Four big tech executives the Army^[1] directly commissioned to be lieutenant colonels, with no military background, will not recuse themselves from business dealings with the Department of Defense -- as the Pentagon, particularly the Army, cozies up to Silicon Valley.

Earlier this month, the Army announced Detachment 201, the name being a reference to HTTP code^[2], for the newly commissioned executives of Palantir, Meta and OpenAI. The new formation is set to recruit tech executives to work on major Army challenges, but the service has not articulated exactly what those individuals would do -- instead focusing on recruiting^[3] talent and creating jobs around them.

"They're not making acquisition decisions, they're not senior decision-makers," Steve Warren, an Army spokesperson, told reporters Wednesday when asked about what oversight mechanisms are in place over the new unit. "It's not in our interest to show any favoritism to a company -- that would be the exact opposite of what we're trying to do, right? What we want is competition. That's what we're looking for; these guys will help us think about that."

Read Next: New Army Shaving Policy Will Allow Soldiers with Skin Condition that Affects Mostly Black Men to Be Kicked Out^[4]

The four include Shyam Sankar, chief technology officer for Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, chief technology officer of Meta; Kevin Weil, chief product officer of OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, adviser at Thinking Machines Lab and former chief research officer for OpenAI.

They'll take part in an extremely accelerated two-week training course to familiarize themselves with the Army. Some of that will be online training and the rest will be at Fort Benning, Georgia. It's unclear whether they'll have to adhere to typical service standards including fitness and marksmanship.

Sankar has pledged to donate all of the money he earns as a part-time officer to Army Emergency Relief^[5], the de facto nonprofit for soldiers and their families, according to a Palantir spokesperson. Pay for a part-time officer at his rank with no time in service would amount to roughly $10,000 per year but could be higher or lower depending on how much time they commit to the Army.

Last year, Sankar sold Palantir stock amounting to $367.9 million^[6] and has made numerous other multimillion-dollar deals. None of the other executives, now Army Reserve officers, responded to requests for comment. None of them were made available for interviews.

Just before Bosworth was sworn in, Meta announced a deal with defense technology company Anduril to pursue military contracts that involve artificial intelligence and augmented reality, which could be worth millions of dollars.

OpenAI also announced a $200 million defense contract within days of Bosworth being sworn in to develop an artificial intelligence tool. Palantir has been involved in numerous enormous federal deals, particularly during the second Trump administration, including a $759 million Army contract for AI development and another massive project to compile data on Americans^[7]. 

While in regular formations, lieutenant colonel is a senior rank that garners respect. Inside the Pentagon, it's often the bare minimum rank to enter the room -- a relatively junior-grade officer in a sea of top brass and high-level civilian decision-makers. The law allows the military to direct commission up to the rank of colonel, but that would require Senate confirmation.

Military.com spoke with nearly two dozen Army and Pentagon officials -- from midgrade officers to senior brass -- as well as defense analysts and Capitol Hill aides. Across the board, there was strong support for the concept of pulling high-end civilian tech talent into uniform, particularly in a bureaucracy often faulted for its glacial pace of change.

"If we end up in a war in an Indo-Pacific conflict, we're going to need to tap more people like this," said Katherine Kuzminski, a national security personnel expert at the Center for a New American Security.

And the potential benefits go beyond Silicon Valley-style innovation.

"Tech is the hot new thing, but think about the logistics piece," Kuzminski added. "How do you capture that from UPS or FedEx? How do we feed our service members in a contested environment?"

Still, nearly all sources raised red flags about how the Army handled the rollout, calling it a self-inflicted optics nightmare. Service officials have insisted none of those executives will be involved in decision-making on government contracts, yet there is virtually no systemic oversight on that potential conflict of interest.

The decision to grant officer commissions to executives with no military background, without clear recusal from future defense business, sparked concerns of ethical lapses and blurred lines.

Several officials warned that any future Pentagon deals involving the companies could be tainted by perceptions of favoritism, potentially souring relationships with competing contractors and casting a shadow over future acquisitions.

Most officials interviewed see long-term promise for the Army, but the initiative is also emerging as a flashpoint -- the latest sign of the service's growing relationship with Silicon Valley, a rapidly warming connection that's turning into a growing concern for lawmakers worried about big-tech influence and lobbying.

Much of the concern centers on what, exactly, wealthy tech executives already wielding outsized influence stand to gain from a formal relationship with the Army.

Service officials insist patriotism is the driving force. However, while the Pentagon has long tapped private-sector talent through advisory roles and consulting gigs, issuing uniforms^[8] marks a largely unprecedented step in the modern era.

While an executive role will likely have more influence than a reserve officer with no notable title, working directly with the Army would likely yield more networking opportunities within the Pentagon and constant direct contact with senior Army leaders.

"When it isn't obvious what rich guys get out of something, that's what worries me," one Capitol Hill national security adviser told Military.com on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly.

Related: Pentagon Plans $5 Billion for Border, Bets on Trump Bill to Fill Funding Gaps^[9]

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced that a Navy^[1] supply ship that honored a veteran who was the first openly gay politician in California will be renamed for a sailor who was awarded the Medal of Honor^[2] during World War II in a video message posted online Friday^[3].

In the video, Hegseth said that he would be renaming the John Lewis-class oiler USNS Harvey Milk in honor of Chief Watertender Oscar V. Peterson. Peterson heroically sacrificed his life^[4] while his ship, the USS Neosho, was under attack by the Japanese during the Battle of the Coral Sea.

Military.com first reported^[5] that Hegseth had ordered the Navy secretary, who has the legal power to name ships, to rename the Milk earlier in June, and an official said that the choice to strip the ship of the gay rights icon's name during Pride Month was deliberate on Hegseth's part.

Read Next: New Army Shaving Policy Will Allow Soldiers with Skin Condition that Affects Mostly Black Men to Be Kicked Out^[6]

According to a Navy memo reviewed by Military.com, the renaming was being done so that there is "alignment with president and SECDEF objectives and SECNAV priorities of reestablishing the warrior culture," apparently referencing President Donald Trump, Hegseth and Navy Secretary John Phelan.

Both Hegseth, and the Pentagon's top spokesman, Sean Parnell, claimed that the renaming -- a move that is incredibly rare for the U.S. Navy -- was to remove politics from the ship naming process.

Hegseth claimed in his video that "this is not about political activists, unlike the previous administration." However, the Milk was actually named in 2016 by then-Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, and the entire class of ships are named after civil rights and human rights activists including Harriet Tubman, who helped slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad, and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who championed civil rights.

Parnell, in an emailed statement, claimed that the choice of Harvey Milk was "widely viewed as an ideologically motivated action that countless sailors and veterans found abhorrent."

The Pentagon did not answer Military.com's request for any evidence of the claim.

Despite the comments from the defense secretary's office, politics have been part of ship naming throughout the modern era.

A Congressional Research Service report^[7] on ship naming found numerous instances in which members of Congress have advocated for or against ship names -- often with the aim of having their state or someone from their state be honored.

The report also notes that 1819 and 1858 laws "set forth naming rules for certain kinds of ships," and there is still a law on the books that requires battleships -- a class of ship not built since World War II -- be named after states.

In his video, Hegseth said that "people want to be proud of the ship they're sailing in," but other ship names have also skirted controversy and raised concerns without being renamed.

The aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis honors a U.S. senator from Mississippi who had a long track record of supporting racial segregation.

In the 1950s, Stennis signed the so-called "Southern Manifesto," which called for massive resistance to the Supreme Court ruling that desegregated public schools. He also voted against the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. It wouldn't be until 1982 that Stennis seemed to finally abandon those views with his support for the extension of the Voting Rights Act that year.

Similarly, the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson is named after Rep. Carl Vinson from Georgia who, like Stennis, was a segregationist who signed the Southern Manifesto and voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

More recently, in 2010, for example, some service members were outraged that the Navy would choose to name an amphibious ship after the late Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Pa., after his long record of service as a key leader of the House appropriations defense subcommittee.

Murtha had said that a 2005 incident in which a squad of Marines had killed around two dozen non-combatants was an overreaction on their part and they "killed innocent civilians in cold blood^[8]."

Charges were eventually filed against some of the Marines over the incident; ultimately, most of the charges were dropped, one Marine was acquitted, and one pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty.

A defense official told Military.com that there were currently no plans to rename any other ships in the same class of ships as the Harvey Milk, and that the name change will formally happen sometime in the next six months.

The ship is currently completing maintenance and refit work at a shipyard in Alabama that is expected to wrap up by the end of June^[9].

Related: Hegseth Orders Navy to Strip Name of Gay Rights Icon Harvey Milk from Ship^[10]

President Donald Trump said he wants to bring back a long-retired title: secretary of war. Why was it dropped in the first place?

Trump brought up the idea of a name change while introducing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at a June 25 press conference in the Netherlands, which hosted this year’s NATO summit.

“You know, it used to be called secretary of war,” the president said. “Maybe for a couple of weeks we’ll call it that because we feel like warriors.”

“In fact, if you look at the old building next to the White House, you can see where it used to be secretary of war,” Trump added. “Then we became politically correct and they called it secretary of defense. Maybe we’ll have to start thinking about changing it.”

Here’s why the secretary of war came to be known as the secretary of defense. Secretary of war

The title of secretary of war dates back to the founding of the United States.

In 1789, shortly after the U.S. Constitution was ratified, President George Washington signed legislation establishing the War Department, according to the Department of Defense.

The new department was tasked with overseeing and maintaining the Army, Navy and Marine Corps, all of which were set up three years earlier.

Washington chose Henry Knox, one of his aides during the Revolutionary War — and the namesake of Fort Knox — to serve as its first secretary.

Then, less than a decade later, in 1798, the scope of the department shrank, when management of the Navy was handed over to the newly formed Navy Department. And, in 1834, the Marine Corps was moved under the Navy Department, leaving just the Army under the War Department.

In 1879, following the Civil War, the War Department took up headquarters in the newly built Eisenhower Executive Office Building. It was then referred to as the State-War-Navy Building — as Trump referenced in his recent press conference. --

In 1947, during the aftermath of World War II, President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act, which combined the War and Navy Departments, as well as the newly formed Air Force, into one organization known as the National Military Establishment.

This new organization was renamed the Department of Defense in 1949, according to Dartmouth University records.

James Forrestal, who had previously served as the secretary of the Navy, then became the nation’s first secretary of defense.

This title has remained in use ever since then, with Hegseth being the country’s 29th secretary of defense.

© 2025 The Herald (Rock Hill, S.C.). Visit www.heraldonline.com^[1]. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.^[2]