Four Silicon Valley senior executives were sworn in last week as lieutenant colonels by the US Army. The military announced in a press release that Shyam Sankar, Palantir CTO; Andrew Bosworth, Meta CTO; Kevin Weil, OpenAI's chief product officer; and Bob McGrew, OpenAI's former chief research officer, will serve part-time as senior advisors in the Army Reserve. The lieutenant colonel rank typically takes almost 20 years to achieve, reports Snopes, which fact-checked the story after it started circulating on social media. Per the release, the tech execs will be part of a detachment, or military unit, called Executive Innovation Corps, which it calls "a new initiative designed to fuse cutting-edge tech expertise with military innovation."
The Wall Street Journal reports the execs will serve for 120 hours per year, advising on artificial intelligence and "commercial tech acquisition" as the US continues to compete with China on technological advancements. "There's a lot of patriotism that has been under the covers that I think is coming to light in the Valley," Bosworth told the newspaper, noting Mark Zuckerberg supported his decision to join the unit. The new reservists will not be allowed to work on projects involving the companies they work for, and will be barred from sharing data with those companies. They will have to participate in marksmanship training and physical fitness tests. (More Pentagon stories.)
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