The Army’s Newest Recruits: Tech Execs From Meta, OpenAI and More

I remember my grandfather’s descriptions of WWII in the pacific. One was a Marine who made a number of landings and was involved in a lot that “I wish I could forget”.

The other was a Navy doctor. An officer, but really because he was a doctor.

Their experiences were wildly different. Not so much about risk but the Marine was a grunt and his description oozed what it meant to be at that level of rank. The doctor ... his description was that doctors, while they had rank, were largely left alone to their own devices to do what they needed to do. Rank wasn't really relevant to their daily lives.

My wife and I were at a formal event dinner banquet related to her med school. We were in a small group chatting: On one side an Air Force ROTC med student in his dress uniform and his wife. On the other side another med student and her Navy NCO husband in his dress uniform. I remember distinctly that the Navy NCO kept politely saying “sir” when he addressed the Air Force ROTC.

The Air Force officer mentioned that he got a “light” version of basic training. The Navy NCO said nothing. His ROTC’s wife added that it must have been petty light, because she remembered a call from him where he mentioned that they ran out of ice cream.

Reminds of the story of Major Major from Catch 22 who was promoted due to a computer bug to the rank of Major and outranked everyone in flight school

I'm reminded of an ex who was inquiring about paying for dental school on a ROTC scholarship. She tells the recruiter that she was worried about all the yelling she'd have to deal with at bootcamp since she has severe anxiety. And the recruiter told her the medical officers don't do any of that, she had nothing to worry about.

LOL.

Long ago the British Army used to sell commissions. A form of highly institutionalalized corruption. Mostly about social status.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchase_of_commissions_in_t...

Maybe it's going to be a system for allowing tech companies to deploy their personal defense battalion against riots?

>They are literally there to sell their products (and brag about "having served").

Gets you free priority boarding on all flights you take.

Yup, I’d expect a data scientist or equivalent programmer commissioning as a captain, not a c-suite executive that is more of an MBA graduate. It all seems fishy.

The key difference is the DDS folks were not uniformed military. That can make all the difference when trying to sell your product or service to a military decision maker.

> The exception to this are licensed doctors and lawyers. They enter the military as captains instead of lieutenants.

And chaplains, I think. The three professions corresponding to higher faculties in a medieval university. Many weird things in the military make more sense when you recognize them as leftovers from ancient social structures.

The point of commissioning them isn’t for them to take command of a line infantry battalion. It’s to have them have authority to do stuff that requires a Lt col, but is not actually commanding. It’s like how we commissioned a whole bunch of people in WWII to do admin jobs.

I've seen some specialist docs with extensive experience direct commission as an O5

It's rare as hell, but you can commission directly at higher ranks if you have the required experience and credentials and there is sufficient need in the service. The CO of the dental unit at Fort Hood that did my gum grafts 14 years ago direct commissioned at O6.

As there isn't really any civilian equivalent to combat branches of service, however, they won't direct commission anyone into the infrantry at that level, sure, at least not since the civil war era.

It's just building a club for rich folks to commission in as a field grade officer and give them a fancy dress uniform to wear to official government events where they get to direct contracts towards their parent companies.

That's all it is. Normally the officers come up through the ranks and build a grift to retire and peddle back to the military (see things like BeaverFit), but Detachment 201 lets them direct commission the grift back.

You think they’ll still be in for 20 years? And you need 20 “good years” to get a pension for non-active duty service.

Because this is a different country now. I imagine someone who lived under a military dictatorship would not be shocked by this new approach.

That also strikes me as odd. When I was deployed, we had plenty of contractors/DOD civilians to handle various technical things, and to help maintain continuity while the rest of us rotated in and out of the theater. They didn't need to be commissioned.

If these execs were experienced engineers that needed to be embedded in a unit in the field, maybe, and definitely not at O-5. Usually these sorts of urgently-needed experts become instructors and teach troops the specific technical skills without the need for being enlisted/commissioned/warrant themselves.

Someone more familiar with the political games inside the Pentagon will better understand this decision.

In Boz I can't think of anyone less suited to the task.

At every stage of the RL expansion there has been a stunning lack of both solid direction and attention to detail. Not to mention piss poor logistics.

The default position for anything in meta/facebook is to just throw people at the problem. Which I suppose is a good match for a stereotypical view of the army.

It's an ego trip. That's all.

Possibly to subject them to military law and therefore exert significantly more control over their commissioned period.

Get those sweet "Veteran" plates.

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Executives are obviously more skilled. Just check out their paychecks. Each of them is worth at least a dozen engineers.

Officers are management, a lt col is similar to a director at a tech company.

If they're trying to modernize the strategy and direction of the organization before bringing in additional SMEs, this makes a lot of sense. Good leadership and a good direction really does matter.

After the overall direction and vision is in place, then they can bring in technical SMEs who are hopefully also direct commissioned in and not just contractors hired for a year or 2.

I think it would have been cool to see them allow a hand chosen direct report join them. And maybe that direct report’s hand chosen direct report too.

It's about pushing an agenda and selecting the people with the correct (lack of) morality to do it.

In fairness, the military is full of engineers.

Of course the optics are terrible but it doesn’t matter. Everyone is already either pissed off with trump or dedicated to never being pissed off at him.

Maybe this gives US gov an extra leash on them? Surely the standards of what's approaching treason are different for people in service, so maybe it's just a way to trick execs into getting personally under government control, so they'll not be able to shield behind the whole "free enterprise" / "private business" thing when they want to trade with China or EU against the US Gov preferences?

Maybe they get to pull a pension too? There's lots of examples of Admirals and Generals who "retire", get their pension payouts, but come back as an "advisor" effectively doubling their pay.