One of the earliest members of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is in the process of pivoting into his second act as a defense tech startup founder. Ethan Shaotran, one of the young engineers who formed the core of the group’s early strike force, is the founder of a new startup called Blitz Industries. The company’s website provides no information, but in an email viewed by WIRED, Shaotran describes Blitz as a “a defense company backed by big names.”
While at DOGE, Shaotran was part of the team that created a makeshift headquarters in the General Services Administration’s (GSA) offices before fanning out across the federal government. Shaotran, who left Harvard University during his senior year to join DOGE, appeared in multiple agencies, including the GSA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Social Security Administration, the US Postal Service, the US African Development Foundation, and the Inter-American Foundation. While Shaotran was at SSA, DOGE moved thousands of immigrants into the agency’s “Master Death File,” effectively shutting down their social security numbers and thereby removing their right to work or access government benefits.
Shaotran left the federal government in January, according to his LinkedIn, and is now based in Los Angeles. In his bio, Shaotran describes himself as “Harvard engineer, 4x patent inventor, and published researcher on autonomous systems.” He also writes, “Rapidly hiring!” in his bio.
The System for Award Management (SAM), the procurement website for the US government where most contractors and grantees are required to register, lists a company called “Blitz Industries, Inc.” as recently registered in the system, categorized under companies that do “Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (Except Nanotechnology and Biotechnology).” A source who formerly worked on SAM and spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, says that registration on the system is generally a precursor to receiving government contracts.
The address included in the registration is located in Hawthorne, California, across the street from the SpaceX headquarters. WIRED was able to identify a company called “Blitz Industries, Inc.” that was registered in Delaware on February 12, 2026, about a month after Shaotran left the federal government. Documents from the Delaware registration indicate an annual tax assessment of $176,986, and 25,000,000 authorized shares. There does not appear to be a registered California business entity, although the office’s physical address appears to be in that state.
It’s not clear if Shaotran has already procured contracts with the government, and he did not respond to a phone call requesting an interview about the company.
According to recent reporting from The Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon is expanding the pool of contractors it is willing to work with, opening the way for smaller, newer companies to access the hundreds of billions of dollars available in the defense budget. Venture funds poured over $49.1 billion into defense tech startups in 2025 alone. The powerful venture firm a16z, as part of its American Dynamism practice, has heavily invested in defense startups. In March 2025, the firm posted a primer on getting contracts with the Pentagon. Gavin Kliger, another young DOGE engineer, is now the chief data officer at the Department of Defense, where he will be overseeing the agency’s AI strategy.
Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, says that while the US government has the capacity to innovate as quickly and broadly as private businesses, particularly around weapons and military innovation, he has his suspicions about a company led by a former DOGE member.
“It sort of feels like they're turning the government into a hacker house, where people come in, spend a little time, then go back out and build the startup that they can then monetize based on their experience in government,” says Moynihan. “I think that's probably going to be profitable for some people. It's not necessarily good for the US government, or for the public as a whole. I think it's certainly not the most efficient model for making government more effective, if you want to go back to the original mission of DOGE.”
Margaret Mullins, former senior adviser to the deputy secretary of defense in the Biden administration, says that private companies taking an interest in making money off the DOD’s massive budget is nothing new, but “what is most important is the government maintains the ability and the desire to set its own priorities and requirements, rather than conflating national security needs with what the private sector wants the national security needs to be.”
Shaotran is not the only former DOGE member to have entered the startup space after their time in government. Nate Cavanaugh and Justin Fox, who spearheaded the DOGE takeover of the US Institute of Peace, have also launched a new startup called Special. In a deposition in a lawsuit filed by the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association, and the Modern Language Association over DOGE’s dismantling of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Fox told interviewers, “We are buying businesses in senior care, adopting technology to pay the nurses and caregivers more so that the aging population has enough nurses to meet demand.” An early version of its website describes the company as “a technology investment platform” focused on crypto investments. Now, the site says that Special is a “holding company, building an AI operating system to transform critical American industries."
Two other DOGE members, Brooks Morgan and Adam Ramada, launched a Miami-based venture firm, and another DOGE member, Bridget Youngs, started a company to build large power transformers after leaving government.
Maddy Varner contributed reporting.
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