The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - The Recruiting Crisis: US Military Adapts to Zoomers || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: September 4, 2023

The US military has had recruitment issues for a while, and the next generation reaching the recruitment age (aka those who hate any and all things social) won't be making it any easier. But this isn't just a US military issue; this is the leading edge of a recruiting crisis for everyone.Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/the-recruiting-crisis

Hey, everybody, Peter Zeyn here coming to you from Colorado's Lost Man Wilderness. I'm halfway through the Gessler Peak Traverse, and we're going to take one of the Ask Peter questions now. Specifically, am I worried about the U.S. military? There seems to be a bit of a recruiting crisis. The U.S. military had a hard time meeting its numbers throughout the war and terror, and that was 20 years long. And since then, the capacity of recruitment has actually dropped. What we're seeing right now is not the leading edge of a recruiting crisis, but military. It's the leading edge of a recruiting crisis for everyone. Every demographic profile is a little bit different.

In the case of the United States, we now have a very small generation, the smallest ever that is coming of age. The zoomers turn 18 based on how you do the math. But for my math, they turn 18 in 2018. Makes a math simpler, which means that the oldest millennials turn 23 this year and the youngest ones turn 4. Now, what that means is we know exactly what the inflow into the labor market is for the next 20 years because the kids have already been born. And we now know a lot about them culturally, and it's not the sort of thing that the military likes to hear. They are the most ethically diverse group we have ever had. They're the most open-minded on social norms.

However, on top of that, they're the most technically minded and arguably the best educated we've ever had. They're very inclusive. They're very loyal workers. They feel that work is an opportunity, and they will follow you into hell virtually. They hate people. They're antisocial. Their dream job is to work in a closet that locks from the inside.

You need something programmed or designed. They are who you want to turn to. You want to take a hill? No. They never want to go outside. They never want to see another person go to face-to-face. So what I'm doing here, doing class two and class three traverses with a few easy class four moves all day by myself and then I'm going to get on a trail and I'm going to yuck it up with people that I meet. And I know I'm going to end the night in some bar in Aspen just making new friends.

That is their idea of hell on earth. The zoomers are very different from the millennials who come before who are much more social. And we have a world full of zoomers now. We're going to be filling out the labor market for the next 15 years. In many ways, what we're seeing with the military to this point is simply a signal of things to come. Because remember, in most careers in the United States, especially ones that require a degree of education, adulthood, if you will, the first real job starts somewhere between age 21 and 26. The U.S. military recruits right out of high school at ages 17 to 19. So what the U.S. military has been dealing with and modifying themselves around for the last few years

is what everyone is going to have to do for the foreseeable future. Now, in the case of the U.S. military, they're finding ways to get around it, but probably the single biggest thing that has gone right for the military is an end of the global war on terror. Basically, the United States for 20 years tried to partially occupy huge portions of the world. And the only way that you can occupy territories with foot soldiers, That means boots on the ground. That means a lot of soldiers. That means the army. And that's hard to do when Zumers are your recruiting pool. So now that the war on terror has ended and they've been able to arrest and recruit, the military's been able to use the expertise and the preferences of the zoomers to really upgrade a lot of the military tech that will define the next generation of military operations. This is great for special forces. This is great for drone warfare. This is great for satellite reconnaissance and cryptography. These are all things that the United States was already the war. world leader run, and the zoomers are going to plug into that very, very nicely. But if the United States gets involved in another mass military operation, we have to only get a million troops,

that's a very different picture. Now, politically, I don't think that's on the docket. After the war and terror, Americans are absolutely not interested in the large ground warfare operation anywhere in the world, triply so in the Middle East. But the world does have a tendency to not ask you before they get you involved in a military conflict. So at the moment, I'm not worried because the things that Zoomers are good at are the things that the U.S. military wants to be better at. It's a good match. The only issue is if something goes wrong.

All right. Take care. Bye.