A YouTuber with a million followers, Ryan McBeth, devotes his latest video and Substack column today to a denunciation of an article I wrote last month for Responsible Statecraft, “Why is the Selective Service war gaming a ‘special skills’ draft?”
Mr. McBeth also attacks the Quincy Institute (the nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that publishes Responsible Statecraft) and an Instagrammer I don’t know but who posted a short video calling attention to my article.
I’d never heard of Mr. McBeth before he contacted me this week, but it’s apparent from his videos and articles that he has no expertise about the Selective Service System (SSS), its history since 1980, or its current plans, and didn’t do his homework before posting his latest video or an equally errror-filled one a few months ago about automatic draft registration and the possibility of a military draft.
To his credit, Mr. McBeth contacted me before he posted his new video, shared a draft of the script, and included some of my comments in his video and article — none of which was he required to do. He even made some changes to his script in response to my comments, although at the same time he introduced some entirely new factual errors in the final published version of the video.
In his new video, Mr. McBeth claims that “there is no provision” for any type of special-skills draft, but that’s just wrong. In the past, the SSS operated both a general “cannon fodder” draft of young men and a “Doctor Draft” with different criteria and age limits. Since the 1980s, the SSS has been required by law to maintain readiness to activate either a general draft or a draft of “persons qualified for practice or employment in a health care occupation” (the Health Care Personnel Delivery System, HCPDS) — a form of special-skills draft.
The HCPDS contingency plans have some differences from the pre-1973 Doctor Draft (as the current contingency plans for a general draft differ from the pre-1973 operation of the general draft), but the HCPDS is quite explicitly an updated plan based on the prior experience of the Doctor Draft. The SSS has said explicitly (and, I think, truthfully) that its plans for a broader special-skills draft grew out of the HCPDS, which in turn grew out of the Doctor Draft. The issue isn’t whether the SSS is planning for and prioritizing a special-skills draft, but whether it would include draftees with skills in other fields in addition to health care.
Mr. McBeth also claims that that people who, though lack of awareness, didn’t register with the SSS, are being denied student loans and government jobs.
In fact, the requirement to register with the SSS to get student loans was rescinded by Congress in 2020. This change was identified explicitly by the SSS — again I think accurately, although the war in Ukraine was another factor — as one of the reasons for the sharp drop in registration since that change in the law and the FAFSA student aid form took effect. This decline in compliance was, in turn, the major reason that staff of the SSS, fearing that the failed registration program, the SSS, and their jobs might be abolished, came up with the proposal to Congress to give the SSS a second chance to try to register young men “automatically”.
As for government jobs, failure to register is only a bar to Federal employment if it is (provably) knowing and willful. By the explicit terms of the law, someone who unwittingly failed to register can’t be denied a Federal job. In practice, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which makes decisions about eligibility for Federal employment, reported in 2024 that in 99% of cases in which employment is initially denied for failure to register with the SSS, but the applicant appeals the denial to OPM, OPM overrules the initial denial and finds the applicant eligible — presumably, in most if not all cases, because of the absence of any evidence of knowledge and willfulness.
Unwitting failure to register with the SSS is not a bar to Federal student aid or Federal employment.
These factual errors are typical of the myths and misinformation spread by commentators who haven’t been paying attention to anything the SSS has done in the last fifty years. There’s an irony in this factual carelessness, in that Mr. McBeth presents himself as an expert on “disinformation”. But what’s more interesting than the fact that ignorant people make mistaken claims are Mr. McBeth’s motives for attacking me.
Mr. McBeth’s fundamental complaint against me and against the Instagrammer who amplified some of my research findings is that Mr. McBeth wants to shape the discussion about the related issues of U.S. policy toward China and the possibility of a draft, in a way that is different from the way he thinks that my reporting is likely to lead it. Again ironic, since his complaint is against exactly the sort of effort to shape debate and frame public discourse that he’s trying to engage in himself.
Mr. McBeth thinks that my work to expose the details of ongoing planning and preparation for a draft and their role in enabling more belligerent policies, even when activation of a draft is unlikely, might be used by Chinese or other foreign government information warriors to promote fear of a draft, which fear might, in Mr. McBeth’s words, “weaken our resolve to defend our allies”.
I hate to break the news to Mr. McBeth, but Americans don’t need me to tell them to oppose or fear activation of a draft. I’ve never tried — or needed — to persuade anyone not to want to be drafted. My goal has been to make potential draftees — including young people, health care workers, and people with other special skills — aware of safe ways that they can act on their desire not to be drafted, whatever the reasons they already have for opposing a draft, and to empower and facilitate (“aid and abet”, the government might say) those actions.
The goal of my work against the draft is to end planning and preparation for a draft, which (among other outcomes) would remove the possibility of fear of a draft being used to persuade people not to support actions that are premised on the assumption that a draft is available as a “fallback”.
Mr. McBeth and those who share his views can’t have it both ways:
If you believe, as Mr. McBeth implies he does, that a war with China over Taiwan could be fought and won by the U.S. without needing a draft, then why not take planning and preparation of a draft, and the concern it engenders about whether military or diplomatic actions you support might lead to a draft, off the table as a potential tool for information warfare by abolishing Selective Service?
On the other hand, if you believe that (a) the U.S. should take certain actions and (b) those actions would risk a war that would carry significant chance of leading to a draft, then you should openly and honestly engage with both (a) why you believe that’s what other people should support, and (b) why you think a draft would be feasible.
Own up to your beliefs and defend them, rather than criticizing those who disagree with, and call attention to, your policy advocacy positions and their implications.
If you don’t think a draft would be needed, the simple, obvious way to most fully mitigate the risk that bad actors might prey on fear of a draft is to enact the Selective Service Repeal Act. Take the draft off the table, and you take fear of the draft off the table as a potential tool for foreign (or domestic) information warfare.
Supporters of more aggressive policies, including military veterans such as Mr. McBeth, also need to take into consideration the risk of making commitments or taking actions based on unrealistic assumptions about the availability of a draft. Relying on an assumed “fallback” option like a draft that’s not available when it’s called for is a recipe for overreach that endangers the mission and the troops.
The “fear-mongering” Mr. McBeth sees in my effort to publicize facts about Selective Service isn’t the only or, I think, the most significant scenario for information warfare that needs to be taken into account in assessing how an attempt to activate a draft would fare in the real world.
As I said in my invited testimony to the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, “How long will it take after inductions resume before the registration database is hacked – especially if registrants with cyber skills are targeted for a special-skills draft?”
In the event of activation of a draft, there will undoubtedly be a flood of phishing and other scam messages purporting to be induction orders. Chinese info-warriors won’t need to do this. Identity thieves will ensure that the “signal” of real induction orders is drowned out by the “noise” of spam and scams. And the signal of those who deliberately choose not to report will be lost in the noise of those who never got the orders or assumed they were fake.
As I noted in another article in Responsible Statecraft:
If a draftee doesn’t report for induction as ordered, the SSS will have no way to prove whether they did so “knowingly and willfully” or whether they didn’t get the message, aren’t actually subject to the draft, or assumed the induction order was a scam. They will be able to ignore induction orders with impunity until the SSS either tricks them into signing for a certified letter or sends FBI agents door to door to deliver induction orders.
I say again: If Mr. McBeth or his followers and fellow travelers believe in the desirability of actions that might require a draft, they need to own up to and defend that belief and their belief that a draft would be a feasible option to execute. And if I and others point out that, like it or not, a lot of people don’t want to be drafted and will resist (as they have for decades resisted draft registration), don’t shoot the messenger by calling us information warriors. That’s a term that applies to us no more than it does to Mr McBeth’s videos.
Edward Hasbrouck maintains the Resisters.info website and publishes the “Resistance News” newsletter. He was imprisoned in 1983-1984 for organizing resistance to draft registration.
