Welcome back to Potsay of the World.

This is Tommy Vitor, which I want to wish you all a happy July 4th special shout out and

thank you to any and all US service members.

Listen into the show.

You guys are the reason that a lot of us are able to be with our families today.

Have a beer, watch some fireworks, maybe grill out.

So we're grateful for all that you do and for listening to the show.

I really do appreciate it.

Today's episode is an interview I taped with the former Secretary of Defense, a guy named

Ash Carter.

He has a new book out.

It's called Inside the Five-Sided Box, Lessons from a Lifetime of Leadership in the Pentagon.

I talked to Ash about his book, but also tried to get him to tell us what the hell is that

job like.

So we talked about the Doomsday plane, which is this flying command central that can survive

a nuclear attack that the Secretary of Defense and maybe the president can be on to order

a return strike in the event of the worst case scenario.

I asked him to defend the 730 billion plus Pentagon budget because I think for a lot of

us that sounds like an insane amount of money and I asked him to walk me through how it

actually works.

He's written previously that the Obama administration where he was the Secretary of

Defense didn't do enough to respond to Russian interference in our election.

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