Ash Carter

About

Ash Carter was a distinguished visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies until February, 2015, when he became the 25th US Secretary of Defense.  Carter was deputy secretary of defense from October 2011 to December 2013, serving as the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) chief operating officer, overseeing more than $600 billion per year and 2.4 million civilian and military personnel and managing global 24/7 operations.  From April 2009 to October 2011, he was undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, with responsibility for procuring all technology, systems, services, supplies, bases and infrastructure, energy, and environment and more than $50 billion annually in research and development. Previously Carter was a senior partner of Global Technology Partners focused on advising major investment firms in technology and an adviser to Goldman Sachs. At Harvard’s Kennedy School he was a professor and chair of the international relations, science, and security faculty.  From 1993 to 1996, he served as assistant secretary of defense for international security policy.  He served on the boards of the MITRE Corporation, Mitretek Systems, and MIT’s Lincoln Laboratories and as a member of the Draper Laboratory Corporation. He has been a member of the Defense Policy Board, the Defense Science Board, and Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board.  For his service to national security, he has on five separate occasions been awarded the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Medal, DOD’s highest.  He received the Defense Intelligence Medal for his contributions to intelligence and the Joint Distinguished Service Medal from the chairman and Joint Chiefs of Staff.  He is author or coauthor of eleven books and more than a hundred articles on physics, technology, national security, and management.  He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and medieval history from Yale University in 1976, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, and a doctorate in theoretical physics from Oxford University in 1979, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.