US Army Appoints Palantir, Meta, OpenAI Execs as Lt. Colonels
112 comments
·June 20, 2025ajb
dang
Thanks! Macroexpanded:
I'm the CTO of Palantir. Today I Join the Army - 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 - June 2025 (191 comments)
max_
- [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.
jauntywundrkind
> USA is sleep walking into something very nasty. I still don't know what it is.
Maybe there's something fast & vicious in the works, but it could just be the merciless grasping at any shred of power these Hostis Humani Generis do.
The big move is writ large. It's multi-front sell off of the enduring value of America. Fullscale assault on schools. Destruction of science and medicine. Giving up on USAID then FEMA. Selling off millions of acres of land.
The network state ideology is that you should have to know someone and be in a network to get anything. If you aren't born into or allowed entrance into a network you get nothing. Reducing what government does to nothing melds well with the Christo-fascist ideology that likewise resents any state not run by and for the church: two sides of the same coin.
pjmlp
Sadly everyone keeps hoping there will be free elections still.
I do fear for my US friends and everyone else that is being impacted by what is happening.
scottyah
it's too late for free elections, we haven't had one since pre-Bush I think. Most votes are programmed into people and they don't really know it, and if they do they just don't care. I think very few people actually study and do unbiased research prior to voting. Everyone votes based on what people around them think, and whichever party's social media "brainwashing" has affected them most.
xp84
This is such bunk. People aren’t “programmed,” they just don’t agree with you. And people being poorly-informed is not new, and it doesn’t make elections “non-free” or make them not count.
I don’t want to get into a political debate here, but the DNC can thank itself for Trump since they coronated (with no primary!) a candidate who dropped out before Iowa when she ran in the primaries because she had zero support because no one liked her. They also basically ran on a platform of “if you don’t like our policies, you’re a bad person.” I’d imagine more than enough people to swing the election either way pulled the lever for Trump as an explicit rebuke of the DNC’s disdain for anyone outside their orthodoxy.
Anyway. When a party besides the Trump party remembers that persuading the rest of the public (not insulting them) is necessary to win elections, that’s when we’ll have relief from one-man rule by that jackass.
h2zizzle
Okay. What do we do? Be as radical as you want, just don't say, "Vote."
epistasis
There are many countries that have been in the position that the US has been, though few of them have been as strong democracies prior to falling to this state. I'd recommend the tactics in the two "Rules" section of this blog post:
https://verfassungsblog.de/the-authoritarian-regime-survival...
Though, personally, I'm having a lot of trouble following some of them...
ryandv
The people want to be surveilled. This is their choice, which has been revealed billions of times since the dawn of the modern social media era. As a result I have zero pity, and the public can reap what it has sown.
Privacy advocates, cypherpunks, hackers, et cetera have been sounding the alarm bells since Room 641A, if not earlier. Not only has the Internet at large failed to heed these warnings, some of those "conscientious objectors" who refused to willingly submit their information to these systems of surveillance capitalism were actively demonized and hunted.
After all, if you are not willingly signing up for these services, social media, and voluntarily forfeiting your data to these systems, then there is something wrong with you and you should probably just sign up for that Meta account already.
You are the ones who have kept these systems running by voluntarily feeding them your time, attention, and/or data. Now the beast has reached maturity and it is too late to do anything about it.
h2zizzle
*The people are too poor and disconnected to dissent.
Everything comes down to the desperation to survive in a world where abundant (ABUNDANT) food, shelter, and clothing still must be "earned" (so say our elites).
malfist
By your logic people also want to get into car wrecks, develop cancer in old age, get food poisoning, etc.
Just because there's risks with something or side effects with something doesn't mean people want the side effects
ryandv
I would agree in cases where the desired effect is distinct from the side effect.
However, for social media in particular, the desired effect is the side effect, which is the surveillance.
exe34
> USA is sleep walking into something very nasty. I still don't know what it is.
It's called fascism.
autobodie
No, it's called capitalism — capital has the last word. As we have seen clearly, even Trump is overwhelmingly limited by the constraints of capital.
lemoncookiechip
Fascism had it's roots in Capitalism. The elites not only welcomed it, but they backed it, because it helped shut down workers right movements and keep things stable at a time when the workers right movement was hurting their bottom line by asking their bosses for living wages and humane working conditions, which they saw as Socialism and Communism.
blooalien
Sadly, 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.
zeroCalories
Capitalism is when people vote away their own rights? Leftist analysis can't explain why Bernie out-spent Biden and got crushed. There are strong capital interests on both sides of this issue.
epistasis
I would urge anybody who wants to soothe their fears to avoid reading up on Curtis Yarvin.
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melling
Nice trick. I couldn’t stop myself from looking:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/09/curtis-yarvin-...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/magazine/curtis-yarvin-in...
epistasis
The weirdest thing about those pieces (which I have not read) are the glamour shots. Why cover a political subject like that as if they are a beloved children's author or a lifestyle piece? It's a very unusual and strange thing to do for politics, and says a lot about the editors at these media outlets.
infamouscow
Giving federal employees 6+ month severance packages is a far cry from what Yarvin wrote ought to happen them.
Trump really can't get anything right.
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rafram
Grayzone 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
[2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/02/grayzon...
whatshisface
It'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.
stickfigure
Dishonest 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."
jjmarr
It 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/Not...
monkeywork
Ok so in this case what is not correct
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Tiberium
Any reason to prefer the WSJ link over the official source at https://www.army.mil/article/286317/army_launches_detachment... ?
rafram
That seems good too.
pixelcloud
While that may be true, the article is accurate and has links to its sources.
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XenophileJKO
I stopped reading as soon as I read "unprovoked" in regards to the current middle east conflict. I think regardless of what side you are on, there has been a lot of provoking all around.
newsclues
While I don’t agree with them all the time, I find this sort of critique to be unfair and often are attempting to silence alternative media and viewpoints which is a disservice to journalism
sitkack
It is an Ad hominem against the source w/o addressing the actual content of the article.
epistasis
It did address the content of the article: it suggested a more reliable source that is saying the same thing.
Questioning the integrity of a source is not an ad adhominem argument. Saying that a conclusion is false because of the speaker would be an ad hominem.
landl0rd
Before you run cover for these guys you should probably know it’s not “muh based anti-American-imperialist” but agitprop in service of Russian and Chinese imperialism.
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rowanseymour
The WSJ article is paywalled
rafram
Of course. Faux-news outlets peddling disinformation will always be happy to let you read their work for free. Serious journalists rely on your subscription for their paycheck, not Iranian state media, like the author of the OP link [1].
And paywalled links are allowed on HN [2].
[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/02/grayzon...
viccis
This 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.
whatshisface
>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
Whenever 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
Interesting comment. It's exactly one of their market segments, defense technology.
whatshisface
That's a market, in defense a market segment would be "mortar rounds" or "tanks." Palantir's market segment is high-level integration of surveillance.
h2zizzle
Exploding pagers are defensive? (Please don't wrap yourself into a logical pretzel responding to this purely rhetorical question.)
kevinpet
This seems a little weird to me, but direct commissions like this are pretty common for professionals like lawyers, clergy, and doctors.
seydor
That's why clergy and lawyers don't have skyrocketing valuations: because they are a predictable part of the system
tptacek
There'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
The direct commission program is ordinarily used for medical providers and they are on the same payscale as everyone else that holds their rank.
tptacek
But medical providers aren't commissioned as advisors, they're commissioned to actually deliver services, right?
whatshisface
I'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.
HillRat
Genuinely 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
I 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
Rules matter. There are processes to change the rules officially. We are a nation of laws.
jki275
decision 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.
dawnerd
Should make them go through basic.
whatshisface
They only have the qualifications to GOTO BASIC.
xhkkffbf
My 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.
spamizbad
Does this mean if you’re under them in the org chart you are a troop?
moomin
Gotta 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
It 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
Hopefully makes it easier to try them in The Hague
Dilettante_
Not any more than you're a Hindu just because your supervisor is.
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SubiculumCode
If 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.
Previous discussions:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44270660
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44268547