The arc of innovative progress has reached an inflection point, writes Ash Carter in The Atlantic. "Recent technological change that has brought immeasurable improvements to billions around the globe now threatens to overwhelm us. Making this disruption positive for all is the chief challenge of our time. We ourselves—not only market forces—should bend the arc of change toward human good. To do so, we must reinvigorate an ethos of public purpose that has become dangerously decoupled from many of today’s leading tech endeavors."

Ash Carter is a physicist and a defense-policy expert, having served in government periodically for decades. He was secretary of defense from 2015 to 2017. He has spent his academic career at Harvard, where he is today. In this “Q&A,” Jay Nordlinger asks him about some of the biggest issues: nuclear proliferation, North Korea, Iran, the size of the U.S. military. He also asks about the relation between our servicemen and the general American population. Is there too great a gulf between them? Do people sentimentalize our military? Is it okay to say “Thank you for your service”?

This report of the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB) offers nineteen recommendations for discouraging a cascade of nuclear weapons states.

Failure to develop a comprehensive contingency plan, such as the one proposed here, and inform the American public, where appropriate, about its particulars will only serve to amplify the devastating impact of any nuclear attack on a U.S. city

Former Clinton administration officials Ashton Carter and William Perry argue that the most effective way to curb the threat from Pyongyang is to destroy its missiles at their test sites

Should the United States allow a country openly hostile to it and armed with nuclear weapons to perfect an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering nuclear weapons to U.S. soil? We believe not. If North Korea persists in its launch preparations, the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched.

Dr. Ashton B. Carter testifies before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

Dr. Ashton B. Carter testifies before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

A paper by the National Security Advisory Group