Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-203.14.52.144-20150518014116/@comment-27087951-20151028165002

Mercen-X wrote: But why don't soldiers have their Aura unlocked to access Semblance if it's as simple as one tapping into another (a la Pyrrha for Jaune)? You know what, that's an excellent question. We can only guess.

Out-of-universe, plot reasons. If every/most soldiers could get Aura unlocked Hunters wouldn't be needed, or at the least they wouldn't be truly outstanding since the average joe in the army could reach the same levels of badassery. We would have gotten a very different series.

In-Universe......either the concept of "Aura" isn't just known to everyone (Jaune didn't know it, for example, despite coming from a family of warriors), or they do have Aura unlocked, but it's weak, possibly weaker than Jaune's since they don't get Hunter levels of training, much less help from an Ace Hunter. Added to that, regarding Atlas, since most of their army is robots, maybe soldier training isn't as much of a priority as just making sure the AKs work and do their job.