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The 2019 National Commission: How Washington Decided to Keep the Draft Machine

Evidence rating: CONFIRMED for the commission's mandate, the testimony quoted, and the records-request history, all from government documents released under the Freedom of Information Act. STRONG for Edward Hasbrouck's account, drawn from those records, that the commission settled on keeping draft registration before its public hearings.

What the commission was​

The National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service (NCMNPS) was created by Congress in the FY2017 defense bill, Public Law 114-328, signed December 23, 2016. Among its tasks was to consider whether the nation may "obtain for military, national, and public service individuals with [e.g., medical, dental, nursing, language, cyber, science, technology, engineering, and/or mathematics skills] for which the Nation has a critical need, without regard to age or sex" (Hasbrouck v. NARA complaint, 2021).

"Without regard to age or sex." The question put to the commission was not only whether to keep a draft of 18-year-old men. It was whether to build a way to compel anyone with needed skills.

"We are not authorized under current law"​

At an April 24, 2019 hearing, the commission framed its question plainly: "The commission is exploring the use of the Selective Service System to induct personnel with critical skills" ... "whether we identify individuals who possess critical skills that the nation might need, whether we call for volunteers in a time of emergency instead."

The Selective Service director at the time, Donald Benton, answered:

"First, I agree with your premise we do need to be able to identify critical skills. And if current law authorizes us to have a system we would. We are not authorized under current law."

Former director Bernard Rostker told the same hearing that "the key to obtaining critical skills, either on standby, or as needed is volunteerism and incentives," and noted that the old "doctor draft" worked because it was "backed by the ongoing draft. The incentive of avoiding being drafted does not exist today."

Source: NCMNPS hearing transcript, April 24, 2019 (FOIA copy).

Read Benton's words again: the agency agreed it needed to identify critical skills, and would build a system if the law allowed. Seven years later, its exercise script asked the director about "Agency capabilities to selectively draft skilled men" (exercise guide), and its new law lets it demand any data from any federal agency that it "determines necessary to identify or register a person."

Older people, more skills​

According to Hasbrouck's account of the commission's records, co-chair Debra Wada "wanted not only to retain draft registration and expand it to women but to extend the age of required registration to 44, in order to enable conscription of older people with more special skills." The commission "spent a lot of time considering how to draft people with skills in special demand by the military, especially for cyber-warfare, including the current Health Care Personnel Delivery System (HCPDS) as a possible model for an expanded special-skills draft" (Hasbrouck, commission meetings).

In the end, he writes, the commission "decided not to recommend a special-skills draft, mainly because they couldn't figure out a way to reliably identify those with skills" that, unlike medical skills, "don't map to professional licensing lists or clearly-defined credentials." The obstacle was data, not principle.

Decided before the hearing​

Hasbrouck, the only draft resister invited to testify before the commission in 2019 (Hasbrouck biography), writes that records released to him "show that the NCMNPS relied heavily on input from" the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) "and other selected sources." Two of the five witnesses at one hearing were from CNAS: Loren Schulman and Elsa Kania. He writes that "long before this hearing the NCMNPS had secretly but unanimously agreed to recommend the continuation of Selective Service registration. The only questions that were still being debated... were who to subject to registration and a draft, and how to administer the program." He is suing the National Archives for more of the commission's records, "which NARA wants to destroy before anyone can see them" (Hasbrouck blog).

CNAS later produced the 2024 "Draft Mobilization" report, which recommends expanding the data collected at registration "to enable data-informed mobilization." See the CNAS report.

Why it matters now​

The 2019 commission is where the pieces of today's machine were argued out in a room most Americans never saw: keep registration, widen it, find a way to identify skills, and fix the data problem. The congressional commission's call to register women, described in 2026 reporting as a "necessary and fair step," came out of the same work (Newser, April 9, 2026; @NewsNotBs, December 5, 2024, which dates the commission's conclusion to 2020). Automatic registration in 2025 fixed the list. The 2026 exercise rehearsed the skills draft. The 2026 simulation models both.

Sources​

Status: Donald Benton's and Bernard Rostker's current status was not confirmed for this page. Debra Wada, Loren Schulman, Elsa Kania, and Edward Hasbrouck are alive. Nothing here states or implies that any of them acted unlawfully.

Last Updated: 2026-09-26

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