The investment broker for Hegseth, the Pentagon chief appointed by Trump and U.S. Secretary of Defense, attempted to buy millions of dollars worth of defense stock funds a few weeks before the airstrike on Iran. The trade ultimately did not go through because the fund was not yet listed on the platform at that time.

According to three sources familiar with the matter, FT reports that in February, the broker contacted BlackRock through Morgan Stanley to buy into a defense industrial ETF, which included holdings in Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Palantir.
The Pentagon called the report "completely false and fabricated," demanding a retraction but did not provide any evidence to counter it. FT did not report whether Hegseth himself was aware of this, nor did it confirm if the broker shifted to other defense targets.
However, even if the trade had gone through, it would likely have been a loss, as the ETF rose 28% over the past year but has fallen more than 13% since the outbreak of conflict.
By the way, last year, Hegseth leaked detailed deployment plans for a military strike on Yemen in a Signal group chat two hours in advance—targets, weapons, attack sequence—all shared openly in the group.