A ProPublica investigation has found that a senior White House adviser personally directed the Pentagon to issue its largest-ever strategic loan to a start-up in which Donald Trump Jr. had quietly taken an undisclosed stake just three months earlier.
Vulcan Elements, a North Carolina rare-earth magnet company founded in 2023 by a Harvard Business School student and employing roughly 30 people, received a conditional Pentagon loan of £477 million ($620 million) in November 2025. The money was the largest single commitment ever made by the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital. According to ProPublica's investigation, published 28 May 2026 and based on Defence Department records and interviews with multiple Pentagon officials, the deal was not initiated through any standard application or review process.
