The four men looked slightly uncomfortable in their khaki uniforms. They all smiled, however, as they took the oath of allegiance on June 13: “I solemnly swear to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” In truth, these four did not have much in common with the military. But they did not need to toughen up with obstacle courses or weapons training to be awarded the title of reserve lieutenant colonel in the US Army. They were inducted into the “Detachment 201” reserve group, a name that means nothing to most.
In reality, their expertise was far more valuable. Andrew Bosworth is the respected chief technology officer at Meta, a key figure behind the major innovations in virtual reality that Mark Zuckerberg envisions for his metaverse. Shyam Sankar was his counterpart at Palantir Technologies, the company co-founded by Peter Thiel, whose complex data analysis platforms were used by intelligence and defense agencies. As for Kevin Weil and Bob McGrew, both were senior executives at OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT – in other words, specialists in generative artificial intelligence (AI). The official mission for this quartet? To “fuse cutting-edge tech expertise with military innovation” and to help develop projects such as hypersonic weapons or combat AI, they told the press. In short: to bring tech and the military closer together, linking Silicon Valley and the Pentagon, Palo Alto and West Point.
It marks a return to the roots. Silicon Valley was conceived in the aftermath of World War II as a base for the military-industrial complex. Calculators, radars, sonars, and the first guidance systems were then designed and tested in the shadow of Stanford University, thanks to funding from major weapons manufacturers, before being deployed by the military. The internet itself is an extension of ARPAnet, a military network developed in the research laboratories of Berkeley, the other major university in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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