Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, The Podcast Interview

What made former Ash Carter so unique among his predecessors was that by the time he became the Secretary of Defense in 2015, he'd already spent nearly 30 years working at the Pentagon. This includes stints as both the deputy Secretary of Defense and as the number three in the department, a position often referred to as the acquisitions tsar.

Ash Carter, who served as Barack Obama's Secretary of Defense from 2015 to 2017, is out with a new book Inside the Five-Sided Box: Lessons from a Lifetime of Leadership in the Pentagon. This is not your conventional Washington memoir. Rather, what I found so valuable about the book is that offers a grounds-eye view of how how the world's largest national security bureaucracy operates. Decisions made at the Pentagon -- from the kinds of weapons bought, to the bases that are opened, to personnel decisions -- have world-shaping implications. This book takes you inside that decision making process.

We kick off discussing the sheer vastness of the Penta…