Among those donning the uniform are Palantir chief technology officer Shyam Sankar, Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, OpenAI chief product officer Kevin Weil, and Bob McGrew who was once OpenAI’s chief research officer and now advising Thinking Machines Lab.

All four are joining Detachment 201, or the Army’s Executive Innovation Corps, which is a programme designed to plug civilian brainpower into defence modernisation while letting execs keep their cushy day jobs.

In a move that would make any infantry vet grind their teeth, the new tech colonels will skip the Direct Commissioning Course at Fort Benning and dodge the Army Fitness Test entirely.

Don't expect them to have to jump on a live grenade to save their fellows either. Instead of the usual slog, they’ll serve about 120 hours a year remotely, tinkering with commercial tech integration and supposedly steering clear of conflicts of interest. The Army insists the appointees won’t be working on anything that might fatten their companies’ bottom lines, a claim that’ll raise eyebrows from here to the Pentagon parking lot.

“Their swearing-in is just the start of a bigger mission to inspire more tech pros to serve without leaving their careers,” the Army said.

Gizmodo notes that while the move is technically legal, it’s highly irregular. Historically, the US military's relationship with Silicon Valley has been laced with lucrative defence contracts. During the Reagan era, Valley firms trousered $5 billion annually in military funds.

Now, with the Overton window of respectability cracked wide open post-Trump, tech bros are less squeamish about flashing their red, white and blue credentials. “There’s a lot of patriotism that has been under the covers that I think is coming to light in the Valley,” Bosworth told the Wall Street Journal.