Drew FitzGerald

Drew FitzGerald reports for the Wall Street Journal on the business and technology of aerospace, defense and critical communications networks. His coverage follows how government demand, corporate strategy and infrastructure investment shape the companies that build weapons, launch rockets and run telecom systems. He treats national security and connectivity as industrial systems, focusing on capacity, financing and regulation rather than product launches. That mix of defense manufacturing detail, financial stakes and policy conflict marks his work out from more general technology coverage.

Defense Industry, Missile Production and Labor

FitzGerald devotes significant attention to the defense industrial base and the question of whether it can meet modern demand for weapons and aerospace hardware. He has co-written pieces on missile factories and other facilities that have struggled with underinvestment and inconsistent contracting even as they are asked to refill U.S. stockpiles, explaining how production bottlenecks and long lead times clash with wartime needs.

His reporting on a private-equity-backed missile startup shows him tracking how new firms such as Castelion position themselves within that supply chain and attract billion-dollar rounds of capital from investors like Carlyle.

He also follows labor negotiations inside major aerospace employers, detailing how engineers and technicians at companies such as Boeing weigh wage increases and contract terms against the risk of strikes that could disrupt fragile recoveries in aircraft manufacturing. Across these stories he links boardroom decisions, union dynamics and procurement timelines, giving a clear view of how industrial capacity is built, financed and constrained.

National Security Finance and Silicon Valley Defense

A recurring thread in FitzGerald’s coverage is the flow of money into national security projects and the emergence of tech-sector contractors alongside traditional defense firms.

He has reported on a Pentagon office offering pay packages around $400,000 to attract Wall Street bankers as it prepares to lend more than $200 billion to shore up defense manufacturing, laying out how the government is trying to rewire financing for critical suppliers. He tracks newer contractors such as Anduril Industries, Palantir Technologies and Epirus as they pitch autonomous systems and missile-defense platforms, examining how they leverage Silicon Valley methods and their growing influence in Washington.

FitzGerald’s work on cyber campaigns like the “Typhoon” attacks against U.S. infrastructure and telecoms ties software, espionage and physical networks together, showing how intruders position themselves to disrupt response and sow chaos in a conflict. In audio reporting on SpaceX, he has explored how a once-niche launch startup became a dominant provider of government space services and built classified offerings such as Starshield for national security missions, highlighting the dependence of military and intelligence customers on a single commercial operator.

These stories share a focus on the intersection of technology entrepreneurship, government contracts and long-term strategic risk.

Telecom Networks, 5G Rollout and Media Deals

Before moving into aerospace and defense, FitzGerald built a deep portfolio on telecommunications, media and the internet, and he continues to draw on that expertise.

His reporting has followed AT&T’s purchase and later unwinding of Time Warner, explaining how a big bet on Hollywood led to heavy debt loads and a retreat from the media business. He has chronicled repeated attempts to merge DirecTV and Dish Network, the competitive pressures buffeting the pay-TV industry, and how streaming and on-demand services shift scale and bargaining power between distributors and content owners. FitzGerald has written extensively about T-Mobile’s bid for Sprint and subsequent performance, analyzing subscriber growth, investor expectations and the competitive dynamics among wireless providers.

On the network side, he has covered the roadblocks hindering 5G deployment, the fight over U.S. 5G rollout near airports and aviation regulators’ concerns about interference with aircraft systems, making technical spectrum debates intelligible through their impact on carriers and travelers.

His work has also examined attempts to regulate internet providers like utilities and high-profile legal decisions that curtailed federal agencies’ powers over broadband, underlining the stakes for both companies and consumers. This combination of deal coverage, regulatory scrutiny and network engineering detail gives his telecom pieces a structural, rather than gadget-focused, perspective.

Regulators, Policy Makers and Corporate Power

Across beats, FitzGerald pays close attention to the regulators and officials who shape corporate options in telecom and defense.

He has profiled figures such as Federal Communications Commission member Brendan Carr, showing how public-facing tactics and cell-tower visits helped elevate a regulator into a leading player in communications policy. His coverage of appeals-court rulings on net neutrality and other cases has parsed how legal interpretations can abruptly redefine the limits of federal oversight of internet providers. In national security stories, he connects Pentagon hiring plans, Office of Strategic Capital lending programs and classified contracting with broader questions about government reliance on a small number of private suppliers for critical capabilities.

FitzGerald’s reporting consistently situates company moves - whether a merger decision, a capacity expansion or a lobbying push - within the constraints and incentives set by agencies and courts, making policy risk a central part of his technology beat.