Silicon Valley’s Military Commissioning
A Dangerous Farce in Uniform
I was doomscrolling through the news while waiting on hold with customer service—my internet had gone down for the third time that week, and I was trying to explain to a chatbot named Nicolette that yes, I had already tried turning the router off and on again. Mid-scroll, an article headline caught my eye: “Meta CTO Commissioned as Lieutenant Colonel in U.S. Army.”
At first, I assumed it was satire. The Onion? Clickhole? A new Black Mirror season? But no—this was real. Actual tech execs, now military officers. Somewhere between “boot camp waiver” and “lieutenant colonel with startup experience,” I forgot all about the internet outage and started imagining a war room run on Slack.
By the time a human finally picked up, I’d already fallen down a rabbit hole. And that’s how I discovered that Silicon Valley wasn’t just disrupting industries anymore—it was disrupting the chain of command.
In a move that would make Eisenhower's ghost roll his eyes, the U.S. Army has begun commissioning Silicon Valley tech executives as lieutenant colonels—yes, you read that right—offering them rank, uniform, and prestige without the pesky inconvenience of military training, experience, or sacrifice. This initiative, cloaked under the shiny banner of innovation and national security, is nothing short of a dangerous farce.
Let’s strip away the patriotic packaging. This is not about service—it’s about access. It’s about granting some of the wealthiest, most powerful civilians in the country a shortcut into the Pentagon’s inner sanctums, skipping past the years of grueling work, sweat, and risk that actual service members endure. The brass say these execs bring vital knowledge on AI, cybersecurity, and VR. Maybe. But at what cost?
The military is not a start-up. It is a sacred institution rooted in discipline, duty, and accountability. These are values earned, not downloaded. Giving tech moguls ceremonial officer status—complete with medals, uniforms, and public recognition—undermines the credibility of the rank structure and insults those who served with blood, not bandwidth. The lieutenant colonel leading a convoy in Kandahar didn’t get there by writing code from a WeWork in Palo Alto.
Worse, this move cements the already-terrifying fusion of Big Tech and the war machine. With defense contracts already lining the pockets of Palantir, Meta, and others, appointing their execs as military officers essentially legalizes conflict of interest under the guise of patriotic duty. It's the military-industrial complex 2.0—now featuring product demos and TED Talks.
And let’s not ignore the chilling optics: unelected tech barons in uniform advising military strategy? The same men whose platforms struggle to manage deepfakes and data breaches are now national defense advisors? What happens when military policy starts looking like a Terms of Service update—long, opaque, and impossible to opt out of?
This commissioning scheme is not about defending the country. It’s about defending the privilege of those who already have too much influence over our digital and civic lives. If we’re serious about modernization, let’s invest in soldier training, cybersecurity infrastructure, and R&D—not in cosplaying CEOs.
Innovation doesn’t need epaulettes. It needs ethics. And if the Pentagon can’t see the danger in this maneuver, maybe it’s time we rebooted our entire definition of “service.” Because this is not patriotism. It’s performance. And no uniform, however freshly pressed, can disguise that.