Army bringing in big tech executives as lieutenant colonels

[Pluvious]

These are some significantly profound changes going on

It's like things are beginning to snowball

It seems there's no predicting how this plays out

Four senior executives of tech giants like Meta and Palantir are being sworn into the Army Reserve as direct-commissioned officers at the unusually high rank of lieutenant colonel as part of a new program to recruit private-sector experts to speed up tech adoption.

The Army calls the program to recruit Silicon Valley executives Detachment 201: The Army’s Executive Innovation Corps.

...

The Reserve’s new lieutenant colonels are Shyam Sankar, chief technology officer for Palantir; Bosworth, chief technology officer of Meta; Kevin Weil, chief product officer of OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, an advisor at Thinking Machines Lab and former chief research officer for OpenAI. Each of the four, who were set to be sworn in Friday, arrive with decades of experience in some of Silicon Valley’s largest and most innovative companies, and with levels of extraordinary personal wealth that careers in the industry often amass.

The Detachment 201 program is aimed at bringing in part-time advisors from the private sector to help the service adopt and scale commercial technology like drones and robots into its formations. The idea of incorporating private-sector expertise is right out of Ukraine as soldiers there who are engineers or computer scientists in their day jobs are MacGyvering makeshift drones or 3D printing parts to use on the front lines against Russia.

https://taskandpurpose.com/military-life/army-reserve-lt-col-tech-execs/

[Marcuse]

1. Presumably they passed the loyalty test.

[Metaphorical]

2. Not all THAT surprising

Experienced doctors are routinely brought into the military at Major or LC ranks, typically because people with both military leadership and technical/medical skills at that level are VERY rare. Now, personally, I think most senior tech management in the AI space are probably not worth it, but given everything else going on, I'm just surprised they're not handing out OC6 or 7 ranks.

[usonian]

3. Veterans will tell you ...

Military personnel have limited rights, and follow the UCMJ. (1)

Good frickin luck with your grift and shenanigans.

(1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Code_of_Military_Justice
https://ucmj.us/

"Libertarians" got to learn to salute and obey those of higher rank. See you in the brig, wise-ass.

[Baitball Blogger]

4. What a slap in the face for all Lieutenant Colonels.

[Blue Dotty]

5. Oligarch Army n/t

[RandomNumbers]

6. Also posted about it here

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220395031

Links to LinkedIn post (interesting comments on that one, considering the commenters are on professional profiles they are quite outspoken), and Army press release about it.