In June 2025, the US Army created Detachment 201, known as the Pentagon’s Executive Innovation Corps, to “fuse cutting-edge tech expertise with military innovation.” The initiative comes as part of the Trump administration’s push to integrate Silicon Valley, specifically AI companies, into military affairs, to both boost technological adoption in the Army and develop the Army’s entrepreneurial spirit. The corps selected a range of AI company executives to serve in its inaugural group of Army Reserve Colonels, including executives from Palantir, Meta, OpenAI, and Thinking Machines Labs.
These officers will reportedly not be asked to complete the Army Fitness Test or the military’s six-week Direct Commission Course. While not ubiquitous, military adoption of technology and the wider military-industrial complex have been a constant in military doctrine for centuries. Integration of Big Tech into military affairs has been less widespread. Stipulations over ethics and consumer-facing products have hindered significant development in the relationship between the US Army and Silicon Valley, with the latter considering it “anathema to work on projects with military applications”, according to The Wall Street Journal.
However, contracts such as the Project Maven contract with Palantir, established during Donald Trump’s first term as president, as well as a more tech-friendly president in Washington, have substantially improved this relationship. The recent announcement that several prominent technology executives will be inducted into the US Army has ignited a firestorm of ethical questions, transparency concerns, and fears about the accelerating militarisation of the tech sector.
This move, effectively granting defense-adjacent authority, access, and prestige to corporate leaders from Silicon Valley, raises concerns about civilian control of the military, AI ethics on the battlefield, and conflicts of interest that cannot be ignored. Integrating Big Tech into the chain of command is highly likely to lead to an increase in the use of AI in combat scenarios. AI is used to improve lethality on battlefields, usually through automated targeting using biometric analysis databases, which can then be developed into surveillance databases.
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