Four senior executives at Palantir, Meta, and OpenAI have been formally appointed lieutenant colonels in the US Army following the creation of a “special” unit created for rich Big Tech mavens seeking military leadership roles.
On June 13, the Army announced the creation of Detachment 201, otherwise known as the “Executive Innovation Corps,” which it describes as “a new initiative designed to fuse cutting-edge tech expertise with military innovation.”
Four ultra-wealthy executives from top tech companies were sworn in to the unit ahead of President Trump’s heavily promoted military parade, which was itself sponsored by Palantir. The Army’s top spokesman declared that Detachment 201 was “being created to bring in tech innovation executives leaders to help the Army” with the recruitment and the subsequent training of “tech focused people.”
“By bringing private-sector know-how into uniform, Det. 201 is supercharging efforts like the Army Transformation Initiative, which aims to make the force leaner, smarter, and more lethal,” the Army wrote in an official statement.
GEN George and I are thrilled to welcome four brilliant minds from the tech sector to the @USArmy! Today, we commissioned four exceptional individuals as Lieutenant Colonels in the Army's Detachment 201 (Executive Innovation Corps).
Their unique skills will be instrumental in… pic.twitter.com/zyZTaDNKOW — Secretary of the Army (@SecArmy) June 14, 2025
Palantir is by far the S&P 500’s top performing stock of the year, thanks in large part to the gargantuan contracts it has raked in from the Trump administration. According to the company’s founder, Alex Karp, Palantir “is here to disrupt… and when it’s necessary, to scare enemies, and on occasion, kill them.”
Shares of the dystopian data firm, which is named after the all-seeing orb used by the evil wizard Saruman to surveil Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings, skyrocketed to an all-time high following Israel’s unprovoked assault on Iran.
Elsewhere, Karp has eagerly embraced the model of disaster capitalism, remarking, “bad times are very good for Palantir because we build products… that are built for danger.”
In recent years, Palantir has come to dominate the Western information sphere, and now enjoys unfettered access to the sensitive data of citizens in countries from the US to the UK. With customers including the Department of Defense, CIA, NSA, FBI, ICE, and the Special Operations Command, Palantir has become a one-stop shop for weaponized AI-based data analysis. Amid the ruins of the national security state’s obsessive search for enemies overseas, Palantir built a reputation for being both user-friendly and slavishly obedient to the military establishment.
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