During a conversation with author Jared Diamond on The Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan raised a theory about how societies build national identity, drawing a direct line between mandatory military service and the kind of collective pride found in countries around the world.
Rogan brought up how the Mormon church builds deep devotion through its missionary program, then pivoted to a pattern he sees in nation-states.
He said, “You know, there’s an interesting thing with the Mormons when you were talking about how they’ve figured out a way to get people very invested in being a Mormon. And one of the ways is by being a missionary, that you have to be a missionary.”
He continued, “One of the things societies have figured out is to get people to be deeply nationalistic. You almost have to have them serve, like conscription for all young people to do a certain amount of time in the military. That’s a very common thing.”
He pointed to Israel as an example, noting that people from Israel “are very proud of being from Israel,” and cited South Korea’s mandatory service as another case where conscription and national pride seem to move together.
Diamond, who has spent decades studying why civilizations rise and fall, treated the idea as a real hypothesis worth testing against history rather than accepting it outright.
“Is it the case that national identity universally depended upon a draft?” he asked, before offering a counterexample: Finland.
Finland has a strong national identity, Diamond explained, despite not becoming independent until 1918 and having no draft at the time. Instead, he said, “the anchor for Finland’s national identity is the Finnish language, which is a very distinctive language. The Finns are proud of their language.”
In a previous conversation with former Navy SEAL and MrBallen creator John Allen on episode #2543 of The Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan took aim at Alex Karp, the Palantir executive who has floated bringing back the military draft.
Rogan couldn’t get past the basic absurdity of a tech executive advocating for other people to be conscripted into a fight he has no intention of joining himself.
“Human beings love to be in power and especially if you can be in power and get other people to figh t for you and mandate them and force them to fig ht for you.”
That’s where Karp entered the conversation. Rogan couldn’t square a tech executive calling for mandatory service with the fact that Karp himself would never be the one answering that call.
“You know, that’s one of the weirdest things about some of these tech companies. Like Palantir was talking about reinstating the draft and I’m like, ‘Hey, who are you?’ Like what is this? Like you think you want to draft people because you think war… what? Aren’t you a tech company?”
He kept pulling at the thread, framing it as a question of why the people pushing hardest for conscription are never the ones who’d end up on the front lines.
“So like do you want to go fig ht? Why don’t you go fig ht? Why don’t you take your glasses off and go over there? Like what are you talking about?,” he said in another podcast episode.
Rogan’s earlier criticism of Karp makes his latest conversation with Diamond even more interesting. On one hand, Rogan sees conscription as a powerful mechanism that can bind people together and create a stronger national identity. On the other, he has previously condemned the idea when it comes from a powerful executive who, in his view, would be asking other people to fig ht rather than doing it himself.
But there is another piece of the puzzle that Rogan did not bring up in either discussion: the U.S. government is already moving toward automatic military draft registration.
According to sources, automatic Selective Service registration is set to take effect nationwide in December, following a measure folded into the annual defense policy bill that President Trump signed into law late last year.
Once it kicks in, male citizens and, under the National Defense Authorization Act, “every other male person” between the relevant ages, including certain noncitizens such as green-card holders, refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented men, will be entered into the draft pool without having to take any action themselves.
Roughly 46 states and territories already handle registration this way, often through motor vehicle departments, and the Selective Service System has been pushing to make it standard nationwide.
The rule has bipartisan fingerprints on it. Democratic Rep. Chrissy Houlahan sponsored the automatic-registration language and has defended it as a practical fix rather than a political statement, arguing that young men should not be penalized simply because they didn’t know they were supposed to register. The measure passed with support from both parties in Congress, and officials have stressed that automatic registration does not itself activate a military draft.
That distinction is important. The United States has not actually brought back the draft. Automatic registration simply means eligible people will be placed into the Selective Service system without having to register themselves, making the process of identifying potential draftees more automatic if Congress and the president ever authorize a future draft.
Still, the timing is notable. A policy change signed under the Trump administration is about to make draft registration automatic for a new generation of young men, yet Rogan’s previous discussion of conscription focused on a private-sector executive advocating for the idea rather than the government actually changing the registration system.
Rogan is perfectly willing to acknowledge that compulsory military service can be an extremely powerful tool for creating national solidarity. He is also willing to attack wealthy and powerful people who advocate for conscription while expecting someone else to do the fighting.
What he has not done is apply that same scrutiny to the administration under which the mechanics of draft registration are changing.
