Ash Carter | Inside the Pentagon: Life at the Center of American Military Power

In Episode 90 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with former United States Defense Secretary Ash Carter. Secretary Ash Carter served as head of the US Defense Department during President Barack Obama’s second term in office. Before his time as Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter served in the number two and number three positions at the Pentagon.

As you can all imagine, it was a privilege for Demetri to have a cabinet secretary on the podcast, particularly someone with Secretary Carter’s breadth of experience and scope of responsibilities. His newly published memoir, “Inside the Five-Sided Box: Lessons from a Lifetime of Leadership in the Pentagon” offers an insider’s look at what it was like to head the largest department in the government with its millions of staff members and near trillion-dollar budget.

Demetri begins this conversation by asking Secretary Ash Carter about his experience serving under Barack Obama, the unique challenges of dealing with Congress, and the exigencies of protecting the citizenry from threats, both at home and abroad. Secretary Carter also addresses some of the constitutional conflicts that arise from NSA surveillance and targeted assassinations of enemy combatants or terrorist suspects operating outside of traditional warzones and military theaters.

In this episode, Demetri attempts to identify and do away with many of the assumptions that are embedded in much of the language and in many of the conversations around US foreign policy. This is meant as an honest and informed exploration about the nature of American power and what it means in practice. How we might begin to think about international relations in a gig-economy where people are increasingly working contractually on projects with team members located in just about every corner of the globe?

Also, Dr. Carter has thought extensively about the future of warfare in the 21stcentury, including the role of autonomous weapons, artificial intelligence, and cyberwarfare, topics that he and Demetri discuss in this episode as well.

The overtime to this week’s episode includes an hour-long excerpt from Demetri’s yet-to-be-released recording with renowned political scientist and historian of American foreign policy Stephen Walt. You can gain access to that recording, as well as obtain a copy of the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces patreon page at Patreon.com/HiddenForces.

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

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