This week, President Obama announced his intention to nominate Ashton B. Carter, the current Under Secretary of Defense (Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics), to be the next Deputy Secretary of Defense. Carter would succeed Deputy Secretary Bill Lynn who last month announced his decision to leave. Lynn will stay on until Carter is confirmed.
Secretary Panetta praised Carter’s selection saying that he looks forward to having Carter as his “partner as we drive solutions to the strategic management challenges facing the Department of Defense.”
Before becoming USD(AT&L) in 2009, Carter was chair of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government’s international and Global Affairs department. From 2006 until 2008, Carter was a member of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s International Security Advisory Board. Previously, Carter served in the Clinton administration as Assistant Secretary of Defense for international Security Policy from 1993 until 1996.
During his career, Carter also has been a member of the Defense Science Board (1991-93 and 1997-01) and the Defense Policy Board (1997-01), and co-chaired the Catastrophic Terrorism Study Group. He was also a Senior Partner at Global Technology Partners and served on the Board of Trustees at MITRE Corporation.
As Deputy Secretary, Carter will be the Department’s Chief Management Officer (CMO) and will head DoD’s cybersecurity strategy. Carter will play an important role in DoD’s efforts to develop an effective and efficient DoD program while reducing the long-term funding profile by hundreds of billions of dollars.
Carter has also been appointed by the president to serve on the Government Accountability and Transparency Board, which “will focus on rooting out misspent tax dollars and making government spending more accessible and transparent for the American people.”
