US President Barack Obama made one thing clear in choosing his fourth defense secretary: He gives the orders, his military advisers follow them.
Obama has been through three defense secretaries in six years, and they have all complained about micromanagement from the White House. Former US deputy secretary of defense Ashton Carter, whom Obama is nominating to be the next, has watched it happen.
So Carter offered words of deference to Obama at the announcement ceremony on Friday — and capped his remarks with an on-camera bear hug for US National Security Adviser Susan Rice.
Photo: Bloomberg
“I accepted the president’s offer to be nominated for secretary of defense because I respected his leadership,” Carter said.
Current US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, who announced his resignation on Monday last week, has had a frosty relationship with the president’s staff. He did not attend yesterday’s ceremony — even after the White House announced that he would be there.
After skipping the White House ceremony yesterday, Hagel released a statement praising Carter as “a renowned strategist, scientist, and scholar with expertise spanning from international security and counterterrorism to science, technology, and innovation.”
Carter has expressed a philosophical view toward government infighting in the past.
“Public service at senior levels in Washington is a little bit like being a Christian in the Coliseum,” Carter wrote in his autobiography for Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where he has been a faculty member. “You never know when they are going to release the lions and have you torn apart for the amusement of onlookers.”
A former Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he received a doctorate in theoretical physics, Carter’s involvement in defense policy dates back to Cold War-era debates over the MX missile system. He joined a team of scientists analyzing the missile system for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment in 1979, according to his biography.
He went from there to the systems analysis department in the defense secretary’s office, which he described as the successor group to the “whiz kids” that Robert McNamara recruited to help modernize military strategy during the 1960s.
Since then, he has mostly cycled between positions in government and academia.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the