How to Recruit and Retain the Force We Need

Historians and national security experts agree that America faces complex and increasingly perilous threats to its existence. Yet at age 50, our modern all-volunteer force (AVF) is stumbling—failing to recruit the requisite number of qualified troops and turning to extraordinary measures to make up for the shortfalls. Hobbled by inadequate forces, our country is ill-equipped to enforce peace or prevail in war we’re increasingly unlikely to deter with such a weakened military. Defining the specific obstacles to manning the force and developing timely solutions are critical in sustaining the force needed to protect the republic.

The United States military is too small for the requirements of its recent usage and stated strategy. It was clear that challenges from our adversaries were increasing by 2018, when US Defense Secretary James Mattis said,

The negative impact on military readiness is resulting from the longest continuous stretch of combat in our nation’s history and defense spending caps, because we have been operating also for nine of the last 10 years under continuing resolutions that have created an overstretched and under-resourced military.¹

In the years since, China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran have posed an increasing danger, both individually and as an alliance working against our interests. Russia’s defense spending has increased at twice the rate of the United States’, and China’s has increased by nearly four times the US rate.² While the size of these countries’ conventional forces has not substantially increased, their military cooperation—and, in some cases, even integration—has.³

The United States’ strategy is predicated on dealing with these adversaries as singular threats, not a combined alliance. Moreover, our forces have not increased: Defense spending hasn’t even kept pace with inflation, technology has not substituted for people at scale, integrated whole-of-government action continues to prove elusive, allies have not proved capable of absorbing responsibilities the US wishes to shift, and we have not found new tools or a novel strategy to obviate the need for military force to underwrite American diplomacy. As a result, US forces are stretched dangerously—and, for any adversary, temptingly—thin.

The bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States determined in 2023 that the risk of conflict with [China and Russia] is increasing. It is an existential challenge for which the United States is ill-prepared. . . . The Commission reached the unanimous, non-partisan conclusion that today’s strategic outlook requires an urgent national focus and a series of concerted actions not currently planned.⁴

In 2024, the bipartisan Commission on the National Defense Strategy concluded,

The threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945 and include the potential for near-term major war. The United States last fought a global conflict during World War II, which ended nearly 80 years ago. The nation was last prepared for such a fight during the Cold War, which ended 35 years ago. It is not prepared today.⁵

Both commissions recommended significant increases in defense spending, programs, and force structure.

The US has a well-designed system for determining how large a force it needs: The president establishes major policies, which are incorporated into a National Security Strategy to guide the Department of Defense (DOD) in developing its National Defense Strategy and the military in developing its National Military Strategy. These strategies are then developed into plans that establish the necessary forces. Crucial considerations include the following:

• Clarity on what the US will defend,
• The capabilities of the forces America needs to defend against,
• The role of alliances in reducing requirements for US forces,
• Trade-offs between conventional force size and reliance on nuclear weapons,
• The question of whether forces should be forward deployed to engage with allies and deter adversaries, and
• Prioritization and sequencing of operations if forces are inadequate to meet all demands simultaneously.

The Inadequacy of the Current Force

Historically, US forces have not been adequate to address all threats simultaneously—even with 12 million servicemen in World War II, the US had to prioritize the European theater and swing forces subsequently to the economy of force theater in the Pacific. But the AVF was not designed to bear the burden of sustained combat. It is a credit to America’s military and the young patriots who fill its ranks that it has held up so well through decades of fighting. We owe it to the men and women of our military to reduce the demands of routine operations and overall strategy or expand the force.

The international environment is unlikely to permit a constriction of US engagement without deeply disadvantageous consequences for US interests. Our diplomats are most effective and persuasive in dealing with threats when backed by a lethal and clearly capable military. Adversaries are increasingly challenging our defenses and commitments because we aren’t fielding forces sufficient to deter conflict. Therefore, our country needs a larger military.

Yet even many who acknowledge that a larger force is necessary consider it unaffordable.⁶ Arguments rest on comparisons between the US population (5 percent of the global population) and the preponderance of global defense spending, concerns about migrating responsibilities for defending America’s allies to the US, and the costly unwieldiness of DOD procurement practices. But the central argument against the affordability of a larger US military focuses on the cost of its personnel, which has increased dramatically in recent years.

Each service member costs US taxpayers over $100,000 per year in pay and benefits, before training and arming. A major driver of cost increases is health care, paralleling the dynamic in the overall federal budget, where entitlement spending is crowding out discretionary spending. That means DOD must prioritize pay and benefits over equipment, training, research and development, operations, and maintenance. This is crucial because warfare remains a human endeavor. The initiative, grit, and inventiveness of American military personnel remain an inestimable advantage in deterring authoritarians, maintaining our allies’ trust (and forces), and passing our freedoms intact to the next generation.

This chapter’s fundamental argument is that defending America’s interests is affordable. In 1943–44, the US managed to spend 40 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defense;⁷ during the Korean War, it mustered 12 percent. But after the end of the Vietnam War, US defense spending dropped to 4.2 percent. Between 1975 and 2025 it jumped around, increasing with the Reagan buildup, dropping with the end of the Cold War, and increasing back to around 4 percent after 9/11. Over the past 13 years, it has continued to decline. Although Americans are considerably wealthier than in 1974 (per capita GDP was $7,226 in 1974, compared with $81,695 in 2023), we spend a smaller percentage of our national wealth on defense.⁸

Although prewar activities deter war, money cannot buy back the time to prepare for it. By suggesting that so prosperous a country cannot afford to defend its interests, we are talking ourselves into our own demise. We currently spend just 3.2 percent of GDP on defense, significantly less than the 5 percent that President Donald Trump is calling on our allies to spend.⁹ America can afford survival, and survival with our freedoms intact is our generation’s responsibility to future generations.

Impediments to Recruiting

Even acknowledging that a larger force is needed and can be funded responsibly, however, there is significant skepticism that Americans would be willing to join in the numbers needed. After all, the military is struggling to meet its recruiting goals for the current force, let alone a significantly larger one. In 2023, only the Marine Corps and Space Force met their recruiting goals; the Army and Navy recruited less than 70 percent of their goals for active and reserve components, falling 41,000 recruits short of sustaining the current force.¹⁰ The American military is shrinking not due to a policy determination about the size of the force needed but because the services cannot recruit enough Americans to defend the country.

Ineligibility and Disinterest. The military has diverged from American society in many ways, as reflected in the statistic that in 2022, 77 percent of American youth did not qualify for military service. Reasons included being overweight (11 percent), drug or alcohol use (8 percent), physical or mental health problems (7 percent and 4 percent, respectively), misconduct (1 percent), and inaptitude (1 percent).¹¹ An additional 44 percent were disqualified for multiple of these reasons. The military must also confront the reality that only 9 percent of Americans between age 17 and 24 (prime recruitment age) have an interest in signing up.¹²

Misperceptions of the Military. The public knows little about the military. There is a misperception, still lingering from the 1960s, that the American military disproportionately recruits from among minorities and the poor. In reality, 19 percent of the poorest quintile of our country serve, as do 17 percent of the richest quintile, while the majority of recruits are from middle-income families.¹³ Our military personnel come disproportionately from those who live near military bases and come from military families.¹⁴ Nor are their politics distinguishable from those of other Americans with equivalent education and income.

Misperceptions about what service may entail are also prevalent. According to an article published by the Army,

The Army’s own polling shows today’s youth have a disproportionate perception of their likelihood of being injured, killed, or suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) if they join the military. A large percentage of women believe they will be sexually harassed or assaulted.¹⁵

These misperceptions significantly inhibit Americans’ propensity to serve in the military and will be difficult to overcome. They result partly from increased, even exaggerated, attention to real problems like post-traumatic stress disorder and sexual assault. But they also result from broader cultural and generational shifts that make military service less appealing.

Cultural Shifts. One legacy of the long wars of the 21st century has been the distancing of the military from broader American society. It’s commonplace for military personnel to grumble that we’re not a country at war; we’re just a military at war.¹⁶ And they’re right. The Triangle Institute for Security Studies’ 1999 study and subsequent survey research confirms that, 50 years since the end of conscription, American society has less direct stake in military service and the application of force and increasingly defers to the military on those issues.¹⁷

The same Army article mentioned above highlights a Wall Street Journal–NORC poll that found that far fewer young adults considered patriotism important in 2023 (23 percent) than did so in 1998 (70 percent). The article explains that “today’s military-age adults value flexibility, self-expression, individual identity, and leisure. They are much more likely to believe that climate change is a greater existential threat than is China or Russia.”¹⁸

Political polarization exacerbates recruitment challenges, as it drags the military into America’s culture wars. The 2024 Reagan National Defense Survey indicates that after plummeting more than 20 points in three years, confidence in the US military has stabilized and is slowly trending back up—and that the military remains our public’s most trusted institution.¹⁹ But polling also reveals that a polarized American body politic remains concerned about the perceived politicization of our military: Another Reagan poll showed in 2023 that 38 percent of Republicans consider the military too focused on social issues rather than warfighting, while 47 percent of Democrats consider the balance between social issues and warfighting appropriate.²⁰ Apparently, those who are traditionally most likely to serve perceive the military as preoccupied with social issues rather than focused on fighting and winning the nation’s wars. Civilian departmental leaders have been forcing divisive social issues onto the agenda, but they aren’t being driven by manpower or warfighting necessities.²¹

Whether “wokeness” is a problem in the military is open to debate, and veterans’ attitudes may not reflect the views of those currently in service because of generational differences. But what is clear is that the civilian public—and in particular the veteran community—believe that focus on progressive social issues and lack of mission focus are problems. The willingness of military families and veterans to encourage family members toward service has declined precipitously, and given how much recruitment draws on the military as a family business, that is a serious problem. Their concerns also affect the attitudes of school counselors and the parents of potential recruits, who are becoming hesitant to encourage military service.

Older veterans are not the only ones with concerns about military leadership. Many younger veterans and service members express disillusionment about the wars they fought and the lack of accountability among both the military and elected leaders. They especially resent that “a callous foreign policy elite in Washington unjustly asked them to fight in unwinnable wars.”²² While grumbling in the military ranks is routine, civilian leaders should not continue to place troops in harm’s way without doing the political work to keep the purpose of such sacrifice evident.

How to expand the pool of recruits without alienating those who serve in greatest numbers is the challenge. In trying to expand the recruitment pool to less traditional constituencies, there is a tendency to use the success of desegregation in the military to justify other socially progressive policies. But doing so widens the civil-military divide, as many in uniform conclude that civilians neither understand the exigencies of military life nor share the burdens of policies that make service members’ work even harder. Moreover, 70 percent of recruits come from the South and West, where populations tend to be more socially conservative.²³ Promoting progressive social messages runs counter to the data provided by where recruits are coming from.

Many social justice efforts are advanced without considering the practical consequences for the military. For example, Laura Miller and John Allen Williams show that civilians weigh civil rights concerns more heavily than military effectiveness in considering defense policies.²⁴ But civil society cannot always impose its social imperatives in the primitive environment of the battlefield, where military imperatives must take priority. For an organization whose victory or defeat will be calculated in body bags, it is crucial to recognize that unit cohesion, trust, and seemingly old-fashioned values are military imperatives—even when at odds with the societal values they’re designed to protect.

For example, more than 200,000 women serve in the American military, and we want them to. In fact, if we hope to retain current end strength—let alone expand it—we need them to serve. Yet scholarly research conclusively reinforces—and military experience shows—that unit cohesion is critical for success in warfare,²⁵ and 82 percent of the military is male (as were 89 percent of those who deployed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan).²⁶ Close-in combat occurs in an atavistic environment, is physically demanding, and requires a level of physical intimacy that makes managing the interactions of 18- to 29-year-old men and women incredibly difficult.

We cannot wish away those difficulties. But we can make them easier to manage by reaffirming common standards for assignment to close-in combat units, focusing on equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome. There is an important difference between policies aimed at equality of opportunity—like desegregation, which focused on applying standards fairly to expand opportunity and improved military effectiveness—and those prioritizing equality of outcome. (For example, the NFL doesn’t exclude female players.) Close-in combat poses similar demands, which we must take seriously if we are to restore trust among those who serve. To allow women to serve in the infantry without requiring them to meet the same standards as men weakens the infantry.

The Trump administration is amplifying, rather than attenuating, these frictions with nominees who are focused on reversing current policies on issues like women serving in combat while threatening to fire “woke” generals. They are not wrong that the aggressive pursuit of certain social policies is alienating many in the force and merits reconsideration. But those issues are not dominating the military internally. Army surveys of 50,000 soldiers reveal that their predominant reasons for leaving military service are the effects of deployments on their families, the degree of stability in Army life, the difficulty of two-career families, and plans to have children. Only 6 percent of the soldiers cited concerns about sexual assault as an extremely important reason to leave, while only 7 percent cited diversity policies.²⁷ The political issues identified by outsiders don’t reflect realities experienced by the vast majority serving in the ranks.

Difficult as these impediments are, workable solutions to most can be found. They lie in what brings people into the force and what keeps them there. The experiences of racially integrating the force in the 1940s and establishing a recruited military can shed light on how to affordably recruit the larger force we need.

Creating the Volunteer Force

The US ended conscription in 1973 based on a confluence of factors: political opposition to the Vietnam War, ideological opposition to involuntary service, an oversized demographic pool for conscription, the loss of the military’s confidence in the quality of a conscripted force, and the judgment that a volunteer force could be recruited and retained affordably.²⁸ The Gates Commission, established by President Richard Nixon, made a strong economic case that, although DOD was paying less than half the market rate in salaries, the true costs of conscription were not factored in. The commission reported that considering these costs, a volunteer force was no more expensive than conscription.²⁹

Concerns at the time about transitioning to a volunteer force were more than just financial, however. In defending the end of conscription, Nixon had to dispense with three arguments about who would be in the force and its effect on policymaking:

The first is that a volunteer army would be a black army, so it is a scheme to use Negroes to defend a white America. The second is that a volunteer army would actually be an army of hired mercenaries. The third is, a volunteer army would dangerously increase military influence in our society.³⁰

Within the military, there was grave apprehension about whether recruiting could deliver the necessary numbers and whether it would lower standards. The Army was the service most concerned about the end of conscription, as it was both the largest service and had the greatest proportion of draftees. In debates, Army leaders, both civilian and military, worried that pay increases would prove inadequate to meet end-strength requirements, fail to bring sufficiently skilled recruits, and divert such a large proportion of the military budget to training that the force could not modernize. Their fears were initially justified: Recruits proved less committed, less skilled, poorer, and disproportionately from minority populations.³¹

Milton Friedman’s and Alan Greenspan’s elegant arguments in the Gates Commission dramatically underestimated the cost of recruiting and retaining a force of the quality the military wanted, and Congress did not appropriate even the amounts that the commission recommended.³² It took a decade of experimentation and reform to shape policies and develop marketing campaigns that delivered the desired quality and quantity of recruits. The 1984 GI Bill, Ronald Reagan’s pay raises, serious market research, and creative advertising (such as “Be all you can be” and “The few, the proud, the Marines”) finally brought into the force the men and women the services wanted.

Transitioning from conscription to a volunteer force raises issues that remain salient for expanding the force today:

• A tendency by politicians in the executive and legislative branches to downplay the actual costs of bringing and retaining recruits with the necessary skills;
• The appeal of education and health benefits;
• The cost-effectiveness of retaining quality recruits;
• The value of nonmonetary incentives such as personal fulfillment, adventure, and commitment to a mission; and
• The fact that a volunteer force would be untenable in a large-scale war, so Selective Service registration has been retained.³³

It is surprising the volunteer force has held up as well as it has with the demands of the past two decades. Concerns are legitimately raised about cost, capacity, and whether enough Americans are willing to serve.³⁴ We would add to that list the military’s dissociation from broader American society, the lack of elected officials’ support—including that of the commander in chief—and the civic paucity of treating military service as merely a labor commodity.³⁵

Cost. The volunteer force is unquestionably expensive. Personnel costs are the largest component of defense spending, at half the total budget. The fundamental proposition of a volunteer force is that the government competes in the marketplace for labor. When the labor market is tight, the force becomes more expensive. The natural rate of unemployment in the US economy is 4.4 percent.³⁶ And despite a pandemic-driven spike in 2020 alone, the US unemployment rate has been below 4 percent since 2018.³⁷ So the force is expensive because it’s competing in a tight labor market. To say the force is expensive is not to say it is unaffordable, however: Whether to buy a larger force is a choice.

Capacity. Friedman acknowledged upon the volunteer force’s creation that a major conflict would break the AVF.³⁸ The duration of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq strained the force with repeated deployments because it was too small to meet strategic demands. As a result, the National Guard and reserves became regular parts of the rotation rather than the strategic backup they were designed to be. Thus, not only active-duty but also National Guard and reserve forces are badly strained.

Federal law requires men between age 18 and 25 to register for potential conscription into military service. We tend to think of fair conscription practices as requiring universality.³⁹ But there are 31,795,000 Americans age 17–24, a figure greater than the population of Texas, Florida, or New York and more than 10 times the size of the current military.⁴⁰ It is unlikely that any form of compulsory service would find meaningful uses for so many young Americans, and the economic impact of taking 32 million potential workers from the labor force would unquestionably be negative. But it’s called the Selective Service because it needn’t be universal, and there are cohorts with specialized skills that the military has long directed funds to acquire.

Inability to serve will also dramatically narrow the service base, since 77 percent of Americans age 17–24 do not meet the mental and physical standards for enlistment. A few times since the AVF’s advent, the US military has lowered its standards to expand the force; the results have validated the higher standards. When standards are relaxed to serve social purposes, they risk discrediting those the effort has been designed to assist. Racial integration was so successful in our military partially because it maintained a common standard of performance for everyone, which legitimated the success of black Americans among their military colleagues.

Conscription is best used to familiarize a broad population base with military training, increase subsequent voluntary accession into service, and expand the force leading up to war, as a political signal and to provide time to fully train the conscripts.⁴¹ It can be a reminder that citizenship brings duties, not just rights provided by others. But the Selective Service System could not mobilize a larger force—or any force—quickly, because it hasn’t been tested in more than 50 years.

Can you recall President Barack Obama, President Trump, or President Joe Biden ever saying Uncle Sam needs you in the US military? With nearly no public officials or community leaders extolling public service of any kind—much less military service in particular—the Selective Service is unquestionably unpopular. Challenges to the system have been active in Congress since 2016, even though the constitutionality of involuntary service—even in peacetime—and its applicability to only men have been upheld.

Conscription will be necessary for any major war the US has to fight. But such a war could be better deterred in the first place by demonstrating a functioning Selective Service System. This would force enemies to consider both an expanded force and an American society willing to produce that force.

Willingness to Serve. Cost and capacity are affected by propensity to serve, because if there is low willingness to join the military, more money is needed to entice and retain recruits. And if unemployment remains as low as in recent years (which it hopefully will), recruitment based on financial incentives will remain exorbitant and potentially politically controversial. So the most important question in recruiting and retaining the force that current international circumstances require is how to increase public willingness to serve. And in 2022, just 9 percent of eligible individuals expressed an openness to serving in the American military.⁴² Considering that 77 percent of the young adults are unqualified to serve, the arithmetic does not favor sustaining the AVF. Fortunately, civic activism, particularly by political leaders, can increase propensity to serve.

A related question is whether Americans are willing to tolerate the casualties from a major war. The public has been remarkably unaffected by casualties in recent wars, likely due to volunteer service and the small proportion of the population represented in the force. In fact, the American public increasingly views casualties as intrinsic to the military profession, as they do with firefighting and policing. But whether that attitude would hold at the scale of casualties that a war against China would produce is unknown—although facing that question will be unavoidable if we don’t have a military large enough to deter war.

The Army and Navy have recently instituted preparatory programs for recruits who cannot meet the physical or mental standards but are willing to serve. With this extraordinary measure, the services aim to correct problems prevalent in American society, particularly obesity and lack of physical fitness, reading comprehension, and English proficiency. Those programs currently supply a quarter of Army recruits and a fifth of Navy recruits.⁴³ Their long-term impacts, positive or negative, remain to be seen.

The prevalence of criticism of the AVF from the right and left obscures how good a fighting force it has produced. Maintaining discipline is much less of a problem than under conscription, establishing draft infrastructure and policing evasion require minimal effort, and proficiency is higher because volunteers demonstrate greater motivation and, as Nixon predicted, remain longer in service.

Also overlooked is how high retention rates are, despite the strain of frequent deployments: All the services are meeting or exceeding their goals.⁴⁴ They are, however, critically short of personnel with some demanding skill sets. That is a leading indicator of how to expand the force: Once in service, recruits’ experience is positive enough that they stay. Whether the recruits we want to stay are staying is a question requiring further analysis.

Recommendations

Despite low eligibility and interest among military-age Americans, we are skeptical that the AVF is in crisis or unsustainable, either at its current end strength or with the expansion we advocate. Our confidence comes from how well the force has adapted and held up in the demands of the preceding 25 years and from the positive effect engagement by political and community leaders could make. But important adjustments are needed to increase Americans’ propensity to serve and facilitate accession of those Americans willing or needed to serve.

Restore Military and Civilian Leaders’ Mission Focus. The military’s priority should be to fight and win the nation’s wars. Political leaders should educate the public on how and why the military that guards our freedoms must be different from broader society. There are genuine trade-offs between military proficiency and many other good things our society values. Political leaders should approach with greater humility the use of the military to advance broader social change. Propensity to serve increases significantly when leaders engage with the public on these issues. The Trump administration is inclined toward public engagement but risks further alienating the military from broader society and reducing Americans’ propensity to serve by prosecuting the case to dangerous excess, such as by pardoning convicted war criminals or convening extrajudicial panels of veterans to judge the “wokeness” of serving officers.

Increase Defense Spending. America must provide the pay and benefits that recruit and retain the military force. There is no escaping the fact that a volunteer force is expensive. Significant savings can be wrung from the existing budget—Elaine McCusker’s work shows that one out of every seven defense dollars goes to things unrelated to fighting the nation’s wars.⁴⁵ Thus, Congress is complicit in inflating the defense topline without increasing military capability by hiding funds for worthy programs like breast cancer research in the defense budget—one of the few bills that reliably passes. But more money is needed to avoid continuing to trade readiness and force structure for personnel costs.

The US should also take up President Trump’s call for NATO allies to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense. That would add roughly $323 billion to the defense topline and be a solid start on repairing the damage of recent years. Sustained increases are necessary to produce the peace through strength that the president and congressional leadership are advocating.

Reform the Selective Service. The US should reform the Selective Service System to enroll all Americans, exercise the system to increase public awareness, and create functional call-ups for short-supply specialists. We now have the formalities of the Selective Service but not its practical benefits; citizens’ only interaction with the system is the irritation of registering or being excluded from employment opportunities if they do not. This reinforces the service-dampening notion that citizens have rights but no responsibilities. A public campaign is needed to educate Americans about why the system exists, what is required of every citizen age 18–25, and what specialized skill sets are needed.

Moreover, the system must be exercised to be functional; call-ups will never work on short notice, but they will be essential for looming wars against major states. Political and military leaders, such as members of Congress, should welcome enrollees at exercise points, and recruiters should follow up with enrollees after exercises. We must not overlook civic education to convey the expectation of service to the republic. This is clear to every immigrant who swears in their naturalization ceremony to serve in the armed forces if needed.

Minimize Disqualifiers. Finally, the military should review disqualifiers that prevent recruits from joining but wouldn’t affect their service. More accurate medical records have become a significant disqualifier of recruits seeking to join the military. While cultural and legal prohibitions have relaxed, rules against admitting those with tattoos or a history of marijuana use remain a serious barrier to service. Review by Congress and the services to scrape away the accretion of disqualifiers is overdue. Removing unnecessary impediments to service does not lower standards.

Conclusion

While the current volunteer force is not experiencing a crisis, unless we find a way to provide the surge of capable manpower that international circumstances demand, America’s leaders will find themselves either facing a world that’s escalating quickly toward nuclear warfare or conceding.

President Trump would be an unlikely advocate for most of our recommendations, having received medical waivers to avoid the draft himself and proclaimed mandatory service a “ridiculous idea.”⁴⁶ And that’s before considering the challenge of so divisive a president providing the leadership required to persuade the American public. But Trump wants a US that is powerful and respected by the world. In the first two years of his first term, he was persuaded to provide the funding and policy tools to strengthen the force. Meanwhile, congressional leaders have adopted President Reagan’s mantra of peace through strength. Asserting their constitutional prerogatives to legislate defense policy will be determinative.

Restoring civil participation and shared responsibility isn’t just the president’s work; it is also the work of Congress and civilian and military leaders.⁴⁷ Ultimately, if we don’t make progress, technical fixes that more accurately target a shrinking cohort will prove to be a failing strategy for defending our country.

Authors