The Nerdy Dozen? Army touts high-tech team made up of experts recruited from Meta, OpenAI, Palantir

The U.S. Army has recruited its own team of tech executives from Meta, OpenAI and Palantir for a new unit called Detachment 201 dedicated to upgrading the branch’s innovation expertise and driving a tech overhaul with recruits from Silicon Valley. 

The Army officially swore in four new reserve lieutenant colonels on Friday, including Shyam Sankar, Palantir chief technology officer; Andrew Bosworth, Meta chief technology officer; Kevin Weil, OpenAI chief product officer; and Bob McGrew, former chief research officer at Meta and adviser to Thinking Machines Lab. 

“Det. 201 is an effort to recruit senior tech executives to serve part-time in the Army Reserve as senior advisers,” the Army said in a statement. “In this role they will work on targeted projects to help guide rapid and scalable tech solutions to complex problems.”

Mr. Bosworth wrote on X that the new corps’ main role “will be to serve as technical experts advising the Army’s modernization efforts.”

Among the targeted projects and modernization efforts will be the Army Transformation Initiative, which is a strategy intending to deliver new warfighting capabilities, the optimization of its force structure and the elimination of waste and outdated programs. 

The close collaboration between Silicon Valley and the U.S. military would have been unthinkable just a decade ago, according to Mr. Sankar. 

In an article for The Free Press, he wrote that the idea for the new unit would not have been imagined by either the public or private sectors not too long ago, but it is needed now. He urged other technologists to listen to the call for public service. 

“My father grew up in a mud hut in India. America gave him — and me — a life,” he wrote. “Now, technologists like me need to give back.”

Meta, OpenAI and Palantir are all also working on tech programs making products for warfighters. 

Meta made plans last month to work with defense tech company Anduril on new extended reality products for American warfighters. The partnership intends to design, build and field products that create “enhanced perception and enable intuitive control of autonomous platforms on the battlefield,” according to Anduril.

OpenAI is also working with Anduril on a separate effort to improve the nation’s counter-unmanned aircraft systems. 

The AI company responsible for the popular chatbot ChatGPT is also working on new projects with the Department of Defense and the intelligence community. 

OpenAI’s Katrina Mulligan shared details about the company’s anticipated work with America’s military and intelligence establishment during an AI conference earlier this month. 

And Palantir is also a close partner of the U.S. military — and appeared as a sponsor of the U.S. Army’s 250th Anniversary Celebration over the weekend at the military parade in Washington.