After his tech bro praise Trump meeting last night, Trump had 4 tech execs sworn in as Lt Colonels, so they could give them access to classified documents without the pesky clearances needed
I genuinely cannot believe I’m saying this and that it is not a top-of-the-page headline story across the country, but the US Army just swore in four tech executives as Lieutenant Colonels: Shayam Sankar, the CTO of Palantir (Peter Thiel’s company), Andrew Bosworth, the CTO of Meta (Mark Zuckerberg’s company) and OpenAI’s chief product officer Kevin Weil and former chief research officer Bob McGrew, (the company belonging to Sam Altman.)
These four men are all now one rank away from a General. Second-in-command for field-grade officers. There are 16 ranks lower than a Lieutenant Colonel and these four untrained civilians just leapfrogged over soldiers who have dedicated their entire career and lives to the US military.
Apparently, these men are going to work on “targeted projects to help guide rapid and scalable tech solutions to complex problems.”
A sentence that means absolutely nothing because clearly this is just a way of giving these companies access to top-secret information without them having to go through any pesky background checks. If that doesn’t scare you, it really should, because we already know that Palantir is building a massive centralized database using much of the information they acquired from DOGE, Elon Musk’s foray into the American government.
These billionaire tech-bros are compiling lists of our most sensitive information. Our tax records, medical data, bank accounts, Social Security information, immigration status, etc. This administration is allowing them to build the infrastructure for techno-feudalism. Authoritarianism in the form of data and surveillance.
It is a horrifying and blatant conflict of interest that harms the safety and security of all Americans. There should not be this much overlap between private tech and the US government, certainly not between private tech and the US military. I do not know how asleep at the wheel Congress can possibly be. But they should be shutting this down immediately and every single one of us should be demanding that they do it.
The people who are using the government against you are now taking over military authority. The corruption is calculated and staggering. And I can only hope that our veterans and active-duty military are paying incredibly close attention. And now that you know you should be talking about it.
-Leigh McGowan (“Politics Girl Podcast”)