Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This week on the podcast What Can I Say, Secretary
Speaker 1: of Defense Ash Carter under Barack Obama was in the
Speaker 1: studio for over an hour and we talked about everything
Speaker 1: from Iran to North Korea, to China to Russia, to
Speaker 1: the procurement process, to what we do right with the
Speaker 1: military and what we get wrong and what we areas
Speaker 1: we really need to improve. This was a tour to
Speaker 1: force conversation from somebody who is not only brilliant. He's
Speaker 1: a Rhodes scholar, a PhD in in physics UM, but
Speaker 1: a historian who focuses on military history in the medieval times,
Speaker 1: and that has colored how he looks at at the world,
Speaker 1: how he looks at the role of government. I could
Speaker 1: talk about him for hours, but instead I'm just gonna say,
Speaker 1: with no further ado, my conversation with former Secretary of
Speaker 1: Defense Ash Carter. This is Masters in Business with Barry
Speaker 1: Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. My extra special guest this week
Speaker 1: is Ash Carter. He is the former Secretary of Defense
Speaker 1: under President Barack Obama. He is the five time winner
Speaker 1: of the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Medal that
Speaker 1: is the highest award to a civilian from the Pentagon.
Speaker 1: He is a Rhodes Scholar with a PhD in theoretical
Speaker 1: physics from Oxford, the author of almost a dozen books,
Speaker 1: most recently Inside the Five Sided Box Lessons from a
Speaker 1: Lifetime of leadership in the Pentagon. Ash Carter, Welcome to Bloomberg,
Speaker 1: to be with you, Mary. So let's um. Let's start
Speaker 1: with your rather unusual academic career. You're a double major
Speaker 1: physics and medieval history. How do you end up with that?
Speaker 1: As a double major? Turned out to be useful. More
Speaker 1: on that in a moment, But at the time it
Speaker 1: was just a right brain left brain thing. I I
Speaker 1: I was fascinated by history, and particularly by medieval history,
Speaker 1: because if you think about it, the Middle Ages was
Speaker 1: a thousand years long. So if you call yourself an evilist,
Speaker 1: you've just gotten yourself a whole millennium of territory. And
Speaker 1: I like the languages Latin, Greek, French, German UH to speak.
Speaker 1: And it was the time when the church UH developed,
Speaker 1: when the university developed, when the English common law developed,
Speaker 1: when the nation state developed, So a lot of things
Speaker 1: we lived with today and I found later in life
Speaker 1: as I started working in the Pentagon in one and
Speaker 1: all the way until I left and in nineteen that
Speaker 1: that was useful training physics, history, useful training for the
Speaker 1: didn't of course. The joke is that I had the
Speaker 1: perfect of My job was the perfect combination of medieval
Speaker 1: thinking and physics thinking. Physics was totally other side of
Speaker 1: the brain thing. It's clean, logical, uh, And I liked that.
Speaker 1: And then I had to make a choice for further
Speaker 1: training in the beginning of my career, and that was
Speaker 1: that was for physics. And then I got into the
Speaker 1: whole defense business by by accident. Um. But how did
Speaker 1: that come about? Well, it was part It was remember
Speaker 1: the people who taught me physics, and where the seniors
Speaker 1: in the field that I was starting out in, which
Speaker 1: was elementary particle physics and big accelerators at Fermi Lab
Speaker 1: and Brookhaven outside of New York here and so forth.
Speaker 1: I worked at those big laboratories. Those guys were all
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project generation, and they had in their veins
Speaker 1: the idea first of all that when you that that
Speaker 1: you you should have relationship with the government, that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that you They always did what you wanted to do,
Speaker 1: but it was natural to try to help out your country. Uh.
Speaker 1: And second that with respect to technology and disruptive technology,
Speaker 1: which the nuclear weapons certainly was that the people who
Speaker 1: built it had some responsibility too into essentially control the
Speaker 1: technology so that we got the good out of it,
Speaker 1: which was ending the war with Japan, winning the war
Speaker 1: with Japan, and keeping the piece for fifty years with
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union without blowing ourselves up. So they they
Speaker 1: taught me that we had something some responsibility. So one day,
Speaker 1: two of those seniors said to me, a guy who
Speaker 1: was involved in satellite reconnaissance, another guy who designed the
Speaker 1: first thermonuclear weapon said to me, Ashal, wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: let me let me interrupt you right here, because you
Speaker 1: can't just mention that and go by. You referred to
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project. Are you talking about people like Edward Teller?
Speaker 1: And I traveled once with to Europe with Edward Teller.
Speaker 1: The too. Particularly the particular people I was speaking of
Speaker 1: was Richard Garwin with Edward Teller, but it was really
Speaker 1: Garwin's design designed the I said, the first thermonuclear bomb,
Speaker 1: that is one that that combined fishing and fusion, and
Speaker 1: it blew up an island in the Pacific Ocean. It
Speaker 1: was very successful and much more powerful than the original
Speaker 1: thousand times more powerful UM. And the other guy was
Speaker 1: the person who was very instrumental in putting the first
Speaker 1: UM essentially cell phone type cameras, digital cameras onto our
Speaker 1: spy satellites, be our old spy satellites in the old
Speaker 1: days would take pictures on film, big roles of film,
Speaker 1: and then when the film was all exposed, they would
Speaker 1: separate it from the satellite, put a little rocket on it.
Speaker 1: The rocket would slow it down, it would fall down
Speaker 1: to Earth. Deploy a parachute and we'd fly an airplane
Speaker 1: next to the parachute with a hook on it, and
Speaker 1: the hook would grab the parachute reel in the film.
Speaker 1: We'd fly it to what in those days, the CIA
Speaker 1: did all of that interpretation right outside of washing Anacostia washing,
Speaker 1: and they'd fly it, they develop it, and they'd count
Speaker 1: how many Russian missiles and so forth. So that was
Speaker 1: the guy who was instrumental in turning that film system
Speaker 1: into a digital system. So they were the two, that's
Speaker 1: the two specific people rich pretty pretty big technologies. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and those happened to be the two who said to me,
Speaker 1: once you go to Washington for just one year turned
Speaker 1: out to be thirty seven, just one year and work
Speaker 1: on a problem that was a big deal at that time, Barry,
Speaker 1: which was a Cold War problem of where what to
Speaker 1: do with the m X missile. I recall that that
Speaker 1: was under Reagan trying to figure out how we could
Speaker 1: hide and shuttle all these missiles underground to hide them
Speaker 1: from Russian satellite couldn't target them, right, So I think
Speaker 1: the original plan, and I don't remember how much of
Speaker 1: this is from your book, and how much of this
Speaker 1: is male memory, that undred silos when a shuttle five
Speaker 1: hundred missiles around, pretty impossible plan. It was certainly very
Speaker 1: unpopular because it would have paved over a big part
Speaker 1: of the Great Basin area of the southwestern United States.
Speaker 1: It was actually the Carter administration's plan. Reagan looked at
Speaker 1: it and said that looks said, it looked like a
Speaker 1: Rube Goldberg thing, right, So that was to him a
Speaker 1: pretty ugly baby, this idea of of digging all these
Speaker 1: holes and then hiding missiles in him so he began
Speaker 1: this is all under um the concept of being able
Speaker 1: to survive a first strike in order to make sure
Speaker 1: our mutual is your destruction was in place exactly, because
Speaker 1: if we took the m X missile and we put
Speaker 1: them out where the Soviets could hit them, then in
Speaker 1: a crisis, they'd say, well, our only way of surviving
Speaker 1: is to go for and that would be incentive for
Speaker 1: them to go first. And we seeing them thinking that way,
Speaker 1: I would say, well, we better get we better launched
Speaker 1: these before they destroy them. So one or the other
Speaker 1: of us is gonna start a war under those circumstances.
Speaker 1: We wanted to avoid that that situation. So anyway, that
Speaker 1: was the projects all in the past now and that
Speaker 1: was effectively your first book. Yes, yes, after I did this,
Speaker 1: I wrote it which is essentially a technical book on
Speaker 1: that subject. Um. But uh, two things happened to me there, Barry,
Speaker 1: which I think is important to anybody who's choosing a
Speaker 1: career or at a crossroads in their career. Um. I
Speaker 1: found that in these Washington conversations I had something to
Speaker 1: offer that nobody else in the room had. Namely, I
Speaker 1: understood how it all worked technically, and the decisions were
Speaker 1: very consequential. So for a young person to be able
Speaker 1: to make a contribution, to feel like they're able to
Speaker 1: make actually a contribution, not just watch, but make a contribution,
Speaker 1: and that the issues they're dealing with really matter. That's
Speaker 1: a that's a wonderful you know. It's a hugely inspiring creation.
Speaker 1: And so that's what got me caught the bug of
Speaker 1: of of defense. And I've been devoted to you know,
Speaker 1: defending our country and making a better world for our
Speaker 1: children ever since. But it could have gone a different way,
Speaker 1: but for those two people who who inspire me. It's
Speaker 1: a good lesson to all of us, to to you.
Speaker 1: And now I teach people at a university. That's my
Speaker 1: way of continuing to contribute. But you give them a
Speaker 1: little nudge, and UH, in the direction of public purpose
Speaker 1: and public spirits a good thing. Let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about UH, the Iraq War, and you go into
Speaker 1: quite a bit of detail in the new book inside
Speaker 1: the Five Sided Box Lessons from a lifetime of leadership
Speaker 1: in the Pentagon. What made the Iraq War such a
Speaker 1: uni nique fight relative to previous US military history. Well,
Speaker 1: from a managerial point of view, which the point of
Speaker 1: view that the book takes, UH, it was a cantra
Speaker 1: insurgency war rather than a war of one country with
Speaker 1: another asymmetrical warfare is that we had. Yes. So the
Speaker 1: first thing is we had to learn that by by
Speaker 1: the way, I should back up a little bit Bari
Speaker 1: and say, of course, and the invasion of Iraq in
Speaker 1: two thousand and three didn't turn out very well. History
Speaker 1: says I have to say I didn't have the wisdom
Speaker 1: to oppose that at the time. I believe many people
Speaker 1: did not. I I'm I count myself among them, and
Speaker 1: I'm not proud of that, but I can't say I
Speaker 1: had better wisdom than anyone else. Anyway, we found ourselves
Speaker 1: in in Iraq. And of course when I became first
Speaker 1: the number three in the department, and the number two,
Speaker 1: then the number one, all during all that time we
Speaker 1: were still fighting in Iraq. And here's what we got
Speaker 1: out of it. That um was in a way useful
Speaker 1: to today's very different strategic situation. Uh. We learned to
Speaker 1: stop working in the old Cold War moode, which was
Speaker 1: that is was very superpower superpower versus super power. Moreover,
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union was this slow, lumbering, very predictable thing,
Speaker 1: and so you could have many year programs where you
Speaker 1: slowly built the perfect thing. When you're at war and
Speaker 1: people are getting killed or or kids are coming back
Speaker 1: with no legs, and my wife and I are at
Speaker 1: the hospitals every weekend talk, you know, meeting with them
Speaker 1: and talking talking to them there, then you're working day
Speaker 1: by day. That's a very different pace and it's much
Speaker 1: better suited to today's competitive world because now as we
Speaker 1: turned back to Chi Russia as we much do we have,
Speaker 1: if we did that and tried to compete with them
Speaker 1: today in the old mood, that wouldn't work because people
Speaker 1: are moving faster today, technologies moving factor. So I again,
Speaker 1: nobody likes to be in a war for that long.
Speaker 1: Nobody likes to be dealing with issues like uh amputations
Speaker 1: and prostheses pts, all the things we had to learn.
Speaker 1: But we also learned something about agility in the course
Speaker 1: of Iraq and then of course Afghanistan as well. And
Speaker 1: I was all in when I was in the defense department.
Speaker 1: I know some people don't agree with those wars, and
Speaker 1: we can talk about that later, but when you're there
Speaker 1: and you're responsible for them, UH, that was my highest priority.
Speaker 1: Every day I went to bed thinking about him. I
Speaker 1: woke up thinking about him either there's no choice. So
Speaker 1: let's let's talk a little bit about some of the
Speaker 1: adaptations that some took place fast and took place slow. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the things you write about ore are the
Speaker 1: I E d S And two really interesting issues come
Speaker 1: up in that. The first is the concept of drones
Speaker 1: versus blimps. That some people on the ground wanted drones,
Speaker 1: which really are good at flying in circles for short
Speaker 1: periods of time, but you wanted full There aren't a
Speaker 1: lot of roads in Iraq. You wanted full coverage of
Speaker 1: where insurgents are bringing I E d S that could
Speaker 1: hurt troops. How did that process go from let's get
Speaker 1: these expensive drones that will take two years to get
Speaker 1: into place to no, No, we could hang blimps. It
Speaker 1: will take us a really short period of time and
Speaker 1: have eyes in the sky on everything. And it began
Speaker 1: one morning when Bob Gates was secretary. He was the
Speaker 1: number one. I was the number three at that time,
Speaker 1: and on the and we were having a video teleconference,
Speaker 1: secure video teleconference with Cobble, and up on the screen
Speaker 1: was Stan McCrystal, who is our commander there. And Stan
Speaker 1: says to Bob that he needs he has only fifteen
Speaker 1: percent of the drone coverage he needs. And Bob Gates
Speaker 1: looks at me with that. I was his top supply
Speaker 1: weapons buyer, and he said with that, what are you
Speaker 1: going to do about that? Ash look? And I thought
Speaker 1: to myself, how on earth am I going to get
Speaker 1: seven times a number of drones in a very short,
Speaker 1: very short period of time. So I get on the
Speaker 1: phone and I talked to stands intelligence head at that time,
Speaker 1: who was General Mike Flynn. This is prey before those
Speaker 1: whole issues with his politics right right and uh, And
Speaker 1: he had a good reputation, he did, and I enjoyed
Speaker 1: working with I don't know what happened later I I
Speaker 1: lost touch with him. But anyway, when I began, I said, jeez,
Speaker 1: what do you what do you need all that coverage
Speaker 1: for that drone coverage? And it turned out that it
Speaker 1: wasn't to get the kind of film that only a
Speaker 1: drone could get. Only a drone can fly down a
Speaker 1: long highway. Um, but they wanted persistent coverage over one
Speaker 1: base or one town. That's what they really needed. Satellites
Speaker 1: are going by, satellites zipping by, and their overall Australia
Speaker 1: when you really need them, drones you can do, but
Speaker 1: you have to They're much more expensive, and you have
Speaker 1: to fly them around in circles, and you need to
Speaker 1: pilot even if they were back in California as it
Speaker 1: turns out. But yeah, a well trained pilot and a
Speaker 1: crew and somebody to make all the decisions very different weight.
Speaker 1: We came up with the idea of just putting a
Speaker 1: balloon up, and you put a helium filled balloon over
Speaker 1: the base. It's got a camera on it and the
Speaker 1: feed goes right down to the captain who is commanding
Speaker 1: that little outpost. And the reassurance that those guys had
Speaker 1: that when they went out on patrol they knew this
Speaker 1: is full video infrared exactly. Why couldn't just the kind
Speaker 1: of cameras that are on the the helicopters that fly
Speaker 1: on looking looking at car accident and traffic patterns that guy, So,
Speaker 1: why couldn't those just get shot out of the sky.
Speaker 1: It's they tried. And here's first of all, the pressure
Speaker 1: of the helium inside is not very much. It's not
Speaker 1: gonna pop, and so every once in a while you
Speaker 1: winch it down and sell up the holes. That's it's
Speaker 1: it's but the enemy, the bad guys would when it
Speaker 1: went up, not knowing that, take pot shots at it.
Speaker 1: We began to put UM microphones on that could I Yes, triangulate,
Speaker 1: and so if you took a shot at one of
Speaker 1: our balloons, a mortar shell fell on you a few
Speaker 1: seconds later. So the other I D question I have
Speaker 1: is in the beginning of the war, and you mentioned
Speaker 1: in your Troops coming home, lots of the humvees were
Speaker 1: really very lightly armored. And maybe this is my memory,
Speaker 1: but the recollection of how long it took to get
Speaker 1: the humvees up armored and protect seemed like it took
Speaker 1: a long time. And then later on the anti I E. D.
Speaker 1: There's all sorts of interesting technologies to detonate these things
Speaker 1: from a distance. Why did that seem to take so long?
Speaker 1: Is the process to UM identify what you want, order
Speaker 1: it and get it delivered? Is it really that long?
Speaker 1: Part of it was the bureaucracy was still working on
Speaker 1: that Cold War lumbering enemy mode where we'll deliver the
Speaker 1: perfect thing in five years. Even in the middle of
Speaker 1: a hot wall. You'd be amazed. I would call people
Speaker 1: up when I was in the so called acquisitions are
Speaker 1: And I would say, do you realize that on your
Speaker 1: desk is a contract that you're supposed to sign or audit,
Speaker 1: and that is I need that tomorrow. And it would
Speaker 1: be in the stack of this bureaucrat stack of papers.
Speaker 1: And as soon as they became aware that this was
Speaker 1: a matter of life or death for literally, yeah, they'd
Speaker 1: pull it out of the stack. But you'd be amazed
Speaker 1: at how much of that I had to do every
Speaker 1: single day, even when I was Secretary of Defense, to
Speaker 1: push the system. But but we we did. At let's
Speaker 1: take the M wrap which is the vehicle you're talking about. Um.
Speaker 1: When M wraps first started to be fielded, there was
Speaker 1: another attitude which was, hey, look, this war is going
Speaker 1: to be over in a while. I only buy something
Speaker 1: that's going to be good for you know, the army.
Speaker 1: You'll be around for a long time. We need to
Speaker 1: be thinking about what we're gonna want in twenty and
Speaker 1: thirty years and and and I that's not hot war
Speaker 1: thinking that's that's exactly right. There was a lot of that,
Speaker 1: conscious and unconscious. And you mentioned the two different types
Speaker 1: of dogs in the book. You mentioned there are bomb
Speaker 1: sniffer dogs, and then they're attack dogs. It seemed that
Speaker 1: there weren't enough breeders to get enough dogs quickly, and
Speaker 1: you guys went out and said, let's go global and
Speaker 1: find these dogs that you guys could get very very quickly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it turns out that the guy who was usually biding
Speaker 1: fighter aircraft and aircraft carriers and satellites and so were,
Speaker 1: namely me and drones and balloons and so forth, ended
Speaker 1: up learning how to buy dogs. And I learned a lot.
Speaker 1: And you're right, in fact, there's more than one kind
Speaker 1: of sniffer dog. There are some sniffer dogs on leash
Speaker 1: and off leash, and some that work better and confined areas,
Speaker 1: and some that are comfortable with open areas. And different
Speaker 1: breeds have different predilections, and so you learned that, and
Speaker 1: then you had to source them, as you said, And
Speaker 1: the United States has kennels, but there weren't enough kennels
Speaker 1: to supply, so we did globally source dogs. Thousands of
Speaker 1: dogs with great, great, great and became and this was
Speaker 1: a good side of outside of this, but became really
Speaker 1: good friends of the troops. They loved them, as people
Speaker 1: tend too, were able to take them back home with
Speaker 1: them at the individually not enough, but many sad The
Speaker 1: sad cases were when the dog died, which happened um,
Speaker 1: but especially if dogs were wounded or even if they
Speaker 1: were in the vicinity of an i e. Ed. It
Speaker 1: was impossible to use them anymore. That they become very
Speaker 1: nervous at that point and all their training would go
Speaker 1: out the windows. Either have to sadly put them to
Speaker 1: sleep or or take them and try to find a
Speaker 1: home for them in the United States. Well, they they
Speaker 1: certainly served quite well. And and I think there's a
Speaker 1: long history of Canaan corpse in the military, isn't there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they're their newses. I went to dark are
Speaker 1: high tech research arm looking for better news? Is electronic
Speaker 1: newses than the dogs knows and the people who know
Speaker 1: about electronics knows is say, don't they're not years and
Speaker 1: years years away. You got a ward a fight now,
Speaker 1: just gotten by yourself a dog. Amazing. You describe working
Speaker 1: in d C as quote being a Christian in the colosseum.
Speaker 1: You never know when they're going to release the lions,
Speaker 1: and have you torn apart for the amusement of onlookers.
Speaker 1: How accurate is that description? And and how frustrating is
Speaker 1: it to work in a town like d C. Well,
Speaker 1: I got used to it after a while. I was
Speaker 1: there for thirty seven years on and off and associated
Speaker 1: with the department uninterruptedly since. So they never really released
Speaker 1: the lions that you didn't know. I went through four
Speaker 1: Senate confirmations, which was really what I was talking about
Speaker 1: in that particular passage. And that's a time of great
Speaker 1: vulnerability in Washington, because anybody who doesn't like you can
Speaker 1: take a shot at you that or try to persuade
Speaker 1: some senator to put a hold on you. Came up
Speaker 1: unanimously for a Secretary of Defense. That's not many people.
Speaker 1: That's actually I think there were two or three votes,
Speaker 1: not personal about me, but uh, nobody voted against you.
Speaker 1: Either they abstained or they voted for you. Not a
Speaker 1: lot of people in d C get that sort of
Speaker 1: love from the U. S. Senate. No, but there. I mean,
Speaker 1: I tried to earn it the old fashioned way. I
Speaker 1: kept my nose clean, and all those years I never
Speaker 1: had was investigated or or or anything. I never that's
Speaker 1: the normal course these days. That seems to be a
Speaker 1: little unusual, but typically people working in the defense department
Speaker 1: tend to put their head down to their job and
Speaker 1: keep their nose yes, and conduct is really important. The
Speaker 1: in the profession of arms, honor and trust matter a lot.
Speaker 1: And if you can't trust people in small things, how
Speaker 1: can you trust them in big things like war. So
Speaker 1: for us it was a big deal. And when you're
Speaker 1: at the top up, you have to show example, and
Speaker 1: so it was. I always watched over my conduct and
Speaker 1: comportment and tried to make an example. Me give me.
Speaker 1: Let me give you a particular instance of that I
Speaker 1: described in the book uh barry Um. When I and
Speaker 1: many many many times, was in the Iraq and Afghanistan
Speaker 1: and it's hot as hundred twenty degrees. If I was
Speaker 1: Secretary of Defense, you'd see the sea foreign leaders. You
Speaker 1: talk especially to our commanders and what we're doing, and
Speaker 1: and give them the direction that they needed. And then
Speaker 1: I'd meet with hundreds and hundreds of troops and you'd
Speaker 1: shake their hands and so forth. And I'd wear my
Speaker 1: suit out in the desert degrees, sweating like a wheel
Speaker 1: of cheese out there, and my staff would say, hey, sir,
Speaker 1: you know you can take your jacket off and the
Speaker 1: troops would say, hey, it's just us, Secretary, you can relax.
Speaker 1: And I always kept my suit on. And here's why,
Speaker 1: because every time I shook one of those soldiers hands,
Speaker 1: we had a photographer take a picture. That picture would
Speaker 1: be sent home to mom. Mom would frame it and
Speaker 1: put it by her bedside or on the mantel. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to look the part. I wanted to look
Speaker 1: like you still, well, I do have my suit on,
Speaker 1: my flag and I wear and I would wear the
Speaker 1: same thing out there because I thought it was important
Speaker 1: that their mother understand that I was the coursie. She
Speaker 1: didn't know me, she doesn't know the secret. She didn't care.
Speaker 1: She cares about her son, but I don't want to
Speaker 1: look like the guy who deserves to be sending her
Speaker 1: son to war. That was important to me, And that's
Speaker 1: a small example of how you behavior. Comportment, conduct matter
Speaker 1: a lot. I think they matter not only in the
Speaker 1: largest organization in the world, de Pentagon, but in any
Speaker 1: kind of organization. And I obviously um uh dismayed uh
Speaker 1: times these days about conduct, I see um and I
Speaker 1: held people to a higher standard, and I fired people
Speaker 1: for things that you see today. We fired people for Lyne,
Speaker 1: for having sex with subordinates. All of these things were
Speaker 1: unfortunately happened um, but there was no doubt I was
Speaker 1: harsh on people, but they were even harsher on subordinates.
Speaker 1: Our rules are very strict about that, and um our
Speaker 1: ethos is one of their conduct. Uh is a sign
Speaker 1: of character, and character is an increasing an aspect of leadership.
Speaker 1: And you can't give somebody leadership over troops if they
Speaker 1: don't have conduct and enough character. So let me ask you,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna throw two curve balls at you. The first
Speaker 1: is we ask our troops to go in harm's way
Speaker 1: and we make extraordinary demands of them and they come
Speaker 1: back home. Not directly under the Pentagon, but under the
Speaker 1: v A. They haven't been getting really terrific treatment. We
Speaker 1: have a number of veterans in my office and I've
Speaker 1: heard some pretty horrifying tales. What's going on in the
Speaker 1: v A and what can we do to give our
Speaker 1: veterans the sort of care they deserve. Well, the v
Speaker 1: A is a very very complicated bureaucracy. It's separate from
Speaker 1: the defense, and in most countries they would be managed together,
Speaker 1: but they're managed separately. That's interesting. Yeah, and it would
Speaker 1: be part of the defense budget. But it's not part
Speaker 1: of the defense budget in this country. But it's a
Speaker 1: separate cabinet department. Should it be should it be part
Speaker 1: of the Pentagon and the defense budget. It may be
Speaker 1: that if we could start over again, that would have
Speaker 1: been a better way to manage things. But now I
Speaker 1: think mushing to organizations. Remember we tried that in the
Speaker 1: Department of Homeland Security and did it well. It took
Speaker 1: ten years or so began before it began to show
Speaker 1: any results. Um. But any rate, so the v A
Speaker 1: has a difficult job of taking care of what is
Speaker 1: largely a geriatric medical population. Whereas our medical system which
Speaker 1: is huge in the defense departments, the largest in the country.
Speaker 1: And so you run the largest medical center in the
Speaker 1: medical care system in the country if you have the
Speaker 1: Secretary Defense. Um, but it's it's has a lot of
Speaker 1: pediatric work, right because our young people have children, so
Speaker 1: they're completely different populations. Um. What we were doing a
Speaker 1: bad job of I discovered when i UH started to
Speaker 1: run the place was the transition from a soldier to
Speaker 1: a veteran, which is a very challenging transition. It is
Speaker 1: because remember some of these people have never done anything
Speaker 1: else but be in the military. Some of them are
Speaker 1: kids that came out of high school, went in for
Speaker 1: a few years. They've never had a civilian job. I
Speaker 1: discovered that our separation program, what we did with soldiers
Speaker 1: and sailor's aerband and marines before they left service, was
Speaker 1: essentially to teach them how to get on welfare. Really yes,
Speaker 1: And of course that was revolted by that it's not
Speaker 1: good for them and it's not good for the public
Speaker 1: that's paying for these things. So we designed a new
Speaker 1: transition program that that had three tracks. One was to
Speaker 1: get a job track if you never had to get
Speaker 1: a job. Let's tell you how to make a resume.
Speaker 1: Let's tell you how to get on some of these
Speaker 1: social media where you can describe what you're good at.
Speaker 1: Let's tell you how you can describe your in civilian terms,
Speaker 1: the skills you've got as a military person. Second track
Speaker 1: was entrepreneurship, like how do you run a McDonald's franchise?
Speaker 1: And the third was continue in education if you want
Speaker 1: to get on the g I bills some further education.
Speaker 1: So we turned it from a uh, your life in
Speaker 1: the future is one of pendency upon the v A
Speaker 1: and getting benefits to you too. You've got a life ahead,
Speaker 1: let us help you prepare. And of course they're still
Speaker 1: qualified to get the benefits, they still just still preserve them.
Speaker 1: But to just to teach them right away to get
Speaker 1: that it's all about social safety net when they get out,
Speaker 1: that's no way to treat someone. I will tell you
Speaker 1: from my personal experience, the veterans who work in my
Speaker 1: office are our secret weapons Logistics Trading CFO. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: And every time we look to hire somebody, we try
Speaker 1: and say, is this person that a veteran can feel that? Verry,
Speaker 1: you know that's new and I always really, well, it is.
Speaker 1: It's only in the last ten years because I started
Speaker 1: working on veterans and commitment when I was the under
Speaker 1: secretary the number three job back in two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: and employers would say, okay, Ash, we promised to hire
Speaker 1: five thousand veterans a big company, and they'd put it
Speaker 1: on their TV ads and everything, and they acted as
Speaker 1: though they were doing us a favor. By now most
Speaker 1: employers have the attitude you just described. We'll train the smart, honorable. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And go back even further to the Vietnam era. And
Speaker 1: if I don't know, and I don't know what I
Speaker 1: would have done as secretary, I couldn't have stood to
Speaker 1: see our people treated that way. I mean, now you
Speaker 1: go to the airport and they're boarded first on the
Speaker 1: plane and all, you know, and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Some of that is making up for the mistakes of
Speaker 1: the Vietnam Era. Yeah, one of the the most moving
Speaker 1: things you can do as a current Secretary of Defense
Speaker 1: is to talk to Vietnam era veterans. And a line
Speaker 1: that not only I use, but others including the President used,
Speaker 1: uh uh was just in case nobody said this to
Speaker 1: you when you came home the first time, welcome home
Speaker 1: and you their tears in the eyes. I could imagine
Speaker 1: some of these guys because of the way they were treated.
Speaker 1: That would have broken my heart at the time. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: I live in need live in that year. I live
Speaker 1: in near where most people have any attitude that you do,
Speaker 1: which is these guys deserve a good job. I think
Speaker 1: we learn a little bit from our our societal mistakes
Speaker 1: in the past that that war was problematic. But then
Speaker 1: you know people who were um and that was not
Speaker 1: a voluntary army. That was a people were drafted. They
Speaker 1: should not have been treated the way they they were
Speaker 1: when they came back, But that was a very different time.
Speaker 1: Let me throw the other curve ball at you, which
Speaker 1: is what you just brought up some of the issues
Speaker 1: we're hearing about people dealing with within the military, within
Speaker 1: the um Department of State, just generally within the government,
Speaker 1: moving away from the concept of honor and responsibility and truthfulness.
Speaker 1: What does this say about us as a country? How
Speaker 1: have we gotten so far off track? Well? I I
Speaker 1: think that in part it is a reflection of the
Speaker 1: attitude that some Americans have had that the government is
Speaker 1: a thing apart from them. And I've obviously been in
Speaker 1: an out of government my whole life. I don't have
Speaker 1: that feeling. But I can well imagine if I were
Speaker 1: someone who've been outside of the government, that that that
Speaker 1: idea that that's a thing apart gaining ground in my mind.
Speaker 1: But to me, the government is just us. It is
Speaker 1: the way we do things that we have that have
Speaker 1: to be done that can't be done by individuals or
Speaker 1: by companies. Who's going to build the roads, who's going
Speaker 1: to educate people, who's going to fight for us and
Speaker 1: win against enemies unless we do it all together. Now,
Speaker 1: I learned that by association with the Defense Department, which
Speaker 1: which most Americans really understand. Okay, that's a part of
Speaker 1: the government I really, I really get. But the other parts,
Speaker 1: the regulatory parts and all that. There came to be
Speaker 1: an attitude that we took all the good for granted
Speaker 1: and we picked at what was bad. And there's plenty
Speaker 1: of things that are bad, and I think the government
Speaker 1: ought to be uh as high quality as it can be.
Speaker 1: But there was a little bit of that in our society.
Speaker 1: And then some of the people who are in government
Speaker 1: today seem to be looking at it as something to
Speaker 1: a pillage at last, rather than a sacred trust. That's
Speaker 1: hard for me to relate to, let alone condone um,
Speaker 1: but I think it's enabled in part by people taking
Speaker 1: for granted what the government does for them, and also
Speaker 1: by government not living up to public expectations. So both
Speaker 1: sides of the equation need to change their attitude, because
Speaker 1: we do need a competent government. It's a competitive world,
Speaker 1: it's a dangerous world, and um, we need things, uh
Speaker 1: that only government can do. Quite quite interesting. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about some of the interesting things you go over
Speaker 1: in the book. Um, I'm fascinated by the future of warfare.
Speaker 1: Is it just gonna be drones and robots? What sort
Speaker 1: of battles are we going to be fighting? And how
Speaker 1: is the world going to look different from a military
Speaker 1: perspective than it does today. So let's take a few
Speaker 1: of the pieces. Um. I ran the F thirty five
Speaker 1: Joint Strike fighter program, started the new B twenty one
Speaker 1: stealth bomber, and I think those are once you get
Speaker 1: them under managerial control, important things. But Barry, they're the
Speaker 1: last man fighter and man bomber will ever build last
Speaker 1: man A That's what I believe. I think that's the last.
Speaker 1: What about ships? And we're gonna still have man take
Speaker 1: the aircraft carry? Now, aircraft carriers are getting harder and
Speaker 1: harder to defend against countries like China and Russia. And
Speaker 1: people ask me, is the aircraft carrier going to go away?
Speaker 1: And I say no, because an aircraft carry is good
Speaker 1: for a different kind of circumstance. An aircraft carry is
Speaker 1: still good with the with respect to Afghanistan. The counter
Speaker 1: isis campaign environments in which nobody's going to sink the
Speaker 1: ship they provide America a floating air base, and that's
Speaker 1: an important thing. But I don't think we'll be trying
Speaker 1: to use them against China and Russia decades from now. Soldiers.
Speaker 1: You just said, are robots gonna be soldiers? I think
Speaker 1: what will happen first is that in an infantry squad
Speaker 1: there'll be one or two robots that carry Oh, all
Speaker 1: the batteries get way down soldiers today they have so
Speaker 1: much electronics and they have spare batteries for everything that
Speaker 1: carry the electronics. And also that if they're let's say,
Speaker 1: clearing a house, is the first thing through the door
Speaker 1: of the house. You see a little of that already
Speaker 1: because what what disarms? And I e ed now a
Speaker 1: little screaded small, But I worked. I worked on them
Speaker 1: because we had people walking out in suits with a
Speaker 1: pair of wire cutters, very dangerous thing to be doing,
Speaker 1: and so why not have a little robot to so
Speaker 1: you see now, I think that they'll be inch by
Speaker 1: inch more and more of that taking away. Some of
Speaker 1: them were mechanical and more dangerous jobs. But they'll still
Speaker 1: be a squad commander, I think, making the decisions about
Speaker 1: fire and maneuver and when to do things and when
Speaker 1: not to do things. One thing that's not going to
Speaker 1: go away. We're talking about things that are going to
Speaker 1: go away, and they're not going to go away are
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons. And let's think about that a little bit,
Speaker 1: because that is something that because of the wars in
Speaker 1: Iraq and Afghanistan and the fact that many people, not
Speaker 1: myself among them, but many people recognized too late that
Speaker 1: China and Russia we're not turning out the way everybody
Speaker 1: had hoped in the nine nineties. We hope they were
Speaker 1: going to turn out okay. They didn't turn out okay.
Speaker 1: And for both those reasons, we uh stopped improving or
Speaker 1: really just keeping up our own nuclear arsenal. And in
Speaker 1: the meantime, they kept building, kept building, kept building. These
Speaker 1: things aren't going anywhere. I don't think we need new types.
Speaker 1: I don't. Nuclear weapons are just brutally simple a bomb
Speaker 1: on a rocket, right, Um, But I think we need
Speaker 1: them to defend ourselves. And basically the only way you
Speaker 1: can defend yourself against nuclear weapons is through deterrence, and um,
Speaker 1: we haven't built any for twenty five years. I think
Speaker 1: I am a strong supporter of recapitalizing our nuclear weapons arsenal,
Speaker 1: and anybody who thinks that's going to start at arms race.
Speaker 1: I would say, well, you don't have twenty five years
Speaker 1: of history on your side, because we haven't done anything
Speaker 1: for the last twenty five years, and they've been racing anyway,
Speaker 1: so we still be the cause of them. So let's
Speaker 1: stick with nukes and talk about Korea. You were involved
Speaker 1: as a very junior person back in with the first
Speaker 1: round of Korea trying to get a nuclear weapon. Why
Speaker 1: this is hindsight bias, obviously, but why don't we just
Speaker 1: stop them back then, years ago before they had the
Speaker 1: chance to retaliate. Well, it's interesting, I want I spent
Speaker 1: about half the year as an assistant secretary of Defense,
Speaker 1: meaning where is that in the hierarchy, that's like the
Speaker 1: third layer down? Okay, working on UH strike plan against
Speaker 1: the North Korean reactor, which is all. They had the
Speaker 1: reactor at a place called Young Beyond, and it had
Speaker 1: the fuel rods that had plutonium in them, and the
Speaker 1: they had finished their fuelling cycle, and the North Koreans
Speaker 1: could if they wanted to take those fuel rods out,
Speaker 1: extract the plutonium, and they had enough in there to
Speaker 1: make one bomb. We thought that it was a cause
Speaker 1: of war, and so I built that plan to destroy
Speaker 1: that reactor, which I was at the time barrier. And
Speaker 1: this is just the pride of the artist, I guess
Speaker 1: proud of because it would have destroyed and operating nuclear
Speaker 1: reactor without creating a radioactive plume um but mopefully, I
Speaker 1: was pretty certain. I was pretty certain. Now. Of course,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to do that because the certain result
Speaker 1: of that would be the North Korean Army streaming over
Speaker 1: the d m Z and a war beginning, which I
Speaker 1: was confident we would win. But a soul would change
Speaker 1: hands twice and it's an ugly baby, uh as a
Speaker 1: war to contemplate. But I thought that was going to happen.
Speaker 1: And Clinton was really yes, and he was threatening that
Speaker 1: to who's the grandfather of the current guy, Kim jongun
Speaker 1: that you see meeting with President Trump. His grandfather Kim
Speaker 1: Il sung was running the place then, and Kim Il
Speaker 1: sung rather unexpectedly said, Okay, I'll give up this reactor
Speaker 1: at Young Beyond if you build me some real Western
Speaker 1: reactor that can are power plants and that don't have
Speaker 1: all the proliferation problems. Did we do that? And we
Speaker 1: signed that agreement and it stayed in force for five
Speaker 1: six years. The North Koreans under his son slowly began
Speaker 1: cheating and the whole thing kind of began to fall
Speaker 1: apart later in the night, when we bought ourselves out
Speaker 1: of five six years. Then we had talks again in
Speaker 1: the late nineties. I was part of them. Then, Uh,
Speaker 1: let's see, Condi, Rice and and Colin Pale had some
Speaker 1: more in two thousand and six. So I've seen various
Speaker 1: cycles of this and what about the current cycle, Well,
Speaker 1: that's not, unfortunately going anywhere. I don't object to talking
Speaker 1: to the North Koreans. As I said, We've done it
Speaker 1: in the in the past. Um, no president that I
Speaker 1: worked for, going back to Reagan, would meet with the
Speaker 1: North Korean leader unless until there was an agreement. Explain why,
Speaker 1: because they knew that. To the North Koreans, that was
Speaker 1: a huge gift a meeting with the American president because
Speaker 1: in North Korean propaganda that they can tell there are
Speaker 1: people everything's okay in our system, which is a disaster
Speaker 1: for the North Korean people, is actually successful because I
Speaker 1: got to meet with the American president. You look at us,
Speaker 1: where the equivalent of a superpas So when you're dealing
Speaker 1: with a potential enemy. You don't in Ash Carter's book,
Speaker 1: you don't give away anything for free. So I wouldn't
Speaker 1: give away a meeting with the President United States for
Speaker 1: free without some exchange. Now, yeah, now we gave Now
Speaker 1: we've given it away. We also stopped or curtailed our
Speaker 1: exercises in South Korea, which is a very dangerous move. Remember,
Speaker 1: the exercises are how we keep us and our South
Speaker 1: Korean partners sharp. To make it the North Koreans absolutely
Speaker 1: clear that if they start a war, they will be
Speaker 1: destroyed and that will be the end of the regime.
Speaker 1: And that's what those exercises demonstrate. To To not keep
Speaker 1: up that proficiency and not keep demonstrating it risks of
Speaker 1: war on the Korean Peninsula, which as I said, would
Speaker 1: be a war we would win, but would not look
Speaker 1: like anything are people have seen since the last Creating war.
Speaker 1: I mean, the intensity of the violence is unbelievable in
Speaker 1: that war. Although some people have argued that the North
Speaker 1: Korean troops once they're over the border might not be
Speaker 1: as aggressive a enemy as some people have suggested, similar
Speaker 1: to the Iraqi National Guard. Well, it's interesting, Um, you
Speaker 1: don't have much evidence on your side. If you have
Speaker 1: that view, well, here's some evidence that goes but it
Speaker 1: all goes the other way. North Korean agents military agents
Speaker 1: captured in South Korea who have been preparing sabotage and
Speaker 1: other things that they intend to do in the course
Speaker 1: of the war like that, um very few of they're
Speaker 1: all so brainwashed that they do not turn compliant. They
Speaker 1: don't come down into this well lit, wealthy society and
Speaker 1: change their views, even though all of their propaganda and
Speaker 1: all of their media and so forth have told them
Speaker 1: that it's a poor and backward place. So if you
Speaker 1: think about it, Barry there in their third or fourth
Speaker 1: generation of Stalinism. No other society had that many generation.
Speaker 1: What that means is that your parents don't tell you
Speaker 1: stories of how things used to be different. Your grandparents
Speaker 1: don't tell you stories. There's nowhere if your memory is,
Speaker 1: that memory is gone, that there's a different kind of world.
Speaker 1: So I I think the evidence suggests these people are
Speaker 1: brainwashed deeply enough that they'll fight really hard before they
Speaker 1: get tempted by all the good ease down in South Korea.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about another nuclear program. I ran We've had
Speaker 1: a couple of interesting military actions by other countries, namely
Speaker 1: Israel blew up a reactor. I don't know how many
Speaker 1: decades ago that was, and then the whole centrifuge hack
Speaker 1: UH set them back quite a bit. How close is
Speaker 1: I ran to building a nuclear weapon? And what should
Speaker 1: we be doing about that? We had a treaty, this
Speaker 1: president UH decided to overturn it. Where are we with
Speaker 1: I ran in there? Well? Obviously the treaty was controversial
Speaker 1: in the United States has has rejected it. In the meantime, however,
Speaker 1: it bought us some time because while they were abiding
Speaker 1: by it, and while it was in force, the Iranians
Speaker 1: were obliged to destroy a bunch of centrifuges, send a
Speaker 1: bunch of plutonium to Russia, I mean uranium enriched uranium
Speaker 1: to Russia, and destroy a reactor. And they did all
Speaker 1: that before we backed out of the treaty. So we
Speaker 1: got some goodies so to speak, um in exchange for
Speaker 1: US releasing frozen funds that were that's right, that from
Speaker 1: the late Ages, which turned out not to be as
Speaker 1: much as the Iranians wanted. So maybe in time they
Speaker 1: would have left there. Anyway, what's done is done at
Speaker 1: the time that that agreement was negotiated, I was Secretary
Speaker 1: of Defense, and as I I tell a story in
Speaker 1: the book which is indicative of how we looked at
Speaker 1: things in the Pentagon. The morning after UH that agreement
Speaker 1: was concluded by Secretary of State Kerry, I sat down
Speaker 1: as I always did with the Chairman of the Joint
Speaker 1: Jesus stabbed a little round table in the Secretary of
Speaker 1: Defense always been there since since George Marshall's day, and
Speaker 1: I would sit there with Marty or later with Joe
Speaker 1: Dunford every morning that we were both in town, and
Speaker 1: also the vice Chairman and the Deputy Secretary Defense, and
Speaker 1: we'd say, Okay, what do we know? What do you
Speaker 1: what do you need today? And the Marty said to me,
Speaker 1: as Secretary, the A proposed this Iranian agreement, what are
Speaker 1: your instructions to the Department? And I said, change nothing. Really,
Speaker 1: I said, it changes nothing. We have a strike plan
Speaker 1: that will destroy the Iranian nuclear program by force if
Speaker 1: we have to. We're gonna keep sixty five troops in
Speaker 1: the Gulf a deterrent against Iran, also carrying out the
Speaker 1: Worgans dices um will continue. We have to continue to
Speaker 1: counter Iranian malign influence everywhere else, which is lots of
Speaker 1: places uh, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and so forth. So I said,
Speaker 1: don't change anything. What this does is take off our
Speaker 1: plate a headache that we would otherwise have, which is
Speaker 1: somewhere down the road we would have to face an
Speaker 1: Iran that had nuclear weapons. Uh. And that is why
Speaker 1: I thought I didn't object to the agreement. I supported
Speaker 1: the agreement because as Secretary Defense, it took a headache
Speaker 1: off my plate. But I had lots of Iran headaches
Speaker 1: on my plate, and I said to Marty, let's keep
Speaker 1: working on all the other headaches that Iran is. This
Speaker 1: is not could never be a grand bargain. So let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about I Ran and Iraq. I
Speaker 1: thought the best argument against invading Iraq and oh three
Speaker 1: was the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Ends
Speaker 1: We may not be fans of Saddam Hussein or Iraq,
Speaker 1: but they were the regional counterbalance too. Iran am I
Speaker 1: oversimplifying that or is that I'm not? That was our
Speaker 1: That was our actually conscious view during the Iran I
Speaker 1: Rock war, which is a pox upon both albus let
Speaker 1: them fight each other into the ground, and that seemed
Speaker 1: like a good outcome, And looking back now, you're at
Speaker 1: what the Middle East has become. A a country that
Speaker 1: kept order within its borders, that was not capable of
Speaker 1: major aggression against its its neighbor, which Irraq was. You'd
Speaker 1: otherwise leave alone as long as it wasn't doing anything
Speaker 1: to US America. What we thought might become a threat
Speaker 1: to US was the whole weapon of mass destruction thing.
Speaker 1: But we knew that was nonsense from day one. The
Speaker 1: whole Chainey separate department of anytime someone says, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they N S A and C I A. Those guys
Speaker 1: don't know what they're doing. We're gonna set up a
Speaker 1: little division in the basement of the White House. You know,
Speaker 1: that's just a nonsensical approach. You can't say that, but
Speaker 1: I can say that. Okay, I not only I wouldn't
Speaker 1: I say that, but because I didn't see that at
Speaker 1: the time, I'm just being honest. I'd like to say
Speaker 1: I was apprecient, um, but I actually bought what Colan
Speaker 1: pal said. I thought that I, in my experience in government,
Speaker 1: with that much smoke, there had to be sot fire
Speaker 1: uh somewhere, And so I was disappointed and of course
Speaker 1: it didn't turn out very well because we did uh
Speaker 1: take away the government of Iraq and what was left
Speaker 1: was no government at all, and we've been dealing with
Speaker 1: the consequences of that. So let's do a compare and contrast,
Speaker 1: because the fascinating thing about Iraq is the George H. W.
Speaker 1: Bush invasion. In is that no one? So he famously said,
Speaker 1: We're gonna chase Iraq out of Kuwait, but we're not
Speaker 1: going to talk. We're not going to keep going to Baghdad.
Speaker 1: As some people have suggested, Hey keep them going and
Speaker 1: let's just topple on the theory. I assumed that I
Speaker 1: ran as a problem. Let's let Iraq be there as
Speaker 1: a counterweight. Why, first of all, am I right in
Speaker 1: saying the senior Bush's approach was the right decision? Was
Speaker 1: the right approach at the time. So what was the
Speaker 1: thinking in OH three let's keep going and take bag
Speaker 1: Dad out as opposed to because we clearly won the
Speaker 1: war in the first six weeks. It was over like
Speaker 1: that because its intention in OH three was specifically to
Speaker 1: topple Saddam. Remember the intention of the war was to
Speaker 1: recapture Kuwait, Okay, and then when when that was done,
Speaker 1: President Bush said another. Now there were some and Dick
Speaker 1: Cheney was his Secretary Defense. And I was on the
Speaker 1: advisory board to Dick Cheney at that time, and I
Speaker 1: knew him at that time, and he wanted to go
Speaker 1: all the way to bag guttons and let's finish this
Speaker 1: off once and for all. The President overruled him, and
Speaker 1: that was controversial at that time. Now fast forward a
Speaker 1: little bit more than a decade, Dick Cheney is now
Speaker 1: Vice President UH with some unfinished business, with some unfinished business,
Speaker 1: and so in retrospect, it seems that that was an
Speaker 1: ingredient of the decision to UH to invade and all
Speaker 1: this stuff about weapons of mass destruction and so forth,
Speaker 1: which I think was the ordinary citizens reason for supporting
Speaker 1: the OH three invasion. We turned out not to be
Speaker 1: a reason at all. So let's roll back to nine
Speaker 1: eleven and the two thousand one attack, which came from
Speaker 1: Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, not Iraq. You have a really
Speaker 1: interesting role, not only in the creation of homeland security,
Speaker 1: but post not eleven. Where were you on September eleventh,
Speaker 1: two thousand and one. I landed in Washington. I must
Speaker 1: have taken off on a aircraft from Boston at eight o'clock,
Speaker 1: just like some of their planes. The town must have
Speaker 1: been in that same line waiting to take off. I
Speaker 1: landed a National airport and I looked out the windows
Speaker 1: we taxied and there was a huge cloud of smoke
Speaker 1: over the Pentagon Cla Okay, a place I'd worked getting
Speaker 1: out of for years and years. This huge plumes and
Speaker 1: you know what else was in it? Was striking about
Speaker 1: that Barry, guess what else was in there besides smoke? Paper?
Speaker 1: It was a huge you hit it office building, so
Speaker 1: you get is a big plume of of paper and
Speaker 1: I so I thought, well that's odd, but I didn't
Speaker 1: know what the reason. Then I walk up the ramp,
Speaker 1: look at the TV screen in the terminal and I
Speaker 1: see two towers, and then I know exactly And not
Speaker 1: only did I know what was going on, but I
Speaker 1: did it right away, and I knew it has been
Speaker 1: laden well. He tried to hit the towers pretty so
Speaker 1: i'd know that. Remember for most Americans, this is like
Speaker 1: the Martians had land. You know, Osama who and where
Speaker 1: you come from? Wild earth? Is he doing this? I
Speaker 1: knew right away? Um, and so I, and I began
Speaker 1: to try to help as best I could. One of
Speaker 1: the issues was Tom Ridge became the Highland Security Secretary,
Speaker 1: and I tried to help there get our government better organized.
Speaker 1: So what was your role with the establishment of the
Speaker 1: Department of one Land Security? You were? You were? I
Speaker 1: I offered an alternative to that. I was not in
Speaker 1: favor of setting up a formal department. I I thought
Speaker 1: that the Office of Home Land Security UH could be improved.
Speaker 1: But when you create a Department of Homeland Security, in
Speaker 1: people's mind that brought together all our makes sense. Well
Speaker 1: it doesn't because if you still have the problem that
Speaker 1: DHS doesn't include the Defense Department, it doesn't include the
Speaker 1: colligence community, it doesn't include law enforcement. So the issue
Speaker 1: still remains, how do you bring everybody together so instead
Speaker 1: of terrorists. So it it creates what looks like a
Speaker 1: little bit of bureaucratic tidiness, but it doesn't get to
Speaker 1: the core issue. So instead of having a coordinated response
Speaker 1: from all these different resources, it's just one more bureaucracy
Speaker 1: that tries to pace together some organizations that haven't worked
Speaker 1: together in the past, and they spend all this time
Speaker 1: on themselves, not only not on the enemy. So I
Speaker 1: thought I wouldn't have done it, but we did do it,
Speaker 1: and then I tried to help it make it uh
Speaker 1: work and for the Defense Department to begin to play
Speaker 1: a stronger role in counter terrorism, you've got to decide.
Speaker 1: We thought we needed to decide, is terrorism crime, a
Speaker 1: disaster or an attack. Have it's a cry, you send
Speaker 1: the FBI, the disaster you send FEMA, And if it's
Speaker 1: an attack, you send the Department of Defense. But in
Speaker 1: the real world, they're all three and the president. If
Speaker 1: you think about the president, If I'm Secretary Defense as
Speaker 1: I was, and there's John Kerry as Secretary of State,
Speaker 1: and there's these other cabinet members, there are only two
Speaker 1: people who sit atop us, the President the Vice president.
Speaker 1: Only two people outrank us. Carry can't make me do anything,
Speaker 1: and I can't make Carry do anything. Only the president
Speaker 1: can make us work together. Well, the president is a
Speaker 1: busy guy and he can't watch after everything. So inter
Speaker 1: agency work is inherently difficult for a president because he's
Speaker 1: got a knock together the heads of cabinet members who
Speaker 1: all have their own proud traditions and laws, and committees
Speaker 1: of Congress and all this stuff, and he's a and
Speaker 1: he's a busy guy. So I thought there was a
Speaker 1: better way of doing counter terrorism inter agency out of
Speaker 1: the White House. But the President decided to create a department,
Speaker 1: and off he went to do it. But I did.
Speaker 1: I opposed that at the time. I also opposed the
Speaker 1: creation of a Director of National Intelligence for the same reason.
Speaker 1: Just created another guy on top of six. And if
Speaker 1: the problem is you've got a bunch of people who
Speaker 1: you can't get rid of any of them, you can't
Speaker 1: put any of them on top of each other. Really,
Speaker 1: because law enforcement really is different from the military. Um,
Speaker 1: you've got to get them to work together. So the
Speaker 1: managerial question I always looked at it as a manager.
Speaker 1: The managerial question is cooperation, not consolidation. And so you,
Speaker 1: in your managerial mind, you say, how do I get
Speaker 1: different things that I cannot mush together? And it's not
Speaker 1: the right approach to push them together to work together.
Speaker 1: That's a different managed social approach. Let me throw the
Speaker 1: question back at you, how do you get the head
Speaker 1: of the FBI, the head of the n s A,
Speaker 1: the head of the c i A, the head of
Speaker 1: the Apartment of Defense Intelligence groups. How do you get
Speaker 1: these disparate groups, all from very different institutions to co
Speaker 1: operate for a common purpose. There's a model, which is
Speaker 1: the National Security Council. It's been in effects since Eisenhower's days,
Speaker 1: as has worked better and worse than in different times.
Speaker 1: But it's now got kind of well, I can't speak
Speaker 1: to right now, um, but uh, it did for a
Speaker 1: number of years and really very very efficiently in the
Speaker 1: first Bush administration work to get all of the people
Speaker 1: involved in foreign affairs, whether it's economic foreign affairs or
Speaker 1: military foreign affairs, are diplomatic foreign affairs working together every
Speaker 1: day and you know there are meetings at junior levels,
Speaker 1: their cabinet member meetings, and they try to work everything out.
Speaker 1: And then only when they have met and tried does
Speaker 1: the president is his precious time used, because remember he's
Speaker 1: the only one who can tell everybody what to do.
Speaker 1: But there it needs to. The National Security councils be
Speaker 1: basically intended to put decisions in management form that are
Speaker 1: ready for the President to make a decision that the
Speaker 1: people at the table can't make because that would involve
Speaker 1: bossing one another around, which they can't do. That's a
Speaker 1: that's a functional system. And when Tom Ridge came in
Speaker 1: as Homeland Security Director, he was setting up something that
Speaker 1: was a replica of that. I think if they'd stuck
Speaker 1: with it longer, what can you stick around a bit?
Speaker 1: I have a few more questions for you. We have
Speaker 1: been speaking with Ash Carter, former Secretary of Defense and
Speaker 1: author of a new book, Inside the Five Sided Box,
Speaker 1: Lessons from a lifetime of leadership in the Pentagon. If
Speaker 1: you enjoy this conversation, well be sure and come back
Speaker 1: for the podcast Astras, where we keep the tape rolling
Speaker 1: and continue discussing all things defense related. You can find
Speaker 1: that at iTunes, Google podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever finer podcasts
Speaker 1: are found. We love your comments, feedback and suggestions right
Speaker 1: to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net.
Speaker 1: Give us a review on Apple iTunes. You can check
Speaker 1: out my weekly column on Bloomberg dot com. Follow me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at rit Halts. I'm Barry Hults. You're listening
Speaker 1: to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast, Ayesh,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for doing this. I don't spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time with the former defense secretaries, and
Speaker 1: I have a million questions. I am fascinated by the
Speaker 1: Department of Defense. And if I was born either ten
Speaker 1: years earlier or ten years later, I absolutely would have
Speaker 1: joined the military. I was in that. I was in
Speaker 1: that zone at the tail end when I graduated high school.
Speaker 1: It was it was still however from v No. No,
Speaker 1: the draft was long over, UM, but there was still
Speaker 1: hangover from Vietnam, and it my father would have killed
Speaker 1: me if had I done that. UM. I always fancied
Speaker 1: myself a fighter pilot, which, as you described great is
Speaker 1: it's a UM. This is now manned aircraft is now
Speaker 1: going to be an antique. It's not like even even today,
Speaker 1: you know you're fighting missiles. It's not a dog fight
Speaker 1: like it have mixed today, and that mixing will get
Speaker 1: even more and more unmanned over time. I think. I
Speaker 1: think that's right. There are a couple of questions I
Speaker 1: wanted to get to both about the book and some
Speaker 1: of the more interesting things some of the more shocking
Speaker 1: things within the book. I love the discussion about the
Speaker 1: Joint Strike Fighter, where you're negotiating was is this some
Speaker 1: north Rop Lockied Lockied Martin, not Northrop Grumman, which is
Speaker 1: what I grew up with. UM. Next town over as
Speaker 1: a kid, um Grumman was in Bethpage and were building
Speaker 1: F fourteens there in the middle of negotiations. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: already you come in as Secretary of Defense, it's already
Speaker 1: way over budget, way delayed. And in negotiations, the representative
Speaker 1: from Lockheed asked, well, how many of these you know
Speaker 1: you're talking about budgets and what have you. How many
Speaker 1: of these planes can you afford? And your answer is
Speaker 1: how about none? And you get up and walk out
Speaker 1: of the room. Tell us about that negotiation, and first
Speaker 1: of all, why was the Drke's Joint Strike fighter so
Speaker 1: far behind? How important was this as a piece of
Speaker 1: military hardware? And how was this resolved under your leadership?
Speaker 1: That was a tough moment. Uh. In that media room.
Speaker 1: That was a Saturday, and people knew if I called
Speaker 1: meetings on Saturday, it was because I was pissed. Fight Uh.
Speaker 1: And I did have the CEO of this company, and
Speaker 1: I want to say I have as a successor and
Speaker 1: very good relations with lockeed Martin, and they do a
Speaker 1: lot of good work for us. But business is business
Speaker 1: us And what I was telling him was that if
Speaker 1: this management of this program doesn't improve it's going to
Speaker 1: go down the toilet. It's going down the reputational toilet.
Speaker 1: It's a joke in the media. What's the most bloated
Speaker 1: thing government? Everybody can say, Joint Strike f you are,
Speaker 1: and there are toilet seats and people associated with well,
Speaker 1: and you can't ask for seven or billion dollars for
Speaker 1: the taxpayer for defense if you're running things like that.
Speaker 1: So I was the weapons buyer at that time, and
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I can't defend this kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and you're going to drag down the whole program with
Speaker 1: this kind of management. That's the point I was making
Speaker 1: to him. What did we do with the Joint strike
Speaker 1: freighter to get it back on track? There are a
Speaker 1: number of things, but one thing I described in the
Speaker 1: book because it is kind of an executive guide to
Speaker 1: run the place, and contracting is critical. And what I
Speaker 1: did was shift the air early aircraft building contract. One
Speaker 1: of the steps I took to an incentive contract it
Speaker 1: rather rather than a contract where whatever he spent we
Speaker 1: gave him. That was the old old That was the
Speaker 1: old method. And you can imagine where that I mean
Speaker 1: human nature being as you can see where that leads
Speaker 1: and that's okay. If you're doing an experimental, more developmental
Speaker 1: type thing, you don't really know where it's going to go.
Speaker 1: And it's unfair to make the guy give you a price.
Speaker 1: Once he's building aircraft and he's been doing it for
Speaker 1: a couple of years, couple of what he's up against, well,
Speaker 1: in this particular model, UH, for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: And I and we I said, let's write a contract
Speaker 1: like this, will agree on a target price seems like
Speaker 1: and that you think and I think, is about what
Speaker 1: it will cost to build that plane. And we'll put
Speaker 1: a little profit in not a little profit, but a
Speaker 1: reasonable profit in there. For you, every dollar you overrun
Speaker 1: of that, I'm gonna make you pay fifty cents and
Speaker 1: the tax barrel bay fifty cents, except if it runs
Speaker 1: up to twenty cents on the dollar. After that you
Speaker 1: have to pay for it all. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: if you if you deliver it cheaper then the target
Speaker 1: you get to keep fifty cents. I get fifty cents back. Yes,
Speaker 1: that puts the right economic incentives on the contractor. And
Speaker 1: with that and some other managerial moves, we made the
Speaker 1: costs of the joint stock strike fighters stopped rising and
Speaker 1: eventually turned over. And now we have a joint strike fighter,
Speaker 1: which I have to tell you that I said earlier
Speaker 1: in this conversation that I think it's the last man
Speaker 1: fighter will ever build. But we do need it now
Speaker 1: because we need fighter aircraft and it's the aircraft of
Speaker 1: the future for our air Force, our Navy, and our
Speaker 1: Marine corps. So without it we would be in trouble.
Speaker 1: On top of which, there are a lot of foreign
Speaker 1: customers for it, and we sell it and it's actually
Speaker 1: good for our economy and for our defense industry. We
Speaker 1: look at the old teens and fifteen. These are decades
Speaker 1: old planes, right, yes, and they got improved, you know,
Speaker 1: gradually over time, and we sold many of them abroad
Speaker 1: and they were very useful in Iraq, in Afghanistan and
Speaker 1: so forth, and also in deterring more formidable enemies than
Speaker 1: than the enemies we found uh there, So we needed
Speaker 1: the joint Strike writer. But this is an example of
Speaker 1: how uh, whether it's aircraft carriers, fighter aircraft dogs for
Speaker 1: I E. D s we talk about a services. Do
Speaker 1: you know that half of the contract spend of the
Speaker 1: Department of Defense is not for aircraft and satellites. Not
Speaker 1: for things. It's for services, mowing the lawn at a base,
Speaker 1: doing high tech R and D, all these things, and
Speaker 1: you have to you have to learn how to be
Speaker 1: a good buyer. They're also so uh as the person
Speaker 1: who ran the acquisition corps, I needed to train them
Speaker 1: to be excellent an acquisition and then I had to
Speaker 1: back them up because when companies trying to push them around,
Speaker 1: or not companies, it was it was always the what
Speaker 1: the lobbyists of the companies tried to push them around,
Speaker 1: or members of Congress of their staffs tried to push
Speaker 1: them around. You need to stick up for them if
Speaker 1: they're doing the right thing. And when you do that,
Speaker 1: that makes everybody in the acquisition corps performed to their
Speaker 1: highest potential. And it was real important to me to
Speaker 1: set that example that the boss backs you up when
Speaker 1: you do the right thing. And anywhere in the penning
Speaker 1: on and I would say anywhere in leadership, in any department.
Speaker 1: You have to set expectations, but then when people meet
Speaker 1: those expectations and they run into trouble, you need to
Speaker 1: back them up. That means if you've asked them to
Speaker 1: do risky stuff and something fails and it doesn't work out,
Speaker 1: you say, fine, you took a risk, and I told
Speaker 1: you to take the risk. It's too often we let
Speaker 1: people take risk in public life and then if it
Speaker 1: doesn't work out, well, we we throw them under the bus.
Speaker 1: Caught him loose. Yeah, well that's fine. It works once
Speaker 1: and then nobody else wants after that. You don't get
Speaker 1: anything out of them. So you mentioned high tech. Um
Speaker 1: my view of and I think a lot of people's
Speaker 1: view of the rise of technology in the American economy,
Speaker 1: much of that traces back to DARPA and NASA, and
Speaker 1: whether we're talking semiconductors or software or geosynchronous satellites and GPS,
Speaker 1: all these things traced back to what we did in
Speaker 1: the fifties, sixties, seventies. Are we still engaging in that
Speaker 1: sort of deep research? I know, DARPA still exists, they
Speaker 1: still run all sorts of interesting contest. Self driving cars
Speaker 1: is another example. Are we as cutting edge in the
Speaker 1: technology world in defense as we once were? And if not,
Speaker 1: what should we be doing that? Well, there are two
Speaker 1: sides to it. We're still a big dog verry. We
Speaker 1: spend more on R and D than Apple, Microsoft and
Speaker 1: Google combined. So We still do a lot, including a
Speaker 1: lot of frontier stuff. But let's be realistic. When I
Speaker 1: started my career, everything of consequence in the world of technology,
Speaker 1: and you name things g I remember the birth of
Speaker 1: GPS um by the way, the Defense Department, the Air
Speaker 1: Force supposed, oh no, we didn't want to do it,
Speaker 1: and had to be overturned by the civilian leadership. And
Speaker 1: that it was President Reagan who all by himself decided
Speaker 1: that everybody should be able to use GPS. But still
Speaker 1: it wasn't as granular and detailed as the military grade
Speaker 1: GPS at least. Yeah, that's true, that's true. But but
Speaker 1: the general point is that everything that mattered and that
Speaker 1: happened of consequence came out of government, came out of
Speaker 1: the United States, mostly came out of the military within
Speaker 1: the United States. That was then. Now it's a much
Speaker 1: bigger mix. A lot of the technology of consequence to
Speaker 1: the future comes out of the commercial world, and the
Speaker 1: commercial world is inherently global. What does that mean for
Speaker 1: us as the Defense Department? Managerially, it's a very different thing.
Speaker 1: You have to do not only the management within your
Speaker 1: own house if you're an R and D, but I
Speaker 1: had to build I called him bridges to the tech world,
Speaker 1: so that we could stay connected with them and draw
Speaker 1: the best of what they were doing into us, rather
Speaker 1: than having the flow only be the other direction. And now,
Speaker 1: how do you do that when you have Edward Snowden
Speaker 1: and you have a generation of technologists that is kind
Speaker 1: of suspicious of government or thinks government is inferior, and
Speaker 1: they're sort of uh or I had to try to
Speaker 1: restore that relationship of trust, which was the one that
Speaker 1: launched my career, that went back to the Manhattan Project.
Speaker 1: But all that would all that had been gone, and
Speaker 1: and Jim Comey, who was my colleague in the FBI,
Speaker 1: was picking fights with Tim Cook, who was the CEO
Speaker 1: of Apple, and I'm in the middle of all of this.
Speaker 1: And I tried, and I think I had some success
Speaker 1: in drawing the tech community, but you had to kind
Speaker 1: of meet him fifty fifties. So, for example, I'd try
Speaker 1: to get people to come in and serve in what
Speaker 1: I called the Defense Digital Service, which is it was
Speaker 1: a a way that you could a tech person could
Speaker 1: come in and just work for one year or on
Speaker 1: one project, and I enough to join the military. They'd
Speaker 1: have to join the civil service, and they just they
Speaker 1: could commit, and I'd go and I'd try to recruit them,
Speaker 1: and they'd have orange hair in their noses, and I'd say,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna ask you to do anything different. You
Speaker 1: can wear your hoodie coming to the Pentagon. And I
Speaker 1: promise you when you do that, first of all, your
Speaker 1: respect for the Pentagon will be very strong. And second,
Speaker 1: this will be what you'll tell your children about. You'll
Speaker 1: be proudest of this, prouder of this than working somewhere
Speaker 1: where you're selling advertising or whatever, as interesting as that
Speaker 1: may maybe. And they would come and I wouldn't make
Speaker 1: them change clothes, and they'd be walking around the halls
Speaker 1: along with all of our people who are buttoned down
Speaker 1: and a suit like me, or wearing a uniform um
Speaker 1: and they and it was true. By the time they left,
Speaker 1: they tell me, this is the most meaningful thing I've
Speaker 1: ever done. And I'm so proud of it. I'm so
Speaker 1: proud of the people that I was with and could
Speaker 1: be part of, could be part of. But if you
Speaker 1: didn't build that bridge at the beginning, and you didn't say, look,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to agree to disagree about Edward student,
Speaker 1: you may think he's a hero. I think he's a trader.
Speaker 1: But let's agree to disagree about that. But I want
Speaker 1: you to come in and give us a try. And
Speaker 1: then they would come in, they'd give it a try, successful,
Speaker 1: and they'd go back out to Silicon Valley or out
Speaker 1: to Boston or down to Austin, back to the tech hubs,
Speaker 1: and they'd take the word that the government ain't so
Speaker 1: bad after after all, and it does need our help,
Speaker 1: and it deserves our help. So that's interesting you you
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier um I ran in North Korea. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about two other countries you mentioned in the book, uh
Speaker 1: inside the Five Sided Box. Let's talk about China and Russia.
Speaker 1: China seems to be very good at hacking corporate computer
Speaker 1: systems and taking pretty much what they want, including military manufacturers,
Speaker 1: and capturing plans for jets and drones and everything else.
Speaker 1: How dangerous a adversary is China, Well there, I think
Speaker 1: they're quite dangerous, and I have thought that for quite
Speaker 1: some time. I came earlier than most people to the view,
Speaker 1: even even though I worked with the Chinese quite closely
Speaker 1: in the nineties, and after two thousand, knew everybody in
Speaker 1: the p l A had good relations with with them.
Speaker 1: It was clear to me that China wasn't going to
Speaker 1: turn out the way everybody had hoped in the nineteen nineties. Yes,
Speaker 1: that would be different. They'd be Chinese, but they wouldn't
Speaker 1: challenge the world order. They wouldn't become an economic competitor.
Speaker 1: I mean, they wouldn't become a military competitor, and they
Speaker 1: would be become an economic power, but kind of one
Speaker 1: like US, a free trade type economic uh, and be
Speaker 1: like Canada and Mexico and Europe, and that kind of
Speaker 1: it was well in the nine nineties, you may have
Speaker 1: still held onto that hope. I thought by two thousand,
Speaker 1: when my conversations, as I watched johnsa Men become Hujent
Speaker 1: Tao become Season Pining, and I've known all three of them,
Speaker 1: it became clearer and clearer that they were going down
Speaker 1: under a path quite deliberately, of state is um rather
Speaker 1: than free trade and capitalism, repression rather than an open society,
Speaker 1: and um one that was going to use every advantage
Speaker 1: a dictatorship could have to advantage themselves, including the one
Speaker 1: you started with, which is using their spy agencies to
Speaker 1: steal information. The Chinese had copied us for a long time,
Speaker 1: or we used to be flattered by that um and
Speaker 1: and then at a certain point they get good enough
Speaker 1: at copying you that it stops being flattering and becomes
Speaker 1: threatening to you. And we we passed that point quite
Speaker 1: some time ago. So let me ask a question here.
Speaker 1: I still look at China as more of an economic
Speaker 1: threat than a and and more of a potential military threat.
Speaker 1: At what point does that balance shift? At what point
Speaker 1: do they become a legitimate military threat at with aims
Speaker 1: of global domination versus letting their economy, which is quite
Speaker 1: an industrial engine, drive the development of the count I
Speaker 1: think they're convinced and determined to be militarily superior, but
Speaker 1: that's not going to happen for a long time. We
Speaker 1: have comprehensive military power that is going to be to
Speaker 1: take a long time for the Chinese to overcome. And
Speaker 1: think about this, We spend a lot more every year
Speaker 1: than they do for starters multiple Secondly, yes, Secondly, we
Speaker 1: have been doing that for decades, which means we have
Speaker 1: this accumulated capital stock that is much larger than their's. Third,
Speaker 1: we have an experienced military. Our people have basically been
Speaker 1: at war for the last fifteen years. Our officer courts
Speaker 1: extremely proficient. And last we have all the friends and
Speaker 1: allies and they have none. Basically they've been buying friends
Speaker 1: with that belt and road approach. You know, I'm not
Speaker 1: I think the Belton Road, like them, overtaking us militarily
Speaker 1: is exaggerated. Also, it's what yeah Belton Road. Remember this
Speaker 1: is the country that builds cities with no people in them,
Speaker 1: and so they're perfectly capable of having initiatives with nothing
Speaker 1: going on underneath. What they did with Belton Road was
Speaker 1: gathered together a lot of stuff they were doing. Anyway,
Speaker 1: most of the countries that they they Belton Road with
Speaker 1: South America. Yeah, well, go to Africa and ask how
Speaker 1: that which where the Chinese came first? And the Chinese
Speaker 1: have worn't out there. It takes about three years and
Speaker 1: they were out there welcome. Yes, because that's when people
Speaker 1: realize that it's all about China and they're not grants
Speaker 1: their loans, their loans on predatory terms, and the Chinese
Speaker 1: bringing all their own workers and then start taking your
Speaker 1: precious metals out of your country. They bring in their
Speaker 1: own work. And that's the Belton Road. So it's sours
Speaker 1: on people real fast because it's so explode a native,
Speaker 1: you know. And that's where China and we, I think,
Speaker 1: really differ in fundamentally, and that is this if our
Speaker 1: at our best and usually and certainly our institutions go
Speaker 1: back to the Enlightenment, and it was about the rights
Speaker 1: of man and the dignity of man. Today we'd say, people, um,
Speaker 1: for China, it's all about being Chinese. So our ideology, Yes,
Speaker 1: we're American and we stick up for Americans, and maybe
Speaker 1: we're narrow minded sometime, but at the heart, our political
Speaker 1: values are universal. At their heart, Chinese political values are
Speaker 1: about being China. Pretty soon that dawns on everybody around them.
Speaker 1: Remember also that China is only half of Asia. So
Speaker 1: I want to have a China policy, but always telling
Speaker 1: people we don't have a China policy, we have an
Speaker 1: Asia policy, and I want to win the other half.
Speaker 1: I want to trade with it. I wanted to be
Speaker 1: friendly with me. I it to work with me militarily,
Speaker 1: and that is both a good in itself and the
Speaker 1: hedge against China. So we we can't lose those. We
Speaker 1: really had to keep our focus and the Secretary Defense
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time meeting with my counterparts
Speaker 1: from Vietnam, from Laos, from Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, as well
Speaker 1: as the traditional friends like Japan and it's Korean, Australian,
Speaker 1: so forth, to make sure that we had friends there
Speaker 1: and that the Chinese saw that we had friends. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about one other country in Asia, which is Russia.
Speaker 1: Not economically the powerhouse that China is, but they seem
Speaker 1: to be very good at sowing descent and sowing disinformation.
Speaker 1: Their brand of um warfare or pre warfare is kind
Speaker 1: of unique, their involvement in various uh, when you're in
Speaker 1: open society, you have to acknowledge that they're going to
Speaker 1: attempt to disrupt our elections and everything else. How does
Speaker 1: the former secretary of Defense look at the former Soviet
Speaker 1: Union that's now Russia. Well, when your trend lines are
Speaker 1: all down like Russia's and rather than up like China's,
Speaker 1: you only have one tool, and that is to be
Speaker 1: a spoiler. And the Russians have perfected being a spoiler.
Speaker 1: So they have NATO, which has unity, and so they
Speaker 1: try to to so discord. They had the United States,
Speaker 1: which is doing fine and powerful and won the Cold
Speaker 1: War and they resent and so their way of trying
Speaker 1: to get back at US is to try to so
Speaker 1: discord within the United States. That's all they have. And
Speaker 1: when dealing with Putin over the years, by the way
Speaker 1: I first met Vladimir Putin, he was a note taker
Speaker 1: meetings between Clinton and Yelson. He sat in the back,
Speaker 1: this guy, and we knew who he was, c Ia
Speaker 1: knew he was. He's back there taking his and my
Speaker 1: view of him has been if it were only that
Speaker 1: we disagreed about Syria and van and NATO expansion and
Speaker 1: so forth, those are normal geopolitical issues, and there with
Speaker 1: a foreign leader, you go in and you agree where
Speaker 1: you can, and you agree to disagree where you can't,
Speaker 1: and you go on. The problem with him is as
Speaker 1: you work down the list, you find he has an
Speaker 1: item on his list that you can't build a bridge to,
Speaker 1: and that's screwing us, and that's on his to do list.
Speaker 1: It's very hard to negotiate on and say, well, let's
Speaker 1: talk about screwing us and maybe we can meet halfway.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not going to do that. I expect
Speaker 1: we're going to find out that Russia was much more
Speaker 1: involved in Brexit than anybody previously imagined. Yeah, that's actually
Speaker 1: a new documentary out called A Great Hack Netflix documentary
Speaker 1: which describes exactly that. Very deeply involved in trying so
Speaker 1: that now. Of course for them, it was there. They're
Speaker 1: they're uh, throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing right
Speaker 1: stick there. They're fomenting all kinds of discord, and every
Speaker 1: once in a while one of these goes, one of
Speaker 1: these long shots goes the distance and doesn't just stir
Speaker 1: up a cloud of dust. But there's a cowboy at
Speaker 1: the end of it. And in the case of Brexit,
Speaker 1: they scored um. But I don't think going into it
Speaker 1: that they knew they were going to win that one.
Speaker 1: They were, uh, that's what week countries do. And and
Speaker 1: Russia basically has nuclear weapons and being a spoiler, and
Speaker 1: that's all it's got. I have a million questions for you,
Speaker 1: but I know I only have you for a short
Speaker 1: period of time. Let me ask you some of my
Speaker 1: favorite questions I ask all my guests sort of our
Speaker 1: speed rounds, and then we'll get you over to television
Speaker 1: and have you continue the conversation. What was the first
Speaker 1: car you ever owned? Year making model? It was a
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight empower. And the reason and I know
Speaker 1: intimately about that car was I worked for five years
Speaker 1: at gas station on North broad Street in Philadelphia. Was
Speaker 1: my second job. The first job was at a car wash,
Speaker 1: and I got fired from it. Uh, and then I
Speaker 1: walked up the street and got a job at a
Speaker 1: Gulf station there and and therefore I could take that
Speaker 1: car apart and put it back together again, something I
Speaker 1: could never do with a car today. Well, it's all
Speaker 1: chips and computers. It's you have to replace. You just replace, uh,
Speaker 1: chunks of it. You know, there are no turning and
Speaker 1: ranches and stuff. Tell us about your early mentors who
Speaker 1: influenced your career, whether it was academically an m I. T.
Speaker 1: And Harvard or UM professionally in the Pentagon two years.
Speaker 1: The people who got me from being a physicist to
Speaker 1: being a public servant were those guys from the UM
Speaker 1: generation of the Manhattan Project that I referred to earlier,
Speaker 1: who believed that they had UM done something of consequence,
Speaker 1: namely the nuclear weapon. But with no college came responsibility.
Speaker 1: Then later in my in the time where I slowly
Speaker 1: kind of worked my way up from junior ranks in
Speaker 1: the Defense Establishment to becoming the Secretary of Defense. Um,
Speaker 1: there were people uh like Jim Slessinger, was Richard Nixon,
Speaker 1: same great great guy, Brent Scotcroft, national security advisor and
Speaker 1: four star general previous yes three start Actually okay, he
Speaker 1: deserved one. Um Bill Perry, who was Secretary of Defense,
Speaker 1: Admiral Inn. This is a guy who There was a
Speaker 1: Perry long ago who was a no. This is a
Speaker 1: guy who was a scientist like it turns out, but
Speaker 1: not all three of those were um Bob Gates. These
Speaker 1: were people who were uh capable, and they always stuck up,
Speaker 1: stuck up for a junior person. And I got myself
Speaker 1: into a few tight jams where I thought I was
Speaker 1: doing the right thing. One of them was with respect
Speaker 1: to President Reagan star Wars, which I I said wasn't
Speaker 1: going to work, was my technical judgment. Well, that flew
Speaker 1: in the face of a president's desire, and I learned
Speaker 1: what it was like to tell the truth in the
Speaker 1: real world, where presidents don't like when you trap all
Speaker 1: over there initiatives. But those people that I just named
Speaker 1: stuck up for me at that time and therefore stuck
Speaker 1: up for the truth, and that made me feel that
Speaker 1: there was dignity and honor as well as purpose in
Speaker 1: public life. And I tried to carry that forward with me.
Speaker 1: And I don't think I would have stuck with it
Speaker 1: if I hadn't been able to look up at my
Speaker 1: at people who it turns out, became my predecessors and
Speaker 1: Secretary of Defense and say that is not only a
Speaker 1: capable and patriotic person, but an admirable and honorable person.
Speaker 1: Quite quite interesting. Let's let's talk ab out some of
Speaker 1: your favorite books. What do you enjoy reading. You're a
Speaker 1: bit of a it's funny berry. I am uh, and
Speaker 1: I'm all nonfiction because I love to learn about something
Speaker 1: I've never seen, never done, never will do. That's why
Speaker 1: I wrote the book I did about the Pentagon, because
Speaker 1: if you've never been in the Pentagon and you want
Speaker 1: to know how all the parts were, it paints quite
Speaker 1: a vivid picture. It's an executive guide or a citizens
Speaker 1: guide to the Pentagon. Side about me, it's about the
Speaker 1: the Pentagon. I like reading books like that. That's why
Speaker 1: I wrote a book like that. I read, and this
Speaker 1: may surprise you, textbooks. Okay, it may sound boring, but
Speaker 1: here's why a text if you want to learn something.
Speaker 1: A textbook is about is designed. It's written to teach you.
Speaker 1: So from a good textbook you can learn a lot
Speaker 1: about a subject you don't know. And um, second, if
Speaker 1: you don't like if if something doesn't come through to
Speaker 1: you in the first textbook, get another textbook. I always
Speaker 1: get three or four the same. I like mathematics, I
Speaker 1: like physics, but about like history and language and so
Speaker 1: forth too, because then you can say, well, I'm gonna this.
Speaker 1: I didn't get this guy's explanation of a certain subject,
Speaker 1: so I'll go to the corresponding chapter and the other
Speaker 1: one and read that, and they've got a better explanation,
Speaker 1: and you go back and forth. I like doing that.
Speaker 1: And it may sound like an odd recommendation to people,
Speaker 1: but if you like to learn, try textbooks. Okay, there's
Speaker 1: there's two books I have to ask you about on
Speaker 1: the off chance you might have read them based on
Speaker 1: our previous discussion. One is a book on the history
Speaker 1: of the medieval era with the title A World Lit
Speaker 1: Only by Fire. I have I had not read it,
Speaker 1: but I've I've read. I guess it's kind of fascinating
Speaker 1: because that thousand year period is shocking for the lack
Speaker 1: of technological advancement. Before and after Tons it was it
Speaker 1: was dark and every it wasn't cold, truly dark. But
Speaker 1: if you look at human material progress, not allow for
Speaker 1: the wet. For Western culture, there was a thousand years
Speaker 1: when say, Islam was going great and yes, and they
Speaker 1: were doing mathematics, and they were doing all sorts of
Speaker 1: things with trade and pottery and glass, and we were
Speaker 1: doing nothing. Ever in the Western world. The the other
Speaker 1: book that you immediately made me think of when you
Speaker 1: were describing how people often don't appreciate and understand what
Speaker 1: the government is doing is the most recent Michael Lewis
Speaker 1: book called The Fifth Risk, which is about all these
Speaker 1: scientists and all these managers that are doing the government's
Speaker 1: work that is effectively essential and most of us are
Speaker 1: oblivious to it. Well, that's in a sense the theme
Speaker 1: of that book is the theme of my life of
Speaker 1: getting into national defense as a technologist, and there are
Speaker 1: lots of other skills as well. I'm a strong believer
Speaker 1: that um uh, the best government is one that people
Speaker 1: come into and go out of. Now we're criticized for that,
Speaker 1: for the reving for the yeah, and every administration, things
Speaker 1: change And here's how it looks to me about political
Speaker 1: appointees and government. About half of them are really good. Uh,
Speaker 1: a quarter of them have no idea what they're doing
Speaker 1: at first, but they learn fast and they're patriotic and
Speaker 1: they do well. And a quarter of them are hopeless
Speaker 1: and never get any better. That's pretty much the way
Speaker 1: it is. But they bring in a freshness every time
Speaker 1: they come that I think is healthy for our government.
Speaker 1: And so compared to the British, who are horrified, for example,
Speaker 1: to see all their counterparts chart change every time for
Speaker 1: presidential administration change, it's pretty helpful. But in a time,
Speaker 1: particularly in the military, where we're very we're never going
Speaker 1: to return to the draft. We will continue to get
Speaker 1: people to register for the draft because it's a little
Speaker 1: reminder that they owe something to their country. But I
Speaker 1: don't want there are four million kids who turn eighteen
Speaker 1: every year. I don't need four million. I need a
Speaker 1: quarter of a million. And moreover, many of them are
Speaker 1: not physically or mentally fit to be in our military today,
Speaker 1: so there'll never be a citizen army. So there needs
Speaker 1: to be some way of linking the people and government,
Speaker 1: and one way is for those who have something to
Speaker 1: contribute to to to UM, find some way of being
Speaker 1: supportive UH. And there are lots of ways of of
Speaker 1: doing that. So I I think that's important for citizens
Speaker 1: that don't don't believe yourself made. Even if you're a
Speaker 1: successful person, none of us is self made. Tell us
Speaker 1: about a time you failed and what you learned from
Speaker 1: the experience. UM. I early early on in my UH
Speaker 1: time in to speak the big leagues, the number three,
Speaker 1: number two, number one, UH, I had to work very
Speaker 1: hard at dealing with the press and the Congress and
Speaker 1: just getting good at that. UM. And first of all,
Speaker 1: you have to start from the right place that I did,
Speaker 1: which is you can't start from a position of disdain. UH.
Speaker 1: Congress for example, you know, most of these guys are
Speaker 1: working so hard. There's so they're they are trying to
Speaker 1: understand a much wider range of issues than even the
Speaker 1: Secretary of Defense. They have to vote on all these
Speaker 1: other issues. And so you have to start with a
Speaker 1: attitude that they're very they're that they're very stretched, and
Speaker 1: they're they're trying. UM. But what I had to do, Barry,
Speaker 1: and I described this in the book is practice. I
Speaker 1: would sit down before a hearing, or before I went
Speaker 1: out and made an announcement or did a press conference,
Speaker 1: I would got in practice and I at my staff
Speaker 1: and I'd get Joe Doneford. It was a chairman with me,
Speaker 1: so he could learn to in the same roy and
Speaker 1: I'd say, asked me all the hard questions, asked me
Speaker 1: the things that I might not have thought of. UM,
Speaker 1: because when you're when you're going real fast. And I
Speaker 1: was going real fast, because there's a lot I wanted
Speaker 1: to do and I had two years as the top guy, UM,
Speaker 1: and I had had all those years to think about
Speaker 1: what I would like to see see Donna. I was
Speaker 1: going fast, UM, and I wanted them to catch the
Speaker 1: soft spots in my arguments. And the place was where
Speaker 1: I was skipping over over things. So I wasn't too
Speaker 1: proud to practice. But Chuck Hagel, who came before me,
Speaker 1: who was a very very great guy, he didn't practice
Speaker 1: for his confirmation hearing, and that was a rough confinmations
Speaker 1: of very rough confirmation. And I asked him to practice.
Speaker 1: I said, I wasn't too proud to practice, and he said,
Speaker 1: I've been a member of the Senate for a long time.
Speaker 1: I know how to handle it. I think in retrospect
Speaker 1: he would have done well, done a little bit better
Speaker 1: if he had he had practiced um. But that was
Speaker 1: something I wasn't good at, and I describe in the
Speaker 1: book holl if you're that kind of person, or you
Speaker 1: think you might be, don't be too proud. Um. What
Speaker 1: are you most optimistic about the penticon and the military
Speaker 1: procumin process going forward? And what are you most pessimistic
Speaker 1: about about his procurement process? I think that if the
Speaker 1: it continues, the kind have good management at the top,
Speaker 1: and I can't speak for that, of course I tried
Speaker 1: to set that example, but I don't know. Um Uh.
Speaker 1: I think we can continue to be the finest fighting
Speaker 1: force the world has overknown technologically as well as in
Speaker 1: the kind of people we attract, and generally speaking, I'm
Speaker 1: optimistic about that for our military overall, it's a learning organization.
Speaker 1: It's very constructive organization. It's been at the top technologically
Speaker 1: in terms of human talent, and if it continues to
Speaker 1: draw from the civilian world the very best trade craft
Speaker 1: from them about how to be good and how to
Speaker 1: compete and how to be the best, I think I'm
Speaker 1: I'm confident we can be the best. I also think
Speaker 1: that it's a great molder of of citizens. Our veterans
Speaker 1: are wonderful people. They're they're morally correct, they know how
Speaker 1: to behave themselves and conduct themselves. Uh, They're disciplined and determined,
Speaker 1: and they understand that we all live here and uh
Speaker 1: that the government is one of the ways, but not
Speaker 1: the only way, that we keep our society and civilization going.
Speaker 1: They have that imbued in them. They know that they're
Speaker 1: not self made, that they're part of a wider society,
Speaker 1: all those good values. So I'm pretty optimistic. And our
Speaker 1: final question, what do you know about the world of
Speaker 1: politics and diplomacy and the Pentagon today that you wish
Speaker 1: you knew when you were getting started. I didn't always.
Speaker 1: I think I took a lot for granted in the
Speaker 1: course of my life when I talked about the gym
Speaker 1: Slassingers and the Prince car across from the Bill Perry's
Speaker 1: and the pop Games, and I'm being I could always
Speaker 1: look northward right up to the President and there was
Speaker 1: uh a good order and discipline for the most part
Speaker 1: in the government. And these were admirable people. They made
Speaker 1: mistakes there for sure, and I didn't agree with everything
Speaker 1: they did. But starting with President Reagan and the first
Speaker 1: president I worked under, I could look up and I say,
Speaker 1: the President United States is is someone whom I can
Speaker 1: work for and kind of emulate what he stands for.
Speaker 1: There's a part of our country and it's not just
Speaker 1: the president, but it's that um Ah. I I now
Speaker 1: understand how lucky I was to have those people above me,
Speaker 1: and maybe I took that for granted. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: a believer in what we've been doing in the world
Speaker 1: all these decades. I now realized that you you really
Speaker 1: have to keep proving that to the public and make
Speaker 1: them understand that this is a necessity and you can't
Speaker 1: take anything for granted. So I I would take a
Speaker 1: lot less for granted now than I thought I could
Speaker 1: when I started my career. But I had around me
Speaker 1: people like those um and you tend to do that
Speaker 1: quite quite fascinating. We have been speaking with Ash Carter,
Speaker 1: former Secretary of Defense and author of a new book,
Speaker 1: Inside the Five Sided Box, Lessons from a Lifetime of
Speaker 1: Leadership in the Pentagon. If you enjoy this conversation, we'll
Speaker 1: be sure to look up an intro down an Inch
Speaker 1: on Apple iTunes, and you can see any of the
Speaker 1: previous three hundred or so such conversations we've had over
Speaker 1: the past five years. We love your comments, feedback and suggestions.
Speaker 1: Write to us at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net.
Speaker 1: Please give us a review on Apple iTunes. I would
Speaker 1: be remiss if I did not thank the crack staff
Speaker 1: that helps put these conversations together each week. Michael Boyle
Speaker 1: is my producer. Carolin O'Brien is my audio engineer ATKA.
Speaker 1: Val Bern is my project manager. Michael Batnick is my
Speaker 1: head of research. I'm Barry Retults. You're listening to Masters
Speaker 1: in Business on Bloomberg Radio.