I'm the CTO of Palantir. Today I Join the Army

33 amrrs 46 6/13/2025, 5:57:16 PM thefp.com ↗

Comments (46)

OJFord · 5h ago
What a joke - they couldn't 'serve' their advisory roles without playing dress-up and commissioning directly as Lt Cols?
burnt-resistor · 48m ago
Officially-sanctioned stolen valor.
TMWNN · 4h ago
There is a long history of direct commission oficers <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_commission_officer> in the military.
burnt-resistor · 48m ago
* In times of war. This ain't it.
TMWNN · 45m ago
If you'd bothered to actually read the link I cited, you'd have seen that direct commissions occur during and outside of wartime.
burnt-resistor · 41m ago
You complain a lot while adding nothing of value.
TMWNN · 24m ago
I'll take that as your tacit acknowledgement of not having known of the existence of direct commissions before your outrage got ginned up to the appropriate level. I bet you also think that a president using both the National Guard and active-duty soldiers to quell unrest is, like, totally unprecedented and omg 100% Nazi.
cempaka · 17m ago
The U.S. ruling class is at war with the citizenry and Silicon Valley is its vanguard.
johnneville · 5h ago
sneak · 5h ago
> The four new Army Reserve Lt. Cols. are Shyam Sankar, Chief Technology Officer for Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, Chief Technology Officer of Meta; Kevin Weil, Chief Product Officer of OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, advisor at Thinking Machines Lab and former Chief Research Officer for OpenAI.

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?

cempaka · 16m ago
Probably just waiting for him to get the IPO he's been teasing done first.
pera · 4h ago
You are not a real corporatocracy until you don't have military ranks just for your C-suite pals
slg · 5h ago
This article is clearly written with an attempt to frame this as a purely patriotic and yet somehow an apolitical ideological decision, but it reads as incredibly fascistic.
AlotOfReading · 5h ago
It's always good to remember that the "arsenal of democracy" was matched by an "arsenal of fascism" on the other side of WW2 made up of companies like Bayer, IBM, Coca-Cola, Ford, and Mercedes.
cyberdick · 1h ago
> incredibly fascistic.

What do you mean by this? Is its some feeling you have or do you have any objective measure?

dragonwriter · 3h ago
It reads as incredibly fascistic because it is.
g8oz · 5h ago
Is this a fascist piece or a neocon one? I can't decide. Makes sense that he's from Palantir though.
octopoc · 4h ago
It's a military profiteer drinking the cool-aid thing. Although...TBH he's never going to get shot at seeing the rank he's getting from the start.
dragonwriter · 2h ago
“Fascist” and “neocon” are not mutually exclusive.
sdbbp · 5h ago
The people in that list all sound sketchy. Where are the "good guys"?
arp242 · 12m ago
It is not my impression that the federal government is currently in the business of hiring "good guys".
NoGravitas · 4h ago
Oh, look. The surveillance capital complex that was always unofficially part of the US state is now officially part of the US state.
LargeWu · 5h ago
Just jumping right in as a Lt Col? Is there a lot of precedent for that? I know that the armed forces have worked with a lot of scientists before, like in the Manhattan Project, but my understanding is that most of them remained civilians.
verst · 5h ago
Yes, I believe some folks who joined the Defense Digital Service received similar rank.
itsdrewmiller · 2h ago
Who?
bryanlarsen · 5h ago
Isn't this the sort of thing that warrant officers were created for? Why wouldn't they give him a high warrant officer rank rather than a commissioned rank?
jltsiren · 3h ago
If you bring in people from other organizations, you usually give them titles that reflect their actual roles.

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.

NoGravitas · 5h ago
Manhattan Project scientists were civilians. Doctors were often drafted as captains, I'm led to understand (via MAS*H).
TMWNN · 4h ago
There is a long history of direct commission officers <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_commission_officer> in the military.
baerrie · 4h ago
You lost me at “Executive Innovation Corps”. Rich men playing soldier to get some patriotism points as usual
smartbit · 1h ago
mlinhares · 5h ago
If you work for an old army contractor, it might be time to find a job elsewhere.
andrewinardeer · 1h ago
AI by proxy just joined the army.
bgwalter · 5h ago
It is part time, they get a high rank immediately and will facilitate purchases from Palantir:

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.

OutOfHere · 4h ago
A takeaway I have is that the US and UK are now very actively and strongly preparing for a world war.
burnt-resistor · 43m ago
That's probably how Trump says in office indefinitely and makes money off it: either start a giant, unnecessary war and/or push the home front to riot. Cutting Ukraine aid to zero may be part of undermining their efforts so a wider war between NATO and Russia happens, where US might leave NATO and side with Russia.
gigaflop · 4h ago
This feels disingenuous to the max. I have a younger brother who went through USAF Basic, and these tech bros just get bestowed a high rank? It smells of stolen valor.

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.

TMWNN · 3h ago
>stolen valor

... 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.

LargeWu · 2h ago
It might not be stolen valor, but you just KNOW these guys are going to play up their veteran status, the Honor and Sacrifice of these Great Men, (the article is already an example of this) when really this is just a trojan horse to enrich themselves and their companies. They're not even full time positions.
TMWNN · 46m ago
>It might not be stolen valor

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.

gigaflop · 2h ago
I believe that I am equally qualified for the role as they are ;)
hypeatei · 5h ago
> Twenty years ago, that calling brought me to Palantir, a company founded in the aftermath of 9/11 to answer the challenges of our generation.

Ah yes, the "challenges" of sucking up as much data as possible on people around the world (including U.S. citizens) to stop "terrorism"

JCattheATM · 4h ago
> and commission as a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve’s newly formed Detachment 201: Executive Innovation Corps.

'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...

verst · 5h ago
The author writes as though this is the first time that Silicon Valley and the military meet.

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/

sneak · 5h ago
> A decade ago, it would’ve been unthinkable for so many tech heavyweights to openly align with the U.S. military.

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.

bananapub · 4h ago
this is absolutely one of the last big steps in the fall of america - letting the preferred and loyal plutocrats take positions in the actual armed forces should be horrifying to absolutely everyone that wants a civilian republic to continue beyond the end of this term.

politicians and judges allowing trump to run again was a catastrophe, as was American citizens voting for him to get to have another go.