4 top execs of Silicon Valley are joining the US Army as Army Reserve Lt. Colonel; here's what the mission is
President Donald Trump salutes during a military parade commemorating the Army's 250th anniversary, coinciding with his 79th birthday, in Washington, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and first lady Melania Trump watch. (AP/PTI)(AP06_15_2025_000056A)
The U.S. Army is establishing Detachment 201: The Army's Executive Innovation Corps, a new initiative designed to fuse cutting-edge tech expertise with military innovation. Under this, The US military recently announced that four executives from some of the top tech companies in Silicon Valley have joined the Army Reserve as direct-commissioned officers.
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.
What is US Army's Detachment 201 project
Detachment 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.
What is the mission of the US Army's Detachment 201 project
The swearing-in of the four Silicon Valley top executives is, as per an official press release from the US Army: To be just the start of a bigger mission to inspire more tech pros to serve without leaving their careers, showing the next generation how to make a difference in uniform.
The new reservists will serve for about 120 hours a year, according to the Wall Street Journal, and will have a lot of flexibility to work remotely. They'll work on helping the Army acquire more commercial tech.
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Its story goes back thousands of years, to the time of Cyrus the Great and the grand cities of Persepolis and Isfahan. For Americans, 1776 feels like distant history. For Iranians, it's barely yesterday compared to the long arc of dynasties like the Achaemenids, Parthians, Sassanids and Safavids. Fraternity of Ancient Civilisation Iran, of course, is not alone in this deep civilisational lineage. India, with its Indus Valley roots and uninterrupted philosophical, spiritual, and political traditions, remains one of the oldest living civilisations. From the Vedas and Ashoka to Gandhi and Ambedkar, India's civilisational dialogue has always been self-reflective and adaptive. China, too, boasts over 4,000 years of continuous history. Dynasties rose and fell, but the Middle Kingdom maintained its Confucian spine, reinventing itself repeatedly - from the Han and Tang to the Ming and the modern Chinese state. 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It's widely believed that by the time the Greeks were learning to spell democracy, Persian kings had already drafted the first known charter of human rights. The Cyrus Cylinder, dating back to 539 BCE, speaks of religious freedom and humane governance. Darius I standardised coinage, built roads, and governed a vast empire through a sophisticated administrative system. What does America have in comparison? A civil war it barely understands, a Constitution its politicians selectively quote, and a capital city with Roman facades but little Roman endurance. Old vs New Even America's soft power - Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wall Street - is somewhat brittle. It lacks civilisational roots. Its stories are constantly rebooted, its billionaires chase immortality in the cloud, and its idea of global leadership is inseparable from surveillance and sanctions. Iran, for all its censorship and theocracy, still reveres poets. The tombs of Hafez and Saadi attract pilgrims, not influencers. 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The Soviets believed Afghanistan could be tamed by tanks. And America thought shock and awe in Iraq would usher in a democratic sunrise. History laughed. Civilisational Iran endured them all. And all indications are that it will endure American airstrikes, too. But what kind of world are we building when the powerful measure their might not by restraint, but by the tonnage of explosives? The US should remember how many short-lived superpowers litter the pages of history. Persia fought Alexander and survived. It absorbed Mongols and was reborn. It was ruled by Caliphs and rose again. It had its Renaissance during Europe's Dark Ages. All through history, Iran has been a picture of fortitude. America, by contrast, is already cracking under its own weight - politically polarised, socially fragmented and struggling to project credibility abroad. What we are witnessing is not just geopolitical conflict but a deeper clash of temporalities. America thinks in news cycles; Iran thinks in centuries. America invades; Iran waits. Even Machiavelli, the patron saint of political cynics, warned that power without legitimacy is brittle. You can silence an enemy with missiles. You cannot erase their memory with drones. The Persian Identity Iran's intellectual lineage is impressive. Avicenna, whose Canon of Medicine was taught in European universities until the 17th century, was Persian. So was Al-Farabi, one of the early architects of Islamic philosophy. The Islamic Golden Age, from Baghdad to Bukhara, owed much to Persian scholars. The Safavid dynasty (16th-18th century) fused Shiism into Persian identity, creating a theocratic-political structure far more enduring than any ideology cooked up in Washington think tanks. Even in decline, Persia exports ideas. Its cinema, literature, art, and even resistance politics ripple across the region. India's Enduring Philosophy India, too, shows us what resilience looks like. Despite colonial looting, Partition trauma and post-colonial chaos, it has preserved its philosophical heritage - from the Upanishads to Tagore, from the Bhakti movement to contemporary thinkers. India gave the world zero, yoga, and Gandhi. It also gave dissent, pluralism and the idea that unity doesn't mean uniformity. China, for its part, has weathered dynastic collapses, colonial incursions and cultural revolutions, only to emerge as a global economic powerhouse - its Confucian and Taoist roots still pulsing beneath the skyscrapers of Shanghai. So what does it mean when a heavily armed young boy bombs an ancestor? It means we are in an age where history is ignored and memory is disposable. But nations, like people, need roots to endure. Iran has those roots. India and China have them too. America, increasingly, lives on borrowed time and borrowed wisdom. If American policymakers want to understand Iran, they should start by reading the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, not just satellite imagery. If they want to influence West Asia, they should study Shahnameh, not just sanctions. Because the legacy of the empire is not measured by firepower. Bombing Iran may win a news cycle. But it loses the arc of history. Empires that fail to listen to history end up becoming footnotes in it. Ask Rome. Ask Britain. America still has a choice. But first, it must decide: does it want to be remembered as a fleeting power that barked orders or a mature civilisation that earned respect? Iran, wounded but enduring, knows its answer. It has known it for 5,000 years. (Syed Zubair Ahmed is a London-based senior Indian journalist with three decades of experience with the Western media) Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
