The Army commissioned four executives from high-tech companies, including Palantir, Meta and Openai, as reserves for the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
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- Three of the four high-tech executives represent companies with military contracts totaling over $1 billion.
WASHINGTON — When the Army announced it would delegate four executives from some of Silicon Valley’s top technology giants as lieutenant colonels in reserves, critics said they could use insider positions to win favorable military contracts for employers.
Currently, one of the Army and executives says Tech is not even part of the challenge.
“What I’m working on is actually nothing to do directly with technology or AI,” Shyam Sankar, chief technology officer at data analytics giant Palantir, told USA Today. Sankar said he will focus on recruitment and “talent.” Palantir has a hundred million dollars of Pentagon technology contract.
“I need to address the lack of conflict as determined by my lawyer,” Sankar said on July 7th.
According to Army spokesman Major General Matthew Visser, three other technical executives are working on subjects such as “autonomy,” “human performance,” and “organisational organic industrial base.”
“Put them inside.”
The Army says four executives — Sankar of Palantir, Andrew Bosworth of Meta, Kevin Weil of Openai and Bob McGrew of AI startup thinking agency — will be well positioned as Army officers to address large-scale issues.
Military personnel in preparation will participate in the military department. Most of them have other jobs, working one week a month and two weeks a year.
However, the Army implies that four people in particular were brought in last month to lend technical expertise.
“They have this sixth feeling,” Army spokesman Steve Warren said of the four newly created lieutenant colonels. “It helps these people think about how they use things like AI and Bleeding Edge Technologies in different ways.”
Warren said the Army will provide “advice” and “insights” when it receives a bottom overhaul from the top, known as the “Army Transformation Initiative.”
The initiative, kickstarted by Defense Secretary Pete Hegses in May, will reduce “outdated equipment” like some ground vehicles and prioritize high-tech gadgets such as drones and AI. Hegseth’s memo will instruct the Army to “enable AI-driven command and control” across headquarters by 2027, and by 2026, it will lead field drones in all departments.
Critics say bringing in technical executives is an ethical minefield.
In combination, executive companies hold over $1 billion in military contracts. Palantir, who compiled personal data from Americans and scrutinized reports of investigating potential immigration targets, was awarded a $795 million contract in May by the Army. The company’s Pentagon contracts are primarily intended to design AI systems that calculate large amounts of data to create potential strike targets.
Meta announced the same month that was tapped to build virtual reality headsets for Army soldiers, and the Open won a $200 million contract in June to develop the Army’s artificial intelligence. There are no army contracts only in Thinking Machine Lab. According to his LinkedIn profile, McGrew previously worked stints for both Openai and Palantir.
“Obviously, they have a blatant conflict of interest,” said Dru Brenner-Beck, a retired lieutenant colonel and Army lawyer who served as the assistant general counsel for the Army inspector.
“If I were one of those competitors in these particular organizations, I would certainly have questions,” Brenner Beck said.
Sankar said he first pitched his desire to join a year and a half ago, and personally recruited the other three for the effort. He spoke with multiple services, but because of his “state of mind” he landed in the army. Motivation: He said there is pure patriotism and desire to help the military succeed.
“They are patriots. They see what’s going on in the country,” Sankar said of his technical brother. Of the critics, he said, “It’s amazing how cynical I’ve been on the eve of the 250th anniversary (in the United States).”
It is very common for external experts to bring and advise to the military, so “highly qualified experts” who have their own title within the Pentagon.
In the rank of lieutenant colonels who directly entrust them to military roles and usually takes about 17 years to achieve, this is not the case.
“Part of that is putting them inside,” Warren said of the decision to give them four army ranks. “We want them to invest.”
Hegus and China
The Army says the four-man corporate bond is less problematic than other reserve officers. Like other reserves, technical executives had to fill out a form declaring potential conflicts of interest. These forms are reviewed by military lawyers and the military may order the military to sell from stocks or investments that may be exposed to military services.
The four will arrive at Fort Benning, Georgia for their first training by the end of July, where they will be taught the basics of being a “salute hand” and other officer, Warren said. According to Major General Visser, they are subject to the same physical fitness standards and will undergo the required tests from other reserve officers.
The commission of businessmen to the Army is not unprecedented. During World War II, the US economy moved to High Gear to support war efforts, so some industry leaders were commissioned directly to the military, such as General Motors President William Knudsen, who was appointed in 1942 with a much higher rank of general generals.
Sankar argues that China poses equal or greater threats to what the US faced during World War II and the Cold War. This is a view that has been approved by Hegus and his inner circle. According to Hegseth, that belief also droops behind the Army Transformation Initiative, which aims to “deter China.”
Skeptics say it is the tail that waves the dog.
As evidenced by the new high-tech officers, the shift is “undriven by the military needs by the incredible AI hype produced by those companies to which they belong,” said Shannon Frenchman, a professor of ethics at Case Western Reserve University, who taught military ethics for 11 years at the U.S. Navy Academy.
The increasing overlap between arms makers and companies with vast surveillance capabilities has sparked wider public interest, and the movement to dismantle Trump’s AI regulations and the relationship with some of the wealthiest executives with President Donald Trump’s Silicon Valley executives – most notably the most notable mask, the Trump efforts, which destroyed the government, but has since been explosively destroyed.
