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At first glance, it seems like Silicon Valley executives have the perfect life, what with the unimaginable wealth and power and such. But what if they’re sad they don’t get to put on big boy pants and pretend they’re warfighters? What then, America?

Thankfully the Army has invented a way to give tech execs participation trophies—surely that is the best and most noble use of our armed forces. 

A new Army initiative titled “Detachment 201: The Army’s Executive Innovation Corps” promises to “fuse cutting-edge tech expertise with military innovation.” 

Will they do that by tapping 18F, the federal agency dedicated to working with other agencies on technology products, staffed by people with expertise in both government and tech? Heavens, no. Not since President Donald Trump disbanded that agency because Elon Musk thought it was too woke. 

No, instead they will do it by making some tech execs part-time lieutenant colonels in the Army Reserve while retaining their current full-time jobs. Welcome your newest recruits: Andrew Bosworth, CTO of Meta; Shyam Sankar, CTO Palantir; Kevin Weil, CPO of OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, OpenAI’s former research chief and current advisor to Thinking Machines Lab. 

The whole thing feels like nothing more than a make-believe outing meant to make some tech bros feel important. The Army already does these sorts of direct commissions, where civilians are directly appointed to officer positions. But that’s usually used for people wanting to serve in the medical corps, not for getting a pretend Army gig to steer federal contracts to your private company. 

The Army announced the initiative the same day the four execs were sworn in, which makes it look a lot like they invented this “detachment” as a way to bring Silicon Valley moguls in-house without officially doing so. This way, the Trump administration didn’t have to appoint or hire any industry titans, and they didn’t have to give up their incredibly lucrative day jobs. 

“Detachment 201” would look a lot less sketchy if the Army hadn’t only tapped executives from companies that have donated millions to Trump. OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman dropped a million on his inauguration, as did Palantir CEO Alexander Karp and Meta. Palantir even went above and beyond, sponsoring Trump’s pathetic military parade. 

These four execs were sworn in on June 13, and it only took until June 16 for the Defense Department to announce it had awarded a $200 million no-bid contract to OpenAI to “develop prototype frontier AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains.” 

Just in case this conflict of interest wasn’t blatant enough, Katrina Mulligan, former chief of staff to the Army secretary, posted more big news on LinkedIn Monday, announcing that, since being rewarded its $200 million contract, OpenAI is now bringing her on to run a new initiative, “OpenAI for Government,” which will supposedly “help accelerate the U.S. government’s adoption of AI.”

Similarly, Palantir has already been the recipient of more than $100 million in taxpayer dollars since Trump took office in January. And just last month, The New York Times published a detailed account of government use of Foundry, a Palantir tool for organizing and analyzing data. As everyone knows, this is because the Trump administration wants to create a unified master database of government data to better torment immigrants. But Palantir wants you to know it’s definitely not building a unified master database, and how dare you ask. 

Meta, meanwhile, hasn’t yet reaped its rewards, but don’t worry—it’s getting there. The company is actively courting the military for contracts and has partnered with Palmer Luckey’s Anduril Industries to design, build, and field products for the military to “provide warfighters with enhanced perception and enable intuitive control of autonomous platforms on the battlefield.”

In other words, they’re building a VR helmet to sell to the military.  

Notably absent from the list of Big Special Boys with Big Special Army Jobs is Musk and any of his companies. In the halcyon days of the Trump-Musk alliance, he was getting literal billions in government contracts, awarded with no oversight and no regard for the obvious conflict of interest. 

SpaceX was on track to help build the Golden Dome missile shield, a Trump fixation and boondoggle that will not work but will nonetheless cost somewhere between $119 billion and $6.4 trillion. But now there’s nary a mention of SpaceX while Golden Dome missile shield partner Palantir’s star is rapidly ascending. 

Clearly, Trump’s gratitude for the $250 million Musk spent to get him elected is now exhausted, in part thanks to their tacky, messy blowup, but also because Trump requires constant infusions of both money and fealty. 

But other billionaires are eager to fill that void and ready to reap the riches. And, unlike Musk, they get to play soldier, too!

Campaign Action

New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander was arrested outside an immigration courtroom Tuesday. Lander has been volunteering as an observer and escort for people with immigration hearings in recent weeks. In this case, while accompanying a man named Edgardo, a group of ICE agents approached the two men, who were walking arm in arm. Lander asked repeatedly to see a judicial warrant before being handcuffed and detained. Lander was later released after New York Governor Kathy Hochul condemned the arrest and visited New York City to lobby for his release. Five other mayoral candidates also condemned Lander’s arrest, although current Mayor Eric Adams has stayed silent. Adams “has sold this city out to Donald Trump to try to get his own pardon,” says Lander. “Let’s be clear: It’s only himself he cares about, and he is putting New York’s immigrants in harm’s way.”

The Supreme Court has upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, in an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts over dissent from the court’s Democratic appointees.

The Republican-appointed majority said Wednesday that the state law isn’t subject to heightened scrutiny under the Constitution’s equal protection clause. Reasoning that the law doesn’t discriminate based on sex, Roberts wrote that it “prohibits healthcare providers from administering puberty blockers and hormones to minors for certain medical uses, regardless of a minor’s sex.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent for the three Democratic appointees that the law plainly discriminated on the basis of sex, and so it deserved greater scrutiny from the court. “By retreating from meaningful judicial review exactly where it matters most, the Court abandons transgender children and their families to political whims,” she wrote.

The appeal presented national implications for other states with similar laws and for transgender rights more broadly. According to KFF, which tracks health policy, 27 states have laws or policies limiting youth access to gender-affirming care.

The justices took the case at the urging of the federal government during the Biden administration. Its petition noted that states across the country have laws that bar transgender adolescents from receiving certain treatments but don’t restrict those same treatments for any other purpose. Those laws “classify based on sex and transgender status,” the petition argued.

Defending the law, the state said it’s “not unconstitutional discrimination to say that drugs can be prescribed for one reason but not another.” The state further argued that its law doesn’t classify people based on sex but rather creates two groups: “minors seeking drugs for gender transition and minors seeking drugs for other medical purposes.”

After Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, the federal government told the court in February that its Biden-era stance “no longer represent the United States’ position.” Still, the government didn’t ask the justices to dismiss the appeal, citing several factors including that the court’s resolution of the case would affect many pending cases in the lower courts.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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In recent months we’ve seen the Trump administration punishing speech critical of Israel in its widening effort to combat what it sees as antisemitism. As protestors have been detained for pro-Palestinian activism, we’ve seen attacks on Jews and people expressing concern for Israeli hostages in Gaza — and in the wake of all this, a lot Jews don’t agree on which actions constitutive antisemitism. On this episode, we’re looking at the landscape of this disagreement, and talking to the legal scholar who came up with the definition of antisemitism that the White House is using, and who says he’s worried that definition is being used in a way that could hurt Jews instead of protect them.

This episode was produced by Jess Kung. It was edited by Courtney Stein. Our engineer was Ko Takasugi-Czernowin.