The New York Times is reporting Erik Prince, the founder of the now-defunct mercenary firm Blackwater, and billionaire Stephen Feinberg, owner of military contractor DynCorp, developed proposals for the Trump administration to use more private military contractors in Afghanistan, rather than deploy thousands more U.S. troops, as the Pentagon has requested. Prince, who is also the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and Feinberg developed the proposals at the request of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Trump’s chief strategist Stephen Bannon. The proposal represents an obvious conflict of interest, given that both Prince and Feinberg profit off the use of private military contractors in U.S. wars. The State Department has already paid DynCorp $2.5 billion for its military contracting work in Afghanistan.