Discussion

This Big Tech Firm Wants To Reinstate the Draft

dylan604: Opening graph: "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," says military contractor and all-around surveillance-enabler Palantir.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.

lokar: Exactly. Enforce the war powers of congress and require a non-delegatable per-war approval.Hell, require the approval of 3/4 of governors as well.

tootie: Karp has a right to his opinion as bonkers as it may be but it is doubly bonkers to release this as company policy. Especially coupled with all the other bonkers things that went into this manifesto. Rearming Germany and Japan? Why does Palantir care about that? Toss in some unsubtle racism and you're really just staking your company position as aligned with a very narrow political niche. Seemingly at odds with the company's interest to provide services to whoever will pay.

drivingmenuts: "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,"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.

LoFiSamurai: Having those sent to fight in a war being the ones to decide if the war should be fought was on of the major points in General Butler’s 1935 book War is a Racket

ceejayoz: Great example.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.

nayroclade: > Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possibleI 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.

smm11: Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country, and the country now has to serve.What?

Alive-in-2025: And also the us not prosecuting those people in 1935is sadly a precursor of j6 in the US.

robotburrito: Doesn’t ycombinator and hacker news have links with this company? Makes it hard to maintain the hacker ethos when this entire site seems so closely linked with such forces.

mrhottakes: The hacker aesthetic has always been largely reactionary and hyperfocused on the individual and individual freedoms. See also the politics of "generation X"

abdelhousni: Aiding and abetting to a current genocide does that to the appetite for more corpses.

russellbeattie: [delayed]

Alive-in-2025: They are simply following along with the basically fascist direction of Trump, or maybe leading them.

_doctor_love: Other countries have compulsory military service, for example Finland. Generally speaking I am a fan of the idea that everyone should be required to do some kind of community service for 2 years once they turn 18. Military service would just be one option, could be other kinds of civic engagement. This can really help people feel connected to their society and understand there is something to show up.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.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.

an0malous: > These days, what are American soldiers dying for?Israel

rickydroll: more likely big tech and the oligarchs.(The name of my next punk band.)

wahnfrieden: > 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.

_doctor_love: > 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.

mrbnatural: I absolutely read it as promoting war.

b00ty4breakfast: Unless you have popular support behind you, a draft is a great way to make your military less effective. You get a bunch of soldiers who don't want to be there, who may not do their job to the utmost either out of apathy or active malice. It also gives lots of people, who might otherwise passively disagree with your war, a great incentive to actively resist your war and your attempts to force them to fight in it.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.

chromacity: > Generally speaking I am a fan of the idea that everyone should be required to do some kind of community service for 2 years once they turn 18.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?

_doctor_love: > 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.

criddell: Wars used to be paid for by raising taxes. Now we have no idea how much they cost. How many years in a row has the Pentagon failed it's audit? How many years (decades?) was the Iraq war funded through annual (unbudgeted) emergency measures? How many trillions in promised healthcare does America owe its veterans?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.

sleepybrett: > How many years in a row has the Pentagon failed it's audit?The pentagon has NEVER been successfully audited.

bjackman: > 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 frontI 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.

throw4847285: Service guarantees citizenship!

Kit-Triv: I would do it as a civic corps like the military in structure and pay but for civil projects and work experience. Enable our youth to learn on the job and actually value that experieence.

_doctor_love: That's what the ideal would look like in my opinion too. Like the Peace Corps.

tshaddox: It also implies that most normal work isn't in the interest of society, which if that were true, would be a major problem on its own. In what sense is 2 years of military service or "community service" strictly better for society than going to school, or working as a waiter, or starting a small business?

antisthenes: Roughly speaking, 2 years of community service should be worth some % of local & federal taxes.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?

causal: I like the idea of civic engagement / service in theory too, but I feel like the Vietnam war was a demonstration of possible failure modes when draft is in place: a lot of poor kids died, some rich kids allegedly used parental influence to dodge the draft. No incentive for leaders to avoid war while loop holes remain for their own interests.

Drupon: People greatly overestimate the number of Vietnam vets who were drafted.

MengerSponge: For others' sake, I double-checked: 2.59 million served, of which 648,500 were draftees. Right at 25%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.

bragr: It would be more interesting to see those numbers broken down by frontline service. What percentage of the guys actually dying in the jungle were drafted?

r0m4n0: I'm not sure what I believe is right but one thing I can think of is there could be a bias for a certain type of people to join branches of the military and therefore our capabilities are held back by that bias. The same goes for companies that work with the military/defense which I think the parent article lays out as well.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.

_doctor_love: > there could be a bias for a certain type of people to join branches of the military and therefore our capabilities are held back by that bias.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.

quantified: Do you believe that in American civil society there are only privileges and not responsibilities?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.

sheikhnbake: This is very much anecdotal but the concept of fragging has gone mainstream in my social media feeds. Mostly gen z joking about ww3 when the Iran conflict kicked off

vaylian: What is fragging?

lamasery: Situation: you are a poor draftee being led by some other kid who happens to have a college degree (an officer). There are several of you, and one of him. Your living conditions are terrible and you're often asked to do things that might get you killed, and all of the reasons you're told you have to do this sure smell like bullshit.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 then 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.

quantified: Shouldn't be. Just have a more-level playing field, make everyone (college-track or not) participate.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.

petre: Peter Thiel can sign up for the draft as far as I'm concerned.