It's not even that. The biggest difference is by being sworn in, they now have Legal authorities and rights awarded to military personnel, but are also subject to the UCMJ. Depending on how they structure the program they may be able to get Title 10 and 50 coverage and possibly others. This drastically changes what they legally can or can't do on behalf of the USG. There's more to this than people realize. It's also not all that new. In the past they had "Consultants" deeply integrated into agencies to solve the same issues.
Palantir, Crowdstrike, many others pretty much started inside the govt and were built around classified information as a means to get their advantage. It's not right, but It's definitely something that happens. Source: I was there for it with both orgs and even back then everyone though Dmitry formely from CS was a dick. I still have the mousepad that Palantir created for the office in lieu of a training guide (just a bunch of printed shortcuts / commands).
Adding some additional context on most of the above:
Yes, as commissioned US military officers they become subject to UCMJ.
USDS and DDS employees are/were civilian federal employees with capacity for legal authority to act on behalf of the US Government.
DoD and its branches have uniformed service members subject to UCMJ, but they also have many civilian employees with decision making authority and ultimately the services report to civilian secretaries; the ratio of uniformed service members (e.g. enlisted, and commissioned officers) to civilians can vary greatly by service. Another main difference to consider beyond UCMJ would be eligibility to be considered a combatant versus not; not all uniformed personnel should be considered combatants. "Authority" is not exclusive to uniformed personnel.
Many DoD programs can be led or managed by civilians, typically a GS-15 which is roughly equivalent to O-6 (e.g. Army/Air Force/Space Force Colonel, Navy Captain)
If I recall correctly, Palantir's main starting point beyond some of its fraud-tracking origins at Paypal were through its attempts to compete in the DCGS-A / replacement acquisition in DoD.
Crowdstrike had Dmitry, but its main US Government ties were through Shawn Henry, a former director of investigative operations at the FBI; Crowdstrike had a few business lines in its early days, which included its intel/research/analysis services, breach investigation/remediation services, while it was developing its endpoint protection products/platform.
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And to the upstream parent comment:
> The key difference is the DDS folks were not uniformed military. That can make all the difference when trying to sell your product or service to a military decision maker.
A lot of DoD acquisitions, developments, operations decisions end up being materially informed by civilian personnel that are direct employees of the US Government, contractors supporting the US Government via Federally Funded Research and Development Corporations (FFRDCS, labs, etc.), other contractors, etc. In some cases, it seems like the DoD programs are entirely reliant (i.e. dependent) on their contractor support (via FFRDCs, labs, etc).
Some of this comes from the fact that the typical active duty officer's assignment duration in a particular role (e.g. acquisition program manager, chief engineer, etc) ends up being two years or less before a permanent change of assignment (PCA). Having organic civilian staff in these roles can be essential for maintaining continuity and can be a key part of a program/mission's success.
(Also worth noting that in a lot of cases where the head of a program is a civilian employee, it's not uncommon to find that are military retired, prior service but separated, and/or also a reserve officer in the same or very adjacent field)
Palantir, Crowdstrike, many others pretty much started inside the govt and were built around classified information as a means to get their advantage. It's not right, but It's definitely something that happens. Source: I was there for it with both orgs and even back then everyone though Dmitry formely from CS was a dick. I still have the mousepad that Palantir created for the office in lieu of a training guide (just a bunch of printed shortcuts / commands).