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Follow the Money: Who Pays for the Draft Software

Evidence rating: CONFIRMED for the budget lines, awards, contracts, and solicitations below, all from official records. STRONG for this page's reading: the draft machine is being paid for in small pieces, through a White House-run fund and the draft agency's own budget, for a customer that is the Department of War, in a way designed never to become a headline.

The short version​

The Selective Service System (SSS), the independent agency that would run a draft, gets about $31 million a year from Congress. On top of that, a fund run by the General Services Administration under the White House budget office has given it about $12 million in two awards to move its "conscription applications" to the cloud and add "AI-powered workflows." Small IT contractors are doing the work. The agency's customer, the one whose manpower needs it exists to fill, is the Pentagon, now called the Department of War. SSS describes its own mission as maintaining "a system that can rapidly furnish manpower to the Department of Defense during national emergencies" (CLEATUS summary of the 2026 solicitation), and its 2026 exercise has the Department of War requesting "1 million inductees in 15 mos." (exercise guide, FOIA).

The money trail answers the question "who is building a draft machine?" It is being built by the draft agency, with White House-approved money, for the Pentagon's use.

The annual budget​

SSS asked Congress for $31,300,000 for FY2026, the same as FY2024 and FY2025, with full-time staff falling from 110 to 101. Its goals include:

  • "Deliver IT enterprise application portfolio rationalization, data architecture, and artificial intelligence capabilities."
  • "Secure the Agency's registration database in the FedRAMP cloud."
  • "Acquire new data streams to support additional compliance mailings."

One line in its appropriation says "none of the funds appropriated by this Act may be expended for or in connection with the induction of any person into the Armed Forces of the United States." In plain words: the agency may build, test, and prepare everything short of actually inducting anyone; that last step needs new authority from Congress.

Source: SSS FY2026 Congressional Budget Justification, pages 4–7 and 12–14.

Staff are falling while "artificial intelligence capabilities" and "data architecture" are rising. That is the shape of an agency replacing people with software, which is exactly what its plan says: "sunset manual compliance activities" (SSS Strategic Plan FY 2026–2030). An April 2026 report quoted the agency as planning "a streamlined registration process and corresponding workforce realignment" (USA Today, April 9, 2026).

The budget is small, which is part of the design. A 2024 critic called the agency "a low-cost insurance policy ($26 million per year)" (The Federalist, via @OwenGregorian, August 9, 2024); a 2026 critic wrote it is "only tens of millions of dollars per year, a drop in the Federal budget" (@GreeneElizabeth, July 20, 2026). Nothing this small gets a hearing.

The Technology Modernization Fund awards​

AwardStartAmountPurpose, in the fund's words
Registration and verification modernizationMarch 2022$5,988,807"Advanced data analytics to inform decisions on any future mobilization"; able "to scale up rapidly when activated by Congress and the President"
Modernizing Defense Readiness ApplicationsJune 2025$6,000,000"Migrate core systems to cloud infrastructure with AI-powered workflows"

The agency's plan describes the 2025 award as money to "modernize legacy conscription applications to ensure secure, reliable systems are ready in the event of a national emergency." It was awarded in the month of the first war on Iran.

Go deeper: the Technology Modernization Fund awards

The contracts​

We pulled every SSS contract on USAspending.gov from October 2019 to September 2026: 368 awards worth about $37.4 million. The largest software awards go to a small firm, Cloud7Works, Inc.: $3.44 million for "RCV CLOUD REFACTORING SYSTEM MODERNIZATION" (July 2023), $1.8 million for an "RCV DATAWAREHOUSE PROJECT" (September 2025), and about $946,000 more for hosting. The data-warehouse contract equals, to the dollar, what the fund reports spent on the AI award. A data warehouse is where records from many agencies are joined, which is where automatic registration's matching will happen. Other vendors supply state motor-vehicle data (AAMVA), address verification for mailings (Pitney Bowes), a new website (Mobomo), and cloud engineers (Sonora & Associates).

Go deeper: Cloud7Works, the data warehouse, and the vendors

The 2026 simulation purchases​

NoticeDateWhat it asks for
Request for Information 9000_26_0003, "Conscription Readiness Model Simulation"May 20, 2026"a government-owned predictive Discrete Event Simulation (DES) model"
Request for Quote 90MC26Q0005, "Readiness Simulation (RS)"July 22, 2026 (quotes due August 14)a model of "the full end-to-end SSS mobilization pipeline," including "no-shows," small-business set-aside

Sources: SAM.gov RFI; SAM.gov RFQ; HigherGov. No award had been announced as of September 26, 2026. Details: the draft wargame software.

Where the automatic-registration money went​

Responsible Statecraft reported in March 2026 that "no money for this project is included in this year's SSS budget" (Responsible Statecraft, March 10, 2026). That is true of the annual appropriation. It is not true of the machine: the cloud move, the AI award, and the data warehouse are the pieces automatic registration runs on, and they were paid for from the modernization fund, outside the annual budget line. And when a researcher asked the agency by records request for any "plan, schedule, or cost estimate" for automatic registration, the agency said it had none (Hasbrouck). See the rule and the records request.

Bigger defense-data money around it​

The draft agency's own contracts are small. The defense-data companies around it are not. A reported August 4, 2026 draft memo from Deputy Secretary of War Steve Feinberg, titled "Funding Palantir," would direct up to $243.9 million for Palantir services through March 2027; the Pentagon, per the reports, "called it a standard planning directive" (summary on X, September 22, 2026). Palantir, whose software ran targeting in the Iran war, publicly urged the country in April 2026 to "seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force." Nothing on the public record ties the Palantir memo to Selective Service. What ties them is the direction of travel. See Palantir, DOGE, and the Pentagon's own databases.

What a citizen can check​

  • Go to USAspending.gov search, set Awarding Agency to "Selective Service System," and sort by amount.
  • Read the TMF project pages linked above; they update spending and status.
  • Watch for the award of the draft simulation contract (solicitation 90MC26Q0005). It will name the vendor and the price.
  • Ask your member of Congress why a program to build conscription software is being paid for from a modernization fund instead of a line item Congress votes on.

Sources​

Status: Steve Feinberg is alive.

Research captures: twitter/t62__v733.md through t62__v744.md, t63__v745.md through t63__v756.md, t65__v772.md through t65__v774.md, t66__v785.md, t68__v816.md

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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