Ash Carter
Former Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense. On 1 show, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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.
1shows
2appearances
18statements
4resolved
3supported
1contradicted
75%fully supported
5said about them ↓ Everything Ash Carter said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
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.”
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”
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.”
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.”
DoD will soon stop launching traditional GPS satellites
“Pretty soon we'll, I won't be launching any more of those satellites.”
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.”
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…”
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: 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…”
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.”
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 …”
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…”
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 …”
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.”
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.”
Security specialists fear insider threats above all else
“The insider threat really is the one that security specialists fear the most.”
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…”
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 across the shows. 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
the a16z Podcast 5
2024 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Ash's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a16zLEDGER | Former Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense | 2 | 18 | 75% 3/4 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |