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The CNAS "Draft Mobilization" Report: The President Sets the Rules, the Pentagon Sets the Needs

Evidence rating: CONFIRMED for the report's statements quoted below. STRONG for this page's reading: the report shows that who gets drafted is not fixed in stone; the President has authority to set the guidelines, and the report asks that the Pentagon's requirements drive what data the draft agency collects.

Who wrote it​

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) is a Washington think tank on defense policy. Its 2024 report "Draft Mobilization" studied what it would take to draft Americans for a large war (CNAS, Draft Mobilization, PDF). CNAS was also central to the 2019 national commission on the draft: two of five witnesses at one hearing came from CNAS, and the commission "relied heavily" on its input, according to records obtained by Edward Hasbrouck (Hasbrouck blog). Hasbrouck names the report's co-author as Katherine L. Kuzminski.

The rule that matters most: the President decides​

The report states:

"The president has the authority to prescribe the guidelines for who is drafted into training and service from within the population of individuals “liable for such training and service and who at the time of selection are registered and classified, but not deferred or exempted.”"

In plain words: the law says who can be drafted. Who actually is drafted, and in what order, is a set of guidelines the President can write. The birthday lottery is the current guideline, not a guarantee.

The current plan​

The report describes the present rules: "The current plan for draft mobilization is to begin the draft with individuals who turn 20 in the year a draft is enacted," and "a lottery system is used to determine the order in which men report for induction, based on random number assignment associated with birthdays. Under current processes, all men who turn 20 during the year of the draft will be called upon first; additional lotteries are called in order of those who turn 21–25, and then 19-year-olds and 18.5-year-olds." Local boards "decide the outcomes of exemptions, deferments, and conscientious objector (CO) claims." Current data collected at registration: "name, date of birth, Social Security number, and address."

The recommendation: data-informed mobilization​

"The Department of Defense should analyze the necessary requirements for future conflict and provide the requirements to the Selective Service System. The SSS should then expand the information collected during registration to enable data-informed mobilization."

Read the order. First the Pentagon decides what kinds of people it needs. Then the draft agency collects the data to find them. That is the design of a skills-based, data-driven draft, stated as a recommendation by the think tank the government's own commission relied on. Two years later, the agency's January 2026 exercise had the White House asking for "a specialized skills national service draft in 30 days" (the exercise).

The war game​

According to a widely shared account of John Markel's 2025 law review, the CNAS war game simulated "a mass mobilization needed for a “large-scale combat operation against a near-peer adversary”," used the agency's planning figure that "500,000 induction notices would be required to yield 100,000 conscripts within 193 days," and found that "even under “best-case” assumptions, the current system would fail to provide the necessary manpower" (@UnplugTheEmpire, June 23, 2026). The same account quotes CNAS that "multiple high-ranking personnel in the United States military fear World War III is on the horizon." A CNAS fellow, Andrew Metrick, wrote a December 2023 report on "protracted conflict," per Hasbrouck.

The conclusion the war game invites is not "no draft." It is "a better draft machine."

Sources​

Status: Katherine L. Kuzminski and Andrew Metrick are alive.

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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