The White House Won't Rule Out Drafting Your Son. Also: Israel Prepares to Mobilize 450,000, Iran Hacks a Medical Giant, 3,800 Meatpackers Walk Off, and Drones Hit Dubai's Airport
Weekly news for March 10-16th, 2026
Every male in America between 18 and 25 is registered in a federal database. This week, the White House confirmed that database might actually get used.
Your Body, Their War
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked whether a military draft is on the table. Her answer: “It’s not part of the current plan right now, but the president again wisely keeps his options on the table.”
Conscription is forced labor under threat of imprisonment. Call it what it is. The federal government maintains a list of every man aged 18 to 25 through the Selective Service System. Registration is compulsory. If Congress authorizes a draft, the system already knows who you are, where you live, and how old you are. The machinery never went away after Vietnam. It’s been sitting in a drawer for 53 years, waiting.
If activated, 20-year-olds get called first, followed by 21, then 22 through 25, then 18 and 19. Birthday lottery, just like Vietnam. Happy birthday to you.
Polymarket bettors give an actual draft 8.5% odds this year. That’s low, but a month ago the market didn’t exist.
What you can do: If you have sons, brothers, or friends aged 18 to 25, make sure they understand what Selective Service registration means. The Selective Service website has information on conscientious objector status and deferment categories.
Maybe look into dual citizenship possibilities - a strategic “vacation” to another country during a draft could save you or your loved ones from becoming cannon fodder in another senseless war.
During Vietnam, tens of thousands of draft-age men left the country. They were technically federal criminals until Carter’s amnesty in 1977. Dual citizenship or legal residency abroad doesn’t exempt you on paper, but enforcement across borders is a different story. Worth thinking about before the lottery starts, not after.
Sources: Military.com, FOX LA
450,000 Reasons to Pay Attention
The Israeli government is preparing to mobilize 450,000 military reservists for a potential ground invasion of Lebanon south of the Litani River. The current authorized ceiling is 260,000 troops. This request would increase that by more than 70%.
Israeli public broadcaster KAN reported the mobilization is “part of military preparations for war and the possibility of a ground incursion in Lebanon.” Axios reported Friday that the IDF is already sending reinforcements to the border. Southern Lebanon has been part of the “Greater Israel” (Eretz Yisrael HaShlemah) territorial vision since the Revisionist Zionist movement, and Likud’s founding ideology has never formally abandoned the claim.
Israel’s total population is 9.6 million. Mobilizing 450,000 reservists means pulling roughly one in every 21 citizens into uniform.
Polymarket bettors give a major Israeli ground offensive in Lebanon 76.5% odds by March 31, with $4.6 million in volume. Fifteen days on the clock.
Oil is responding exactly how you’d expect. WTI crude hit $98.71 Friday (it was in the low $60s in January). Brent crossed $103. Gas is up to $3.58 per gallon nationally. Goldman Sachs raised its 12-month recession probability to 25%. This war is already in your wallet.
What you can do: If you haven’t already, start tracking your energy costs and building a buffer. Fill up the tank before prices climb further. If you’re in a position to, look into solar, wood heat, or other ways to decouple from oil-dependent energy.
Sources: Middle East Monitor, Axios, Forbes
Iran’s War Came Home Through Microsoft
An Iran-linked hacker group called Handala hijacked the device management system of Stryker, a Fortune 500 medical technology company with $25.1 billion in annual revenue.
The attack exploited Stryker’s Microsoft Intune account, which manages corporate devices. Instead of deploying ransomware (how quaint), the hackers used the system’s own remote wipe feature to factory-reset employee devices globally. Phones stopped working. Laptops bricked. Internal communications went dark.
Stryker, headquartered in Kalamazoo, Michigan, makes surgical equipment, implants, and hospital infrastructure. A “global network disruption” at a company that supplies operating rooms could delay surgeries.
Cybersecurity firm Sophos linked Handala to Iran’s Intelligence Ministry. This is the first significant Iranian cyberattack on a US company since the war started. Previous Iran-sympathetic attacks were minor (defacing websites). This was different: a wiper attack on a $25 billion medical company, using its own management tools against it.
What you can do: If you work for any large organization, ask your IT department how device management systems like Intune are secured. Multi-factor authentication on admin consoles is the bare minimum. For personal devices, make sure you have offline backups of anything important. A wiper attack can’t touch a hard drive sitting in your desk drawer.
Sources: NBC News, TechCrunch
The Beef Line
3,800 meatpackers at the JBS plant in Greeley, Colorado walked off the job this morning. It’s the first major meatpacking strike in the US since the 1980s.
The workers, represented by UFCW Local 7, have been negotiating for eight months on an expired contract. JBS offered raises of 60 cents an hour the first year and 30 cents annually after that. The union says that after a 22-cent-per-hour increase in healthcare costs, the real raise in years two and three drops to 8 cents. In a state where the minimum wage is $15.16 (more than double the federal minimum), that’s an insult wrapped in a spreadsheet.
JBS is the world’s largest meat company, with $21 billion in quarterly revenue. It’s also one of four corporations (along with Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef) that control 80 to 85% of US beef processing. When one plant in a four-company oligopoly shuts down, you feel it at the grocery store. Beef prices are already up 15% year-over-year, hitting record after record.
The company’s response: it plans to “temporarily shift production to other JBS plants where we currently have excess processing capacity.” Translation: we’ll keep the machine running without you. JBS also claimed the union “abruptly walked away” from the negotiating table. The union’s version: the company’s offer is a copy-paste of a national deal negotiated with workers in lower-cost-of-living states like Texas and Utah, where $7.25 minimum wage makes the same raise stretch further.
What you can do: This is a good time to look into local beef sources: ranchers, co-ops, or buying clubs. Industrial meatpacking concentrates your food supply through a handful of companies that can be disrupted by strikes, cyberattacks, or policy changes. Knowing a local rancher isn’t just about quality. It’s supply chain insurance.
Sources: Colorado Sun, Reuters
When the Drones Hit the Duty-Free
Iranian drones struck near Dubai International Airport this week, igniting a fuel tank fire and suspending flights at the world’s busiest international airport. Separate strikes hit Abu Dhabi, killing one person (a Palestinian national), and Fujairah.
Dubai International handled 95.2 million passengers in 2025. It’s the linchpin of global air travel connecting Europe, Asia, and Africa. When drones close it, flight schedules ripple worldwide.
The UAE hosts Al Dhafra Air Base, a major US military installation. UAE defenses intercepted most incoming missiles, but debris reached residential areas. Four people were injured near Dubai: two Ghanaians, a Bangladeshi, and an Indian. The casualties tell you who absorbs the damage in these conflicts: overwhelmingly, foreign workers from countries with no say in any of it.
What you can do: If you have travel plans through the Middle East or connections through Gulf hubs, build in backup routing now. More broadly, this is another reason to reduce dependency on fragile global systems. The more your life runs through single points of failure (one airline hub, one supply chain, one energy source), the more vulnerable you are when someone puts a drone through it.
Sources: Washington Post, Al Jazeera, Reuters
Next Steps
- Check your Selective Service status (or your son’s): sss.gov/verify
- Research conscientious objector status: the time to prepare documentation is before it’s needed
- Fill up the tank: gas prices are climbing and oil shows no sign of retreating from $100
- Find local beef: eatwild.com and localharvest.org are good starting points
- Back up your devices offline: external hard drives still work when your cloud account gets wiped