Cdn = Canadian?
It’s not without precedent, although this guy was directly commissioned a Lt. General (3 stars) as the military’s Director of Production and was basically in charge of industrial production during WW2.
William S. Knudsen - Wikipedia
I have a feeling that this is kind of in the same vein; if it was just garden-variety Trumpian graft, it would be Bezos, Zuckerberg, et al getting stars on their shoulders, not unknown Silicon Valley types getting field-grade commissions.
Realistically it was more like only two, because most professionals who are directly commissioned come in as O3 anyway, but it apparently can depend on the level of experience and education and can go all the way to O6 (full Colonel).
There’s a decent enough Wiki on this process, the DCO:
Back in my day, these were referred to as Direct Input Limited Duty Officers.
Yes, this happened frequently during WWII, although that wasn’t peacetime as the OP requested. The government essentially took over the economy and ordered firms to make materiel to fulfill needs. Many CEOs and other executives were given commissions although Knudson is unique for going straight to lieutenant general.
Those in other important fields were also given commissions, including many in Hollywood who then were told to create propaganda films.
IIRC, people were given commissions in the OSS without going through basic training.
Some of these commissions were given to flatter people, some to provide a means for control, and some to avoid the time-wasting process of basic for people who would never need those skills or leave the US, and surely some for a variety of other reasons. The government created many precedents out of necessity.
Of course, once a precedent is set it’s out there for others to use or abuse.
In World War 2 William Paley, the head of CBS, was named director of radio operations in a division of the Office of War Information, sent to London, and was commissioned as a colonel - all while still running CBS throughout the War.
His counterpart at RCA, David Sarnoff, did even better. He enlisted in the Army Signal Corps in 1924 and was commissioned as a Lt. Colonel. When WW2 broke out, he was recalled to active duty, served in Eisenhower’s staff and ended up promoted to Brigadier General.
Ha!
Questions. If someone is a commissioned officer does that mean they are in the chain of command? Do they follow the same rules as the rest of the military or does it work differently?
Also, does the military ever use people it doesn’t commission, like on a consultant basis? In what circumstances would they do this?
As mentioned earlier, a directly-commissioned specialist has command authority within the specialty. A doctor (or a nuclear physicist) won’t be giving combat orders, but their direction on matters within their specialty are considered military orders.
If Doctor Professor Colonel Foobar directs his enlisted technicial flunky to install the instrumentation harness one way and the enlisted technician deliberately does it differently, technically that’s disobeying a legitimate order from a commanding officer.
I was more thinking about the reverse… Would a non-commissioned military person be in a position to give orders to a commissioned one? Or is the person being commissioned really just being commissioned so they can supervise military personnel? Would you ever commission someone who isn’t meant to be supervising someone?
I’m shocked, shocked to discover…
Yes, and in WWI, so not exactly what you’re looking for.
Except for very specific circumstances (such as attending an operating skills school or SERE training) NCOs don’t give orders to officers or hold any position of authority. Line officers are essentially ‘middle management’, making decisions and giving orders to the NCOs below them (although any junior line officer who wants to be successful will listen to ‘suggestions’ from their sergeants and petty officers), and generally aren’t giving orders to officers and enlisted outside of their direct line of command. The job of NCOs is to translate the orders they get from their officer (typically a lieutenant or captain) into specific direction for the junior NCOs and enlisted they oversee.
There are commissioned officers in non-command technical positions that are not generally supervisory (medical, engineering, scientific) but even in such cases they’ll have some direct reports. Warrant officers are technical specialists who don’t generally have direct command duties but will also typically have some reports beneath them in their area of expertise.
Stranger
And the hoary barracks lawyer aphorism that claims that military medical doctors are officers because that makes their medical orders lawful orders from a superior officer, so they can court-martial you for not taking your meds. 
Is this a deliberate reference to the origin of Murphy’s Law?
Murphy was one of the engineers on Colonel Stapp’s acceleration experiments, and on one of the runs, a technician connected every single sensor backwards, so they didn’t record any data. Which led Murphy to observe that “If there is a right way and a wrong way to do something, some fool will invariably choose the wrong way”.
Ah, you recognized it.
Although Murphy was a captain. I just put myself in the place of the good captain, so I had to make it an enlisted tech flunky (which I was for most of my career). I feel like a captain was less likely to get threatened with court-martial than I would have been.
A story my friend (RIP) told a couple of times was that his uncle was investigating something for the Army and it was determined that kitchen workers were not washing their hands after going to the bathroom. So he was supposedly commissioned to general rank for one day in order to issue a wide military order that everybody wash their hands after using the bathroom, that would not be as casually ignored.
But that seems like one silly step too far.
I mean, in the ongoing context of someone continuing to serve as a doctor — and issuing new orders to people on the fly, week after week, as new stuff comes to his attention and new determinations get made while General X is busy — a story could hang together just fine. But if the idea is that a single determination has already been made, and so they want a single order to come from someone of General rank or higher, and a guy of General rank or higher could briefly grant this other guy that rank just long enough for him to issue that one order, then: why bother doing that?
If they’re only doing this to supercharge that one order, then: couldn’t the guy who’s already of General rank or higher just, y’know, issue that one order?
The highest direct-commission I ever saw was a surgeon who got DC’ed directly to Major. He was of course required to attend Officer Basic Course, but did so as a Major. Doctors aren’t famous for their military bearing, but they’re required to do the minimal training.
To DC as an Army LTC is so unusual that I personally haven’t heard of it, never mind doing it and not even attending OBC. If they need officer rank but aren’t expected to command, that’s why there’s a warrant officer rank.
The Dr. Maj. I knew was fond of reminding everyone that he had “medical readiness authority” that could override the battalion commander in some cases. He could declare the unit medically unfit to operate, mandate vaccines or preventive medicine (like hand-washing), or evacuate soldiers in spite of the commander’s preference.
So the anecdote mentioned here sounds like someone asserted medical readiness authority at a brigade level, and decided that this effectively made them a brigadier general for a day.
Thanks for the interpretation, HMS_Irruncible. Unfortunately I am not able to ask for clarifying details. 
My friend had a number of interesting anecdotes, for example, at one point he was writing the second of a two-part report and did not have the security clearance to read the first part of his own report, which he wanted to refer to (eventually solved by a set of illicit carbons he kept that had not been destroyed).