Ash Carter guests hosts an hour of CNBC's Squawk Box. December 13, 2018.

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 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."

"When I took the oath of office, in February 2015, with two years left in the Obama administration, I made a specific commitment to ensure that the U.S. military continues to be a place where America’s finest want to serve. It was clear to me then that the Defense Department would need to keep pace with the dramatic changes — many of them technological — reshaping the economy, the labor market, and human resource management."

For the seventh year in a row, Congress has failed to pass a defense appropriations bill in time to start the fiscal year. And for the past four years, the Defense Department and other federal agencies have been struggling with the impact of sequestration, which imposed cuts that were never meant to be implemented, but were supposed to prod both parties to come together and reach a budget agreement. The Defense Department has done its best to manage through this prolonged period of budget uncertainty, making painful choices and trade-offs among the size, capabilities and readiness of the joint force.

The nation cannot allow this to become the new normal.