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Tech execs are joining the Army — no grueling boot camp required
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Business Insider

The chief of staff of the US Army, Gen. Randy A. George, administering the oath of office to four new US Army lieutenant colonels, all tech leaders, during a ceremony at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Virginia on Friday. Leroy Council/US Army

Business Insider, June 17, 2025
Posted: July 7th, 2025
https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-execs-just-joined-the-a...

Four top tech execs from OpenAI, Meta, and Palantir have just joined the US Army. The Army Reserve has commissioned these senior tech leaders to serve as midlevel officers, skipping tradition to pursue transformation. The newcomers won't attend any current version of the military's most basic and ingrained rite of passage— boot camp. Instead, they'll be ushered in through express training that Army leaders are still hashing out, Col. Dave Butler ... said. The execs — Shyam Sankar, the chief technology officer of Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, the chief technology officer of Meta; Kevin Weil, the chief product officer at OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, an advisor at Thinking Machines Lab who was formerly the chief research officer for OpenAI — are joining the Army as lieutenant colonels. The name of their unit, "Detachment 201," is named for the "201" status code generated when a new resource is created for Hypertext Transfer Protocols in internet coding, Butler explained. "In this role they will work on targeted projects to help guide rapid and scalable tech solutions to complex problems," read the Army press release. "By bringing private-sector know-how into uniform, Det. 201 is supercharging efforts like the Army Transformation Initiative, which aims to make the force leaner, smarter, and more lethal." Lethality, a vague Pentagon buzzword, has been at the heart of the massive modernization and transformation effort the Army is undergoing.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and military corruption.


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