The US Army has established a new group to help big tech and the military work closer together.

As part of 'Detachment 201: The Army’s Executive Innovation Corps,' executives from four tech giants have been sworn in as Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonels.

The new Lt. Cols. are Shyam Sankar, CTO of Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, CTO of Meta; Kevin Weil, chief product officer of OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, advisor at Thinking Machines Lab and former chief research officer of OpenAI.

"Their swearing-in is 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 US Army Public Affairs said.

The detachment is named after the hypertext transfer protocol status code 201, which indicates the creation of a new resource on a server.

The Lt. Cols. are expected to serve at least 120 hours a year, and will not be expected to do basic training. However, they will be expected to complete physical-fitness tests and marksmanship training.

Their exact role is unclear, with tech experts expected to provide guidance on topics such as AI-powered military systems and soldier fitness optimization efforts. They are meant to be recused from anything that could benefit their employers.

There have been multiple efforts to integrate Silicon Valley and the US military, notably 2016's creation of the Defense Innovation Board.

The board's first chairman, Eric Schmidt, was previously the CEO of Google - with the board's exec director Joshua Marcuse eventually leaving for Google. LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman is also a member. Amazon's Jeff Bezos was considered, but ultimately dropped out due to security clearance issues.

The military also operates the Secretary of Defense Executive Fellows (SDEF) program, where military officers or civilian employees from military services train with sponsoring corporations. Fellows have been assigned to Amazon, Apple, Cisco, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, and others.

Despite much of Silicon Valley being built on military and security contracts, it long kept such deals at arm's length. Employees at companies like Google and Microsoft have protested military contracts, and companies went out of their way to hide the deals they did make.

Big data business Palantir was founded to take advantage of this disconnect, openly pitching the military-industrial complex. But, with the reelection of Donald Trump, the broader Silicon Valley community has also shifted to more openly support military contracts.

Meta last month announced that it would partner with Anduril to develop a range of augmented reality (AR) products for US soldiers. The generative AI giant is also working with Anduril on artificial intelligence systems for “national security missions.”

Rival Anthropic and Palantir have partnered with Amazon Web Services to “provide US intelligence and defense agencies access to [Anthropic’s] Claude 3 and 3.5 family of models on AWS."

This month, Palantir and Oracle were revealed as one of the corporate sponsors of the 250th anniversary military march.