I'm the CTO of Palantir. Today I Join the Army
thefp.com
thefp.com
The Army’s Newest Recruits: Tech Execs From Meta, OpenAI and More - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44268547 - June 2025 (60 comments)
Warrant officers are a leftover from an era when you had to be nobility to become a commissioned officer. Today a lieutenant is just a kid with a college degree, and a lieutenant colonel is someone who did an MBA and was promoted into middle management.
Roles that historically required higher education – doctors, lawyers, and chaplains – are typically commissioned officers. Air forces similarly have commissioned officers doing the actual fighting. While they are not in management positions, their status and responsibilities are comparable to commissioned officers in other branches. In some cultures, the same extends to special forces.
> They will have more flexibility than the average reservist to work remotely and asynchronously, and will be spared basic training.
No officer basic training course to teach them how to be an army officer?
They are privileged consultants playing dress up.
What do you mean by this? Is its some feeling you have or do you have any objective measure?
It might help to contrast it with an authoritarian left-wing approach to this same problem of private and state collaboration. In a system like that, we might expect these companies to be nationalized. But a right-wing system would generally be against that. They would instead keep those companies private, but the company could effectively still become state controlled by intertwining leadership such as we see here.
A free and open society should generally be against the merging of corporations and the state as it allows for too much concentrated power which can lead to both corruption and tyranny. These two sides will of course be aligned generally on the well-being of the nation, but having leadership literally splitting time between the two functions goes way beyond that as it creates problems like inherent conflicts of interest and allows for the circumvention of laws and regulations around how both the government and corporations should work. For example, the government might be prevented from spying on its people such as collecting internet histories and corporations might be prevented from exerting physical power over people like imprisoning them. But if the two groups are acting as one, this distinction doesn't matter. The corporate side can do the data collection to find who needs to be imprisoned and then the state does the dirty work of rounding people up. This would be much easier to implement and hide when it can all be orchestrated by a single person delegating their desires down whatever chain of command can legally accomplish the specific subtask at hand.
And wrapping this all up under the general banner of patriotism is doing them no favors here either as it comes off like the nationalistic propaganda that often accompanies fascism.
Rather than attributing it to right or left, I would characterize it as a synthesis of illiberal ideas. Under Corporatism, even union and worker movements merge with the state. UAW is just as relevant here as state adjacent corporations like Palantir, GM, VW, Airbus or Boeing.
>For example, the government might be prevented from spying on its people such as collecting internet histories and corporations might be prevented from exerting physical power over people like imprisoning them. But if the two groups are acting as one, this distinction doesn't matter.
We saw a similar strategy under the previous administration. Social media companies took direction from the White House to censor user content. Proponents claimed that this didn't violate civil liberties because of the voluntary nature of the collaboration.
It isn't hard to find parallels if you look hard enough. There will always be a nexus of power around the state. Whether it is nationalized corporations or public private partnerships, malign incentives will always exist in these cases. The variation is only in degrees.
However, I think the ultimate distinction for Fascism would be in Mussolini's open call for the state to become an all-encompassing, collectivist force. There is still a contrast to the extent that the US at least plays some lip-service to liberal individualist ideals. Overall, it retains some laissez-faire elements in comparison to other major economies.
Oh, great, vertical integration between the violence organizations and the three worst and most amoral companies in tech. I’m sure nothing bad will come out of this.
Where’s Luckey and Anduril? Did he not pass the drug test?
It still is. Don’t be fooled by propaganda pieces like this.
It is followed up by two blatant falsehoods:
> But a sea change has taken place in both places because of the urgency and seriousness of the moment.
> Wars in Europe and the Middle East and, above all, the threat of a war in the Pacific have focused the national mind and initiated a scramble for mobilization.
None of this is true in the sense he means it. Businesses have scrambled to have alternatives to China, yes, but that’s nothing to do with the military.
> The Army’s Executive Innovation Corps, under the direction of the Army’s chief of staff, General Randy George, is part of a larger effort by our military to transform the way it prepares for and fights wars in the 21st century.
Expanding the military-industrial complex is of no benefit to anyone other than those in the military-industrial complex (such as the author of this article).
Such transparent self-serving.
Yeah sure serve. In a full fledged war they were the first to hide in bunker or flee the country
https://www.wsj.com/tech/army-reserve-tech-executives-meta-p...
This is just another part of the revolving door that also enables ex generals to get board positions at Lockheed. This time it is the reverse way.
Given that McKinsey ruined the German army, let us see whether this will even improve anything.
With this I'm not sure what the goal is. If it is to change the process heavy culture of the pentagon to be more automated I'm hopeful. Yes, there is a revolving door between pentagon officials and the prime defense contractors. But I think that is currently a symptom of how the pentagon works, as in, you need to understand the process AND how the product will be used.
'New Executive Innovation Corps brings top tech talent into the Army Reserve to bridge the commercial-military tech gap, with four tech leaders set to join as officers.'[1]
lol. As someone else said in this thread, this is basically stolen valor.
[1] https://www.army.mil/article/286317/army_launches_detachment...
Ah yes, the "challenges" of sucking up as much data as possible on people around the world (including U.S. citizens) to stop "terrorism"
However, it also places them in Trump's direct chain of command as CinC. They might not have thought enough about that.
I mean nothing ill towards the 'mud hut', but seriously? All these listed names seem like people who've never had to roll in the mud with the rest of the grunts.
... is a term with a specific definition, which a direct commission officer in no way matches. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_commission_officer>
>roll in the mud with the rest of the grunts
Neither have you, yet you presume to speak on their behalf.
It is, or isn't.
In this case, it ain't.
>but you just KNOW these guys are going to play up their veteran status
How do you have such a surplus of outrage, that you can freely spend it on something that so far has only happened in your mind?
>They're not even full time positions.
Yes, that's the definition of a reserve commission.
politicians and judges allowing trump to run again was a catastrophe, as was American citizens voting for him to get to have another go.
Let's not forget about the Defense Digital Service [1]. Of course I'm not sure how much of that is left under the current administration.
[1]: https://www.dds.mil/