Former Defense Secretary Ash Carter, a physicist who pushed for closer ties between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon, opened combat positions to women and streamlined the command that ran the war against the Islamic State terror group, died of a heart attack Monday evening, his family said. He was 68.
An experienced Pentagon official, he became President Barack Obama’s last defense chief, serving from 2015-2017, a period defined by the U.S. campaign against Islamic State.
“President...
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Former Defense Secretary Ash Carter, a physicist who pushed for closer ties between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon, opened combat positions to women and streamlined the command that ran the war against the Islamic State terror group, died of a heart attack Monday evening, his family said. He was 68.
An experienced Pentagon official, he became President Barack Obama’s last defense chief, serving from 2015-2017, a period defined by the U.S. campaign against Islamic State.
“President Obama and I relied on Ash’s fierce intellect and wise counsel to ensure our military’s readiness, technological edge, and obligation to the women and men of the greatest fighting force in the history of the world,” said President Biden, who was vice president when Mr. Carter was defense secretary and continued to rely on his expertise as president through his Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Mr. Carter, who was also a Harvard professor who had a degree in theoretical physics, spent his career in government and academia. He served as the director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government at the time of his death.
“He believed that his most profound legacy would be the thousands of students he taught with the hope that they would make the world a better and safer place,” his family said in a statement.
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Mr. Carter played an important role in restructuring the U.S. military command that prosecuted the campaign against Islamic State militants. In a monograph published by the Belfer Center, he recounted how he concluded during a visit to the Middle East soon after becoming the Pentagon chief that “the United States and its coalition partners lacked a comprehensive, achievable plan for success.”
The campaign against the terror group started slowly and unexpectedly after Islamic State took control of Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, in June 2014, less than three years after U.S. troops left.
“He was instrumental in creating unity of effort in the war against ISIS,” said Sean MacFarland, a retired Army Lieutenant General who led the fight against the terrorist group from 2015-2016, using an acronym for Islamic State. “He brought together conventional and special forces operating in multiple countries under one command.”
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“He also played a key role in giving the commanders the necessary resources and latitude to conduct operations successfully, like sending U.S. advisers into the field with Iraqi troops,” he added.
Against the objections of the Marine Corps, Mr. Carter opened combat positions to women, calling it the “right thing to do for our people and for the force.” That decision paved the way for women to not only be on the front lines of war but also hold the jobs that lead to becoming general officers.
“We’re talking about talented Americans who are serving with distinction or who want the opportunity to serve. We can’t allow barriers unrelated to a person’s qualifications [to] prevent us from recruiting and retaining those who can best accomplish the mission,” he said in June 2016 when announcing the decision.
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When he was serving as deputy defense secretary, Mr. Carter also established the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office in 2012, concluding that the U.S. needed to take advantage of cutting-edge technology in a renewed competition with China and Russia.
While leading the Pentagon, Mr. Carter also repeatedly visited Silicon Valley and pushed for private industry to help the military develop better technology, particularly in cybersecurity.
Ashton Baldwin Carter was born Sept. 24, 1954 in Philadelphia. His father was a physicist and a Navy veteran, and Mr. Carter obtained a bachelor’s degree from Yale University, earning a double major in physics and medieval history. His senior thesis was titled “Quarks, Charm and the Psi Particle.” He then traveled to the University of Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and earned his Ph.D.
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Mr. Carter wrote a number of books. In 2000, he co-wrote the book “Preventive Defense” with William Perry, who served as defense secretary in the Clinton administration. The two former officials argued that the U.S. strategy should aim at preventing the re-emergence of the sort of “A list” threats the U.S. had confronted during the Cold War.
In 2019, he wrote a book titled “Inside the Five-Sided Box: Lessons from a Lifetime of Leadership in the Pentagon” in which he sought to demystify the department and share details about his time as defense chief.
He is survived by his wife, Stephanie, and his children, Ava and Will. Funeral arrangements are pending, the family said.