Carter visits Cyber Command

Ashton Carter chose Cyber Command for his first troop event in the United States as secretary of the Defense Department, a move he said showed the importance of cybersecurity to the Pentagon.

In a March 13 televised speech to Cyber Command staff at Fort Meade, Md., the new secretary reflected on the close relationship between the command and the National Security Agency, and the challenge of incorporating cybersecurity into military career fields.

Development of the cyber workforce "can be a model for other things we do in the department," Carter said. "The freshness of approach -- the constant effort to stay up [and] reinvent that your field demands -- is actually something we can use everywhere in the department."

Yet work remains to integrate cybersecurity into traditional military career paths, he added.

Carter also backed keeping Cyber Command and NSA under one leader, as they have been since the command's formal establishment in 2010. "One way of thinking about that is that we just don't have enough good people like you to spread around," he said to the employees. "We need to cluster our hits as a country, and that's one of the reasons why we're going to keep these two together, at least for now."

A technology and privacy review panel appointed by President Barack Obama in 2013 advised against having the same person lead NSA and Cyber Command, but the administration rejected the recommendation. While defending the two organizations' union, Carter left open the possibility of separating the pair once Cyber Command has been sufficiently developed.

He also cast the cybersecurity mission in moral terms. "We're the ones who stand with those who create and innovate against those who would steal and destroy," he said. "That's the kind of country we are, and that's the kind of cyber force we are."