US army swore in 4 tech executives as lieutenant colonels

In 2025, a rumor spread online that the U.S. Army had sworn in lieutenant colonels with a history of work not in the military — but in Silicon Valley. 

The claim spread on Facebook, X and Reddit. Many posts alleged that the Army swore in four tech executives with ties to Meta, which owns social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp; Palantir, a data analysis software company; and OpenAI, which developed the generative artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT. 

In a June 13, 2025, news release, the Army announced the swearing-in of four tech executives as lieutenant colonels, a rank that typically takes nearly two decades to achieve. The executives will serve part-time in the Army Reserve as senior advisers. As of this writing, all of the executives either currently hold or once held senior positions at Meta, Palantir or OpenAI. Thus, we rate this claim true. 

Per the news release, these executives will serve in a new initiative called “Detachment 201: The Army’s Executive Innovation Corps,” which is “designed to fuse cutting-edge tech expertise with military innovation.” 

Read the relevant portion of the news release below (emphasis ours): 

On June 13, 2025, the Army will officially swear in four tech leaders.

Det. 201 is an effort to recruit senior tech executives to serve part-time in the Army Reserve as senior advisors. In this role they will work on targeted projects to help guide rapid and scalable tech solutions to complex problems. By bringing private-sector know-how into uniform, Det. 201 is supercharging efforts like the Army Transformation Initiative, which aims to make the force leaner, smarter, and more lethal.

The four new Army Reserve Lt. Cols. are Shyam Sankar, Chief Technology Officer for Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, Chief Technology Officer of Meta; Kevin Weil, Chief Product Officer of OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, advisor at Thinking Machines Lab and former Chief Research Officer for OpenAI.

Thinking Machines Lab is an artificial intelligence research and product company. 

Sankar, Bosworth, Weil and McGrew also published their own statements on X announcing their swearings-in; Bosworth said in his statement that the four advisers’ “primary role will be to serve as technical experts advising the Army’s modernization efforts.” 

 The Wall Street Journal reported (archived) that the “tech reservists will serve for around 120 days a year.” 

Snopes has previously examined many claims about Meta, Palantir and OpenAI, including an allegation that Meta forced Facebook users to follow U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, a rumor that Palantir was creating a national database of U.S. citizens and a claim that an OpenAI artificial intelligence model lied to avoid being shut down. 

Sources