Big Tech Executives Welcomed as Army Colonels, New Government AI Project Leaked

TL;DR - The top execs of Meta, Palantir, and OpenAI were sworn into the Army Reserves. This Detachment 201 will be responsible for the military’s tech transformation, integrating new technologies such as drones, and robots. A new leaked AI project showes ‘ai.gov’ which is an initiative to bring AI aisstances and capabiltiies to all goernment agencies, using models from OpenAI Google, and Anthropic.

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Senior executives at Meta, Palantir, and OpenAI were just sworn into the Army Reserves as Lieutenant Colonels, a rank you typically get after 20 years of serving in the military. This rank would normally oversee a batallation of troops - that could be over a thousand men.

• The new recruits include:
  • Shyam Sankar, CTO for Palantir
  • Andrew Bosworth, CTO for Meta
  • Kevin Weil, CPO for OpenAI
  • Bob McGrew, former Research for OpenAI

Although these guys will have to pass physical training and marksmanship tests, they may only see the battlefield behind a computer screen. This program, named Detachment 201 is going to be responsible for getting the US military to adopt drones and robots into its formations, along with troop augmentation and virtual reality devices.

The US Army wants to utilize big tech to enable the Army’s tech transformation.

One must note that these aren’t random picks. They’re intentional and bring representation and collaboration from the highest level of these companies.

We’ve talked about Palantir and how dangerous their products can be for domestic surveillance in #TBOT episode 2. Now Palantir’s CEO is joining the US military.

Here’s my speculation on what these picks could mean for the Army:

Shyam Sankar’s role could be to help integrate Palantir’s products across the US military, standardizing interfaces like Palantir’s Gotham which is used to overlay military intelligence and targetting across satellite imaging and visual feeds.

The CTO for Meta could help incorporate the data across Meta’s products, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook - used by 8 billion people all over the world. The activities, movements, and communications from these apps could be integrated into this surveillance network. Its no wonder why countries opposed to the US like China have been banning Meta products.

The CPO and research for OpenAI could help design a standard interface for army units to consult AI chatbots in their strategy and on the ground operations.

The battlefield is truly transforming and so is the government.

But is there an achilles heel? A separate Government AI initiative may expose some skin. The new ai.gov website was leaked during its development, showing an initiative providing government employees with AI tools – chatbots, coding assistants, and data analysis platforms – powered by models from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.

This project is run by the General Services Administration, run by former Tesla engineer Thomas Shedd who was also part of DOGE.

The irony? The website itself was leaked during development, demonstrating that AI isn't foolproof and can't replace human expertise.

And most government employees think this is a terrible idea, without proper safeguards, diving head first into AI could create new security vulnerabilities, disrupt operations, and further erode privacy.

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