Earlier this month, the Army announced it had recruited four technology executives, including one from a controversial defense contrator, to serve as Reserve lieutenant colonels and “work on targeted projects to help guide rapid and scalable tech solutions to complex problems,” according to a press release.
The new members of Detachment 201: The Army’s Executive Innovation Corps include Shyam Shankar, Palantir’s chief technology officer; Andrew Bosworth, Meta’s CTO; Kevin Weil, OpenAI’s chief product officer; and Bob McGrew, an advisor at Thinking Machines Lab and OpenAI’s former chief research officer.
But the service hasn’t identified exactly which projects they will work on, Army spokesman Steve Warren told reporters Wednesday. Their first task is to head down to office candidate school at Fort Benning, Georgia.
“So let’s get them in. Let’s, you know, teach them which hand to salute with, fundamentals of being a field-grade officer in the Army first, and then we’ll start working on specific projects,” Warren said.
The four swore their oaths of office on June 13, per the press release, but the Army offered no other details on what the unit will do or what kind of oversight will be in place for executives whose companies court Defense Department contracts.
“They’re not making acquisition decisions. They’re not senior decision-makers, they’re not senior leaders—they’re lieutenant colonels,” Warren said. “It’s not in our interest to show any favoritism to a company—that would be the exact opposite of what we’re trying to do, right? What we want is competition. What we want is the best to emerge. That’s what we’re looking for. These guys will help us think about that.”
It’s almost a reverse version of DOD’s Training With Industry program, which allows service members to go on temporary duty to corporate America—past examples include the NFL, Amazon and FedEx—then bring what they learned about senior management and corporate processes back to their units.
The executives will be in uniform one weekend a month and for two full weeks a year, like any other reservist, Warren said, and with the same policies governing conflicts of interest that reservists already submit to.
Though the service is short on details, the idea has been percolating for a while. About 18 months ago, the defense secretary’s office floated the idea to the services, and the Army volunteered to get it off the ground as a pilot program, Maj. Matt Visser, an Army spokesman, told reporters.
“One might assume the Army would have done an extensive study of the specific talents required for this pilot program and pulled those people from an open call for the best candidates. That did not happen,” according to a story in Wired about the detachment’s origins. “Sankar helped recruit the other three future officers—all male, which by intention or coincidence seems to satisfy the anti-DEI bent of today’s military.”
Visser said the innovation corps is technically open to anyone who’s interested in joining, and the Army is actively looking for more members.
“It’s open to more people,” he said. “It’s not just for people that have senior ranking roles in industry.”
The Army’s personnel directorate has published a website where people can put themselves up for the job.
“This new program is something that we’re excited about,” Warren said. “And we are going to, I think, look for ways to expand it.”
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