Pentagon Builds Secret Tech Sabotage Office Targeting Rival Defense Supply Chains

On October 22, 2026, Politico revealed that the US Department of Defense has spent months building a little-known agency designed to covertly disrupt foreign technology programs that Washington sees as threats to American military superiority. The unit, called the Technology Support Office or TSO, was formally created in April 2026, yet Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other senior Pentagon officials have never mentioned it in public. Its name appears almost nowhere on Pentagon websites and surfaces only in a handful of internal historical records and memoranda.

The report, written by John Sakellariadis, Jack Detsch and Paul McLeary, is based on interviews with 12 current and former US national security officials. Some of them helped set up the office or worked alongside it, others attended briefings about it, and several were familiar with the older classified programs that were folded into it. The Pentagon rejected the story on the day it was published, with Deputy Press Secretary Jacob Bliss saying the questions were built on untrue claims spread by sources who were either misinformed or deliberately misleading. The White House did not comment.

The idea of a dedicated sabotage agency had been circulating inside the Pentagon for more than a year. In early 2025, staff in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security began drafting a white paper on how to scale up two classified programs that had been running smaller technology sabotage efforts since 2023. The paper, completed in the fall of 2025, considered placing both programs under US Cyber Command but finally recommended merging them into a new agency with its own budget and purchasing powers. According to the officials, this structure would allow the office to bring in commercial technology faster and to rank foreign weapons programs by the level of threat they pose across the entire US military.

On April 14, 2026, Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg signed the memo that established TSO and placed it under the authority of the Under Secretary for Intelligence and Security, a post held by Bradley Hansell since his Senate confirmation in July 2025. Feinberg, a private equity billionaire who chaired the White House Intelligence Advisory Board during Donald Trump's first term, led the push to create the office. He was supported by his senior adviser Tom Rakusan, a long-serving veteran of the CIA's clandestine service who later focused on emerging technology at Feinberg's former investment firm. Because the agency was largely assembled by reorganizing existing programs, it could be set up quickly and without outside attention.

During the summer of 2026, the Pentagon appointed Grant Hundley, a former Marine Corps special operations officer, as director of TSO. William Nelson, a career Army official who most recently served at Army Futures Command, was named Director of Intelligence for Sensitive Activities and Special Programs and now shares internal oversight of the office with Hansell.

TSO does not have the legal authority to carry out clandestine operations on its own. It works instead with senior military and intelligence officers, designing tools and plans that those partners can use under their own authorities and approval procedures. Its staff of engineers, special operators and intelligence officers works on projects ranging from custom hacking tools to elaborate deception schemes intended to lead adversaries into fitting faulty components, probably designed by TSO itself, into key weapons systems. A former intelligence official who worked closely with the office described its main goal as an effort to "buy time or stop adversaries from developing technologies" that would most endanger US forces in a major conflict.

For anyone tracking supply chain risk, this is the most significant part of the story. According to Politico, the creation of a dedicated agency signals that the Pentagon intends to expand a range of aggressive covert activities abroad, potentially including cyberattacks, supply chain disruptions and disinformation operations. Tampering with parts before they reach a production line is one of the hardest threats to detect, because it exploits the trust that manufacturers place in their suppliers, distributors and contract manufacturers. The officials who support the project argue that rival powers are using artificial intelligence and off-the-shelf commercial technology such as drones in inventive ways that could erode the American military edge, which makes the electronics and components feeding those programs natural targets.

The practical consequences could reach well beyond the targeted countries. Defense manufacturers in rival nations are likely to tighten supplier audits, test incoming components more aggressively and push even harder for domestic production of sensitive parts. Distributors, electronics brokers and contract manufacturers in third countries that sell dual-use parts may face closer scrutiny from buyers who fear that shipments passing through their hands have been compromised. The move also gives Washington a permanent structure for the kind of gray-zone pressure that Europe has experienced in recent years through sabotage incidents that Western governments attribute to Russia, this time focused squarely on technology.

The size of the TSO budget remains unclear, and it is not known whether the office has already signed new contracts. Two former officials said the agency has told some defense contractors that it is interested in offensive hacking capabilities, and a former senior Pentagon intelligence official estimated that the budget for classified contracts alone probably exceeds $1.5 billion. The office is reportedly looking for companies working at the leading edge of technology. Beyond offensive work, TSO is also expected to coordinate the use of technology across many separate intelligence programs and to reduce paperwork for contractors, notably by building a central catalog of approved commercial AI and technology tools that can be used on classified projects.

The rise of this new power center has caused friction inside the Department of Defense. Special Operations Command and US Cyber Command both opposed the creation of TSO because they feared it would cut into their budgets. Two former intelligence officials told Politico that tensions over the office partly explain the recent departure of Khoi Nguyen, Cyber Command's chief acquisition officer, who oversaw the purchase of advanced hacking tools. One former senior official also described TSO as part of a wider effort by Pentagon leadership to centralize control over the department's intelligence programs.

Oversight is the other major concern raised by the report. Several of the officials who support the mission worry that the secrecy surrounding the office could encourage operations that break international law or allow valuable classified contracts to be steered toward political allies. The Pentagon recently briefed some congressional officials on its plans, but only a small number of staffers have been read in on the program, which could make it harder for lawmakers to spot any wrongdoing in its operations or contracting. Responding to these concerns, the Pentagon said it values its working relationship with Congress and will keep providing information to the relevant committees.

Democrats have also focused on potential conflicts of interest, because the private equity and venture capital firms Feinberg led before joining the government hold large stakes in defense technology companies competing for Pentagon contracts. Skeptics also point to other initiatives launched by Hegseth and Feinberg, such as Project Meridian, a commission led by Elon Musk and Palmer Luckey. The Pentagon dismissed these concerns as baseless, stating that it applies a strict ethics framework including financial disclosure reviews, divestitures and conflict screening. Some sources said they were reassured by the involvement of career officials such as Nelson and Rakusan, whom they described as experienced professionals able to resist political pressure.

As of October 23, 2026, the Pentagon has neither confirmed the existence of TSO nor said whether it will request additional funding or seek long-term authorization from Congress. The Politico report arrived shortly after the Washington Post described a separate plan to expand deep-cover intelligence operations aimed at waging economic warfare against China and other competitors, an effort that is also reportedly overseen by Rakusan. The Pentagon has pushed back on both reports. Whatever the official position, the revelations suggest that covert interference in foreign technology and component supply chains is becoming an organized and funded part of US defense strategy, a development that defense manufacturers and component suppliers worldwide will need to factor into their risk assessments.