0:00:00 - 0:00:23 I'd like to share some thoughts about the draft and some upcoming military situations uh for lack of a better word. So in the news today, today is June 15th 2024. It was announced that the house approved some language in the current Defense Authorization Act, which is the budget for the military that 0:00:23 - 0:00:48 they pass each year. That and they like to sneak significant policy shifts into that bill because to vote against it is um political suicide because you'll be ostracized as against the troops. So um in that bill that the house, the version of the house is approved is language that makes registration 0:00:47 - 0:01:11 in the selective service system automatic for those males between 18 and 26 I believe. Now, legally you're supposed to register a selective service and it's connected to things like student loans, but I suppose they don't chase you down if you don't do it. I don't know. Um I'm not, I'm not up on that 0:01:11 - 0:01:30 . I haven't looked at it in a long time. Yeah, I joined the army when I was 18, so it really didn't matter either way. Um So what's disturbing about this is that uh people are saying that this is a reflection of the difficulty the military is having to meet its recruitment goals. You can look that up 0:01:30 - 0:01:51 . But there, there are uh many percentages behind where they're supposed to be. And one of the problems is that the demographics that traditionally enlist into the military aren't doing it anymore since those demographics tend to not be caught up in the woke business. And the military is very much, uh 0:01:51 - 0:02:14 , discharging people for refusing. The COVID shot was a big deal to, uh, many potential recruits as is the constant need to sit through yet another presentation telling you that white males are the enemy. So, um, they're, they're under strength right now significantly. They're, they're really struggling 0:02:13 - 0:02:35 to recruit people. And at the same time, we have all these undercurrents of war brewing around the world, uh, particularly in Ukraine. And that's a nice dovetail to what I'd like to talk about. Next. On a, on a related note, it's easy to dismiss things like this, this conspiracy theories because after 0:02:35 - 0:02:56 all, how could you know what they're up to unless they said it. And so it's just anyone's best guess. Right. Well, in this case wrong, because it turns out that the military is a very large organization. Um, they happen to have a lot of people in think tank type situations, roles and, um, some, at least 0:02:56 - 0:03:18 some of what these people are producing is actually published to the public So for example, you can look on the army war college website and read publications on the ideas of certain people who are influencing these decisions. So it happened in a weird chain of circumstances to come across one such document 0:03:18 - 0:03:37 and it's pretty interesting. Um One it's really well written and that's just refreshing to read. Um But that's sort of AAA lateral point. I don't want to get off on, but there's a brief section called Casualties Replacements and reconstitution. And I'd like to read that to you. So it says the Russia 0:03:37 - 0:04:00 Ukraine war is exposing significant vulnerabilities in the army's strategic personnel depth and ability to withstand and rep replace casualties. Army theater medical planners may anticipate a sustained rate of roughly 3600 casualties per day ranging from those killed in action to those wounded in action 0:03:59 - 0:04:22 or suffering disease or other non battle injuries. And I, I'll continue reading in a second, but I just want to comment if, if you are aware the wars in which the United States is engaged over the last two decades, the casualty rate has been massively lower than that, but I'll continue with a 25% predicted 0:04:22 - 0:04:45 replacement rate. The personnel system will require 800 new personnel each day for context. The United States sustained about 50,000 casualties in two decades of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and uh most civilians when they hear the word casualty, they think dead, that casualty includes wounded. It's 0:04:45 - 0:05:11 just any person is pulled off the battlefield for any reason. Uh, but, but there it is, there's the statistics, two decades in two wars cost 50,000 casualties that's wounded and dead. And so what the people who are in charge of, of planning for these events are saying is that were the United States to 0:05:10 - 0:05:34 enter into a conflict? That's like the Ukraine Russia conflict then, um, 3600 casualties per day are what we should expect. And it would take 800 new personnel each day to replace those losses. And you might be wondering how that math works out because 800 is a lot smaller than 3600. Um, most casualties 0:05:34 - 0:05:54 are minor. So they get back into the field after they get uh treated so or whatever, whatever that magic math is, it doesn't matter. The point is, the number is really high and here I'm gonna continue reading. But, um, if you know anything about the, the Boer War, I always feel sensitive saying that 0:05:54 - 0:06:17 word because I'm not South African and my wife is and I cannot say it the way she does. But the Boer War, um it, it actually was a, was an extremely significant. Wars are always advancements of technology. And sometimes the, the, even if the war isn't global, it's a, it's a very interesting demonstration 0:06:16 - 0:06:36 of the current state of the art, so to speak. So for example, I think it was in the civil war that the first automatic weapons were, were the machine guns were used and they were primitive compared to the ones today. But, uh, they were terrible to deal with. And then that was significantly advanced by 0:06:35 - 0:06:54 the time World War One rolled around, which had its own first time use of different weapons. This is the first time airplanes were used in combat, at least at a wide scale. But it may have been the first time at all. Um And, and throwing grenades out of planes was a new thing, right? And uh everyone 0:06:53 - 0:07:15 was locked into trenches be before that main global conflicts. Uh Large scale conflicts still had people lining up and shooting at each other face to face in huge units that the civil war was like that. Um So the, the United States Civil War, so the Boer War was interesting because it was the, it was 0:07:15 - 0:07:35 the first large, large scale guerilla war. It was a guerilla war, it was fought uh civilians against civilians. The, the military folks are intertwined, there weren't really front lines, it was just sort of everywhere all at once. And um it was, it was a foreshadowing of things to come and that's what 0:07:34 - 0:07:54 each of these major wars has been through time. We don't, my point here is people talk about World World War Three, whether the conflict is global or not actually doesn't matter. But the point is the next conflict, the United states will be involved in significantly. It is not going to look like the 0:07:54 - 0:08:16 previous ones. The likelihood is very low. And so what will it look like? Well, probably the Ukraine Russian war. And if you know anything about that, it is really different than prior wars. They've got uh, drones dropping grenades on people, uh, drones blowing up tanks, very inexpensive drones blowing 0:08:15 - 0:08:39 up tanks. I'm not talking about Reapers, the US, super expensive type, uh unmanned aerial aircraft. I'm saying like a cheap $500 100 dollar drone with a hand grenade strapped to it and then they fly it over the thing and drop it. So um there's a, there's a massive disruption of military technology right 0:08:39 - 0:09:00 now and uh it's just yet another delusional bubble about to be popped. So years ago when I said Russia and China are a threat, they're going to invade the United States eventually. Uh We will be at war with them. Many, many people thought I was absolutely nuts. And now a whole lot of people are saying 0:09:00 - 0:09:18 that so that bubble has been mostly popped. There are still a lot of people that cannot even imagine another country invading the United States and they think, oh, that's impossible. That can never happen. It can't happen, it's gonna happen. And there are plenty of reasons right now that you could go 0:09:17 - 0:09:40 down to justify that statement. They're, they're more than sufficient to justify that position. But another bubble. That's absolutely going to be popped is the common expectation of what a conflict would look like in the modern world. And when it comes, it's not going to fit that expectation. It's going 0:09:39 - 0:09:59 to be very different. And there are already people who understand this and they're the ones making the plans. So I'll continue now. Uh I'm going to reread the last sentence with a 25% predicted replacement rate. The personnel system will, I'm sorry, those two sentences ago will require 800 new personnel 0:09:59 - 0:10:20 each day for context. The United States sustained about 50,000 casualties in two decades of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan in large scale combat operations. The United States could experience that same number of casualties in two weeks. I'm going to say that again in two decades in Iraq and Afghanistan 0:10:19 - 0:10:44 , the United States suffered the number of casualties that people are expecting in two weeks in a modern conflict. So that's different, isn't it? So, where are all these people going to come from? Well, let me continue reading the last paragraph in addition to the discipled disobedience required. Well 0:10:44 - 0:11:02 , that's, that was a different section of the essay. Uh The US army is facing a dire combination of a recruiting shortfall and a shrinking individual ready reserve. Those are the people that are still on contract, but they're not getting paid and they're not showing up that when you sign a military contract 0:11:02 - 0:11:21 , it's eight years and you might only do four years of active duty and then you're still on the hook. They can recall you at any time without instituting a draft for the next four years. That's called the irr the Individual Ready Reserve. This recruiting shortfall, nearly 50% in the combat arms career 0:11:20 - 0:11:46 management field. Meaning the people that shoot the pew pews, they're 50% fewer than, than what they should be is a longitudinal problem. It's, it's a big problem over a long term. Every infantry and armor soldier we do not recruit. Today is a strategic mobilization asset. We will not have in 2031 the 0:11:46 - 0:12:10 individual ready reserve which stood at 700,000 in 1973 and 450,000 in 1994 now stands at 76,000. These numbers cannot fill the existing gaps in the active force, let alone any casualty replacement or expansion during a large scale combat operation. The implication is that the 19 seventies concept of 0:12:09 - 0:12:30 an all volunteer force, that's when they stopped. The draft has outlived its shelf life and does not align with the current operating environment. In other words, we don't have enough people volunteering, we have to bring back the draft. The technological revolution described below suggests this force 0:12:30 - 0:12:51 has reached obsolescence, large scale combat operations. Troop requirements may well require a rec conceptualization of the 19 seventies and 19 eighties volunteer force and a move towards partial conscription, which is the draft. So this again and go to the top. So I tell you correctly, this is from 0:12:51 - 0:13:21 the US Army War College quarterly parameters volume 53 um, autumn 2023. So this came out actually a year ago, next month. Um, a call to action lessons from UK Ukraine for the future force. So when we're thinking about long term consequences, we tend to think about how things are right now and imagine 0:13:20 - 0:13:43 that they'll be either the same as they are right now or even better. That's actually written into Isaiah. That's, it's human nature. It's always been that way and we're almost always incorrect. Now, some people take that a step further, they look into the past and they create a model of their expectations 0:13:42 - 0:14:01 of the future and they back test it to the past. That's great. But things change, if you created a model for how to be financially successful today and you were using how things are today and back testing it to how things have been for the last 20 years, you're probably gonna be broke because it's changed 0:14:00 - 0:14:24 that much. There are so many things I'm talking in, in, in terms of general principles right now, I'm zooming out of the whole military, your kids are gonna get drafted thing, but we'll come back to that. There's so many things in this world where the average person's expectation of the future is so 0:14:23 - 0:14:48 far off that they are guaranteed to fail in h horrific, terrible ways. And part of that is because their perception of the present is so abysmally, incorrect and incomplete. So I'm telling you right now that there are a multitude of things that you ought to be planning on that. You're not one of them 0:14:48 - 0:15:06 is that we live in a very unstable world. We, we could talk about the collapse of the dollar which is ongoing. It, it's not a future event is already happening and has been for a long time. We could talk about changes in military. We could talk about changes in culture. We could talk about all these 0:15:05 - 0:15:30 things, but the fact is that things are not the way they used to be. They're changing with greater rapidity and greater consequence than, than uh they have in anyone's living memory, which means anyone who's alive today, it's, it's, it's more radical than that than anything they've seen. So let's, let's 0:15:30 - 0:00:00 think about this. So, so what happens is there's already a normalcy bias where people want things to stay the same and they really assume that that's the way it's going to be or better. Uh So they're resistant to evidence that contradicts that. And so they don't plan for the future. Do you see this? 0:00:00 - 0:16:07 People live, check to check. They, they don't think, oh, something could happen in the future where this amount of money isn't enough anymore. And they do that with their ideas. Have you ever thought about transferring the idea of living check to check to your beliefs that everyone does this. They think 0:16:06 - 0:16:26 that their current beliefs, the sufficiency of their current belief implies sufficiency in the face of future revelation. We'll say using that word broadly, future events as reality unfolds, you assume that your current beliefs will be sufficient. And when you see counter evidence, you just ignore it 0:16:26 - 0:16:48 because it's uncomfortable. Uh people find comfort in staying the same instead of improving and becoming better. If you detach from what is right now, in terms of optimizing for what could be in the future, uh You don't take this personal ego hit every time that there's contrary evidence. So zooming 0:16:48 - 0:17:17 back in now to the military thing. Um What's going to happen to you and your family if they start doing partial conscription? So if they bring back the draft, what's gonna happen if you have Children between 18 and 26 or you're 18 to 26 you really need to think about this because when something happens 0:17:16 - 0:17:41 is way more difficult to do the right thing than if you think about it ahead of time and make up your mind before it, while it's still a rational exercise before it's an emotional reaction. So for example, when you were told that COVID vaccines would be mandatory in certain situations before they were 0:17:41 - 0:18:01 . Did you walk through that exercise rationally and say this is what I'm going to do if this isn't something I want to do or did you just ignore it until it locked in? And you said, well, you threw up your arms and said, well, I've got to get a paycheck to support my family. So I have to take this shot 0:18:00 - 0:18:20 even if I don't want to cause a whole bunch of people did that. Well, here's another situation you might be saying, I don't even want to think about the fact that that me or my kids, depending on your age or my grandkids could be drafted. Well, guess what? It's time to start thinking about that and it's 0:18:20 - 0:18:38 time to figure out what you're going to do if that happens because we have an increasing number of situations with extreme consequences coming down the pipe. And if you don't think about them ahead of time and decide what you're gonna do, you're probably not going to make the right decision, especially 0:18:38 - 0:18:59 as more and more of these things require awareness beyond your own and wisdom beyond your own because you're gonna have to find and commune with people that are wiser than you. And that's super uncomfortable for Americans to hear because we believe in this myth that we're all the same and that any person 0:18:58 - 0:19:21 has an entitlement to what every person has and that's just not true, right? If you, if you work harder, you have a right to more than someone who doesn't work as hard if you're smarter than someone else you have a right to better ideas than they will have. In fact, if you don't have either of those 0:19:21 - 0:19:43 two things, you're doing something wrong, right? In that case. So to, for, for due diligence, for com completion's sake, I have to mention the fact that part of what they're pushing for with all of this is to include women in registration for selective service. I'm not going to waste time sharing my 0:19:43 - 0:20:05 own position on whether that's a good or bad thing. The point is it is a thing. And if they manage to tie this to the defense Authorization Act, it's probably gonna pass and they've been trying to do this for a while. Eventually they're going to succeed. You, you can't, there's only so far you can push 0:20:04 - 0:20:31 contradictory things, uh, mutually exclusive things. There's only so far you can push them before one of them has to go. Right? And you can't beat the drum of men and women are the same. Men and women are the same for very long until you also have to draft women. Right? That's equality. And they're not 0:20:30 - 0:20:53 going to back down on, on everything they've gotten from beating that drum. And so it's very logical to expect that women will be drafted if men are drafted. So, uh, you're not out of the woods if you say, well, I'm a woman or, well, I only have daughters that are between 18 and 26 or younger than that 0:20:53 - 0:21:12 because obviously they're going to age into that range. Another thing that you have to worry about is if your prior service. So if you look at Ukraine, the people they're putting on the battlefield right now are old, they're not 18 to 26 because all those guys are dead. That's the, the blunt fact, ok 0:21:11 - 0:21:33 , they're getting their butts kicked. All those guys are maimed or dead. And so they're fielding guys that are 4050 years old. If your prior service, first off, if you're in the irr, you really need to think about this, right? Because your butt's gonna get recalled most likely, right? But if, if you're 0:21:33 - 0:21:55 older than that, you're not out of the woods cause they'll send you before they'll send a, a 13 year old. And don't think that that's outside of the realm of possibilities. Now, as a person willing to do extreme things, I am personally not worried about this for me or my family, but I also have the hedge 0:21:55 - 0:22:15 of the fact that I was medically discharged. So I'm 40. Um, so a couple of dams have to break before they try to get me. But I also happen to live right next door to one of the largest wilderness in the United States, if not the largest. So I'm not telling you what my plans would be, but I am telling 0:22:14 - 0:22:35 you that I feel sorry for the guy who's in charge of trying to find me because he's gonna have a really hard time. So, um, yeah, it's something to think about and it's a big deal and it's a wonderful microcosm of much larger issues in play right now that most people just have no clue about. And it's 0:22:35 - 0:22:39 very sad because this is coming full speed and you really need to deal with it.