Jeff Bezos Joins Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s New Defense Innovation Advisory Board

To continue to enhance the Department of Defense’s (DoD) culture, technology, and processes, Defense Secretary Ash Carter established a Defense Innovation Advisory Board and has asked Amazon Founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, to join others, including astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and former Obama administration official Cass Sunstein (see a full list of board members here).

The board, Carter said in his speech, is “charged with keeping DoD imbued with a culture of innovation in people, organizations, operations, and technology, to support people who innovate, those creative figures in our department who are willing to try new things, fail fast, and iterate; and also to ensure that we’re always doing everything we can to stay ahead of potential adversaries.”

In March, Secretary Carter visited the Amazon headquarters and sat down with Jeff Bezos and AWS leadership including Andy Jassy, Charlie Bell, Adam Selipsky, Bob Kimball, Bill Vass, and Teresa Carlson to discuss innovation topics and ways to strengthen military exchange programs and partnerships with the technology industry. The Defense Innovation Advisory Board is another step in the private-public partnership bringing value and best practices to both industry and military.

We appreciate being engaged at the highest levels to help the DoD to innovate. From the Amazon Military Exchange program and DoD Fellowship to the DoD Cloud Computing SRG Impact Level 4 Authorization, we are committed to helping DoD mission owners to continue to leverage AWS for their mission-critical production applications and look for ways we can better help the different branches of the military save money, innovate faster, and deliver capabilities that help achieve their mission.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter, left, meets with Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos in Seattle, March 3, 2016. DoD photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Tim D. Godbee

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