The day before Donald Trump's 250th anniversary parade for the U.S. Army, the Army swore in four Silicon Valley executives as Army Reserve lieutenant colonels as part of their new "Detachment 201: The Army's Executive Innovation Corps." The Army said the program was "designed to fuse cutting-edge tech expertise with military innovation."

The new Army Reserve lieutenant colonels are Shyam Sankar, chief technology officer for Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, chief technology officer for Meta; Kevin Weil, chief product officer for OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, advisor at Thinking Machines Lab and former chief research officer for OpenAI.

The rank of lieutenant colonel is generally awarded to officers in their second decade of military service. The position typically commands between several hundred soldiers, but the tech executives are not expected to command traditional formations.