Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian speak on the topic “Is Democracy Still Alive?” during a public conversation sponsored by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship.

The arc of innovation has reached an inflection point: technological change now threatens to overwhelm us. Discovery is unstoppable, but it must be shaped for good. We ourselves—not just market forces—must manage it.

Belfer Center experts comment on the Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki.

Ash Carter Guest Hosts MSNBC’s Squawk Box

The last time that America almost risked a pre-emptive strike on North Korea the gamble offered a spectacular pay-off. Ashton Carter, a leading architect of that plan, recalls that his scheme for bombing the Yongbyon nuclear facility in 1994 assumed that in one or two days the entirety of the regime’s nuclear programme could be levelled and entombed in rubble. Mr Carter, who went on to become defence secretary in the Obama administration, now thinks that an American first strike would only put “a significant dent” in North Korea’s arsenal of nuclear devices and bombmaking sites. “The difference today is that the North Koreans are very good at hiding, burying and moving around their nuclear infrastructure,” says Mr Carter, now at Harvard University.

Andrew Poulin, President of the Center for International Maritime Security, interviews Belfer Center Director Ash Carter.

Belfer Center Director and former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter was interviewed about North Korea by Robert Siegel on NPR's All Things Considered. Carter said that while U.S. defense systems should stop a North Korean attack, he believes the threat must be met with coercive diplomacy.

Ash Carter discusses public service, opening the military to transgender troops, and North Korea's latest missile launch with actor Jim Parsons on his SiriusXM radio show "Jim Parsons Is Too Stupid For Politics."

Samantha Power, United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 until 2017, has been named to a joint faculty appointment at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Law School. 

Graham Allison’s impact as Director of the Center has been extraordinary—“impossible to overestimate” in the words of Harvard Kennedy School Dean Doug Elmendorf.