# Alex Harstrick **Alexander "Alex" Harstrick** is co-founder and managing partner of [[J2 Ventures]], a dual-use venture capital firm investing at the intersection of commercial technology and U.S. national security. He is a frequent CNBC commentator on defense tech and "AI-driven war." His career arc is the reason he's on the radar: he began as a healthcare investor at Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, then took a sabbatical to enlist in the Army Reserve, commissioning as an intelligence officer and deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan with a special-operations joint task force. While serving, he was recruited into the Pentagon's [[Defense Innovation Unit]], where he helped lead the National Security Innovation Capital practice and steered roughly $2B in defense funding to startups. After a brief stint at KKR, he co-founded J2. He remains an Army reservist. ## RWKB Relevance Harstrick is a textbook case of the government-to-private-defense-capital revolving door this site tracks across the [[American Dynamism]] and [[Defense Innovation Unit]] ecosystems. Through [[J2 Ventures]], his portfolio shares cap tables with [[Andreessen Horowitz]] ([[Marc Andreessen]]'s firm), the main concrete tie to figures covered elsewhere on this site. As of June 2026 no partisan/right-wing political alignment or Trump-world ties have surfaced — he and J2 present as establishment/centrist national-security investors rather than ideological actors. Flag for re-evaluation if a political tie emerges. This is a stub — expand with biography details, public statements, and any contract/conflict overlap tied to J2 portfolio companies.