Category Archives: Neutrality and Complicity

From Big Tech to Mass Grave

Posted on by under Human Shields, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, War with Iran

Here’s an item from Business Insider of the sort you see just about every day in that publication, at least if you read it every day, as I do. It’s so common that its implications seem to go in one ear and out the other. “More big tech execs are joining the Army Reserve as senior officers,” we’re told.

  • The Army has added three more tech executives to its special Detachment 201 reserve unit.
  • Det 201 members join as lieutenant colonels, advising the service on AI, cyber, and modernization.
  • The new troops come from places like Cloudflare, a major private equity firm, and Facebook AI Research.
  • A second crop of tech executives entered the Army Reserve last week, expanding the service’s ties with Big Tech as it continues a dramatic effort to modernize its equipment and systems and better prepare for modern warfare.

Those who recently joined include Dane Knecht, the chief technology officer of Cloudflare; Sam Pullara, managing director and CTO of Sutter Hill Ventures, a Palo Alto investment firm; and Serkan Piantino, a former Reddit executive and co-founder of Facebook AI Research.

The executives have joined a unit known as Detachment 201, a special unit “designed to bridge the gap between private-sector innovation and military modernization,” the Army said in a press release, reflecting the Pentagon’s push to leverage private-sector technical expertise to address complex national security and defense challenges.

Members are reservists, can work remotely, and must complete a minimum of 112 hours of service annually.

“Their primary role is to serve as senior advisors to help drive the Army Transformation Initiative, concentrated on high-level technological strategies in areas such as cyber, AI and machine learning applications, and other data-driven capabilities,” Army spokesperson Lt. Col. Orlando Howard said in an email to Business Insider.

They join four other tech leaders who entered the Army Reserve one year ago: Shyam Sankar, the chief technology officer of Palantir; Andrew Bosworth, the chief technology officer of Meta; Kevin Weil, former chief product officer at OpenAI; and Bob McGrew, an advisor at Thinking Machines Lab and former chief research officer at OpenAI.

All entered the Army as lieutenant colonels, a rank that takes most officers over a decade to reach. The senior entry, known as a “direct commission,” is not unheard of, though. Most military medical providers, chaplains, and veterinarians join at slightly more senior ranks, though they undergo their own version of boot camp, while Det 201 does not.

“The program selects applicants who are highly skilled civilian technology professionals at the executive or C-suite level to serve as part-time strategic advisers,” Howard said. “These officers use their advanced expertise in commercial tech and private industry to offer a different perspective and advise senior Army leaders on solving military problems.”

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Graham Platner and the Merchants of Mass Death

Posted on by under character based voting, Electoral Ethics and Politics, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement

The Graham Platner controversy is an instructively stupid one. It’s a little bit like the Katie Hill controversy of yesteryear, but even dumber.

Platner is accused of saying and doing some problematic things, mostly many years ago. The accusations fall into two categories. Either the facts are contested, or not. In the most serious cases, the facts are not only contested but essentially unknowable, which raises the suspicion that many of the allegations are either exaggerations, false memories, or lies. In the uncontested cases, what is alleged is simply not serious enough to be disqualfying. Much of the “scandal” turns on the widespread inability to grasp or acknowledge the fact that people often say things in anger or through thoughtlessness that they don’t really mean. These claims often don’t tell us very much in the first instance except that the person lacks a certain kind of self-control. Once the problematic claim comes out, it’s out, but if sincerely apologized for, much of the problem is, often enough, resolved. 

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Outside Agitation

Posted on by under activism, migrant defense, Neutrality and Complicity

Scenes from Delaney Hall (3)
In 1963, an outsider named Martin Luther King, Jr. traveled from Atlanta, Georgia to Birmingham, Alabama to protest injustice there by deliberately intensifying “tension” in that, to him, foreign city. His presence, as well as that of his followers, was questioned by locals:

However, we are now confronted by a series of demonstrations by some of our Negro citizens, directed and led in part by outsiders. We recognize the natural impatience of people who feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely.

King unapologetically doubled down on being an outsider:

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Why We Upheld the U.S. War Crimes Act At Port Elizabeth and Were Arrested

Posted on by under activism, anarchism, Guest Post, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

On May 26, I posted a press release on the May 22, 2026 activist blockade of Port Newark/Elizabeth Marine Terminal. This post below is a reprint, with permission, of an item describing an earlier action of theirs that took place on October 3, 2025. For the original post,and more material, visit their Substack, Zoomed Out. I’ve supplied the hyperlinks.

I would just underscore the fact that if “[h]undreds of tons of tax-payer funded weapons are being shipped weekly from its docks to the Israeli ports of Ashdod and Haifa via commercial shipping companies, Maersk (Danish) and ZIM (Israeli),” then ostensibly civilian infrastructure and workers are being used as human shields, not just at Port Newark/Elizabeth itself, but at every point in this supply chain from beginning to end.

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Bodies Blocking Bombs

Posted on by under activism, anarchism, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, War with Iran

New Jersey Activists Blockade Port Newark
Though press attention is currently riveted on what’s happening at Delaney Hall (and with good reason), the press release below describes a largely unnoticed activist action that took place at the same time at virtually the same place–the industrial east side of Newark and Elizabeth, New Jersey. Taking a cue from successes in Oakland (see this and this), activists are putting their bodies on the line to block the shipment of weapons out of Port Newark/Elizabeth to Israel. (I’ll be posting a report on a prior action at the same location from this past October, and also on activity by the Oakland Peoples’ Arms Embargo.)

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Sonia Sotomayor Smiles for Palestine

Posted on by under cancel culture, Palestine, slices of life, War with Iran, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, activism, Neutrality and Complicity, Princeton University

Our Stop the Wars rally found its way into Princeton University’s Reunions celebration, where we spent several hours making our anti-war case to the approbation and disapprobation of the several thousand revelers marching in Princeton’s annual P-rade. Among those apparently expressing approbation was Princeton alumna Sonia Sotomayor, as revealed in this photo, in which she smiled directly at activist leader Sireen Sawalha, who was standing right next to me.

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Tomasi and Flier on “Commencement Neutrality”

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, moralism, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, War with Iran

I recently attended a webinar on “commencement neutrality” sponsored by Heterodox Academy. In it, the presenters, John Tomasi and Jeffrey Flier, argue that

Students receiving diplomas while a speaker condemns their political values, whether progressive or conservative, are justified in objecting.

The graduation stage is not an op-ed page, a political blog, or a partisan rally, though some wish to make it one.

This claim extends the idea of “institutional neutrality” to commencement speeches, and is elaborated at further length in Flier and Tomasi’s recent Boston Globe piece, “Keep Politics Out of Commencement Speeches” (May 14, paywalled). The basic argument is that commencement speeches have a ceremonial or celebratory function which is incompatible with the discomfort provoked by sharp political commentary. 

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“Terms of Repression”

Posted on by under activism, General announcements, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, Princeton University

You’re invited to our 2026 Reunions Event: Terms of Repression

Join us for a panel discussion with Dr. Sadaf Jaffer, Aditi Rao, and a student (now alum) participant in the 2024 encampment and expert on Princeton’s complicity in war crimes. Moderated by Irfan Khawaja ‘91.

What types of repression have students and faculty been facing since the 2024 encampment? How do the University’s actions towards Palestine activists square with President Eisgruber’s new book on campus speech policies, Terms of Respect? Where does the divestment movement stand, and where do we go from here? 

When: Saturday, May 23th, 11:30am – 1:30pm. Panel discussion and mingling to follow. There will be food for purchase. 

Where: in town, very close to campus – exact location will be shared with confirmed attendees. RSVP here.

–PRINCETON ALUMNI FOR PALESTINE