The DoD wants YOU!

U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter at Harvard on Dec. 1, 2015. (Photo: J.D. Capelouto)

U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter talked internships, science and the need to make the defense department feel more like a “zippy” start-up in an exclusive interview with college journalists Tuesday.

The Department of Defense leader has been spreading the word about his new Force of the Future initiatives, created to boost Millennial interest in national security. He spoke before participating in the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Harvard University Institute of Politics.

Carter said the hope is they change how Millennials see the government and, in turn, the DoD.

“A lot of people in your generation look at us as an industrial-age organization,” he told the group. (“They think), ‘It looks great, they do great things, but they’re kind of old-school, like General Motors and Ford.’ And that’s not the kind of place (they) want to be.”

Basically, he said, Millennials think “the government is dull, the buildings smell like … high school, and it’s all old.”

But the DoD, he told reporters, wants to build the kind of place that attracts Generation Y-ers.

To help do this, they hope to increase the presence of the Department of Defense on college campuses, mainly through an increase in funding for scientific and engineering research.

“I want to be at the forefront of science. We did a lot of amazing work, for example, around Ebola. … (Boston) is a biotech hub, among other kinds of technology — it’s sort of the center of the universe in biotechnology. Well, turns out we have a need for that, too.”

The department also wants to make students more aware of work opportunities, Carter said, such as summer internships and its Defense Digital Service program.

“We have lots of ways of giving people a shot, just for a year,” he explained. “The Defense Digital Service … takes tech people and says, ‘Come on and just work on a problem, just work for a year.’”

Carter described these experiences as “on-ramps,” and said students from low-income families especially are encouraged to take part in the internships.

“The important thing is that our internships be truly sufficiently supporting, so that somebody who doesn’t have independent means can still do this for summer or for when they get out of college for a year,” he says.

They also want to tackle Millennial mistrust of government.

“We have to work on rebuilding the bridge of trust,” he said. “I understand entirely that (Edward) Snowden (the former National Security Agency subcontractor who leaked NSA surveillance information) caused the erection of a wall in some people’s minds between what we‘re trying to accomplish and what they’re trying to accomplish. I think we need to meet people halfway.”