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”?

President Barack Obama announced Monday that he has nominated Dr. Ashton B. Carter to serve as Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics.

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

Ashton B. Carter contributes a chapter to McGraw-Hill's new volume on Weapons of Mass Destruction and Terrorism.

Carter discusses the Bush Administration's failure to propose an adequate strategy for combating WMD in the 2006 QDR.

Remarks by Ashton B. Carter at the Conference on "Non-Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction: Current Challenges and New Approaches," at Tufts University, Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy.

Dr. Ashton B. Carter testifies before the 9/11 Public Discourse Project's hearings on "The 9/11 Commission Report: The Unfinished Agenda."

9/11 Public Discourse Project holds panel discussion on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

The fallacy in the Bush administration's appointment of a commission to study intelligence failures is that there is almost never such a thing as a pure intelligence failure. Intelligence failure is usually linked to policy failure.

Dr. Ashton B. Carter contributes a chapter to the Aspen Strategy Group's book examining the global proliferation threat and the policy tools at hand to prevent catastrophe.