Gallery: DOD Head Ashton Carter Enlists Silicon Valley to Transform the Military
Interfoto/Alamy01tramsport/transportation, cars, Cadillac Fleetwood Eldorado Convertible, 1965, car, USA, 20th century, historic, historical,
1965: Ashton Carter gets his first job, at a car wash in Philadelphia. Fired for mouthing off to the owner, he lands a job at the gas station up the street.
Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy021975 Fermilab
1975: As a Yale undergrad, Carter travels to the Fermilab, home of the largest particle accelerator, and writes one of his senior theses on the newly discovered charm quark, a subatomic particle.
Greg Balfour Evans/Alamy03Radcliffe Camera from Cathedral, Radcliffe Square, Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, United Kingdom. Image shot 2007. Exact date unknown.
1976: Awarded a Rhodes scholarship, Carter takes advantage of the financial backing to pursue his doctorate in theoretical physics at Oxford University. He also patronizes the local pubs.
Popperfoto/Getty Images04War and Conflict. The Cold War. pic: circa 1981. A drawing of the Soviet Russia "Typhoon" 25,000 ton strategic submarine which was launched from the Severodvinsk Naval Shipyard in 1980.
1980: Carter helps protect the US from Soviet bombs by taking a year off of academia to work at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment.
Courtesy of Time051983 1101830404-400
1984: During a research fellowship at MIT, Carter writes a report saying that President Reagan’s “Star Wars” initiative can’t protect the US from a Soviet nuclear attack. The president is not impressed, but defense scholars are.
Alamy06Rowing on the Charles River and Harvard University buildings in Cambridge Greater Boston Massachusetts USA. Image shot 10/2008. Exact date unknown.
1988: Carter gets tenure at Harvard.
Kostyantyn Ivanyshen/Alamy07sunflowers in field. Image shot 2008. Exact date unknown.
1996: After helping draft legislation to dismantle nuclear weapons left behind in former Soviet territories, Carter rides out of Ukraine with the last of the bombs there. Sunflowers, a Ukrainian cash crop, are planted in their place. By the end of the year, all nukes are removed from the former Soviet territories, either destroyed or transported to Russia.
Courtesy of the U.S. Navy08Soldiers visit an ANP checkpoint, coordinate security
2009: As the chief weapons buyer under SecDef Robert Gates, Carter leads the development and production of thousands of mine-resistant ambush-protected all-terrain vehicles, useful for the mountainous Afghan terrain.
Courtesy of the U.S. Department of Defense09US-POLITICS-BIDEN-CARTER
February 2015: Vice President Biden swears in Carter as the 25th US secretary of defense.
Saul Loeb/Getty Images10April 2015 529226-K-INT29-792
April 2015: Carter travels to Silicon Valley, the first SecDef to visit in two decades, to deliver a lecture at Stanford and meet with tech execs.
