![\"\"](\"https:\/\/d27srd8s9736cr.cloudfront.net\/2025\/12\/Picture1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
An amendment<\/a> to the Military Selective Service Act to direct the Selective Service System<\/a> (SSS) to try to register all potential draftees<\/a> in the USA automatically<\/a> has been included in the version of this year\u2019s military authorization bill<\/a> agreed to by a House-Senate conference committee and likely to be enacted into law within the next few weeks.<\/p>\n This doesn\u2019t mean that a draft is being activated right away, or that any or all of those \u201cautomatically\u201d registered will be sent induction orders \u2013 although preparing to do so<\/a> is the sole purpose of registration with or by the SSS. This will, however, be the largest change in Selective Service law since 1980. More importantly, it will move the USA closer to activation of a draft, or at least to being able to claim to be ready to activate a draft \u201con demand\u201d of Congress and the President, than at any time in the half century since draft registration was suspended and draft boards<\/a> were deactivated in 1975.<\/p>\n The provision of the NDAA<\/a> for automatic<\/a> draft registration will take effect one year after the bill is signed into law. The clock will start running soon. We\u2019ll only have a year to get the Military Selective Service Act repealed<\/a> if we are to avert this new threat of both stepped-up preparations for a military draft and sweeping abuse of young Americans\u2019 personal information.<\/p>\n Potential draftees will be required to provide personal information on demand of the SSS \u2013 a telling provision which wouldn\u2019t be needed if they could actually be identified and located \u201cautomatically\u201d. Since it\u2019s impossible to tell which messages demanding information are actually from the SSS, identity thieves and other scammers will undoubtedly step up their use of fraudulent messages purporting to be from the SSS as a way to trick recipients into providing personal information, visiting phishing sites, or installing malware.<\/p>\n The proposal for automatic<\/a> draft registration predates the Trump 2.0 regime and its Department of Government Efficiency<\/a> (DOGE). The idea of \u201cautomatic\u201d draft registration originated within the SSS during the Biden Administration and was introduced in Congress by a Democrat. But a database-driven process aligns perfectly with DOGE\u2019s penchant for aggregation and automated mismatching, weaponization, and misuse of data from unrelated government and commercial sources.<\/p>\n The SSS \u201cAlready knows who needs to register, supporters contend\u201d, according to one report<\/a> on the decision by the House-Senate conference. That\u2019s not true. Whether an individual is subject to the U.S. draft depends on, among other factors, their sex as assigned at birth. Being able to deliver an induction notice by provable means requires a current postal address to which to send a certified letter. This isn\u2019t information that\u2019s necessarily contained in any<\/em> current Federal government database.<\/p>\n U.S. citizens \u2014 other than those under court supervision after being convicted of crimes, and men 18-26 required to register and report changes of address to the SSS \u2013 aren\u2019t normally required to report to any Federal or state agency when they change their address. The address in a Social Security record may be the address where a person lived when they were first assigned a Social security number, especially if they haven\u2019t yet claimed any Social Security benefits or had any reason or need to interact with the Social Security Administration since then. The address in IRS or other Federal records for a young adult may be a parent\u2019s address or another nominal (and legally valid) \u201cresidence\u201d where they aren\u2019t normally present to sign for an induction notice or other mail if, for example, they are in college in another city or state.<\/p>\n Sex as assigned at birth is recorded, if at all, in state or foreign records, and not necessarily in any Federal record. State records may indicate a self-selected gender marker, or a non-binary or non-gendered \u2018X\u2019 gender marker<\/a>, while not all foreign countries include gender in birth records.<\/p>\n Whether an individual is required to register or be registered also depends on their citizenship, immigration, and visa status<\/a>. To figure out who to register \u201cautomatically\u201d, the SSS will have to construct a database of all males ages 18-26 present in the USA including non-U.S. citizens, documented or undocumented, and their immigration and visa status, and keep this list constantly up to date. A comprehensive list of undocumented young adult U.S. residents, with there addresses, won\u2019t be easy to construct. But even an error-filled and incomplete version of such a list would be highly vulnerable to abuse by other Federal agencies that could obtain it form the SSS.<\/p>\n The \u201cautomatic\u201d registration process will be intrusive and error-prone, and the list will be highly vulnerable to misuse. The burden of information collection, and the potential for weaponization of the list will be greatest, for already vulnerable transgender, non-binary, and immigrant youth. These are the people who the SSS is likely to misgender, misregister, and\/or need to interrogate individually to fill in gaps in current Federal data.<\/p>\n The automatic registration<\/a> law would grant the SSS sweeping authority to require any other Federal agency to provide the SSS with any information \u201cthat the Director [of the SSS] determines necessary to identify or register a person subject to registration under this section.\u201d<\/p>\n The idea of trying to construct a complete and accurate list of all draft-age men and their current contact information solely by aggregating and matching existing Federal databases compiled for other purposes<\/a> was a response by the SSS to growing public and Congressional recognition that the current self-registration system is an abject failure in the face of pervasive noncompliance<\/a>.<\/p>\n Few young men voluntarily register with the SSS, and almost none of them report their new addresses to the SSS each time they move. As a result, the current SSS database is so incomplete and inaccurate that it would be \u201cless than useless\u201d for an actual draft, according to the testimony<\/a> in 2019 of the former SSS Director who managed the establishment of the current registration system<\/a> in 1980.<\/p>\n The obvious Congressional response would be to end the registration program and abolish the Selective Service System<\/a> as a failure and unfit for its stated purpose, even if one supports a draft.<\/p>\n But neither Democrats nor Republicans seem willing to let go of their fantasies of always having a draft ready to activate as a fallback<\/a> so they can plan for endless, unlimited wars<\/a> without having to worry about whether enough Americans will be willing to fight them. Keeping conscription on a hair-trigger, like keeping nuclear weapons on a hair-trigger, allows these weapons to be used as part of the arsenal of U.S. military threats. Both have had bipartisan support.<\/p>\n SSS staff came up with the idea of automatic<\/a> registration in a last-ditch effort to justify the continued existence of the agency and save their jobs. The SSS pitched<\/a> the still-sketchy concept<\/a> to Congress and persuaded Rep. Chrissy Houlahan<\/a> (D-PA) to introduce it in 2024<\/a> as an amendment<\/a> to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2025. The proposal has never had a hearing or been subjected to fiscal review as part of the SSS budget.<\/p>\n In 2024, the proposal for \u201cautomatic\u201d draft registration was initially approved by both the House and Senate but removed from the final version of the NDAA during House-Senate conference negotiations. Conference meetings are secret, and no explanation was given for why this provision was removed. It was reintroduced<\/a> as an amendment to this year\u2019s NDAA, approved by the House<\/a> although not at first by the Senate<\/a>, and finally included in the version reported by the House-Senate conference committee<\/a> (see Section 535, pp. 361-365).<\/p>\n The new section of the law<\/a> will provide that \u201cevery\u2026 male person residing in the United States, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-six, shall be automatically registered under this Act by the Director of the Selective Service System.\u201d This use of the passive voice and the imperative \u201cshall\u201d elides who is actually required to take what action as well as whether it is possible to register \u201cevery\u201d such person, and only such persons, \u201cautomatically\u201d.<\/p>\n How the SSS will try to fulfill this new mandate is left to regulations to be promulgated after the bill is signed into law. New regulations for \u201cautomatic\u201d draft registration may be combined with the updating and revision of SSS regulations that was planned under the Biden Administration and ready for issuance earlier this year, but has been delayed by Trump\u2019s freeze<\/a> on most new regulations.<\/p>\n Before it can put an \u201cautomatic\u201d (database-driven) draft registration system into effect, the SSS will have to publish, provide opportunities for public comment on, and obtain approval from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for information collection forms, systems of records, and computer matching programs. These notices should provide additional information about how the system will operate and in what other ways the information collected will be (mis)used. But the SSS and DOGE<\/a> have a track record of playing fast and loose with these requirements of the Privacy Act<\/a>, the Computer Matching Act<\/a>, and the the Paperwork Reduction Act.<\/p>\n Return addresses on e-mail messages and caller ID on robocalls and text messages, even for \u201c.gov\u201d addresses or phone numbers, are trivially easy to forge. The \u201cautomatic\u201d registration system and the requirement to respond to requests from the SSS for personal information won\u2019t take effect until a year after the bill is signed into law. For now, all e-mail or text messages or phone calls claiming to be from the SSS are presumptively fraudulent. Say nothing. Hang up immediately. Delete these messages unread, and don\u2019t click on any links or visit any Web sites in these messages. Links in these messages are likely to contain malware.<\/strong><\/p>\n For the next year, through 2026, my advice<\/a> to those facing draft registration remains unchanged: If you don\u2019t want to be drafted, don\u2019t register and work to repeal<\/a> draft registration.<\/p>\n Even once the \u201cautomatic\u201d draft registration law takes effect, you can and probably should ignore any communication from the SSS except a certified letter you have to sign for or a message personally delivered by an FBI agent or Federal Marshall serving a subpoena. Don\u2019t sign for any letters from the SSS or say anything to the FBI other than, \u201cGo away. I don\u2019t want to talk to you without my lawyer.\u201d Nobody has gotten a certified letter from the SSS or been investigated by the FBI for not registering with the SSS<\/a> for decades. But if this does happen, say nothing, sign nothing, and contact a lawyer with expertise in Selective Service law<\/a> immediately.<\/p>\n To prosecute anyone for failing to respond to a request for information from the SSS, the government would need to prove to a jury, beyond reasonable doubt, that you were provided with proper notice (including the notice required by the Paperwork Reduction Act) and that you knowingly and willfully<\/em> refused to provide the requested and required information. The threat of prosecution for failing to provide information to the SSS is about as hollow as the current empty threats by the SSS<\/a> of prosecution for failing to register.<\/p>\n The \u201cautomatic\u201d draft registration law requires potential draftees to provide the SSS, on proper demand, with information<\/em> the SSS would need to register them for the draft. It\u2019s not clear what form a proper demand for information would have to take. The law doesn\u2019t require individuals to provide the SSS with documents or evidence<\/em>. Ignore any requests for the SSS for copies of documents or evidence. If someone wants you to send them a copy of your birth certificate, it\u2019s a scam.<\/p>\n The \u201cautomatic\u201d draft registration law requires other Federal agencies to hand over whatever data the SSS says it needs, but imposed no such obligation on state or local government agencies. Motor vehicles agencies in some sates, notably California<\/a>, voluntarily share driver\u2019s license data with the SSS, even though registration with the SSS isn\u2019t required to get a driver\u2019s license in California<\/a> or others of these states. States that don\u2019t want the SSS used as a conveyor belt to DOGE and other Federal agencies for information from state records that could be weaponized against vulnerable immigrant, transgender, and non-binary youth can and should put a stop to this practice through gubernatorial order or state legislation explicitly prohibiting access by the SSS to any state records.<\/p>\n \u201cAutomatic\u201d draft registration won\u2019t make a draft any easier to administer or enforce. \u201cGarbage-in, garbage-out\u201d aggregation and attempted matching of other lists compiled for other purposes will result in a list of potential draftees and their current mailing addresses that is just as incomplete and inaccurate as the current one. If the SSS is ordered to activate a draft, it will probably send out induction orders by e-mail, text message, or regular mail without provable delivery. If it sends them out by certified mail, the first message from draft counselors<\/a> will be, \u201cDon\u2019t sign for any letters from the Selective Service System\u201d.<\/p>\n If a draftee doesn\u2019t report for induction as ordered, the SSS will have no way to know or prove whether they \u201cknowingly and willfully\u201d refused to report or whether they don\u2019t exist, didn\u2019t get the message (maybe because they\u2019ve moved, or maybe because it was delivered to their parents\u2019 house and their parents destroyed it to protect their son against being drafted, as many parents undoubtedly would do), or they aren\u2019t actually required to register (because they weren\u2019t assigned male at birth, have a non-immigrant U.S. visa such as a student or H1 visa, or for other reasons), or they assumed the induction order was a scam.<\/p>\n Those wittingly or unwittingly registered and ordered to report for examination and induction will be able to ignore induction orders with impunity until the SSS either tricks them into signing for a registered or sends FBI agents door to door to individually notify prospective draftees of induction orders.<\/p>\n \u201cAutomatic\u201d registration won\u2019t make draft resistance any more difficult. But it will make the unwillingness of young people to be drafted<\/a> less visible until a draft is attempted. That will make it easier for war planners to pretend, as they do now, that a draft is a viable policy option.<\/p>\n Passage of the NDAA for fiscal year 2026 including the provision for \u201cautomatic\u201d draft registration may be a fait accompli<\/em>. That doesn\u2019t mean, though, that we have to acquiesce to this new step toward a draft.<\/p>\n The <\/strong>changes to the Military Selective Service Act<\/strong><\/a> don\u2019t take effect until a year after the NDAA for FY 2026 is signed into law. If we oppose planning and preparation for a draft and the larger and longer wars those plans enable, <\/strong>the time is now<\/em> to step up our efforts to get the <\/strong>Selective Service Repeal Act<\/strong><\/a> reintroduced and enacted in 2026, before the SSS can try to put \u201cautomatic\u201d draft registration into effect.<\/strong><\/p>\n Edward Hasbrouck maintains the <\/em>Resisters.info<\/em><\/a> website and publishes the <\/em>\u201cResistance News\u201d newsletter<\/em><\/a>. He was <\/em>imprisoned in 1983-1984<\/em><\/a> for organizing resistance to draft registration.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An amendment to the Military Selective Service Act to direct the Selective Service System (SSS) to try to register all potential draftees in the USA automatically has been included in the version of this year\u2019s military authorization bill agreed to by a House-Senate conference committee and likely to be enacted into law within the next […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":367,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[785],"class_list":["post-56573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"0","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/367"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56573"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56577,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56573\/revisions\/56577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56573"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=56573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}