Silicon Valley Executives Join the Army as Officers. The men will get to skip the usual process of taking a Direct Commissioning Course and won’t need to complete the Army Fitness Test.
Silicon Valley Executives Join the Army as Officers. The men will get to skip the usual process of taking a Direct Commissioning Course and won’t need to complete the Army Fitness Test.
The tech industry is fully on board, but the rank and file won't have to do time as grunts.
The Army said in a press release that the four executives are Shyam Sankar, CTO at Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, CTO at Meta; Kevin Weil, Chief Product Officer of OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, an advisor at Thinking Machines Lab and former Chief Research Officer for OpenAI.
The four men are being commissioned at the high rank of lieutenant colonel as part of a program called Detachment 201: The Army’s Executive Innovation Corps.
Anyone else find this extremely worrying?
You definitely should be
It’s fucking terrifying
Sounds like those people are swearing fealty to their respective corporations and not the Constitution.
LOL might as well add the army to the list of products made even worse by tech enshittification
This Is the fascist fusion of corporation and state.
Technofascist oligarchs are being given military positions to convert the military and surveillance state into a big brother grade domestic secret police. I'm sure they'll be given command over ICE and DOGE by end of year.
yep. i was sick of internet anyway
The Army said in a press release that the four executives are Shyam Sankar, CTO at Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, CTO at Meta; Kevin Weil, Chief Product Officer of OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, an advisor at Thinking Machines Lab and former Chief Research Officer for OpenAI.
The four men are being commissioned at the high rank of lieutenant colonel as part of a program called Detachment 201: The Army’s Executive Innovation Corps.
This feels like cosplay + "you could just do ..." energy that will undoubtedly funnel money straight back to these companies.
I find it odd that they force PhDs, literal fucking doctor's, to go through the Direct Commission course, but allow these dipshit tech nerds to skip it. Almost as if their wealth allowed them privilege a god damned doctor doesn't typically have after a decade of school debt
For those who have read the Galaxy's Edge series, I can only think of the appointees (aka 'Points). Political appointed officer who often end up getting the legionaries killed and lack the combat prowess/skill to be in the officer position they exercise.
Realistically we have many other direct commission officers such as the medical, engineers, legal, etc. What's really different here is they are not requiring the full 5 week Direct commission officer basic course .
I'm just thinking about how various European militaries used to give dipshit aristocrats officer commissions back in the day, until they got curb-stomped by Napoleon or whoever and figured out it wasn't such a great idea.
Not generally given, bought. You used to buy your commission in the military, and yes it went exactly as you'd think buying merit goes.
Us Army Inc.
They are the very model of modern major generals!
Get ready for 90-10 style reviews every month or quarter, and then these idiot tech bros being confused they can't just fire people in the military for no goddamned reason.
I am sure they can find a reason to discharge people.
general issue office workers <> PX heros
I find this worrying, yet—I’ll play devil’s advocate:
Having CEO-like people in charge of others is not necessarily bad, assuming they’re not in charge of front-line people. The vast majority of military work is logistics and intel. Having some that knows how to accomplish that efficiently isn’t a bad idea.
They 100% will be put in charge of front liners, though.
Executives aren't the ones making companies successful they're usually more hindrance than anything else..
No real disagreement from me. Again, just playing devil’s advocate and assuming an “ideal.” It’s 100% a good boys’ club hire.