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Ash Carter

Former Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense · 2 appearances on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

politicianacademicscientistauthorbelfercenter.org/person/ash-carter ↗Wikipedia ↗

Ash Carter served as the 25th U.S. Secretary of Defense from 2015 to 2017 under President Barack Obama, opening all combat positions to women and establishing DIUx. A theoretical physicist and Rhodes Scholar, he authored 11 books and later served as Director of the Belfer Center at Harvard Kennedy School.

18statements → 13claims → 4claims resolved → 75%fully supported → 3.89/5average certainty → 2.72/5average debate potential → 5said about them ↓

3 supported 0 partly supported 1 contradicted 9 not checkable as stated how the 13 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

5 predictions · 8 assertions · 1 opinion · 3 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 13 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, and 9 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Ash argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Edward Snowden exfiltrated NSA data undetected for months
“NSA, which is part of the Department of Defense, that's what Edward Snowden did. And he wasn't caught in the act over a period of months doing something that had no reasonable association with his job, ah, at all.”
Ash Carter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 14:26 a16z Podcast | Government, Startups, & Innovation -- with U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up
DoD will soon stop launching traditional GPS satellites
“Pretty soon we'll, I won't be launching any more of those satellites.”
Ash Carter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 2:18 a16z Podcast | Government, Startups, & Innovation -- with U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
100% certainty 3
50% certainty 4
100% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

223 words/min while actually speaking · 20.8 um and uh per 1k words · 13.9 false starts per 1k · 37.4% of pauses land inside a clause

No argument clarity score for Ash Carter: only 2 usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 4,378 words across 2 episodes of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Ash Carter said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Disclosure
DoD preparing counterattack framework against major cyberattacks on US firms
“We are also working on which combination of defense, intervention, and even counterattack In order to tell people that if they attack Americans in cyberspace, at a certain level, we're gonna regard that as an attack.”
Ash Carter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 11:13 a16z Podcast | Government, Startups, & Innovation -- with U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Carter: Chinese state-sponsored cyber aggressors are smart and largely unopposed in US
“Jim Comey is basically telling the truth. The Chinese government-sponsored and at kind of one arm's length proxy I.T. Aggressor, ah, services are large, they're smart and they're largely unopposed in this country”
Ash Carter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 12:41 a16z Podcast | Security’s Wakeup Call
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Carter: Homeland Security sought bureaucratic control of cyber defense without capability
“I could never get Homeland Security, quite honestly, because I thought they had the attitude that they wanted this bureaucratically. I mean, all bureaucracies want things, and they wanted this, but they didn't have the capability.”
Ash Carter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 19:41 a16z Podcast | Security’s Wakeup Call
Opinion
Carter: Chinese strategic hubris poses a greater existential threat than Putin
“When it shades into hubris and risk taking, it's a problem. And I just say that because that could ruin everything. Putin can't ruin everything. And, you know, ISIS can't ruin everything. That could ruin everything.”
Ash Carter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 26:38 a16z Podcast | Security’s Wakeup Call
Prediction Didn’t hold up
DoD will soon stop launching traditional GPS satellites
“Pretty soon we'll, I won't be launching any more of those satellites.”
Ash Carter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 2:18 a16z Podcast | Government, Startups, & Innovation -- with U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Defense procurement favors bureaucratic skill over superior technology
“Companies that know how to deal with the bureaucracy have an advantage over ones that have the best technology.”
Ash Carter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 5:18 a16z Podcast | Government, Startups, & Innovation -- with U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Global industry has underinvested in cyber defense for a decade
“First, industry is not, and I'm not sure I understand why, but for 10 years or so, as the cyber threat has been growing, industry around the world has not been investing adequately in its protection. They're beginning to do that now. And so people at the CEO l…”
Ash Carter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 9:36 a16z Podcast | Government, Startups, & Innovation -- with U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter
Assertion Supported
Edward Snowden exfiltrated NSA data undetected for months
“NSA, which is part of the Department of Defense, that's what Edward Snowden did. And he wasn't caught in the act over a period of months doing something that had no reasonable association with his job, ah, at all.”
Ash Carter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 14:26 a16z Podcast | Government, Startups, & Innovation -- with U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ash Carter: U.S. government collects little threat intelligence relevant to commercial cyberattacks
“A lot of the threat information that the government collects in the counterintelligence area, counterterrorism, protect our own networks area, some of it's germane, but a lot of it is not really germane to these commercial attacks. Said differently, the govern…”
Ash Carter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 17:47 a16z Podcast | Security’s Wakeup Call
Assertion Not checkable as stated
DoD acts primarily as a buyer of commercial tech
“In most cases in technology today, we, the Defense Department, we play the role in the ecosystem of a devourer of outside technology.”
Ash Carter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 4:00 a16z Podcast | Government, Startups, & Innovation -- with U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter
Prediction Held up
DoD-developed cybersecurity tech will spin off into the commercial market
“One is, we are going to be one of the innovators of new techniques, and we'll do them even if they're expensive, because we have to protect our networks. And so, just as in other Technologies where we have been willing to pay more for innovation and to do the …”
Ash Carter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 10:28 a16z Podcast | Government, Startups, & Innovation -- with U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Carter: Turnkey security architecture for non-tech firms will be huge market
“And so somebody's gonna make an, a hell of a lot of money Who figures out how to brand That architecture, and can credibly say, I'll put together an architecture for you, non-tech company, as good as the one Alex is going to put together for a tech company and…”
Ash Carter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 9:50 a16z Podcast | Security’s Wakeup Call
Prediction Held up
DoD will maintain funding for risky basic research despite budget pressures
“I'm determined in this, we're doing this, that even in the time of budget pressure, sequester, and all that, that we keep our basic research funding going at a very brisk rate, that, that is things that are a real reach, that the commercial world won't invest …”
Ash Carter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 7:36 a16z Podcast | Government, Startups, & Innovation -- with U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter
Insight
Connecting innovators to end users requires physical proximity
“What you have to do is make sure that the innovators Are linked to the, ah, users and developers, and the only way to do that is what I call sort of animal proximity. They have to be, they have to have, know each other, be together enough.”
Ash Carter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 8:24 a16z Podcast | Government, Startups, & Innovation -- with U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter
Insight
Passive firewall defense is obsolete for modern cybersecurity
“You can't be passive anymore in, in network defense. You can't just put firewalls around. It doesn't work. You have to patrol the walls and look for people who are drilling holes and people who are climbing over your wall.”
Ash Carter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 13:39 a16z Podcast | Government, Startups, & Innovation -- with U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Security specialists fear insider threats above all else
“The insider threat really is the one that security specialists fear the most.”
Ash Carter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 14:07 a16z Podcast | Government, Startups, & Innovation -- with U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter
Insight
Carter: Executives overlook foreign IP theft as a core cyber threat
“They don't quite know Why it could be detrimental to their business to be insecure. They understand the reputational part of it, but not necessarily the instrumental part. And these are real, real, one of the threats to them is real world competitors elsewhere…”
Ash Carter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 2:40 a16z Podcast | Security’s Wakeup Call
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Carter: Skeptical major breaches will trigger systemic cybersecurity changes
“The short answer to your question is, I've been waiting for Godot here for many years, I certainly hope that this is the beginning of a wake-up call, but I, I'm skeptical.”
Ash Carter Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 3:02 a16z Podcast | Security’s Wakeup Call

The other half of the tape: Ash Carter's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 5 times in 4 episodes on the a16z Podcast. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Doug Beck 2Michelle Flournoy 1Kathleen Hicks 1Katherine Boyle 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
002132201920202021202220232024episodesmentions
012201920202021202220232024episodes it came up in
000.811.52201920202021202220232024episodesmentions per episode
2024 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (2)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
a16z Podcast | Government, Startups, & Innovation -- with U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Ca Jan 2, 2019 11m
a16z Podcast | Security’s Wakeup Call Jan 2, 2019 12m
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