest ally in the Middle East, Israel.”
Gallagher is now the head of defense at Palantir, a military contractor that provides AI-enabled targeting capabilities. Last year Palantir signed an agreement with the Israeli Ministry of Defense to “harness Palantir’s advanced technology in support of war-related missions.”
Fox News contributor Gen. Jack Keane (ret.) also made several appearances to discuss the war, making the case for using B-2s and bunker-buster bombs in Iran. Keane was quick to rule out alternatives. “There are options that the Israelis have,” he said, “but none of those options are as good as the option that we have.”
Keane, a prominent champion of the “surge” of U.S. forces in Iraq 17 years ago, is a former member of the board at General Dynamics, and his think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, receives funding from the company. According to his last SEC filing in 2018, Keane owned over 14,000 shares of General Dynamics stock, over $4 million in today’s value (it’s unclear how much of that, if any, he still owns today).
A General Dynamics' Ohio class submarine, likely the USS Georgia, played a role in the U.S. attack on Iran, launching more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles at targets in Iran. Secretary of the Navy John Phelan told lawmakers that the submarine “performed exceptionally, causing significant damage to Iran’s nuclear capacity” in the attack on Iran.
Former CIA Director David Petraeus also appeared on Fox News several times before and after the U.S. strike. On June 17, Petraeus told Fox anchor Martha MacCallum that the president has two choices. “One is to amplify the ultimatum he has already given of unconditional surrender and say…you agree to give up all of your nuclear enterprise, there’s going to be no negotiations about whatsoever, and to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to have complete inspection rights, or we’re going to take out the Fordow reactor enrichment complex.”
Petraeus is a partner at KKR, a private equity firm that is a major investor in the largest property management platform in Israel, Guesty, and owns or invests in many defense companies, including Israeli cybersecurity firms. Petraeus is also a strategic adviser for Israeli-founded cybersecurity firm Semperis.
Brian Hook, vice chairman for global investments at the defense-focused private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management who headed Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran during Trump’s first term, also appeared on Fox News in the days leading up to the U.S. strikes. “They’ve [Israel] been bombing the facilities that do nuclear research. And I think that campaign is going to continue. As I said, it’s multifaceted and it has been plotted for years, and Israel has now sprung the mousetrap,” he said.
Among other investments, Cerberus owns a hypersonics company and a private military company that trained the assassins of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Of course, many of the loudest pro-war voices on Fox — such as Sean Hannity and Mark Levin — do not work for the defense industry. And others simply do not disclose anything publicly about their funding so we can’t always know.
Long-time Iraq hawk Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, made ten appearances on Fox News, Fox Business, and LiveNOW from Fox in between Israel’s strikes on Iran and the U.S. decision to directly join the war. Dubowitz spent his airtime calling on President Trump to dismantle Iran’s nuclear facilities. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies does not disclose its funding sources.
On June 23, Trump announced a ceasefire between Iran and Israel, though it remains to be seen whether the parties will uphold the agreement. The pro-war onslaught on Fox throughout the war was relentless, with prominent right-wing dissenters such as Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson nowhere to be found. Some Trump advisers privately lamented that high-profile dissenters like Carlson were absent from Fox’s coverage because it meant “Trump was not hearing much of the other side of the debate.” Carlson said it “feels like Fox is playing a central role in the pro-war push,” calling his former employer “warmongers.”
This is not the first time military contractors took to media airwaves to push for war. Before invading Iraq in 2003, the U.S. government embarked on a “meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein.”
Unbeknownst to the public at the time, military contractors helped out with the media push. Former Gen. Barry McCaffrey (ret.) consistently appeared on major networks while serving on the board of DynCorp, a military contractor that trained Iraqi security forces. Initially, he described the Iraqi Security Forces as “badly equipped, badly trained, politically unreliable.” Once he joined Dyncorp’s board, he changed his tune, telling MSNBC’s Brian Williams that “the Iraqi security forces are real.” Dyncorp’s stock went up 87 percent that year, despite reports of ineffective training.
Today, cable viewers are still being fed modern-day McCaffreys, blurring the lines between public and private interest and leaving us with the same question: whose war is this really, and who stands to profit?
