Five defense execs to advise White House on post-COVID economic restart

Five defense industry CEOs will join 200 other business leaders that President Trump plans to consult with on restarting a coronavirus-hit economy.

The White House on Tuesday unveiled a list of around 200 chief executives and other business leaders who President Trump plans to consult with on restarting a coronavirus-hit economy.

Executives in one of the 17 so-called “Great American Economic Revival Industry Groups” broken out by sector will take part in conference calls with the Trump administration over the coming weeks to help formulate plans to open the economy again after the COVID-19 pandemic subsides.

Five CEOs will form the defense group: Marillyn Hewson of Lockheed Martin, Phebe Novakovic of General Dynamics, Kathy Warden of Northrop Grumman, Greg Hayes of the just-launched Raytheon Technologies, and Darius Adamczyk of Honeywell.

Trump has both touted increasing defense spending as a priority and frequently met with industry executives over the course of his presidency.

CEOs from the technology and telecommunications sectors who will be part of the groups include Tim Cook of Apple, Sundar Pichi of Google parent Alphabet, Larry Ellison and Safra Catz of Oracle, Marc Benioff of Salesforce, Jennifer Morgan of SAP, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Arvind Krishna of IBM, Bob Swan of Intel, Chuck Robbins of Cisco, and Hans Vestberg of Verizon.