6 ms·
US Army Appoints Palantir, Meta, OpenAI Execs as Lt. Colonels
- tptacek 1y agoThere's apparently a long history of honorary or symbolic reservist rank being given to civilian advisors; a good starting Google search is "dollar-a-year men".
- whatshisface 1y agoThe direct commission program is ordinarily used for medical providers and they are on the same payscale as everyone else that holds their rank.
- tptacek 1y agoBut medical providers aren't commissioned as advisors, they're commissioned to actually deliver services, right?
- whatshisface 1y agoI'm not aware of any contemporary cases where someone direct commissioned but agreed to a lower "dollar-a-year" payscale. I think our prior assumption should be that these four people are on O5 until we hear for sure.
- DanAtC 1y agoMaybe they'll get shipped to Iran.
- nixgeek 1y agoThey’ll be shipping the drone swarm strategy against Iran from safely under a mountain in CONUS.
- whatshisface 1y ago>The Palantir executive pointed to “exploding pagers and long-distance drone strikes from shipping containers” as attacks which “prove that technology has once again changed the battlefield,” and that “our military has to change with it.” That's not Palantir's market segment.
- hnav 1y agoWhenever I see that guy in the headlines, he's trying to pump the stock by making nebulous threatening statements. Can't wait for this era of public persona CEOs to be over, with the most egregious examples of them stuck in prison for fraud.
- scottyah 1y agoInteresting comment. It's exactly one of their market segments, defense technology.
- h2zizzle 1y agoExploding pagers are defensive? (Please don't wrap yourself into a logical pretzel responding to this purely rhetorical question.)
- whatshisface 1y agoThat's a market, in defense a market segment would be "mortar rounds" or "tanks." Palantir's market segment is high-level integration of surveillance.
- MacsHeadroom 1y agoPalantir has an autonomous weapons command and control product in partnership with Anduril and other weapons manufacturers. They aren't just intelligence.
- hnthrow90348765 1y agoI wonder if they asked them LeetCode questions
- whatshisface 1y agoThey asked them Lt. Code questions.
- dawnerd 1y agoShould make them go through basic.
- ranger_danger 1y agoMake them go through BUD/S.
- monktastic1 1y agoBUD/S /s.
- whatshisface 1y agoThey only have the qualifications to GOTO BASIC.
- xhkkffbf 1y agoMy understanding is that there's a much shorter, simpler form of "basic training" for folks like this. The military bands, for instance, use it. I think the idea is that they can say that they "went through basic just like everyone else." But there might only be one early morning hike.
- newsclues 1y agoTo punish or to learn?
- blooalien 1y ago> To punish or to learn? Why can't it be both?
- ajb 1y agoPrevious discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44270660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44270660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44268547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44268547
- dang 1y agoThanks! Macroexpanded: I'm the CTO of Palantir. Today I Join the Army - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44270660 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44270660 - June 2025 (68 comments) The Army’s Newest Recruits: Tech Execs From Meta, OpenAI and More - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44268547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44268547 - June 2025 (191 comments)
- HillRat 1y agoGenuinely curious what legal waivers they’ve been afforded, since generally speaking “holding a decision-making position in the part of the uniformed services you also sell to” is very much adjacent to profiteering and disturbingly in the vicinity to honest services fraud. How do you disentangle private interests from the public good, even if these guys are operating in good faith? Also, give a brief thought to those troops who signed on for their full hitch to defend their country and get to watch a handful of politically-connected billionaires leapfrog their way into custom-built field grade slots without having to attend basic or OCS, or even pass APFT.
- nixgeek 1y agoI think the question is are the Armed Forces served better by having this expertise available (on a commissioned part-time basis, with modified basic requirements) or by maintaining a bar that the person has to go through OCS and pass APFT? You probably can’t have both — not they couldn’t pass APFT (with varying degrees of fitness program required) but more likely they cannot commit the time required to do OCS and APFT, and if forced to choose will simply not participate. It’ll stick in some people’s craw that this is dual standards, however you can’t please all the people all the time — someone concluded the compromise was worth it to obtain access to technology experience.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 1y agoRules matter. There are processes to change the rules officially. We are a nation of laws.
- HillRat 1y agoThe DOD already has the Defense Science Board (and the services have their own advisory boards), so other than giving a few billionaires the chance to strut around in their freshly-pressed Class As, it's not clear what advantage this provides over existing civilian FACA entities.
- jki275 1y agodecision making on contracts and acquisitions is a very complex thing the DOD, and they won't be allowed anywhere near it in the areas where they have civilian conflicts of interest.
- rafram 1y agoGrayzone is an extremely unreliable source which frequently publishes false stories with an anti-US bent [1][2]. The past discussion [3] has a WSJ link which should be preferred over this. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grayzone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grayzone [2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/02/grayzone-russia-iran-support/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/02/grayzon... [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44268547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44268547
- whatshisface 1y agoIt'd probably be a stronger case if you could point out an inaccuracy in the article. In a sense it's implicit agreement to only criticise the identity of the source.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- stickfigure 1y agoDishonest sources can generate bullshit faster than honest people can debunk it. At some point you are obliged to dismiss consistently unreliable sources. In fact, Wikipedia has already done this: "The English Wikipedia formally deprecated the use of The Grayzone as a source for facts in its articles in March 2020, citing issues with the website's factual reliability." (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grayzone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grayzone)
- monkeywork 1y agoOk so in this case what is not correct
- jjmarr 1y agoIt was deprecated because it was the personal blog of Max Blumenthal more than any specific false stories. The Wikipedia discussion is public: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_287#RfC:_Grayzone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Not...
- kevinpet 1y agoThis seems a little weird to me, but direct commissions like this are pretty common for professionals like lawyers, clergy, and doctors.
- seydor 1y agoThat's why clergy and lawyers don't have skyrocketing valuations: because they are a predictable part of the system
- firesteelrain 1y agoI had to check if this was an April Fools joke
- seydor 1y ago"If you are not a libertarian at twenty, you have no heart, and if you’re not a state nationalist at forty, you have no brain" - Benito Friedman
- spamizbad 1y agoDoes this mean if you’re under them in the org chart you are a troop?
- moomin 1y agoGotta respect the chain of command and it looks like whoever came up with this was smart enough not to put infantry underneath them. You’ll have to salute, though.
- seydor 1y agoIt means they are now refered to military courts and they get military ids instead of civilian . They probably have fewer rights than citizens , no?
- DanAtC 1y agoHopefully makes it easier to try them in The Hague
- Dilettante_ 1y agoNot any more than you're a Hindu just because your supervisor is.
- viccis 1y agoThis is just a direct commission which is commonly done to integrate people into the military who have skills necessary for its continued operation but who don't have the time or need to go through the normal training, process, and schools. It's how Pete Buttigieg got his commission, for example.
- max_ 1y ago- [Palantir] A surveillance company used by by spy agencies - [Meta] A social media company that has all your personal conversations & pictures, video, audio - [Open AI] Something many people at work & school are uploading sensitive data to - All run by acolytes of Peter Thiel - Current president & vp are bankrolled Peter Thiel - Top executives formally recruited into US Army. USA is sleep walking into something very nasty. I still don't know what it is. But please when it unravels. Let us not pretend we never saw it coming. I am very worried about this. Something is being set up.
- exe34 1y ago> USA is sleep walking into something very nasty. I still don't know what it is. It's called fascism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist_paramilitary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascist_paramilitary
- autobodie 1y agoNo, it's called capitalism — capital has the last word. As we have seen clearly, even Trump is overwhelmingly limited by the constraints of capital.
- blooalien 1y agoSadly, Fascism and Capitalism largely walk hand-in-hand these days... Their bastard love-child will almost certainly be the death of "civilized" society if allowed to continue on the path it's currently on... It's well past time society starts brainstorming a better option.
- autobodie 1y agoI don't care. Capitalism is the problem and pretending its something more obscure is easier but useless.
- candiddevmike 1y agoYou could almost say capitalism's final form is some flavor of oligarchy fascism
- kragen 1y agoI'm wondering if maybe there's a non-anti-Semitic source for this? It seems like there ought to be, given that it's reporting on something purportedly published on Twitter.
- HaZeust 1y agoPeter Thiel's 20-year pursuit of ensuring technology companies, and their accompanied data, are used as a highly-efficient machine for surveillance - and plutocratic-endorsed authoritarianism - is almost actualized. I guess creating an ecosystem of these products in the form of having most of them come from the same venture capital company WAS the answer, and he was doing it so well - that even In-Q-Tel gave up on their efforts to compete with that strategy. But Thiel said it best in that regard; "competition is for losers".
- OrvalWintermute 1y agoAs a veteran, now civil servant, I think this is an excellent thing for the US military to do. BIAS: I am a PLTR shareholder and I collab with at least one of the units involved. Another similar commissioning was the founder of Dragos, Robert M Lee who was previously a Cyber officer in the Air Force. We need top talent from industry. These highly skilled individuals will be good pickups for the work confronting our nation in securing vital infrastructure and enabling for the future of high performance compute and AI. https://www.robertmlee.org/back-in-military-service-from-blue-to-green/ https://www.robertmlee.org/back-in-military-service-from-blu... https://www.dragos.com/team/robert-m-lee/ https://www.dragos.com/team/robert-m-lee/
- jackstraw42 1y ago> We need top talent from industry. Fair, but is that what they're doing here? I don't know much about the individuals involved, but I sure know the companies they're associated with. The concerning part for me is that this new "Detachment 201" seems less about these individuals' expertise and more about the companies they represent and can provide access to.
- OrvalWintermute 1y agoI asked Grok a related question about Robert Lee. Here is its response Robert M. Lee, as the CEO and co-founder of Dragos, Inc., brings a wealth of expertise in industrial control systems (ICS) and operational technology (OT) cybersecurity, which aligns closely with the U.S. Army’s requirements for cyberspace operations and infrastructure protection. Commissioned as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army National Guard in February 2025, Lee’s extensive background positions him to make significant contributions to the Army’s mission of securing critical infrastructure and enhancing cyberspace capabilities. His prior experience as a U.S. Air Force Cyber Warfare Operations Officer, where he developed a pioneering mission at the National Security Agency to identify threats to industrial infrastructure, equips him with a deep understanding of the cyber threats facing military and civilian systems. Additionally, his leadership in investigating high-profile cyberattacks, such as the 2015 and 2016 Ukraine power grid attacks, the 2017 TRISIS attack, and the 2021 Colonial Pipeline ransomware incident, demonstrates his ability to address sophisticated threats to critical systems, a key focus for the Army’s cyberspace operations. Lee’s role in the Army National Guard, specifically with the 91st Battalion in Virginia, involves designing and leading OT cybersecurity and response efforts. The Army’s cyberspace requirements, as outlined in documents like the Army Cyberspace Strategy for Unified Land Operations 2025, emphasize securing mission-critical systems, protecting infrastructure, and developing resilient networks against advanced persistent threats. Lee’s expertise in ICS/OT cybersecurity directly supports these goals, particularly in safeguarding infrastructure like power grids, water systems, and transportation networks that the military relies on. His work at Dragos, including the development of the Dragos Platform for threat detection and response, and the discovery of the PIPEDREAM framework, showcases his ability to deliver scalable, OT-specific solutions. These skills could be applied to enhance the Army’s defensive cyber operations, improve real-time threat intelligence, and strengthen partnerships with private sector entities to protect national infrastructure. Furthermore, Lee’s experience as a SANS Fellow and creator of ICS515 and FOR578 courses highlights his commitment to education and workforce development, which could bolster the Army’s efforts to train cyber warriors. His strategic vision, evidenced by his testimony to Congress and advisory roles with the Department of Energy and World Economic Forum, positions him to help the Army develop policies and strategies for public-private collaboration in cyberspace. By leveraging his technical expertise and leadership, Lee could drive the integration of OT cybersecurity into the Army’s broader cyber operations framework, ensuring robust protection of critical infrastructure and enhancing national security in an increasingly contested digital domain.
- paulvnickerson 1y agoThis is a stupid clickbait layer on top of a neutral informative announcement: https://www.army.mil/article/286317/army_launches_detachment_201_executive_innovation_corps_to_drive_tech_transformation https://www.army.mil/article/286317/army_launches_detachment... It's just a way to re-link the military with the tech industry, which is arguably how we won the previous world wars. If the US falls behind, then be prepared to learn Mandarin.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- SubiculumCode 1y agoIf this is pointed at home, we have a problem. If this is about using the best in tech across information harvesting, artificial intelligence for use against foreign adversaries, maybe less worrying for u.s. citizens.
- computerthings 1y ago[dead]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]