David Pakman

There is something far more mundane in the explanation.

The army says this change to 42 is basically just formalizing a policy that's been around internally going all the way back three years.

And it is because of recruitment challenges.

It is because of an aging population.

It is because of the need for technical skills.

But in principle, this is not a new thing.

They formalized something that was around much longer than the Iran war.

There is a reason, though, that people are connecting these stories.

And if you're worried about where this goes next, we should be looking at three different things.

We do have more troops in the region than we've had in a very long time.

We do have an active war there.

We do get the sense, especially from an interview with J.D.

Vance, I'll play for you later, that there is potentially going to be a lot more than three or four weeks of operations there.

And it is true that the higher the enlistment age, the bigger the pool of people you could recruit from or if there were to be a draft that you could potentially draft.

So it is straightforward speculation.

If voluntary recruitment isn't enough for this renewed large presence in the Middle East and whatever Trump has up his sleeve in Iran or maybe Cuba or wherever else and the conflict grows, you would want to be able to draft from the largest possible eligible portion of the population.

Now, that doesn't mean a draft is planned.

There's been no draft announced.

There is no current policy to draft civilians.

But the concern is Trump lies all the time and has no idea what he's really planning to do.