DOD Contractor Hires Trump-Aligned Lobbyists to Tackle DOGE

A Pentagon cybersecurity contractor recently hired Trump-aligned lobbying firm Ballard Partners for “assistance navigating the Department of Defense and DOGE,” according to a February 6, 2025, lobbying disclosure. 

It’s one of the first explicit references to the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort in federal lobbying disclosures.  

Ballard Partners was founded by Brian Ballard, who’s backed Trump since before he won his first presidential election in 2016. Trump’s current White House chief of staff is Susie Wiles, a former lobbyist in Ballard’s firm who helped launch its Washington, DC, office. The three registered lobbyists for Zscaler, the San Jose-based cybersecurity contractor that hired Ballard, are Brian Ballard himself, former Representative Jeff Miller (R-FL), and Adrian Lukis, a former chief of staff to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Zscaler is among a slew of new clients for Ballard Partners.

This latest development serves as a data point showing DOGE poses a new opportunity for lobbyists, whose clients are either worrying about the new department’s impacts on their operations or who see the potential for opportunities, especially for those who don’t currently have significant political clout.

DOGE is led by Musk, who poured over $250 million into efforts to support President Donald Trump’s reelection. 

President Trump’s executive order creating DOGE says its purpose is “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity,” although its mandate has gone beyond that and involves shrinking the federal workforce. 

“Musk has shown us that he’s going after the weakest politically,” said Winslow Wheeler, who formerly worked for the Government Accountability Office and as a Senate staffer for lawmakers of both parties. (Wheeler also formerly led POGO’s Center for Defense Information.)

DOGE’s efforts may already be intersecting with cybersecurity contracts.

The services provided through contracts are a part of the federal government’s defenses against hacking and data breaches, and agencies are a frequent target. “Federal agencies reported 30,659 information security incidents to DHS’s United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team in fiscal year 2022,” according to a Government Accountability Office report last year. 

At the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, DOGE is reportedly poring over its finances looking for waste as the bureau’s acting head says some $100 million in contracts are slated to be canceled. The bureau’s cybersecurity contracts have not been placed on a list of “essential” contracts, meaning they are not shielded from potential cancellation, according to Bloomberg Law, raising concerns that they may be on the chopping block. 

Wheeler pointed to DOGE’s efforts at the bureau not to weigh in on the merits of cuts within that part of government, but to point out its “political vulnerability” with congressional Republicans.

Hiring lobbyists with Trump White House or other political ties is a way to bolster political clout. “All the major firms are trying to figure out the DOGE environment and will be asking for help from lobbying firms,” said James Thurber, a professor emeritus of government at American University and noted expert on lobbying. “Small firms may be more vulnerable because they do not have the resources nor contacts to protect their contracts.”

“Some of the DOGE proposed cuts seem almost random these past few days,” Thurber told POGO. “No matter what it is smart to hire professional lobbyists to help.”

It's not clear if Zscaler is hiring Ballard to defend its federal contracts from possible DOGE intervention or to make the case for expanding them. As the federal government encounters and has to defend against a wide array of cyber threats, Zscaler is a provider of a secure online platform that it is marketing to the Defense Department. A government spending website shows Zscaler with only one $200,617 federal contract with the Army, but the company’s engagement with the Pentagon goes back several years. Its work for the federal government may be obscured because a large contractor called Carahsoft acts as an information technology middle man between agencies and IT vendors, such as Zscaler. 

Neither Zscaler, Ballard Partners, nor Carahsoft responded to a request for comment. Federal News Network was the first to report on Zscaler’s hiring of Ballard Partners.

The Defense Department’s spending on cybersecurity and other information technology efforts have “consistently” accounted for 40% or more of all federal IT spending by the government, according to a 2024 Congressional Research Service report. Last year’s presidential budget request sought $14.5 billion for the Pentagon’s cyber efforts, which include cybersecurity. 

The market appears poised to grow. “Cyber capabilities will continue to be a crucial component of our national defense and, accordingly, a top priority within our budget,” a defense official told reporters last year. In his Senate confirmation questionnaire, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote, “If confirmed, I will ensure that appropriate resources and policy are committed to cyberspace.” Whether DOGE will ignore Pentagon cybersecurity efforts, embrace them, or put them under a critical microscope remains to be seen. (Critics have accused DOGE itself of creating cybersecurity vulnerabilities; a cybersecurity firm fired one DOGE team member for leaking “internal information.”) 

Regardless, DOGE’s work at the Defense Department, with a budget of $850 billion, has just begun. Last week, while visiting a U.S. base in Germany, Hegseth welcomed DOGE’s presence at the Defense Department. “There’s plenty of places where we want the keen eye of DOGE, but we’ll do it in coordination. We’re not going to do things that are to the detriment of American operational or tactical capabilities,” he said.

The Defense Department appears to have been preparing for DOGE. The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that parts of the Pentagon are preparing lists of savings for DOGE to examine for cuts, but noted that “any large cuts that take place, however, are likely to face opposition from both political parties.”

That raises the possibility that bigger programs, which could contain more waste, may be relatively more shielded from cuts due to their broader constituencies compared to smaller programs that may not have as many supporters.

Wheeler, the longtime former congressional investigator, told POGO that a “test” of DOGE at the Pentagon will be whether it meaningfully tackles the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, the cost of which is estimated to exceed $2 trillion over decades. Last fall, POGO revealed a previously classified Pentagon test report detailing numerous problems with the F-35 before it was approved for full-rate production in March of last year. After POGO’s release of the report, Musk posted that “in the name of all that is holy, let us stop the worst military value for money in history that is the F-35 program!”

Yet the program, led by defense behemoth Lockheed Martin, has suppliers and jobs spread across all 50 states and Puerto Rico — meaning it has a deep and broad well of leverage across Congress.

“If he doesn’t do anything about the F-35, it means the porkers, conventional wisdom, and business-as-usual types have got to him,” Wheeler said. “It remains to be seen what will happen.”