<p>In this special bonus episode from The Financial Times, "The Broker" tells the story of how a failed baseball hopeful and disgraced stockbroker reinvented himself as one of America’s most consequential modern arms dealers.</p><br><p>From a family-run warehouse in Virginia Beach, Will Somerindyke built his company into a crucial conduit in the Pentagon’s covert supply chains — sourcing Soviet-era weapons for wars in Syria and Yemen before emerging as a central player in Ukraine’s fight against Russia.</p><br><p>As artillery shells became the most sought-after commodity of the war, he placed a multimillion-dollar bet on reviving crumbling Cold War factories in the Balkans, transforming himself from middleman to manufacturer.</p><br><p>Based on months of reporting, The Broker traces Somerindyke’s rise through the shadow world of privatised warfare — where geopolitics, profit and personal ambition collide — and reveals how modern conflicts are sustained not only by soldiers on the front lines, but by entrepreneurs who move the weapons behind the scenes.</p><br><p><strong>This piece, written by&nbsp;the&nbsp;FT’s Miles Johnson, host of Hot Money Season 2: The New Narcos, was&nbsp;</strong><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/d7f95899-d634-43c9-adac-da8da67f3cdb" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>originally printed</strong></a><strong>&nbsp;in FT Weekend.</strong></p><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>