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U.S. Plans Targeted Draft for Computer Personnel
waytoomuchcoffee writes "The US Selective Service System is drawing up plans for a 'special skills draft'. There is already a system in place to draft health care personnel, and this system would be expanded in order to 'rapidly register and draft' computer specialists."
to move to canada =\
...how do they determine who has "computer skills"? And is this really feasible? How will they make someone work for them? How will they even know if a computer programmer is a computer programmer? Do they have some kind of national database of them? This isn't anything like normal conscription, and sounds like a dodgy idea to me.
This reminds me that I need to vote and participate in the democratic process.
I am going into a computer engineering major at UMBC. I was approached by recruiters, and they wanted me to do ROTC. I didn't want to, because if I was going to a good college, I wasn't going to negate the benefits by being stuck in the military for 5 years afterwards. Now again, this could potentially ruin my plans for after school. I will have to vote for a candidate who will try to keep us out of any major wars that would require a draft.
Disclaimer: I am from a military family, I have nothing against the military, but I personnally don't want to join.
This has been going on in Israel for decades. As a result, Isreal has produced some of the best computer programmer's in the world. Most of the developers end up in VERY high paying jobs once they are released from military duty.
Of course, if you don't like the draft, you could always migrate to India India.
Nothing to see here
This doesn't make too much sense to me.
In the past 10 years, computer specialists in the military were offered large retention bonuses to stay in the military and reenlist. Now those bonuses aren't to be seen. I know from experience.
So why isn't the military trying harder to retain these already military trained computer specialists but supposedly drawing up a draft? Something doesn't jive here.
This guy is way out there
...i will not use my computing/programming skills to help the US subvert anyone.
At the risk of sounding unpatriotic **gasp**, they can take this, shove it and come find me in Canada.
*sigh* Mod me down for speaking ill of the US Gov if you like, they are your points.
there are twin bills in the house and senate in order to conscript for active duty, rerserve military, and homeland security civilian jobs. Male and female. 18-26. Manidtory 2 years.
I forgot the bill numbers. My little sister did a paper on it for her highschool government class. I'll stake my life and reputation that it's true, though. The bills have been in the works since early in 2003 and the schedual is to bring them into effect in 2005.
If the military want to get a bunch of computer specialists, they can just hire them. Drafts are usually only used to acquire cannon fodder because the people who get drafted are often the unrepresented class. It hardly seams fair to pay one CS student's way thought college with ROTC, and then hijack another grad's career without proper compensation.
Well, I always suspected it. I am a member of the US Naval Reserve and about two years ago, the NAVRES asked all of it's members to fill out a "skills profile". This profile would be used to solicit qualified members and ask them to volunteer to fill temporary billets as they arose. The program was presented as a way to find the best service member for the task and to offer them the oppurtunity to take orders for that job. A lot of the billets that open up are from 6 weeks to 9 months.
I was always dubious of doing this, becuase if there were ever a "crisis" and they REALLY needed someone with my skills, I foresaw the "volunteer oppurtunity" becoming an "involuntary recall to active duty" in a heartbeat.
I doubt this decision is directly related, but now they have a massive database of skills that they can search through and draft from first.
Veritas patesco per quaestio questio. Truth is revealed through questions.
I only use and operate free software. I could not in good conscious work with proprietary commercial solutions because of the very real harm they do to others. Would I have to qualify for consentious objector status?
The whole reason to have a draft is so you can pay far below market rates.
Conscription is logically equivalent to slavery. Consider yourself lucky if you get minimum wage, most of the plans to draft unskilled troops won't even give them that much.
The fundamentals have not changed between WW2 and now, and a draft was certainly needed to prosecute that "good war".
The biggest lesson of every military conflict since the first Gulf War is that manpower is almost irrelevant in the face of technology. Remember, in 1991, Iraq had one of the largest and most battle-experienced armies in the middle East. Yet they got spanked by a much smaller force of tecnologically superior Americans.
The 1999 war between NATO and Yugoslavia even put an end to the conventional wisdom that invasion by ground forces is required for victory.
In fact the trend in warfare is to involve as few humans as possible. The second Iraq war was the first large-scale use of unmanned drones in combat; some suggest that the current F-22 will be the last manned fighter jet, and that in the future all military aircraft will be robotic.
I can imagine a future hypothetical conflict between large, technologically equal adversaries, fought entirely by unmanned vehicles over land, sea, and air. Whichever side's unmanned vehicles ran out first would likely be forced to surrender, given the alternative of certain and pointless death for any human sent to combat the machines.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
You too can fight and die for .. the DMCA, 70 year copyright extensions, the RIAA, the MPAA, 1$ a gallon gas and the right to pollute the world... 8)
Perhaps they wouldn't have such a shortage of enlisted and non-commissioned technical workers if it wasn't so freakin' hard to figure out how to find and apply for the jobs! Have you ever tried to decipher a federal job posting? Ack. They never list specific skills they are looking for. I wonder if there are any recruiters that specialize in placing technical workers in federal positions? I would love the chance to work for my country using the skills that I've developed over the past 12 years, and I hear that the pension and benefits are pretty good too!
"Who hasn't slipped into the break room for a quick nibble on a love Newton before?" - Mr. Peterman.
Don't forget that the $27,000 is just your base bay. On top of that you either live on base for free(including electricity and water), or get a housing allowence which changes depending on where you are and your rank, and family. Plus health and dental on top of that.
That's still not very good. If you add $27,000 to what I pay for housing/electricity/water, you get about what I was making as a help desk phone jockey when I started out in IT four years ago, with no degree.
The military can probably get away with lower-than-industry pay for certain jobs that have a cool factor, like flying a fighter jet or driving a tank, but not for an IT position.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
Office workers in skyscrapers, absolutely, they make wonderful targets, as the followup to the failed bombing attempt demonstrated.
I wouldn't want to be an office worker engaged in military work in a skyscraper.
In contrast, look how easy the the low, wide Pentagon got off, comparitively speaking.
If you are engaged in military work, or just standing next to someone engaged in military work, you are a target. Remember that story a few days ago about GE developing luminous panels? That's just a few miles down the road from me, right next to the nuclear test facility, where they do things like work on nuclear submarines and missle systems. A couple blocks from my house is where America made most of its tanks until recently. A few blocks the other way is where most of the worlds electric generating turbines came from until recently.
I may be quietly working with OLED technology for civilian marine use, but I'm sitting down the street from the guy working on the missle systems, and I grew up with Russian missles pointed at me, just because I'm here, and for all I know have Chinese and Korean missles pointed at me right now.
My location puts me at risk.
Office workers in the Empire State Building are sitting under the communications hub for NYC and environs, like the harbor.
And it's an easy frickin' target, even if it's proven to be a might tougher than modern buildings. We make planes and missles larger and more explosive than B-25s these days.
I'd rather work uptown in a nice, anonymous, three story, thank you very much.
KFG
"Ever notice how feminists just really aren't torn up about any of that, even though most of it is deeply sexist?"
By many standards (not all) I would consider myself a feminist. (I'm actually an "equalist" but most people don't grasp that there's any leeway between traditional and feminist views.) Anyway, *I'm* annoyed by the sexist rationale behind not drafting females; perhaps they should be assigned to posts reflecting physical ability, but that should apply to both genders and they shouldn't be auto-exempt.
Then again, even though I'm personally a very aggressive person, I'm also against forcing *either* gender to participate in killing anything, so it's somewhat of a moot point.
that a major war is coming and the government knows it - and the reason for drafting computer people? it's because the next one is going to be nuclear and the resulting EM damage to electronics will require specialized skill to repair quickly... Look at Iran hiding stuff, Iraq hiding stuff, India and Pakistan, both militantly anti-US, having nukes, unaccounted for Russian suitcase nukes, North Korean long range nuclear ballistic missiles, China, the Balkans, the slow painful collapse of the world economy... the "perfect storm" for another world war...
hmm-- I think I'd have to agree with that. My dad was career Army, and most of my friends had dads that were career military, and mostly what we learned from that was don't join the military.
But-- diabetes causes you to get sores on your feet that take a long time to heal (if they do)-- and they get progressively worse.
My limited hospital experience saw people who would come in for wound care, then come in for toe amputation, then more toes, then half the foot, then BKA (below the knee amputation), then AKA, then they wouldn't come back anymore...
Don't get diabetes. Lose weight-- it's supposed to help.
And my unit spent most of its time in the motor pool, or in the field, digging in the dirt. Not once did I train to perform a mission as a linguist with my unit while I was in uniform, because officers can't lead soldiers who aren't in the field. It doesn't get them promoted, so they uniformly oppose it. Every bit of funding for every linguist mission was cut, and the mandatory eight hours of language maintenance required for all linguists was gradually reduced to no maintenance at all.
The only time I was actually useful was while on TDY.
Any assertion that the military needs people in these specialties is not true. They had them, indeed have them, and I can pick up the phone right now, call the RSDNCO of my former unit, and ask what they will be doing on Monday. I am confident that the answer will be: "motor pool".
This is something that has been brewing since before the Kennedy Report, and it still pisses me off, especially in light of all the back-pedalling from the FBI and military that they "don't have the resources". They did have them. Due to mismanagement and fucked-up priorities (primarily the OER system), they couldn't keep them. My re-enlistment counseling with my commanding officer (whom I respected a great deal) was, "well I can offer you the Army nurse program, or physician's assistant, but unless you want to become an officer, you won't be able to transfer out of your MOS because it's short".
During my time in the military, I think about one in three linguists re-enlisted, always for choice of duty station. I cannot count the number of linguists that disappeared, that training wasted, because they spent four (or more) years doing nothing. If they left the military under good terms, they should have been actively pursued by the FBI or NSA so that training wouldn't have been wasted. But it wasn't a priority until 9/11. Then, all those three-letter agencies suddenly realized that they'd better come up with effective damage control fast, so they settled on: "we don't have the resources."
It's a lie.
Slashdot is my Mercer Box.
In WW2 the average life of a machine gunner once deployed was something like 18 hours.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Posting AC because I'm telling the truth,
AC
I can't imagine anything comes in close in price/performance if you're hand-optimizing the assembly (required for SSE2).
Only the third fastest supercomputer in the world at Virginia Tech. Hint: It's a cluster made up on off the shelf G5's from Apple.
Put your money where your mouth is and leave, if you're so pissed off. Perhaps there's a country somewhere that won't ask you to do a thing to contribute. Maybe.
I bet you don't vote, either. Nah, that'd be too much like "involuntary servitude," to go to the polls for all of a half an hour once a year, right?
You know, one of the things I love best about this country is that, although you are guaranteed the right to mouth off about how shitty you think the country is, I also have the right to tell you to shut the hell up or leave.
And I am right now.
Not if the US system is anything like the norwegian. To become an officer in Norway, you must take something that is best translated as "the school of war" - a three-year school. Don't ask me what they teach, I am not an officer.
Norway has a drafted army. When I was drafted as a M.Sc. in electronics/computer science, I spent most of my time logging incoming mail. The next rank in the pecking order would be civilian employees, then the military ranks came on top of this. The amount of techological savvy went down as you progressed up the hierarchy.
In a civilian company, this state of affairs would lead to bankruptcy. The military doesn't have any self-regulating controls of this kind to ensure that resources are utilized effectively - or utilized at all.
I just can't see this happening. The military is based on a hierarchy, and it needs to be organized just this way to be effective during a war - you can't sit and hold hands and talk things out when someone are shooting at you. The only way to make a proper hierarchical model work is to have the most experienced people on top. I think it is impossible to have a marriage between a hierarchical system where it takes 15+ years to reach the top and disciplines where your skills are outdated in five years.
I don't have a solution to this draft-related problem. I don't think a solution exists.
I think you are wrong. When I went to boot camp at Parris Island, SC in 1992 we slept in three story buildings that housed six, sixty-man platoons per floor. When a friend of mine went to Parris Island in the late 1960's (right after the draft was instituted he slept in tents. The infrastructure is there, were a draft to be instituted tomorrow, our militart would have no problems handline the added influx of recruits.
But women aren't in ARMY combat positions. As you say, they are pilots, not infantry. Since the draft is only to funnel personnel into the Army, women are still excluded. The military has justified this to the courts on the basis that the draft would be used mainly to fill combat positions, and hence women would not be elligible anyway. However, if they keep up with this "special skills" idea, the courts may reverse that.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
As far as what would happen if Kerry were elected, I doubt he would institute a draft unless the alternative was foreign troops on US soil. Remember, he was in Vietnam unlike Air National Guard boy. Also, he will have a reelection to worry about, which Bush won't. My own position on the draft is that I will go to jail before being drafted. I might even consider getting shot by the government rather than get drafted. But you're absolutely right that now the 20-somethings have parents and parents' friends who were draft dodgers and can help them out, which was more than the Baby Boomers had.
I am officially gone from
Interesting thing.
We were studying supply and demand, and the relationships in a Free Enterprise System. Demand is paid-for transfer of goods from seller to buyer when both agree on price. If you want a product bad enough, and if you are capable and willing to pay enough for it, some seller will generate a supply. Thats just how the system works. Sure, there are workarounds for the system, like simply taking it if you want it, and we call it theft and extortion. Note how the government has passed all sorts of law to protect the owners of intellectual property lately.
So, one way of looking at a draft is imposing a severe tax on some of the population based on whatever criteria they choose because the demander ( government ) of the resource ( someone else's time and labor ) refuses to negotiate for it, and simply uses a gun to achieve his objectives.
If the free enterprise system, which this country is supposedly based on, is supposed to work, the rights of all, not just some, have to be respected. How can Congress say downloading music or copying software is bad, yet think its OK to commit widespread theft of "factors of production" by invoking a draft? If they need soldiers, PAY for them. Up the salary enough, people will join. Need specialized skills? Compete the same way everyone else has to. I wish Congress could tell me just what is the American Way to fill a need.. negotiate for it, or just use a gun.
That damn draft kept me uncomfortable the whole time I went through adolescence. Although I lucked out on the "lottery", it did drive in just how wrong it was to force ones way at gunpoint. I know the current regime likes to have a lot of prayer breakfasts, but actions like this say a lot more than strings of words ending in "amen."
It just seems to me that we are no better than the ones we fight, if we use the same tactics to enforce compliance with the dictator's rulings.
The government has already shown in my mind very poor fiscal policy by lowering the federal funds rate to such riduculous lows and causing our dollar to become cheap. It places rewards on those who live beyond their means by ensuring they pay back less value than they borrowed, and it damn nearly assures all the working wage-slaves out there that they will probably never be able to afford their own home. Did wages track the the resultant spike in housing and fuel prices as the market achieved a new price point equilibrium reflecting the new inflated value of the dollar?
Most likely, all working people received an effective wage cut, as they keep getting paid numerically yesterdays wage. It makes way for an endless spiral of "raises" just to stay where we are, invisibly pushing us up into higher and higher tax rate brackets. No wonder our employers can't afford us anymore.
Any monetary assets people were saving for retirement are effectively diminshed. And they don't even allow us with retirement accounts to write off the effect of the inflation against the interest on the account. And we wonder why the US has such a low saving rate?
I honestly believe I have been cursed by an old Chinese curse... "May you live in interesting times." I believe the door is just opening now for some real lulus.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
If the military service is not voluntary, it is pretty clearly "involuntary servitude", and as such a violation of the 13th Ammendment.
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
will we need to have a certain level of experience before we can be drafted, or will it be anyone who is computer literate? Who decides this?
I used to be a computer worker until I got too sick to work and went on diability and became a college student. I am getting out of the computer industry and getting into business management. So if I switch careers can I still be drafted?
I used to work as a Federal Contractor for the US Army, so I delt with the government and military beore. I would be proud to serve my country, but my medical condition would prevent me from doing so. Also I am 35 years old, so what is the age limit here?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
So, are you willing to put your money where your mouth is? Are you willing to wager cold, hard cash that your paranoid liberal view of the world is rooted in fact rather than delusion? I've even given you four months longer than you're "sure" the draft will be reinstated. Or are you all just talk?
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
2,000,000 served
500,000 evaded the draft
100,000 deserted
34,000 were court-martialled and imprisoned
I'm currently in the Army Reserves and write software on the civilian side. For the past 8 years I've been trying to find a way to help out the Army Reserves with my computer skills - and from my perspective there are lots of others just like me.... problem is, the Army doesn't know what to do with us. Sure, they have set up special 'Information Operations' units filled with talented people... but most of these people waste their time ordering computers, installing microsoft 2000 on them, and upgrading patches.... not to mention filling out paperwork and stacking boxes... its a complete waste of time. And these are smart people who really want to help out with their skills. I would prefer seeing the military make a plan for how to USE the technology specialists they have before drafting up a plan to pluck people out of their civilian life.