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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."
Type 1 diabetes was never this handy! They don't want me anywhere near the military.
to move to canada =\
Just say you don't know how to use Microsoft products.
'rapidly register and draft' computer specialists
Better go out and start writing my e-mail with Outlook Express! That will immediately prove I am not a computer specialist
If they pay more than the paltry salary I'm making now, then draft me up!
'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.' -HST
I thought they were outsourcing these things :)
Next up: Outsourcing missile control to China...
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
you dont know how to close I tags either!
...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.
If they're drafting you for 'special skills' you're pretty unlikely to get stuck out someplace where you have a high chance of catching a bullet (or some high explosive.) This is probably far less true in the case of people with language skills, however.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The present operation of the US Selective Service is more or less trivial because the draft system not active, and it takes an Act of Congress in order to activate it. However, an Act of Congress can also totally rewrite the rules,
The draft in its present form is also very unconstitutional because it discrimates between men and women. In this day and age, that makes it a political untouchable. To require women to register will spark protests, but to not require them to do so would lead to court injunctions halting the draft process.
Congresspeople also have learned something from the Vietnam war. If a war is so unpopular that we are out of "weekend warrior" reserves and we can't convince people to join on their own, as a politician you should be voting to force a withdrawl rather allow the war to continue. To be depleted to the point that a draft is needed in modern times is a sign that we've already lost and just can't admit it.
The only people in Congress who called for a draft during recent years have been those who oppose the president's military plans. By rolling out a draft, or even raising the possiblity of a draft, a war effort suddenly becomes less popular.
Bottom line... the Selective Service exists only as a tool to be used in a doomsday situation, just like all of the city fallout shelters that were built in the USA during the cold war to be prepared for a nuclear bomb that never came. I'd consider anything new we hear from the Selective Service to be a rarely-used bureaucracy trying to justify its existance because in tight budgets, cutting the Selective Service's staff is always a low-pain cut.
It's about a MILITARY DRAFT. One of the exemptions from draft is type 1 diabetes.
If they're this desperate for workers, is there desperation reflected in wage scales, benefits, etc?
What's a guy make with a freshly-minted bachellaureate in computer science make, working for the military? Where do most of them end up, both in geographical and task-related terms? How much control over where they put you does a new officer have?
Can't wait to design Access databases for the government. Just hope there isn't too much data, else my listboxes might be hard to scroll.
Will they be outsourcing this draft to india as well?
Why not just offer large enlistment bonuses and perhaps raise the age limits? I'll bet there are a lot of 40-something geeks who'd be willing to sign up. It would also be a lot easier politically than restarting the draft, and probably get better results: volunteers tend to do better work than draftees.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
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
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.
Drop and give me twenty shell scripts!
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.
Don't spill my secret plan to the world!
The US Selective Service System is drawing up plans for a 'special skills draft'.
Would this include women?
Years ago in high school, a female friend once angrily declared the draft "sucked". I looked her straight in the face and said "What do you care?" "Huh?" "You' can't be drafted, only men can be." This was apparently a major revelation, and shockingly, the draft was forgotten about almost immediately.
Main theories I've heard are that a)"our nation's daughters" coming home in body bags during a war would be political suicide, and b)"women aren't as [strong/smart/whatever] as men". Oh, then there's c)"women would use their feminine wiles to distract the men busy fighting!"
Ever notice how feminists just really aren't torn up about any of that, even though most of it is deeply sexist? Also notice how Jessica Lynch was supposedly(according to the Army) beaten, raped, tortured, etc- when all evidence(and her own comments, before she developed permanent amnesia of events) point to all her injuries coming from the car accident she was in, and that Iraqi doctors took exemplary care of her? It's like the Army was saying "look, this is why you don't want women in the military! They're brave but helpless, and can get RAPED! Isn't she cute? She could be YOUR daughter!"
Please help metamoderate.
...for all those jokes we made about him on Slashdot!
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
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.
Amateur radio operators were an important source of technically skilled recruits during World War II. Computer hackers could fill a similar role in future conflicts. Not so much for their civilian skills, but for a pool of people with demonstrated intelligence and aptitude for technical jobs.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Just to put a little moderating spin on this whole discussion (not necessarily you) - We seem to have this "us" vs. "them" mentality. The government _is_ "us". If we see "us" as "them" and disengage then it is a self-fulfilling prophesy. If we engage "them", become involved, vote, write letters, campaign, hold public office, serve in the armed forces, etc. then the government becomes "us." Isn't that how it works?
I think perhaps we've swung a little too far into paranoia because so few Americans currently serve in the armed forces. I am a captain in the army reserves, and I get the strangest questions from people who have NO idea what being in the military is like. This wasn't true during my parent's generation.
What I'm saying is this: if we want war and an uncertain future, the best way to achieve this is to not serve, to not care, and to put the power to control such decisions in an increasingly smaller and smaller circle of "good ol' boys."
Being a soldier means as much about loving war as being a firefighter does about loving fire.
Now, first things first, we need to get a new fire captain soon... he keeps saying to us, can of gasoline in hand, that, "I'll have some work for you guys in a sec."
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
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)
Aha! Clever, you just proved that you can't even keep your secret plan secret!
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Now class, can anyone tell me why there would be such a large, quite push to restaff so quickly? Mark my words, the draft will be back.
Here's my guesses:
1. If something goes really wrong this summer in Iraq or Afghanistan (like the Tet Offensive in Vietnam) then they will quickly draft and deploy before the November elections.
2. If Bush is reelected then the draft will start Jan or Feb 2005, slow for the first few months and then when they are up to speed they'll start pulling large amounts of young men.
3. If Kerry is elected I can't guess what he would do. I don't if there would be a major difference.
Watch how the US Govt handles draft, induction, training and deployment this time. You'll see companies created that go through boot together, post recruit train together, deploy together, what's left of them will get discharged together and the company disbanded. No more singles in, singles out. This is much more like WWII than Korea or Vietnam.
If you are 14 - 20 years old then I'd seriously start making plans on what you'll do. Speaking as someone who toted a 16 for his uncle I'd recommend not going at any cost. We use to say "the only thing worst than cleaning a body bag is being in one". As a parent I would do whatever it took to keep my son away from any unjust and immoral war like that clusterfuck going on in the Mid East.
As Frank Zappa once said: "What they do in Washington is take care of number one and number one ain't you. You ain't even number two."
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
For HR.163, go here and type hr 163 into the "Bill Number" field.
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.
giving something back to the country that makes your way of life possible
I am the country -- I and 300 million other Americans. The country is not some capricious god that we dump offerings on.
When you can clearly demonstrate to me how blowing up chunks of Iraq has significantly benefitted We The People, then I'll happily join up.
A draft takes place when people don't care about something enough to want to risk dying for it, but do want to force someone else (who feels the same way) to do something about it. Since there are a number of ways of avoiding the draft, and since money and political influence played a role in avoiding Vietnam, I would say that a draft is a stunningly divisive and politically unsound way of achieving that goal.
If there were a horde of Bush's stereotypical black-swathed turban-wearning terrorists mowing down innocent people outside my front door, would I shoot back and risk my life? I'd at least give it serious consideration. That's a cause that's worth fighting for. Attacking a bunch of Iraqis for political goals that are at best extremely unclear and perhaps poorly chosen, and at worst downright corrupt and evil is not something that I am interested in dying for. Frankly, given a choice between firing a shot at either Ashcroft or a random Iraqi citizen, I can tell you right now who I'd be aiming at.
While I don't want to be drafted to fight in Iraq, also I don't feel that anyone else should be drafted to fight there. As a matter of fact, I feel very strongly that we should not be involved in Iraq at all. I think that US actions in Iraq have caused political and social repercussions that hurt the United States more than help it. So, no. I would not be "fighting for the the country", I would be fighting against it.
May we never see th
Since when has the draft stopped a war? The only thing the draft ensures is that politically unconnected people are forced to fight and die for causes supported for the politically connected, while their kids get cushy jobs in the Air National Guard, where no one cares if they show up or not.
The draft is slavery. I am a veteran, and I proudly volunteered. But if they were to show up claiming they had a right to my life and time - I'd go to jail first.
The PNAC agenda + our current military status = the draft.
Its like the lottery, except when you win you lose. Don't like it? Kick out Bush and his PNAC buddies.
"THIS IS MY DISTRO. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My distro is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master 'Vice City'."
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
I just joined the Marine Corps. I leave in Sept. I am not scared of some draft.
I'd imagine not, considering that you are already in the military. There are those of us, balls notwithstanding, that have become accusomed to our current ways of life and would not like to be forced into military service. There are also those among us who again, balls notwithstanding, would simply prefer not to die.
I can not think of any people other than my own for whom I would risk death to secure freedom. Using volunteers for our charity work around the world is all well and good, but I think drafts shold be reserved for actual threats to the nation's security.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
> There are those of us, balls notwithstanding,
> that have become accusomed to our current ways
> of life and would not like to be forced into
> military service. There are also those among us
> who again, balls notwithstanding, would simply
> prefer not to die.
There are two ways to look at it:
1 - Afraid to die/lose your current way of life
2 - Want to kill someone/change your current way of life
Most of the people who join the USMC fall into that second catagory. If their recruiter is even vaugely honest with them (which, I'll admit, is a streach for even the mildest mannered recruiter), they let prospective recruits know that, in the end, it's about killing the enemy dead either by pushing a button, pulling a trigger or by putting your fscking kbar through his heart.
Anyone who forgets that and still thinks military service is a good idea from them should probably join the peace corps and go off to get high with the natives in the next country that the USMC will be visiting shortly.
Personally, I'm with Robert Heinlein: No service, no vote.
This makes clear that the "U.S. Plans Targeted Draft for Computer Personnel" headline is pure scaremongering. No one is about to get drafted. This is not "Tin soldiers and Nixon coming" for those of you trapped in the 1970s. This is deep, long-range contingency planning by a government agency that needs to look busy to keep their funding from being cut.
Too many people seem to be ignorant of the difference between "contingent" and "imminent." Just because, say, for example, FEMA updates its plans on recovering from a nuclear war DOESN'T MEAN we're planning to launch a nuclear war. Likewise, that whole "Pentagon plans for possibility of global climate change" had nothing to do with them planning for what they thought was going to happen, but everything to do with laying in contingency plans for what MIGHT happen, just like we had "rainbow" plans before World War II as to what we might have to do if involved in a global war against various enemies; just because we made plans for a global war against England, Russia and China (as well as Japan and Germany) didn't mean such an event was likely.
Will anyone here on Slashdot be called up? If, say, al Queda or North Korea nukes DC or Los Angeles, maybe. Otherwise all this talk is a bunch of blather from people who like to over-react anytime anyone in the Bush administration mentions the words "national security" and "computers" in the same sentence.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
So long as we understand "service" properly:
Never confuse serving the state with serving your country.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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/