Palantir Wants to Reinstate the Draft
reason.com
reason.com
BUT - this really only works if there's a social contract in place. In the United States it's hard to see how compulsory service works if people don't feel like the country is showing up for them.
These days, what are American soldiers dying for? A society with great health care? Fantastic education? Wealth and social stability? Absolutely not! Until that changes I don't see any good reason why we should send our young people off to die. (EDIT: if you want a sobering experience, visit a military graveyard and pay special attention to the ages of the soldiers. We might as well call a military graveyard a children's graveyard).
And to agree with others on this thread, the folks who push for war should 100% be required to participate in them and lead from the front. Don't sell the rest of our lives while you hide in a nice air conditioned bunker.
It never happens because those in power use their power to avoid it, even if they bind the rest of us with rules they enforce. By saying they "should be required", you are promoting the idea that their desire for war is acceptable as long as they codify certain standards, which they are able to use their powers to personally circumvent.
I am not.
This was part of Charles Rangel's (D) reasoning to propose bringing back the draft. [1]
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_National_Service_Act
And when contrasting with earlier times like the Civil War, where a draft was unpopular: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrollment_Act
I saw the television portion and thought you meant the televised war was what made it all too real.
War has become too remote and comfortable for most Americans.
Yeah, it did, all the young men of draft age had to live knowing that they might get drafted and be forced to fight and die. Even if they were never called, or in retrospect were too old at the time.
We seem to have largely forgotten that now, along with the "Vietnam Syndrome" that the US military "suffered" through until we were successful in applying military force in 1991 with the Gulf War.
I almost hope they're successful in doing this. We've also lost the focus on clearly defined objectives for war.
It seems like we need a horrible mess to learn all the hard lessons all over again.
Indeed. This is all of human history. No matter what the problem is we are infatuated with the idea of the ultimate solution being exterminating everyone who does not agree with our worldview.
Are you saying we had this in Vietnam?
And I don't think the evidence is strong that these "hard lessons" did anything to keep that same generation from supporting the pointless wars that followed.
Otherwise I agree that the incentives are warped.
Is there a study of soldiers who enlisted but only because their draft number was low? There were substantial benefits to enlisting, because you could choose your branch of service.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragging
A major reason why the draft was stopped is that because when you take a disunified and unwilling populace and start giving them weapons, their target may not be the enemy.
Israel
(The name of my next punk band.)
Good name for a punk band though.
Agree. That's what we saw during Vietnam. The public finally got involved because it couldn't be ignored that the children of "normies" were being sent overseas to die in a meaningless and stupid war.
Yes and no. Of course people should be free, at the same time you live in a society and not a state of nature.
If someone never has to put back into society, that's dangerous. It could lead to people feeling that society has no value, that there's no sense in investing in it, that since nobody else cares why should I.
That's not a world I want to live in.
Most people I meet and interact with in the United States already feel like they don't need to contribute anything back into society besides the taxes they already pay to the local and federal government.
And what I mean by that is that some of them may SAY they would like to contribute, but none of them actually do (beyond taxes).
Why? I get the warm-and-fuzzy angle of "instilling civic responsibility", but you're effectively instilling that at gunpoint: the government forces you to do this, else you go to prison. Is that really such an enlightened thing to do?
It takes away two years of your life, possibly delaying your education, entry into the workforce, or having children. So again, what's the rigorous justification for this? The government already calls dibs on a good chunk of your economic output, on a percentage of every penny you spend, and on certain types of property you own; so why should they also be able to draft you for some free labor if there's no war or other emergency going on?
You can only prepare for a fire before it starts.
The strategic idea is to remain in a pose of compounding growth as long as possible by avoiding war and war preparations until they're known to be absolutely necessary. Peacetime investments like scientific research build on themselves, while military spending sits in a depot until it's obsolete and then costs even more to safely dispose. The same goes for replacing the first two years of professional school with standing around in a big shed.
The same goes for replacing the first two years of professional school with standing around in a big shed.
Exaggerated tropes like this don't make for useful discussion.
This may be true in an American context (though I don't actually know) in the sense that the US military is highly specialized and matrixed. In smaller militaries soldiers tend to be more generalist, while still having specializations.
e.g., they say in the British forces, if you ask an artillery soldier what they do, it's a little bit of everything. In the US military, a soldier might say "I pull the rope!" Not a good use of talent.
But firefighters don't just fight fires, they mostly do medical emergencies, which keep them very busy. And that's the problem with standing armies: we generally don't want soldiers doing a bunch of other kinds of work besides wars because they're around.
For the most part, only during fire season.
https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/research/nfpa-re...
I'm not sure anywhere expects people to do their national service for free - which is to say that such a programme would also likely be very expensive.
If the market figured it out we wouldn't be having these discussions in the first place.
In a developed society, I'm not sure what kind of labor an 18-year old can perform (what I mean is that it would be mostly unskilled labor), that would be better than taxing this same individual later in life, without delaying their education by 2 years.
I suppose there would have to be exemptions for college students as there typically are in such schemes in other countries?
You seem to assume that tax dollars are equivalent to labor. A pile of quarters never did anything sitting there, it takes a human to do something for the most part. Money is a tool sitting there, not actual work.
Luckily, we don't have a pile of quarters sitting there doing anything, because the US operates at a deficit. So dollars are being borrowed then spent on projects.
You'll never guess what happens if you choose not to pay taxes.
Indeed — just not in the style to which you'd like to become accustomed ....
First, "national service" does not necessarily mean relocation like a military deployment does. Second, there is no requirement that national service be free.
This has me thinking about a way to encourage some level of public service in exchange for better access to government programs, like an extra 10% in retirement benefits or something.
Reminds me of Starship Troopers: "Service Guarantees Citizenship!" Yes, I know it's a play on fascism.
So, disclaimer: I'm very aware that Verhoeven created Starship Troopers satirizing fascism and holding up a mirror to American society.
That said, I am somewhat a fan of the idea that citizenship is something that should be earned. For example, birthright citizenship - I think it's a good thing and should be kept around. That said, as far as I know no natural-born American is required to raise their right hand and swear that they will take up arms to defend the United States in case of war. A naturalized citizen is required to do this. That creates a real bifurcation in the society in my opinion.
Somebody who is confident enough to handle a rifle and throw a hand grenade is way more useful to me than someone who was forced to another literature or geology course.
Have someone demonstrate a command of the English language by following written instructions that require coordinating activities with a small group of people.
Instead of learning how to read a topographical map for first year geology lab final actually put the map in their hand with a compass and have them do an orienteering exercise as a group.
Finland has been rated the happiest country in the world what, eight or nine years in a row now and was able to secure they borders against a overwhelmingly more capable neighbour with no participation in a mutual aid defensive alliance like NATO until very recently.
In so many ways Finland is the model we should all be looking at emulating in Western countries.
> Finland has been rated the happiest country in the world
"Tilastollinen onnellisuus" is a concept relentlessly mocked by Finns. Finns are very proud of their country, but many are also very quick to call it a shithole, to engage in valittaminen, and for good reason. Their love for it is practically an expression of sisu. The contradiction of it being an absolute dreg of a swamp populated by insufferable FINNS, yet they would all agree to throw their life away to defend it anyways, is not a situation that was conjured out of thin air with some clever social policies and progressive tax reform.
In a world where 1 year of civil service was normal for most people, I'm skeptical that this is the choice the labor market would consistently make. Remember, if pretty much everyone in society is doing the same national service, then that means the military had to find jobs for everyone to do, including people with mediocre general competence or who are in fact bad at following written instructions in English. "I completed my mandatory national service, just like pretty much everyone else" is not that strong of a signal.
In the Soviet Union, smart math and science students often competed hard for academic and technical positions that would let them fulfill their military obligation by doing some kind of math or science for the Soviet state, instead of being a conscript foot-soldier for a few years like was normal for Soviet males (boot camp sucks for everyone, but it really sucks for most smart nerds). If the US had a system like this, there would definitely be industries where it was normal for everyone working in them to have avoided the worst of actual combat training somehow or another - or for actually having done normal soldiering to be a culturally-unusual thing to do. Just like how in our actual society it's unusual for someone who works at a silicon valley tech company to have actually volunteered to serve in the US military earlier in life.
For when daily standups go south or just the monthly All-Hands?
I'm so sick of libertarian tropes. Starting every argument with oerwrought emotionalism has made me increasingly indifferent to your 'plight' over the years, because it's just victimization politics. Perhaps if we rebalanced public/private obligations overall tax burdens owuld be lower and society would be more pleasant to live in.
Personally I think it'd be a massive net benefit for society if every able person had a decent standard of first-aid training and a bunch of other general competencies that gave them useful job and emergency skills which they didn't have to expend a bunch of money to pay for.
If you allow everyone to pick and choose what they want to do, we may actually end up (or already have ended up) with all of the talented people and cutting edge businesses chasing money here and only second tier folks working with and for the government.
I think a great example of this is with NASA. They are doing a big hiring blitz (someone posted about it recently here). They have a ton of openings but I have to imagine that the talented folks that work in the field are chasing the money that is paid by private companies right now. I personally believe NASA is an important thing that needs to exist and we need to figure out a way to make it happen. Maybe we need to just pay folks more to make them incentivized to work in government? Maybe even more so if you working for the armed forces because you lose a lot of people based upon the sheer fact that your life is more at risk.
It would definitely be worth some research. I don't think free market concepts align well with working in the armed forces and there could be some arguments that we need to tip the scales to make it work better. For some things like the usual government services that aren't vital for our existence, I think we can all accept the longer wait at the DMV or the two decades to get a Real ID implemented. I don't think we can accept not defending our own country from an adversarial invasion so we need to make that importance reflected somewhere.
Not only is there a bias, there is one on purpose (not saying that's a good thing). For example, the Marines are known to prefer recruiting from lower-income and lower-education backgrounds. They want scrappy, tough people.
Conversely, the Air Force is the "geek" branch of the military.
There are lots of other examples. If you go on YouTube you can see funny videos of the branches poking friendly fun at each other; e.g., Marines eating crayons.
> Maybe we need to just pay folks more to make them incentivized to work in government?
In the US I think this may be the only way. Private industry pays so much it's hard to compete.
Government already got the tax dollars to pay for the service at gunpoint. And makes you get a passport to travel internationally or a driver's license to get yourself around at gunpoint.
Funny enough, the only true responsibility I'm aware of is jury duty. And that's only for citizens and everybody tries to get out of it.
if you want rights, you need to do more than just exist.
gunpoint is optional; West Germany used to force people to go either into the Army, or else do a longer stint of service in hospitals, firefighting, old folks homes, rescue services, youth organizations, or other civil roles.
I have found that when older people ask young people to do this kind of "mandatory service" they never specify what exactly are they going to do while being on the government's leash.
It's always this warm fuzzy hand wavy "civic responsibility" or "build communities" thing, that they always seem to think is something someone else should do when they are fully capable of doing it themselves.
Oh? I would argue that most of us in the United States live in complete blissful ignore that our entire way of life is propped up by this.
Edit: I'm for this BTW, I think everyone should have to do some form of service, but I'd also like to see anyone in the gov with the power to send people to war be required to have served in the armed forces.
I agree but I don't think it goes far enough. Leading from the front of the best equipped military in the world doesn't balance your incentives against the misery you are inflicting on the innocent denizens of the poor country you're pointlessly destroying.
There's also the economic destruction back home to balance against. So, those who call for war should be forbidden to privately fund their healthcare and children's education.
War is a mighty economic engine, this cannot be denied. But if we take an entire country to war, then it stands to reason that the entire country should benefit from the spoils (to the extent that there are any).
Isn't that the broken window fallacy writ large?
If there's a shootout in a town that ends up with most peoples' windows getting shot out, the one town glazier will make money off of this, even though it's a net-negative for the town as a whole.
Our modern world was born out of scientific advancements made during WW2. Could these same achievements have occurred in peace time? Obviously the answer is yes. However during war, everything becomes accelerated and things that normally would take a long time can happen very quickly.
I agree that paying for scientific progress with human lives is a bad thing.
Why, they're dying for people like Alex Karp and Peter Thiel of course.
Yes, except it's not their own one.
I absolutely love the idea of me or my children going through a challenging few years as a tool of our society, whether that be military training or something else.
...with the enormous caveat that our society must be cohesive, which it is no longer (culturally, politically - you name it).
The American way of life, which is still the most preferred way of life, as evidenced by (a) people wanting to emigrate here more than any other country in the world and (b) more people immigrating here than any other country.
It's your argument that our current and recent engagements in Venezuela, Iran, and soon Cuba, are to defend the American way of life?
And if it were true (which it isn't), if enjoying the "American way of life" requires killing people in other countries, then it's probably not a very good way of life.
Not recently to my knowledge, but Finland has extensive experience being invaded given they are neighbors with Russia (and Sweden in the past). When your next door neighbor keeps seeing your country as "their property," you need means to push them back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zivildienst_in_Austria
https://www.oesterreich.gv.at/en/themen/gesetze_und_recht/we...
There's also "civilian service" available which is always 12 months in a governmental location somewhere. Schools, hospitals etc.
If the President had to make the case that taking on Iran would cost each American around $1000 on top of higher prices for fuel and food, how many would sign off on that?
So I guess I agree with Palantir. Be honest about the actual costs of war and chances are we will get into fewer.
in the long term maybe, in the short term its mass debt of trillions
The pentagon has NEVER been successfully audited.
Eisenhower warned of the industrial military complex in his farewell address in 1961, 57 years prior.
This is a naive comment. The people deciding to send people to war do not concern themselves with the costs. The people concerned about the cost have no say in deciding to start military conflicts.
Then lets be honest about the cost of war. Lets raise income taxes. Lets set the top marginal tax bracket to 94% like it was during WWII. Lets double corporate income taxes. What taxes won't cover, pay for the rest by issuing war bonds.
How long do you think it would take before voters started replacing their representatives?
It worked in WWII because of Pearl Harbor and the Axis being cartoon villains. Direct US involvement also only lasted 4-5 years. Vietnam demonstrated that an unpopular, long-term conflict is ill-suited to the draft.
Solution: you make your officer (another kid) piss-pants scared that if he doesn't lie and say you all totally went on that combat patrol you were sent on (rather than hanging around in the woods somewhere relatively safe for a couple hours, then walking right back to base) he might go to bed and not wake up because someone tossed a hand grenade in his tent and killed him. Or if he confiscates your drugs or hooch. Or tries to enforce grooming standards. Or anything else that makes your life worse. Basically, make him deathly afraid of upsetting "his men" in any way.
Grenades were the threat/weapon of choice because one tossed into a tent was pretty damn certain to kill the person sleeping there; deploying a grenade is very quiet (up until the boom, of course); they're much smaller than a firearm (easier to conceal even than a service pistol); and the slight delay between throw and detonation gave time to get some distance. In practice, it turned out to be extremely hard to prove who had committed these murders, especially if others in the unit weren't inclined to be honest about things they'd seen and heard that night.
This was A Thing toward the later end of the Vietnam War, and contributed mightily to reduced effectiveness of US ground forces. Turns out when you threaten people with death for no good reason they get kinda pissed off and murdery.
"Fragging" comes from "fragmentation grenade", or "frag" for short.
Particularly when the troops could say "Charlie must have snuck in and done it".
There's no point in addressing their propaganda, but the idea that that a draft leads to everyone from every class of life having to be involved in war equally is so obviously untrue it's a joke.
What are they thinking lol
New markets to sell genocide tools to.
But interestingly enough, for the past 10 years we've seen a trend here in Norway where conscription service is viewed almost as a prestigious thing - due to how selective the military can be.
When I served, everyone would be called in. It wasn't a prestigious thing to do, just something you pushed through. We had one guy in our platoon during boot camp that was so big and heavy, he could not get into any standard issue boots. He was completely unable to run. Eventually he was discharged for medical reasons - but these days someone like that wouldn't have gotten past the screening stage. They can pretty much pick and choose among the fittest and brightest.
When you were conscripted did you fear you might be sent to Iraq or Afganistan? It just feels like given our history an American conscript will litearlly always have some active warzone to possibly be sent off to. Our contries and our armies are not the same. Is Norway today chomping at the bit to send its soldiers to Iran? Or, per Trump, "our next conquest" Cuba? I really don't think you can think of being drafted into the American army the same way you think of the compulsory service of countries like South Korea or your own.
Being conscripted in a defensive army is materially different than being conscripted into one that takes every opportunity to engage in conflicts across the globe.
By the time you were finishing up your service (6-12 months depending on where you were stationed), you'd get a presentation on "the road ahead" if you wanted to continue military life: military school/college, become a professional soldier, etc.
With that said, I think maybe 10%-15% of the guys in our platoon decided to go with the Afghanistan route. IIRC that meant transferring / trying out for the professional battalion (TMBN), training for some time, and then deployed.
I don't think sending all conscripted soldiers to some foreign war will yield good results. But I do think that by the end of their service, some will be hyped up and "thirsty" enough to just go for it.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...
Who does he think invented, designed, and implemented the hardware and software underlying modern military technology?
Or for that matter, the tech that makes running any organization at the scale of the modern US military even possible.
Consider: with computer technology, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service employs over 12,000 people responsible for the Department of Defense's basic accounting functions like accounts payable, accounts receivable, and payroll.
Forget building bombs and drafting soldiers.
Without computer technology, you'd need to draft an army of clerical workers.
If that's the case, then every war to be fought needs to have the say so of those that will be doing the fighting and not the solitary decision made by a delusional leader that had already circumvented the required process from Congress.
Hell, require the approval of 3/4 of governors as well.
You could imagine requiring a referendum if the war goes past N years or something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
> Butler, a retired Marine Corps major general, testified under oath that wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans' organization with him as its leader and use it in a coup d'état to overthrow Roosevelt.
My proposed alternative would be, when you sign up for the military, you are presented with a list of "regions" in which you are willing to be deployed in a combat role, with pay/benefits scaling accordingly the more regions (and more "in demand" regions) you are willing to be deployed. So you could potentially ahve a group that would not fight in the Middle East but would fight in the Pacific, etc. Of course you can't have too many declining service in too many reasons, but if it starts to get expensive to find recruits willing to fight in a given region thats a clear sign somethings amiss with popular sentiment.
(In the book, the "future" Congress had called war referenda on three occasions; each time, the vote was overwhelmingly "No," and historians believed those decisions were justified.)
Even if they had a referendum system such as the one proposed, I don't think that would make it a better decision. And given how people don't assume the consequences of their decisions, they would just find excuses later on - "we were manipulated, they lied to us" - but the damage will still be done.
The question is: Who would profit from a draft? Answer: Panatir.
And let's be clear: Palantir executives want "other" people to die in wars, not them or their children.
imagine if tim cook or satya came out and talked about how there needs to be a draft. people would say lol shut up nerd and move on.
some dorkus who heads a company that's just providing over reaching surveillance data to governments so they can do dumb data analytics should have no say in these affairs, and we should promptly discard what they have to say. peter thiel is a sociopath, karp is a dork, these people just want to be known as "the guy with the ideas" and they've crossed deep into the "what are you even saying right now" territory.
tbh we should jettison them into the sun they're kind of a scourge on civilization and clearly lake any real stakes that keep them grounded in the world.
What this has to do with the argument Palantir is apparently making, I have no idea. I can't make any sense of it.
It's hard to take them seriously given the omission of the biggest catastrophe of the 2000s-2020s that underlies everything they do, i.e., wealth inequality, the creation of a parasitic ruling class that uses propaganda to control the political narrative (and seeking AI for even greater control with less support), and the destitution of the poor by the rich, from the manufactured opium epidemic, gig economy, financial crises, etc.
Their sundry list reminds me of the smarty boys in undergrad philosophy who pretend to be great philosophers before they have taken even one step into self-criticism and self-knowledge.
OK, sure, but only if we agree that a war should be fought. No more fighting a war because six rich guys in a back room decide we need unobtanium. Or because one rich guy doesn't like some other rich guy's religious values.
I still cannot help but look at Palantir as a company that just sends $ to the "oligarchs". I still wonder what real value Palantir provides the US Gov.
After reading the article, are they looking for cheap tech labor. Is that because no one in tech wants to join the military due to pay ?
> After reading the article, are they looking for cheap tech labor. Is that because no one in tech wants to join the military due to pay ?
Cyber in the military has abysmal retention because of the pay. You can get an immediate ~$50k pay raise doing the same work as soon as you leave the military.
Their "product" has always been some hacky database joins behind a web app with a dark mode interface that makes the baby brains at DOD feel like they're in a 90s hacker movie
I think the proper counter move is to seize all assets of oligarchs and distribute it among The People. That way those Vietnam 2.0 loving guys won't get any say in anything anymore.
You do realize what sort of company you work for, right? Is it cognitive dissonance or are you really a paranoid right winger that's fully on board with Palantir's efforts to enable authoritarian governments akin to 1984's Big Brother?
I'm curious. Please feel free to explain how you go to work every day and do what you do. Fair warning, the rest of us are pretty disgusted with you.
For true believers though, which I'm sure exist there, I do wonder much the same things.
False. People with integrity exist who have moral absolute boundaries.
I would agree with that, but its debt is to the people of that country, not their current government. But instead, Palantir conspires to surveil and repress those people at the bidding of an elite, anti-democratic minority.
And would the leaders of Palantir still argue it had a moral debt to serve the government if it was a left-wing one, engaged in a process of wealth redistribution? No, they wouldn't. This supposed moral ideology is a facile sham.
What?
IMO companies should focus on profits and activing within the law, and we shouldn't expect them to go beyond that. If their behaviour seems socially net negative then the law, or it's enforcement should change.
But activist corporations, especially big ones, are a weird chimera where they have a loudspeaker for opinions that are neither representative (it's an owners/C-suite persons PoV, or marketing) nor high quality from a journalistic PoV, yet somehow dressed up as a noble civic duty. SV was so big on allyship and diversity, until Trump said too much woke, and they put it all in the bin, alongside their crumpled backbone. There is no virtue in corporate activism and hypocritical opportunism only.
It feels so off that late-middle-age CEO Karp and his military contractor AI company should be even taking a side in a debate about the state compelling young people (men?) to do something they wouldn't do of their own volition.
> 6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.
which is actually more of a hedge than most of their other points. "National service should be a universal duty" is vague enough to be compatible with a few different concrete policies. And "seriously consider" moving away from an all-volunteer force is rather different from a specific recommendation to literally re-instate the draft! I suspect that the people inside Palantir responsible for this copy are close enough to the actual military that they're aware of the good arguments for why an all-volunteer military is more effective at achieving its goals than one with a bunch of draftees who really don't want to be there.
And because Palantir frames this point as a way to make "everyone share[...] in the risk and the cost" of wars, there's actually quite a lot of measured agreement even here in this HN thread full of people who dislike Palantir in general. Making everyone share in the risk and the cost of wars does have emotional resonance that makes people a bit less reflexively opposed to bringing back the draft than they might otherwise be.
Anyway, I'm against mandatory national service. The US military works well as an all-volunteer force, the US government is perfectly capable of hiring people at a wage to do other types of national service work, and I don't think it's actually socially desirable to force every US citizen to do some amount of mandatory, low-quality work to make them feel connected to the rest of society or whatever other vague benefit people think it would have on the citizenry at large. I'm also skeptical that mandatory service would involve enough young people actually entering combat roles against their will, to incentivize meaningful change to how the US uses its military in the world.
The hacker aesthetic has always been anarchist in nature, until the rich Californians decided that a hacker is an entrepreneur that participates into the game of capitalism. To be fair, even the concept of libertarianism was an offshoot of anarchism, until the Americans decided that it means right-wing party politics of the rich elite. Words don't mean anything any more, any concept that can equated to its opposite if it rewards one with internet points.
They are the biggest enemies of the people, the nation, and everything else people ever pretended to care about in this country. Leveling it, and beasts running is our only hope.
Perhaps this would lead to more peace.
See concepts like Auftragstaktik, command intent, mission command.
Nobility lost most relevance now so I'm sure it's different now, owning a castle or a weird last name doesn't make you rich or powerful.
It’s no different than the republicans that are violently against abortion and then you find out they’ve funded multiple for their mistresses. They’re perfectly fine with a law banning it because they know it will never apply to them.