Transcript
00:00:00 Mossad will do anything.
00:00:01 Mossad has no qualms doing what it takes
00:00:05 to ensure the survival of every Israeli citizen
00:00:08 around the world.
00:00:09 Most other countries will stop at some point,
00:00:12 but Mossad doesn’t do that.
00:00:16 The following is a conversation with Andrew Bustamante,
00:00:19 former CIA covert intelligence officer
00:00:22 and US Air Force combat veteran,
00:00:24 including the job of operational targeting
00:00:27 in cryptic communications and launch operations
00:00:31 for 200 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles.
00:00:36 Andrew’s over seven years as a CIA spy
00:00:39 have given him a skillset and a perspective on the world
00:00:43 that is fascinating to explore.
00:00:46 This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
00:00:48 To support it, please check out our sponsors
00:00:50 in the description.
00:00:52 And now, dear friends, here’s Andrew Bustamante.
00:00:55 The Central Intelligence Agency was formed
00:00:59 almost 75 years ago.
00:01:01 What is the mission of the CIA?
00:01:03 How does it work?
00:01:04 The mission of the CIA is to collect intelligence
00:01:07 from around the world that supports
00:01:08 a national security mission and be the central repository
00:01:12 for all other intelligence agencies
00:01:14 so that it’s one collective source
00:01:17 where all intelligence can be synthesized
00:01:20 and then passed forward to the decision makers.
00:01:23 That doesn’t include domestic intelligence.
00:01:26 It’s primarily looking outward outside the United States.
00:01:29 Correct.
00:01:30 CIA is the foreign intelligence collection,
00:01:35 king spoke, if you will.
00:01:37 FBI does domestic,
00:01:38 and then Department of Homeland Security does domestic.
00:01:41 Law enforcement essentially handles all things domestic.
00:01:45 Intelligence is not law enforcement,
00:01:46 so we technically cannot work inside the United States.
00:01:49 Is there clear lines to be drawn between,
00:01:52 like you just said, the FBI, CIA, FBI,
00:01:55 and the other U.S. intelligence agencies
00:01:58 like the DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency,
00:02:01 Department of Homeland Security,
00:02:04 NSA, National Security Agency, and there’s a list.
00:02:08 There’s a list of about 33
00:02:09 different intelligence organizations.
00:02:11 Yeah. So like the Army, the Navy has,
00:02:12 all the different organizations
00:02:14 have their own intelligence groups.
00:02:16 So is there clear lines here to be drawn,
00:02:19 or is the CIA the giant integrator of all of these?
00:02:23 It’s a little bit of both, to be honest.
00:02:24 So yes, there are absolutely lines,
00:02:26 and more so than the lines.
00:02:28 There are lines that divide what our primary mission is.
00:02:30 Everything’s gotta be prioritized.
00:02:32 That’s one of the benefits
00:02:34 and the superpowers of the United States,
00:02:36 is we prioritize everything.
00:02:38 So different intelligence organizations are prioritized
00:02:41 to collect certain types of intelligence.
00:02:43 And then within the confines of how they collect,
00:02:47 they’re also given unique authorities,
00:02:49 authorities are a term that’s directed
00:02:51 by the executive branch.
00:02:53 Different agencies have different authorities
00:02:55 to execute missions in different ways.
00:02:58 FBI can’t execute the same way CIA executes,
00:03:01 and CIA can’t execute the same way NGA executes.
00:03:05 But then at the end, excuse me, when it’s all collected,
00:03:08 then yes, CIA still acts as a final synthesizing repository
00:03:15 to create what’s known as the president’s daily brief,
00:03:17 the PDB, the only way CIA can create the PDB
00:03:20 is by being the single source of all source intelligence
00:03:24 from around the IC, the intelligence community,
00:03:28 which are those 30 some odd and always changing organizations
00:03:33 that are sponsored for intelligence operations.
00:03:35 What is the PDB, the president’s daily brief look like?
00:03:38 How long is it?
00:03:39 What does it contain?
00:03:41 So first of all, it looks like the most expensive
00:03:43 book report you can ever imagine.
00:03:45 It’s got its own binder.
00:03:46 It’s all very high end.
00:03:48 It feels important, it looks important.
00:03:51 It’s not like a cheap trapper keeper.
00:03:54 It’s somewhere between, I would give it probably
00:03:56 between 50 and 125 pages a day.
00:03:59 It’s produced every day around two o clock in the morning
00:04:02 by a dedicated group of analysts.
00:04:04 And each page is essentially a short paragraph
00:04:09 to a few paragraphs about a priority happening
00:04:13 that affects national security from around the world.
00:04:16 The president rarely gets to the entire briefing in a day.
00:04:19 He relies on a briefer instead to prioritize
00:04:22 what inside the briefing needs to be shared
00:04:25 with the president.
00:04:25 Because some days the PDB will get briefed in 10 minutes
00:04:28 and some days it’ll be briefed over the course of two hours.
00:04:30 It depends on the president’s schedule.
00:04:32 How much competition is there for the first page?
00:04:36 And so how much jockeying there is for attention?
00:04:41 I imagine for all the different intelligence agencies
00:04:44 and within the CIA there’s probably different groups
00:04:46 that are modular and they all care about different nations
00:04:50 or different cases.
00:04:54 Do you understand how much competition there is
00:04:58 for the attention, for the limited attention
00:05:00 of the president?
00:05:01 You’re 100% correct in how the agency
00:05:05 and how officers and managers at the agency handle the PDB.
00:05:09 There’s a ton of competition.
00:05:10 Everybody wants to be the first on the radar.
00:05:12 Everybody wants to be on the first page.
00:05:14 The thing that we’re not baking into the equation
00:05:17 is the president’s interests.
00:05:19 The president dictates what’s on the first page of his PDB
00:05:21 and he will tell them usually the day before,
00:05:23 I wanna see this on the first page tomorrow.
00:05:25 Bring this to me in the beginning.
00:05:26 I don’t wanna hear about what’s happening in Mozambique.
00:05:28 I don’t really care about what’s happening in Saudi Arabia.
00:05:30 I wanna see one, two, three.
00:05:32 And regardless of whether or not
00:05:34 those are the three biggest things in the world,
00:05:37 the president’s the executive, he’s the one.
00:05:39 He’s the ultimate customer.
00:05:40 So we do what the customer says.
00:05:42 That has backfired in the past.
00:05:44 If you haven’t already started seeing
00:05:46 how that could go wrong, that has backfired in the past,
00:05:49 but that is essentially what happens
00:05:51 when you serve in the executive branch.
00:05:53 You serve the executive.
00:05:55 So what’s the role of the director of the CIA
00:05:58 versus the president?
00:05:59 What’s that dance like?
00:06:01 So the president really leads the focus of the CIA?
00:06:06 The president is the commander in chief for the military,
00:06:09 but the president is also the executive
00:06:12 for the entirety of the intelligence community.
00:06:16 So he’s the ultimate customer.
00:06:19 If you look at it like a business,
00:06:21 the customer, the person spending the money
00:06:24 is the president and the director is the CEO.
00:06:27 So if the director doesn’t create what the president wants,
00:06:30 there’s gonna be a new director.
00:06:31 That’s why the director of CIA
00:06:32 is a presidential appointed position.
00:06:34 Sometimes they’re extremely qualified
00:06:36 intelligence professionals.
00:06:37 Sometimes they’re just professional politicians
00:06:39 or soldiers that get put into that seat
00:06:41 because the president trusts them
00:06:43 to do what he wants them to do.
00:06:46 Another gaping area that causes problems,
00:06:52 but that’s still the way it is.
00:06:54 So you think this is a problematic configuration
00:06:57 of the whole system?
00:06:58 Massive flaw in the system.
00:06:59 It is a massive flaw in the system
00:07:00 because if you’re essentially appointing a director
00:07:03 to do what you want them to do,
00:07:05 then you’re assigning a crony.
00:07:08 And that’s what we define corruption as
00:07:10 within the United States.
00:07:11 And inside the United States,
00:07:12 we say if you pick somebody outside of merit
00:07:15 for any other reason other than merit,
00:07:16 then it’s cronyism or it’s nepotism.
00:07:19 Here, that’s exactly what our structure is built on.
00:07:21 All presidential appointees
00:07:22 are appointed on something other than merit.
00:07:25 So for an intelligence agency to be effective,
00:07:27 it has to discover the truth and communicate that truth.
00:07:31 And maybe if you’re appointing the director of that agency,
00:07:34 you’re not, they’re less likely to communicate the truth
00:07:37 to you unless the truth aligns perfectly
00:07:39 with your desired worldview.
00:07:41 Well, not necessarily perfectly
00:07:43 because there are other steps, right?
00:07:44 They have to be, they have to go in front of Congress
00:07:46 and they have to have the support
00:07:48 of multiple legislatures or legislators,
00:07:51 but the challenge is that the shortlist of people
00:07:55 who even get the opportunity aren’t a meritorious list.
00:07:59 It’s a shortlist based off of who the president is picking
00:08:01 or who the would be president is picking.
00:08:03 Now, I think we’ve proven
00:08:05 that an intelligence organization can be,
00:08:07 an intelligence organization can be extremely effective
00:08:10 even within the flawed system.
00:08:13 The challenge is how much more effective could we be
00:08:16 if we improved?
00:08:17 And that’s, I think that’s the challenge
00:08:20 that faces a lot of the US government.
00:08:21 I think that’s a challenge that has resulted
00:08:24 in what we see today when it comes to the decline
00:08:28 of American power and American influence,
00:08:31 the rise of foreign influence, authoritarian powers,
00:08:35 and a shrinking US economy, a growing Chinese economy.
00:08:39 And it’s just, we have questions, hard questions
00:08:42 we need to ask ourselves
00:08:43 about how we’re gonna handle the future.
00:08:45 What aspect of that communication between the president
00:08:47 and the CIA could be fixed to help fix the problems
00:08:53 that you’re referring to
00:08:54 in terms of the decline of American power?
00:08:57 So when you talk about the president wanting to prioritize
00:09:02 what the president cares about,
00:09:04 that immediately shows a break
00:09:07 between what actually matters
00:09:09 to the longterm success of the United States
00:09:12 versus what happened,
00:09:13 what benefits the short term success
00:09:15 of the current president.
00:09:16 Because any president is just a human being
00:09:20 and has a very narrow focus.
00:09:21 And narrow focus is not a longterm calculation.
00:09:24 Exactly, what’s the maximum amount of years
00:09:26 the president can be president?
00:09:28 Eight.
00:09:29 He has to be, he or she.
00:09:30 In the United States.
00:09:31 In the United States,
00:09:32 according to our current constitution.
00:09:34 Yeah.
00:09:35 But they’re very limited
00:09:39 in terms of what they have to prioritize.
00:09:41 And then if you look at a four year cycle,
00:09:44 two years of that is essentially preparing
00:09:45 for the next election cycle.
00:09:47 So that’s only two years of really quality attention
00:09:49 you get from the president,
00:09:50 who is the chief executive
00:09:51 of all the intelligence community.
00:09:53 So the most important thing to them
00:09:55 is not always the most important thing
00:09:57 to the longterm survival of the United States.
00:09:59 What do you make of the hostile relationship
00:10:02 that to me at least stands out of the presidents
00:10:04 between Donald Trump and the CIA?
00:10:07 Was that a very kind of personal bickering?
00:10:11 I mean, is there something interesting to you
00:10:13 about the dynamics between that particular president
00:10:16 and that particular instantiation
00:10:17 of the intelligence agency?
00:10:19 Man, there were lots of things fascinating to me
00:10:21 about that relationship.
00:10:23 What’s the good and the bad, sorry to interrupt.
00:10:26 So let me start with the good first
00:10:27 because there’s a lot of people
00:10:28 who don’t think there was any good.
00:10:30 So the good thing is we saw that the president
00:10:35 who’s the chief customer, the executive to the CIA,
00:10:40 when the president doesn’t want to hear
00:10:42 what CIA has to say, he’s not gonna listen.
00:10:45 I think that’s an important lesson
00:10:46 for everyone to take home.
00:10:49 If the president doesn’t care what you have to say,
00:10:51 he’s gonna take funding away
00:10:52 or she will take funding away.
00:10:54 They’re gonna take attention away.
00:10:56 They’re going to shut down your operations, your missions.
00:11:02 They’re gonna kill the careers of the people working there.
00:11:04 Think about that, for the four years
00:11:05 that President Trump was the president,
00:11:08 basically everybody at CIA, their career was put on pause.
00:11:12 Some people’s careers were ended.
00:11:13 Some people voluntarily left their career there
00:11:16 because they found themselves working for a single customer
00:11:20 that didn’t want what they had to produce.
00:11:21 So for people who don’t know,
00:11:24 Donald Trump did not display significant,
00:11:26 deep interest in the output.
00:11:29 He did not trust it, yeah.
00:11:30 He was a disinterested customer.
00:11:32 Exactly right.
00:11:33 Of the information.
00:11:34 And then what do disinterested customers do?
00:11:37 They go find someone else to create their product.
00:11:39 And that’s exactly what Donald Trump did.
00:11:41 And he did it through the private intelligence world,
00:11:43 funding private intelligence companies
00:11:45 to run their own operations that brought him
00:11:48 the information he cared about when CIA wouldn’t.
00:11:50 It also didn’t help that CIA
00:11:52 stepped outside of their confines, right?
00:11:54 CIA is supposed to collect foreign intelligence
00:11:56 and not comment on domestic matters.
00:11:58 They went way outside of that
00:12:00 when they started challenging the president,
00:12:02 when they started questioning the results,
00:12:04 when they started publicly claiming Russian influence.
00:12:08 That’s all something the FBI could have handled by itself.
00:12:10 The Justice Department could have handled by itself.
00:12:12 CIA had no place to contribute to that conversation.
00:12:16 And when they did, all they did was undermine
00:12:18 the relationship they had with their primary customer.
00:12:21 Let me sort of focus in on this relationship
00:12:26 between the president or the leader
00:12:29 and the intelligence agency
00:12:31 and look outside the United States.
00:12:34 It seems like authoritarian regimes
00:12:36 or regimes throughout history,
00:12:37 if you look at Stalin and Hitler,
00:12:39 if you look at today with Vladimir Putin,
00:12:42 the negative effects of power
00:12:44 corrupting the mind of a leader
00:12:46 manifest itself is that they start
00:12:50 to get bad information from the intelligence agencies.
00:12:53 So this kind of thing that you’re talking about,
00:12:55 over time, they start hearing information
00:12:58 they want to hear.
00:13:00 The agency starts producing
00:13:02 only the kind of information they want to hear,
00:13:05 and the leader’s worldview starts becoming distorted
00:13:09 to where the propaganda they generate
00:13:13 is also the thing that the intelligence agencies
00:13:17 provide to them, and so they start getting this,
00:13:19 they start believing their own propaganda,
00:13:21 and they start getting a distorted view of the world.
00:13:23 Sorry for the sort of walking through in a weird way,
00:13:27 but I guess I want to ask, do you think,
00:13:29 let’s look at Vladimir Putin specifically.
00:13:32 Do you think he’s getting accurate information
00:13:37 about the world?
00:13:38 Do you think he knows the truth of the world,
00:13:40 whether that’s the war in Ukraine,
00:13:42 whether that’s the behavior of the other nations,
00:13:45 in NATO, the United States in general?
00:13:47 What do you think?
00:13:49 It’s rare that I’ll talk about just thinking.
00:13:52 I prefer to share my assessment,
00:13:55 why I assess things a certain way,
00:13:56 rather than just what’s my random opinion.
00:13:59 In my assessment, Vladimir Putin is winning.
00:14:02 Russia is winning.
00:14:04 They’re winning in Ukraine, but they’re also winning
00:14:06 the battle of influence against the West.
00:14:08 They’re winning in the face of economic sanctions.
00:14:11 They’re winning.
00:14:12 Empirically, when you look at the math, they’re winning.
00:14:15 So when you ask me whether or not Putin
00:14:18 is getting good information from his intelligence services,
00:14:20 when I look at my overall assessment of multiple data points,
00:14:24 he must be getting good information.
00:14:26 Do I know how or why?
00:14:28 I do not.
00:14:29 I don’t know how or why it works there.
00:14:31 I don’t know how such deep cronyism,
00:14:35 such deep corruption can possibly yield true real results.
00:14:40 And yet, somehow there are real results happening.
00:14:42 So it’s either excessive waste and an accidental win,
00:14:46 or there really is a system and a process there
00:14:48 that’s functioning.
00:14:49 So this winning idea is very interesting.
00:14:51 In what way, short term and long term, is Russia winning?
00:14:55 Some people say there was a miscalculation
00:14:57 of the way the invasion happened.
00:14:59 There was an assumption that you would be able
00:15:02 to successfully take Kiev.
00:15:05 You’d be able to successfully capture the East,
00:15:07 the South, and the North of Ukraine.
00:15:10 And with what now appears to be
00:15:14 significantly insufficient troops
00:15:16 spread way too thin across way too large of a front.
00:15:20 So that seems to be like an intelligence failure.
00:15:25 And that doesn’t seem to be like winning.
00:15:28 In another way, it doesn’t seem like winning
00:15:30 if we put aside the human cost of war.
00:15:33 It doesn’t seem like winning
00:15:36 because the hearts and minds of the West
00:15:40 were completely on the side of Ukraine.
00:15:43 This particular leader, Volodymyr Zelensky,
00:15:46 captured the attention of the world
00:15:48 and the hearts and minds of Europe, the West,
00:15:52 and many other nations throughout the world,
00:15:54 both financially, in terms of military equipment,
00:15:57 and in terms of sort of social and cultural
00:16:01 and emotional support for the independence fight
00:16:04 of this nation.
00:16:05 That seems to be like a miscalculation.
00:16:08 So against that pushback,
00:16:12 why do you think there’s still kernels
00:16:15 of winning in this on the Russian side?
00:16:19 What you’re laying out isn’t incorrect.
00:16:21 And the miscalculations are not unexpected.
00:16:26 Anybody who’s been to a military college,
00:16:28 including the Army War College in Pennsylvania,
00:16:30 where so many of our military leaders are brought up,
00:16:34 when you look at the conflict in Ukraine,
00:16:37 it fits the exact mold
00:16:40 of what an effective longterm military conflict,
00:16:44 protracted military conflict,
00:16:46 would and should look like for military dominance.
00:16:49 Now, did Zelensky and did the Ukrainians
00:16:52 shock the world?
00:16:53 Absolutely.
00:16:54 But in that, they also shocked American intelligence,
00:16:57 which, like you said, miscalculated.
00:17:00 The whole world miscalculated
00:17:01 how the Ukrainians would respond.
00:17:03 Putin did not move in there accidentally.
00:17:05 He had an assessment.
00:17:06 He had high likelihood of a certain outcome,
00:17:09 and that outcome did not happen.
00:17:11 Why did he have that calculation?
00:17:13 Because in 2014, it worked.
00:17:15 He invaded, he took Crimea in 14 days.
00:17:19 He basically created an infiltration campaign
00:17:25 that turned key leaders over
00:17:26 in the first few days of the conflict.
00:17:29 So essentially, there was no conflict.
00:17:30 It worked in 2008 when he took Georgia.
00:17:33 Nobody talks about that.
00:17:35 He invaded Georgia the exact same way, and it worked.
00:17:38 So in 2008, it worked.
00:17:39 In 2014, it worked.
00:17:40 There was no reason to believe it wasn’t going to work again.
00:17:43 So he just carried out the same campaign.
00:17:45 But this time, something was different.
00:17:47 That was a miscalculation for sure on the part of Putin.
00:17:51 And the reason that there was no support from the West,
00:17:53 because let’s not forget, there is no support.
00:17:55 There is nothing other than the Lend Lease Act,
00:17:58 which is putting Ukraine in massive debt right now
00:18:01 to the West.
00:18:03 That’s the only form of support they’re getting
00:18:05 from NATO or the United States.
00:18:08 So if somebody believed Ukraine would win,
00:18:10 if somebody believed Ukraine had a chance,
00:18:12 they would have gotten more material support
00:18:13 than just debt.
00:18:15 And we can jump into that anytime you want to.
00:18:17 But the whole world miscalculated.
00:18:19 Everybody thought Russia was going to win in 14 days.
00:18:21 I said that they would win in 14 days
00:18:23 because that was the predominant calculation.
00:18:26 Once the first invasion didn’t work,
00:18:28 then the military does what professional militaries do, man.
00:18:32 They reevaluate, they reorganize leaders,
00:18:38 and then they take a new approach.
00:18:40 You saw three approaches.
00:18:41 The first two did not work.
00:18:43 The first two campaigns against Ukraine did not work
00:18:46 the way they were supposed to work.
00:18:47 The third has worked exactly like it’s supposed to work.
00:18:51 You don’t need Kiev to win Ukraine.
00:18:53 You don’t need hearts and minds to win Ukraine.
00:18:56 What you need is control of natural resources,
00:19:00 which they’re taking in the East,
00:19:02 and you need access to the heartbeat,
00:19:05 the blood flow of food and money into the country,
00:19:09 which they’re taking in the South.
00:19:10 The fact that Ukraine had to go to the negotiation table
00:19:14 with Russia and Turkey in order to get exports
00:19:19 out of the Black Sea approved again
00:19:21 demonstrates just how much Ukraine is losing.
00:19:25 The aggressor had a seat at the negotiation table
00:19:29 to allow Ukraine the ability to even export
00:19:32 one of its top exports.
00:19:33 If Russia would have said no,
00:19:35 then they would not have had that.
00:19:37 Russia has, that’s like someone holding your throat.
00:19:39 It’s like somebody holding your jugular vein and saying,
00:19:43 if you don’t do what I tell you to do,
00:19:46 then I’m not gonna let you breathe.
00:19:48 I’m not gonna let blood flow to your brain.
00:19:50 So do you think it’s possible that Russia
00:19:52 takes the South of Ukraine?
00:19:56 It takes, so starting from Mariupol, the Kherson region.
00:20:03 All the way to Odessa.
00:20:04 All the way to Odessa.
00:20:05 And into Moldova.
00:20:09 I believe all of that will happen before the fall.
00:20:12 Fall of this year?
00:20:13 Fall of this year.
00:20:14 Before winter hits Europe,
00:20:16 NATO wants Germany needs to be able to have sanctions lifted
00:20:21 so they can tap into Russian power.
00:20:23 There’s no way they can have those sanctions lifted
00:20:26 unless Russia wins.
00:20:28 And Russia also knows that all of Europe,
00:20:31 all of NATO is the true,
00:20:33 the true people feeling the pain of the war
00:20:36 outside of Ukraine are the NATO countries
00:20:39 because they’re so heavily reliant on Russia.
00:20:42 And as they have supported American sanctions against Russia,
00:20:46 their people feel the pain.
00:20:47 Economically, their people feel the pain.
00:20:50 What are they gonna do in the winter?
00:20:51 Because without Russian gas,
00:20:54 their people are gonna freeze to death.
00:20:56 Ukrainian people.
00:20:58 People all over NATO.
00:21:00 Ukraine, everybody knows Ukraine’s at risk.
00:21:03 Everybody knows Ukrainians are dying.
00:21:05 The game of war isn’t played just,
00:21:08 it isn’t even played majoritively
00:21:10 by the people who are fighting.
00:21:11 The game of war is played by everyone else.
00:21:13 It’s an economic game.
00:21:14 It’s not a military game.
00:21:16 The flow of resources and energy.
00:21:18 Attention. And food.
00:21:19 Exactly right.
00:21:21 I was on the front in the Kherson region,
00:21:24 the very area that you’re referring to,
00:21:26 and I spoke to a lot of people,
00:21:29 and the morale is incredibly high.
00:21:33 And I don’t think the people in that region,
00:21:37 soldiers, volunteer soldiers, civilians,
00:21:42 are going to give up that land without dying.
00:21:47 I agree with you.
00:21:48 I mean, in order to take Odessa,
00:21:51 would require huge amount of artillery
00:21:57 and slaughter of civilians, essentially.
00:22:00 They’re not gonna use artillery in Odessa
00:22:01 because Odessa’s too important to Russian culture.
00:22:06 It’s gonna be even uglier than that.
00:22:07 It’s going to be clearing of streets,
00:22:10 clearing of buildings, person by person, troop by troop.
00:22:13 It’ll be a lot like what it was in Margol.
00:22:16 Just shooting at civilians.
00:22:18 Because they can’t afford to just do bombing raids
00:22:20 because they’re gonna destroy cultural,
00:22:23 significant architecture that’s just too important
00:22:25 to the Russian culture,
00:22:26 and that’s gonna demoralize their own Russian people.
00:22:29 I have to do a lot of thinking
00:22:30 to try to understand what I even feel.
00:22:32 I don’t know, but in terms of information,
00:22:37 the thing that the soldiers are saying,
00:22:39 the Russian soldiers are saying,
00:22:40 the thing the Russian soldiers really believe
00:22:43 is that they’re freeing,
00:22:45 they’re liberating the Ukrainian people from Nazis.
00:22:54 And they believe this.
00:22:56 Because I visited Ukraine,
00:22:57 I spoke to over 100,
00:23:00 probably a couple hundred Ukrainian people
00:23:02 from different walks of life.
00:23:04 It feels like the Russian soldiers, at least,
00:23:08 are under a cloud of propaganda.
00:23:11 They’re not operating on a clear view of the whole world.
00:23:15 And given all that,
00:23:20 I just don’t see Russia taking the South
00:23:28 without committing war crimes.
00:23:32 And if Vladimir Putin is aware of what’s happening
00:23:36 in terms of the treatment of civilians,
00:23:39 I don’t see him pushing forward all the way
00:23:43 to take the South,
00:23:44 because that’s not going to be effective strategy
00:23:49 for him to win the hearts and minds of these people.
00:23:54 Autocracies don’t need to win hearts and minds.
00:23:56 That’s a staunchly democratic point of view.
00:24:00 Hearts and minds mean very little
00:24:02 to people who understand core basic needs and true power.
00:24:11 You don’t see Xi Jinping worrying
00:24:13 about hearts and minds in China.
00:24:14 You don’t see it in North Korea.
00:24:17 You don’t see it in Congo.
00:24:20 You don’t see it in most of the world.
00:24:22 Hearts and minds are a luxury.
00:24:24 In reality, what people need is food, water, power.
00:24:27 They need income to be able to secure a lifestyle.
00:24:32 It is absolutely sad.
00:24:34 I am not in any way, shape or form saying
00:24:37 that my assessment on this is enriching
00:24:42 or enlightening or hopeful.
00:24:46 It’s just fact.
00:24:48 It’s just calculatable empirical evidence.
00:24:52 If Putin loses in Ukraine, the losses,
00:24:56 the influential losses, the economic losses,
00:24:59 the lives lost, the power lost is too great.
00:25:03 So it is better for him to push and push and push
00:25:07 through war crimes, through everything else.
00:25:09 War crimes are something defined
00:25:10 by the international court system.
00:25:12 The international court system has Russia
00:25:14 as part of its board.
00:25:16 And the international court system is largely powerless
00:25:20 when it comes to enforcing its own outcomes.
00:25:23 So the real risk gain scenario here
00:25:26 for Russia is significantly in favor of gain over risk.
00:25:34 The other thing that I think is important
00:25:36 to talk about is we, everybody is trapped
00:25:39 in the middle of a gigantic information war.
00:25:42 Yes, there’s battlefield bullets and cannons and tanks,
00:25:46 but there’s also a massive informational war.
00:25:48 The same narrative that you see these ground troops
00:25:53 in Ukraine, these Russian ground troops in Ukraine,
00:25:56 believing they’re clearing the land of Nazis.
00:25:59 That information is being fed to them
00:26:02 from their own home country.
00:26:05 I don’t know why people seem to think
00:26:06 that the information that they’re reading in English
00:26:08 is any more or less true.
00:26:10 Every piece of news coming out of the West,
00:26:13 every piece of information coming out
00:26:14 in the English language is also a giant narrative
00:26:18 being shared intentionally to try to undermine the morale
00:26:23 and the faithfulness of English speaking Russians,
00:26:26 which somebody somewhere knows exactly
00:26:27 how many of those there are.
00:26:29 So we have to recognize that we’re not getting
00:26:32 true information from other side
00:26:33 because there’s a strategic value in making sure
00:26:35 that there is just the right amount
00:26:37 of mis or disinformation out there.
00:26:40 Not because someone’s trying to lie to Americans,
00:26:42 but because someone is trying to influence
00:26:44 the way English speaking Russians think.
00:26:47 And in that world, that’s exactly why you see
00:26:49 so many news articles cited to anonymous sources,
00:26:54 government officials who do not wanna be named.
00:26:56 There’s nothing that links back responsibility there.
00:26:59 There’s nothing that can go to court there,
00:27:02 but the information still gets released.
00:27:04 And that’s enough to make Ukrainians believe
00:27:08 that the United States is gonna help them
00:27:10 or that the West is gonna help them.
00:27:11 It’s enough to make Russians think
00:27:13 that they’re going to lose.
00:27:15 And maybe they should just give up now
00:27:18 and leave from the battlefield now.
00:27:19 We have to understand.
00:27:20 We are in the middle of a giant information war.
00:27:24 Maybe you can correct me,
00:27:25 but it feels like in the English speaking world,
00:27:27 it’s harder to control.
00:27:29 It’s harder to fight the information war
00:27:32 because of, some people say there’s not really
00:27:36 a freedom of speech in this country,
00:27:37 but I think if you compare,
00:27:40 there’s a lot more freedom of speech.
00:27:41 And it’s just harder to control narratives
00:27:44 when there’s a bunch of guerrilla journalists
00:27:48 that are able to just publish anything they want
00:27:50 on Twitter or anything.
00:27:51 It’s just harder to control narratives.
00:27:53 So people don’t understand what freedom of speech is.
00:27:56 That’s the first major problem.
00:27:57 And it’s shameful how many people in the United States
00:28:00 do not understand what freedom of speech actually protects.
00:28:03 So that aside, you’re absolutely right.
00:28:06 Fighting the information war in the West
00:28:09 is extremely difficult
00:28:10 because anyone with a blog, anyone with a Twitter account,
00:28:16 anyone, I mean, anyone can call themselves
00:28:18 a journalist, essentially.
00:28:19 We live in a world, we live in a country
00:28:21 where people read the headline
00:28:23 and they completely bypass the author line
00:28:26 and they go straight into the content.
00:28:28 And then they decide whether the content’s real or not
00:28:30 based on how they feel
00:28:31 instead of based on empirical, measurable evidence.
00:28:35 So you mentioned the Lend Lease Act
00:28:37 and the support of the United States,
00:28:39 support of Ukraine by the United States.
00:28:42 Are you skeptical to the level of support
00:28:44 that the United States is providing
00:28:46 and is going to provide over time?
00:28:49 The strategy that the United States has taken
00:28:51 to support Ukraine is similar to the strategy we took
00:28:54 to support Great Britain during World War II.
00:28:57 The enactment of the Lend Lease Act
00:28:58 is a perfect example of that.
00:28:59 The Lend Lease Act means that we are lending
00:29:02 or leasing equipment to the Ukrainian government
00:29:06 in exchange for future payment.
00:29:07 So every time a rocket is launched,
00:29:09 every time a drone crashes into a tank,
00:29:12 that’s a bill that Ukraine is just racking up.
00:29:17 It’s like when you go to a restaurant
00:29:18 and you start drinking shots.
00:29:20 Sometime the bill will come due.
00:29:22 This is exactly what we did when Europe
00:29:25 and when Great Britain was in the face of a Nazi invasion.
00:29:29 We signed the same thing into motion.
00:29:31 Do you know that the UK did not pay off the debt
00:29:34 from World War II until 2020?
00:29:37 They’ve been paying that debt since the end of World War II.
00:29:41 So what we’re doing is we’re indebting Ukraine
00:29:44 against the promise that perhaps
00:29:46 they will secure their freedom,
00:29:48 which nobody seems to wanna talk about
00:29:49 what freedom is actually gonna look like for Ukrainians.
00:29:52 What are the true handful of outcomes,
00:29:54 the realistic outcomes that could come of this
00:29:56 and which of those outcomes really looks like freedom
00:29:59 to them, especially in the face of the fact
00:30:02 that they’re going to be trillions of dollars in debt
00:30:04 to the West for supplying them with the training
00:30:08 and the weapons and the food and the med kits
00:30:10 and everything else that we’re giving them
00:30:12 because none of it’s free.
00:30:13 It’s all coming due.
00:30:16 We’re a democracy, but we’re also a capitalist country.
00:30:19 We can’t afford to just give things away for free,
00:30:22 but we can give things away at a discount.
00:30:24 We can give things away, lay away,
00:30:26 but the bill will come due.
00:30:28 And unfortunately that is not part of the conversation
00:30:30 that’s being had with the American people.
00:30:32 So debt is a way to establish some level of control.
00:30:36 Power is power.
00:30:39 That said, having a very close relationship
00:30:43 between Ukraine and the United States
00:30:44 does not seem to be a negative possibility
00:30:50 when the Ukrainians think about their future
00:30:52 in terms of freedom.
00:30:53 That’s one thing.
00:30:54 And the other, there’s some aspect of this war
00:30:57 that I’ve just noticed that one of the people I talked to
00:31:01 said that all great nations have a independence war,
00:31:08 have to have a war for their independence.
00:31:10 In order, there’s something, it’s dark,
00:31:12 but there’s something about war just being a catalyst
00:31:16 for finding your own identity as a nation.
00:31:18 So you can have leaders, you can have sort of
00:31:21 signed documents, you can have all this kind of stuff,
00:31:23 but there’s something about war
00:31:24 that really brings the country together
00:31:26 and actually try to figure out what is at the core
00:31:29 of the spirit of the people that defines this country.
00:31:32 And they see this war as that,
00:31:36 as the independence war to define the heart
00:31:38 of what the country is.
00:31:39 So there’s been before the war, before this invasion,
00:31:43 there was a lot of factions in the country.
00:31:46 There was a lot of influence from oligarchs
00:31:50 and corruption and so on.
00:31:51 A lot of that was the factions were brought together
00:31:56 under one umbrella effectively to become one nation
00:31:59 because of this invasion.
00:32:01 So they see that as a positive direction
00:32:04 for the defining of what a free democratic country
00:32:10 looks like after the war,
00:32:12 in their perspective after the war is won.
00:32:14 It’s a difficult situation because I’m trying to make sure
00:32:19 that you and all, everybody listening understands
00:32:22 that what’s happening in Ukraine, among Ukrainians,
00:32:25 is noble and brave and courageous
00:32:29 and beyond the expectations of anyone.
00:32:35 The fact is there is no material support
00:32:38 coming from the outside.
00:32:40 The American Revolution was won
00:32:43 because of French involvement.
00:32:44 French ships, French troops, French generals,
00:32:47 French military might.
00:32:49 The independence of communist China was won
00:32:55 through Russian support, Russian generals,
00:32:57 Russian troops on the ground fighting with the communists.
00:33:01 That’s how revolutions are won.
00:33:03 That’s how independent countries are born.
00:33:06 Ukraine doesn’t get any of that.
00:33:08 No one is stepping into that
00:33:10 because we live in a world right now
00:33:14 where there simply is no economic benefits
00:33:17 to the parties in power to support Ukraine to that level.
00:33:21 And war is a game of economics.
00:33:24 The economic benefit of Ukraine is crystal clear
00:33:28 in favor of Russia, which is why Putin cannot lose.
00:33:31 He will not let himself lose.
00:33:33 Short of something completely unexpected, right?
00:33:36 I’m talking 60%, 70% probability, Ukraine loses.
00:33:40 But there’s still 20%, 30% probability
00:33:42 of the unimaginable happening.
00:33:44 Who knows what that might be?
00:33:45 An oligarch assassinates Putin
00:33:48 or a nuclear bomb goes off somewhere
00:33:50 or who knows what, right?
00:33:52 There’s still a chance
00:33:53 that something unexpected will happen
00:33:55 and change the tide of the war.
00:33:57 But when it comes down to the core calculus here,
00:34:01 Ukraine is the agricultural bed to support a future Russia.
00:34:06 Russia knows, they know they have to have Ukraine.
00:34:09 They know that they have to have it to protect themselves
00:34:11 against military pressure from the West.
00:34:13 They have to have it for agricultural reasons.
00:34:15 They have major oil and natural gas pipelines
00:34:20 that flow through Eastern Ukraine.
00:34:22 They cannot let Ukraine fall
00:34:25 outside of their sphere of influence.
00:34:27 They cannot.
00:34:28 The United States doesn’t really have
00:34:31 any economic vested interest in Ukraine.
00:34:33 Ideological points of view and promises aside,
00:34:37 there’s no economic benefit.
00:34:39 And the same thing goes for NATO.
00:34:41 NATO has no economic investment in Ukraine.
00:34:44 Ukrainian output, Ukrainian food
00:34:49 goes to the Middle East and Africa.
00:34:51 It doesn’t go to Europe.
00:34:53 So the whole, the West siding with Ukraine
00:34:58 is exclusively ideological
00:35:00 and it’s putting them in a place
00:35:02 where they fight a war with Russia
00:35:04 so the whole world can see Russia’s capabilities.
00:35:06 Ukraine is a, as sad as it is to say, man,
00:35:09 Ukraine is a pawn on a table for superpowers
00:35:14 to calculate each other’s capacities.
00:35:17 Right now we’ve only talked about Russia and the United States.
00:35:19 We haven’t even talked about Iran.
00:35:21 We haven’t even talked about China, right?
00:35:23 It is a pawn on a table.
00:35:24 This is a chicken fight so that people get to watch
00:35:27 and see what the other trainers are doing.
00:35:29 Well, a lot of people might’ve said the same thing
00:35:31 about the United States back in the independence fight.
00:35:34 So there is possibilities, as you’ve said.
00:35:38 We’re not saying a 0% chance
00:35:41 and it could be a reasonably high percent chance
00:35:44 that this becomes one of the great democratic nations
00:35:48 that the 21st century is remembered by.
00:35:50 Absolutely.
00:35:50 And so you said American support.
00:35:55 So ideologically, first of all,
00:35:57 you don’t assign much longterm power to that.
00:36:03 That US could support Ukraine
00:36:05 purely on ideological grounds.
00:36:09 Just look in the last four years, the last three years.
00:36:12 Do you remember what happened in Hong Kong
00:36:14 right before COVID?
00:36:16 China swooped into Hong Kong violently,
00:36:21 beating protesters, killing them in the street,
00:36:23 imprisoning people without just cause.
00:36:26 And Hong Kong was a democracy
00:36:30 and the whole world stood by and let it happen.
00:36:32 And then what happened in Afghanistan just a year ago
00:36:35 and the whole world stood by
00:36:37 and let the Taliban take power again
00:36:39 after 20 years of loss.
00:36:41 This, we are showing a repeatable point of view.
00:36:46 We will talk.
00:36:47 American politicians, American administrations,
00:36:50 we will say a lot of things.
00:36:52 We will promise a lot of ideological pro democracy,
00:36:56 rah rah statements.
00:36:58 We will say it.
00:36:59 But when it comes down to putting our own people,
00:37:02 our own economy, our own GDP at risk,
00:37:07 we step away from that fight.
00:37:09 America is currently supplying
00:37:11 military equipment to Ukraine.
00:37:13 Absolutely.
00:37:13 And a lot of that military equipment
00:37:14 has actually been the thing that turned
00:37:17 the tides of war a couple of times already.
00:37:20 Currently that’s the high mar systems.
00:37:23 So you mentioned sort of Putin can’t afford to lose,
00:37:27 but winning can look in different ways.
00:37:29 So you’ve kind of defined so on.
00:37:32 At this moment, the prediction is that winning
00:37:35 looks like capturing not just the east,
00:37:38 but the south of Ukraine.
00:37:41 But you can have narratives of winning
00:37:44 that return back to what was at the beginning of this year
00:37:48 before the invasion.
00:37:49 Correct.
00:37:50 That Crimea is still with Russia.
00:37:53 There’s some kind of negotiated thing about Donbass
00:37:56 where it still stays with Ukraine,
00:37:58 but there’s some.
00:37:59 Puppet government.
00:38:00 Yeah.
00:38:01 Just like that’s what they have in Georgia right now.
00:38:03 And that could still be defined through mechanisms.
00:38:07 As Russia winning.
00:38:08 As Russia winning for Russia and then for Ukraine
00:38:11 as Ukraine winning and for the west as democracy winning
00:38:16 and you kind of negotiate.
00:38:19 I mean, that seems to be how geopolitics works
00:38:22 is everybody can walk away with a win win story
00:38:25 and then the world progresses with the lessons learned.
00:38:28 That’s the high likely.
00:38:29 That’s the most probable outcome.
00:38:31 The most probable outcome is that Ukraine remains
00:38:35 in air quotes, a sovereign nation.
00:38:38 It’s not going to be truly sovereign
00:38:41 because it will become,
00:38:43 it will have to have new government put in place.
00:38:47 Zelinsky will, it’s extremely unlikely he will be president
00:38:50 because he has gone too far to demonstrate his power
00:38:55 over the people and his ability to separate
00:38:58 the Ukrainian people from the autocratic power of Russia.
00:39:02 So he would have to be unseated whether he goes into exile
00:39:06 or whether he is peacefully left alone
00:39:09 is all gonna be part of negotiations.
00:39:11 But the thing to keep in mind also is that
00:39:14 a negotiated peace really just means a negotiated ceasefire.
00:39:17 We’ve seen this happen all over the world.
00:39:19 North Korea and South Korea are technically still
00:39:20 just in negotiated cease power.
00:39:23 What you end up having is Russia will allow Ukraine
00:39:27 to call itself Ukraine, to operate independently,
00:39:29 to have their own debt to the United States.
00:39:32 Russia doesn’t wanna take on that debt.
00:39:34 And then in exchange for that,
00:39:36 they will have firmer guidelines
00:39:38 as to how NATO can engage with Ukraine.
00:39:41 And then that becomes an example
00:39:43 for all the other former Soviet satellite states,
00:39:45 which are all required economically by Russia,
00:39:48 not required economically by the West.
00:39:51 And then you end up seeing how it just,
00:39:53 you can see how the whole thing plays out
00:39:55 once you realize that the keystone is Ukraine.
00:40:00 There is something about Ukraine,
00:40:02 the deep support by the Ukrainian people of America
00:40:05 that is in contrast with, for example, Afghanistan,
00:40:10 that it seems like ideologically,
00:40:14 Ukraine could be a beacon of freedom
00:40:17 used in narratives by the United States
00:40:20 to fight geopolitical wars in that part of the world,
00:40:24 that they would be a good partner
00:40:26 for this idea of democracy, of freedom,
00:40:28 of all the values that America stands for.
00:40:31 They’re a good partner.
00:40:32 And so it’s valuable,
00:40:35 if you sort of have a cynical, pragmatic view,
00:40:38 sort of like Henry Kissinger type of view,
00:40:41 it’s valuable to have them as a partner,
00:40:43 so valuable that it makes sense to support them
00:40:47 in achieving a negotiated ceasefire
00:40:50 that’s on the side of Ukraine.
00:40:51 But because of this particular leader,
00:40:54 this particular culture,
00:40:56 this particular dynamics of how the war unrolled
00:41:00 and things like Twitter
00:41:02 and the way digital communication currently works,
00:41:05 it just seems like this is a powerful symbol of freedom
00:41:08 that’s useful for the United States
00:41:09 if we’re sort of to take the pragmatic view.
00:41:12 Don’t you think it’s possible
00:41:16 that United States supports Ukraine
00:41:20 financially, militarily enough
00:41:22 for it to get an advantage in this war?
00:41:25 I think they’ve already gotten advantage in the war.
00:41:27 The fact that the war is still going on
00:41:28 demonstrates the asymmetrical advantage.
00:41:30 The fact that Russia has stepped up
00:41:33 to the negotiating table with them several times
00:41:36 without just turning to Chechen,
00:41:41 I mean, you remember what happened in Chechnya,
00:41:43 without turning to Chechnya level,
00:41:45 just mass blind destruction,
00:41:48 which was another Putin war.
00:41:51 To see that those things have happened
00:41:53 demonstrates the asymmetric advantage
00:41:54 that the West has given.
00:41:56 I think the true way to look at the benefit of Ukraine
00:42:01 as a shining example of freedom in Europe for the West
00:42:06 isn’t to understand whether or not they could.
00:42:08 They absolutely could.
00:42:10 It’s the question of how valuable is that in Europe?
00:42:14 How valuable is Ukraine?
00:42:16 Which before February, nobody even thought about Ukraine.
00:42:22 And the people who did know about Ukraine
00:42:24 knew that it was an extremely corrupt former Soviet state
00:42:28 with 20% of its national population
00:42:30 self identifying as Russian.
00:42:33 There’s a reason Putin went into Ukraine.
00:42:35 There’s a reason he’s been promising
00:42:37 he would go into Ukraine for the better part of a decade.
00:42:40 Because the circumstances were aligned,
00:42:43 it was a corrupt country that self identified
00:42:45 as Russian in many ways.
00:42:47 It was supposed to be an easier of multiple marks
00:42:51 in terms of the former Soviet satellite states to go after.
00:42:55 That’s all part of the miscalculation
00:42:57 that the rest of the world saw too
00:42:59 when we thought it would fall quickly.
00:43:02 So to think that it could be a shining example of freedom
00:43:05 is accurate.
00:43:06 But is it as shining a star as Germany?
00:43:10 Is it as shining a star as the UK?
00:43:11 Is it as shining a star as Romania?
00:43:13 Is it as shiny a star as France?
00:43:17 It’s got a lot of democratic freedom based countries
00:43:22 in Europe to compete against
00:43:23 to be the shining stellar example.
00:43:26 And in exchange, on counterpoint to that,
00:43:29 it has an extreme amount of strategic value to Russia
00:43:33 which has no interest in making it a shining star
00:43:36 of the example of democracy and freedom.
00:43:38 Outside of research in terms of the shininess of the star,
00:43:41 I would argue yes.
00:43:43 If you look at how much it captivated
00:43:45 the attention of the world.
00:43:46 The attention of the world
00:43:47 has made no material difference, man.
00:43:49 That’s what I’m saying.
00:43:50 That’s your estimation, but are you sure we can,
00:43:53 we can’t, if you can convert that into political influence
00:43:59 into money, don’t you think attention is money?
00:44:03 Attention is money in democracies and capitalist countries.
00:44:07 Yes.
00:44:08 Which serves as a counterweight
00:44:09 to sort of authoritarian regimes.
00:44:11 So for Putin, resources matter.
00:44:14 For the United States, also resources matter,
00:44:16 but the attention and the belief of the people also matter
00:44:21 because that’s how you attain and maintain political power.
00:44:24 So going to that exact example,
00:44:26 then I would highlight that our current administration
00:44:29 has the lowest approval ratings of any president in history.
00:44:33 So if people were very fond of the war going on in Ukraine,
00:44:36 wouldn’t that counterbalance some of our upset,
00:44:39 some of the dissent coming from the economy
00:44:41 and some of the dissent coming from the great recession
00:44:45 or the second great, or the great resignation
00:44:48 and whatever’s happening with the draw
00:44:49 with the down stock market?
00:44:51 You would think that people would feel
00:44:52 like they’re sacrificing for something
00:44:54 if they really believed that Ukraine mattered,
00:44:57 that they would stand next to the president
00:45:00 who is so staunchly driving and leading the West
00:45:05 against this conflict.
00:45:06 Well, I think the opposition to this particular president,
00:45:09 I personally believe has less to do with the policies
00:45:12 and more to do with a lot of the other human factors.
00:45:19 But again, empirically, this is,
00:45:20 I look at things through a very empirical lens,
00:45:22 a very cold fact based lens.
00:45:26 And there are multiple data points that suggest
00:45:29 that the American people ideologically sympathize
00:45:32 with Ukraine, but they really just want
00:45:34 their gas prices to go down.
00:45:36 They really just want to be able to pay less money
00:45:38 at the grocery store for their food.
00:45:39 And they most definitely don’t want their sons
00:45:41 and daughters to die in exchange for Ukrainian freedom.
00:45:46 It does hurt me to see the politicization
00:45:47 of this war as well.
00:45:50 I think that maybe has to do with the kind of calculation
00:45:54 you’re referring to, but it seems like it doesn’t.
00:45:58 It seems like there’s a cynical,
00:46:00 whatever takes attention of the media for the moment,
00:46:05 the red team chooses one side
00:46:07 and the blue team chooses another.
00:46:08 And then I think, correct me if I’m wrong,
00:46:12 but I believe the Democrats went into full support
00:46:17 of Ukraine on the ideological side.
00:46:20 And then I guess Republicans are saying,
00:46:22 why are we wasting money?
00:46:23 The gas prices are going up.
00:46:25 That’s a very crude kind of analysis,
00:46:27 but they basically picked whatever argument
00:46:29 on whatever side, and now more and more and more,
00:46:33 this particular war in Ukraine is becoming
00:46:37 a kind of pawn in the game of politics
00:46:40 that’s first the midterm elections,
00:46:42 then building up towards the presidential elections,
00:46:44 and stops being about the philosophical, the social,
00:46:49 the geopolitical aspects, parameters of this war,
00:46:53 and more about just like whatever the heck
00:46:55 captivates Twitter, and we’re gonna use that for politics.
00:46:58 You’re right in the sense of the fact that it’s,
00:47:02 I wouldn’t say that the red team and the blue team
00:47:03 picked opposite sides on this.
00:47:05 What I would say is that media discovered
00:47:08 that talking about Ukraine wasn’t as profitable
00:47:12 as talking about something else.
00:47:13 People simply, the American people who read media
00:47:17 or who watch media, they simply became bored
00:47:20 reading about news that didn’t seem to be changing much.
00:47:23 And we turned back into wanting to read
00:47:26 about our own economy, and we wanted to hear more
00:47:28 about cryptocurrency, and we wanted to hear more
00:47:30 about the Kardashians, and that’s what we care about,
00:47:32 so that’s what media writes about.
00:47:33 That’s how a capitalist market driven world works,
00:47:37 and that’s how the United States works.
00:47:38 That’s why in both red papers and blue papers,
00:47:41 red sources and blue sources,
00:47:42 you don’t see Ukraine being mentioned very much.
00:47:44 If anything, I would say that your Republicans
00:47:47 are probably more in support of what’s happening
00:47:49 in Ukraine right now, because we’re creating
00:47:51 new weapon systems, our military is getting stronger,
00:47:53 we’re sending these, we get to test military systems
00:47:57 in combat in Ukraine, that’s priceless.
00:48:02 In the world of the military industrial complex,
00:48:05 being able to field test, combat test a weapon
00:48:10 without having to sacrifice your own people
00:48:12 is incredibly valuable.
00:48:13 You get all the data, you get all the performance metrics,
00:48:15 but you don’t have to put yourself at risk.
00:48:17 That is one of the major benefits of what we’re seeing
00:48:21 from supporting Ukraine with weapons and with troops.
00:48:23 The longterm benefit to what will come of this
00:48:26 for the United States, practically speaking,
00:48:30 in the lens of national security,
00:48:32 through military readiness,
00:48:34 through future economic benefits, those are super strong.
00:48:38 The geopolitical fight is essentially moot,
00:48:42 because Ukraine is not a geopolitical player.
00:48:45 It was not for 70 years, and after this conflict is over,
00:48:50 it will not again.
00:48:51 Just think about what you were just saying
00:48:53 with the American people’s attention span
00:48:55 to Twitter and whatever’s currently going on.
00:48:57 If the Ukraine conflict resolved itself today
00:49:00 in any direction, how many weeks do you think
00:49:04 before no one talked about Ukraine anymore?
00:49:06 Do you think we would make it two weeks?
00:49:07 Or do you think we’d make it maybe seven days?
00:49:09 It would be headline news for one or two days,
00:49:13 and then we’d be onto something else.
00:49:15 It’s just an unfortunate reality
00:49:17 of how the world works in a capitalist democracy.
00:49:21 Yeah, it just breaks my heart how much,
00:49:27 you know, I know that there’s Yemen and Syria
00:49:30 and that nobody talks about anymore.
00:49:33 Still raging conflicts going on.
00:49:37 It breaks my heart how much generational hatred is born.
00:49:42 I happen to be from, my family is from Ukraine
00:49:46 and from Russia, and so for me, just personally,
00:49:49 it’s a part of the world I care about.
00:49:51 In terms of its history, because I speak the language,
00:49:56 I can appreciate the beauty of the literature,
00:49:58 the music, the art, the cultural history
00:50:01 of the 20th century through all the dark times,
00:50:04 through all the hell of the dark sides
00:50:09 of authoritarian regimes, the destruction of war.
00:50:12 There’s still just the beauty that I’m able to appreciate
00:50:14 that I can’t appreciate about China, Brazil,
00:50:17 other countries because I don’t speak their language.
00:50:19 This one I can appreciate.
00:50:20 And so in that way, this is personally really painful to me
00:50:24 to see so much of that history, the beauty in that history
00:50:28 suffocated by the hatred that is born
00:50:31 through this kind of geopolitical game
00:50:36 fought mostly by the politicians, the leaders.
00:50:39 People are beautiful, and that’s what you’re talking about.
00:50:42 People are just, people are beautiful creatures.
00:50:47 Culture and art and science,
00:50:52 these are beautiful, beautiful things
00:50:53 that come about because of human beings.
00:50:55 And the thing that gives me hope is that
00:51:00 no matter what conflict the world has seen,
00:51:02 and we’ve seen some devastating,
00:51:04 horrible crimes against humanity already.
00:51:07 We saw nuclear bombs go off in Japan.
00:51:10 We saw genocide happen in Rwanda.
00:51:13 We’ve seen horrible things happen.
00:51:16 But people persevere.
00:51:18 Language, culture, arts, science, they all persevere.
00:51:21 They all shine through.
00:51:23 Some of the most, people don’t even realize
00:51:25 how gorgeous the architecture and the culture is
00:51:27 inside Iran.
00:51:29 People have no idea.
00:51:31 Chinese people in the rural parts of China
00:51:35 are some of the kindest, most amazing people
00:51:38 you’ll ever meet.
00:51:39 And Korean art and Korean dance, Korean drumming,
00:51:44 I know nobody has ever even heard of Korean drumming.
00:51:47 Korean drumming is this magical, beautiful thing.
00:51:50 And the North, in North Korea, does it better
00:51:53 than anybody in the world.
00:51:54 Taekwondo in North Korea is just exceptional to watch.
00:51:57 In North Korea?
00:51:58 In North Korea.
00:51:59 Nobody knows these things.
00:52:00 How do you know about Taekwondo in North Korea?
00:52:02 I have questions.
00:52:04 That’s fascinating.
00:52:05 That’s, people don’t think about that,
00:52:08 but the culture, the beauty of the people
00:52:09 still flourishes even in the toughest of places.
00:52:11 Absolutely, and we always will.
00:52:13 We always will because that is what people do.
00:52:16 And that is just the truth of it.
00:52:18 And it breaks my heart to see travesties
00:52:21 that people commit against people.
00:52:23 But whether you’re looking at a micro level,
00:52:26 like what happens with shootings here in the United States,
00:52:30 or whether you look at a macro level,
00:52:31 like geopolitical power exchanges
00:52:35 and intra and interstate conflicts,
00:52:37 like what you see in Syria and what you see in Ukraine,
00:52:40 those are disgusting, terrible things.
00:52:42 War is a terrible thing.
00:52:43 That is a famous quote.
00:52:47 But people will persevere.
00:52:49 People will come through.
00:52:53 I hope so.
00:52:54 I hope so.
00:52:55 And I hope we don’t do something
00:52:59 that I’ll probably also ask you about later on
00:53:03 is things that destroy the possibility of perseverance,
00:53:08 which is things like nuclear war,
00:53:09 things that can do such tremendous damage
00:53:14 that we will never recover.
00:53:17 But yeah, amidst your pragmatic pessimism,
00:53:22 I think both you and I have a kind of
00:53:24 maybe small flame of optimism in there
00:53:27 about the perseverance of the human species in general.
00:53:30 Let me ask you about intelligence agencies
00:53:33 outside of the CIA.
00:53:35 Can you illuminate what is the most powerful
00:53:41 intelligence agency in the world?
00:53:43 The CIA, the FSB, formerly the KGB, the MI6, Mossad.
00:53:49 I’ve gotten a chance to interact with a lot of Israelis
00:53:52 while in Ukraine.
00:53:54 Just incredible people.
00:53:56 Yeah, in terms of both training and skill,
00:53:58 just every front.
00:54:00 American soldiers too, just American military is incredible.
00:54:04 I just, the competence and skill of the military,
00:54:08 the United States, Israeli I got to interact,
00:54:10 and Ukrainian as well.
00:54:12 It’s striking.
00:54:13 It’s striking, it’s beautiful.
00:54:14 I just love people, I love carpenters,
00:54:16 or people that are just extremely good at their job
00:54:19 and then take pride in their craftsmanship.
00:54:21 It’s beautiful to see.
00:54:22 And I imagine the same kind of thing happens
00:54:24 inside of intelligence agencies as well
00:54:27 that we don’t get to appreciate because of the secrecy.
00:54:29 Same thing with like Lockheed Martin.
00:54:31 I interviewed the CTO of Lockheed Martin.
00:54:34 It breaks my heart, as a person who loves engineering,
00:54:38 because of the cover of secrecy,
00:54:41 we’ll never get to know some of the incredible engineering
00:54:43 that happens inside of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon.
00:54:46 Yeah, you know, there’s kind of this idea
00:54:49 that these are, you know, people have conspiracy theories
00:54:52 and kind of assign evil to these companies in some part,
00:54:56 but I think there’s beautiful people inside those companies,
00:54:59 brilliant people, and some incredible science
00:55:02 and engineering is happening there.
00:55:04 Anyway, that said, the CIA, the FSB, the MI6,
00:55:08 Mossad, China, I know very little about the…
00:55:13 MSS, the Ministry of State Security.
00:55:14 I don’t know how much you know.
00:55:16 Yeah.
00:55:17 Or just other intelligence agencies.
00:55:19 In India, Pakistan, I’ve also heard…
00:55:21 Yeah, RAW is powerful, and so is ISSI.
00:55:24 Yes, or ISSI.
00:55:26 And then, of course, European nations in Germany and France.
00:55:30 Yeah, so what can you say about the power,
00:55:33 the influence of the different intelligence agencies
00:55:35 within their nation and outside?
00:55:37 Yeah, so to answer your question, your original question,
00:55:41 which is the most powerful,
00:55:42 I’m gonna have to give you a few different answers.
00:55:44 So the most powerful intelligence organization in the world
00:55:49 in terms of reach is the Chinese MSS,
00:55:53 the Ministry of State Security,
00:55:54 because they have created
00:55:57 a single, solitary intelligence service
00:56:01 that has global reach and is integrated
00:56:04 with Chinese culture, so that essentially,
00:56:07 every Chinese person anywhere in the world
00:56:09 is an informant to the MSS,
00:56:11 because that’s their way of serving the Middle Kingdom,
00:56:15 Zhongguo, the Central Kingdom, the Chinese word for China.
00:56:19 So they’re the strongest.
00:56:21 They’re the most powerful intelligence service
00:56:23 in terms of reach.
00:56:24 Most assets, most informants, most intelligence.
00:56:27 So it’s deeply integrated with the citizenry.
00:56:29 Correct, with their culture.
00:56:30 You know what a Chinese person who lives in Syria
00:56:32 thinks of themself as?
00:56:34 A Chinese person.
00:56:35 Do you know what a Chinese person,
00:56:36 a Chinese national living in the United States
00:56:38 thinks of themself as?
00:56:40 A Chinese person, right?
00:56:41 Americans living abroad often think of ourselves
00:56:44 as expats, expatriates, living on the local economy,
00:56:47 embracing the local culture.
00:56:49 That is not how Chinese people view
00:56:51 traveling around the world.
00:56:52 And by the way, if I may mention,
00:56:54 I believe the way Mossad operates
00:56:59 is a similar kind of thing,
00:57:01 because people from Israel living abroad
00:57:04 still think of themselves as Jewish and Israeli.
00:57:07 First.
00:57:08 First, so that allows you to integrate the.
00:57:11 Culture, and yep, the faith based aspects.
00:57:13 Exactly right.
00:57:14 But the number of people in Israel is much, much smaller.
00:57:17 Exactly right.
00:57:18 The number of people in China.
00:57:18 When it comes to reach, China wins that game.
00:57:21 When it comes to professional capability,
00:57:23 it’s the CIA by far, because budget wise,
00:57:28 capability wise, weapons system wise,
00:57:30 modern technology wise,
00:57:31 CIA is the leader around the world,
00:57:34 which is why every other intelligence organization out there
00:57:36 wants to partner with CIA.
00:57:38 They want to learn from CIA.
00:57:40 They want to train with CIA.
00:57:42 They want to partner on counter narcotics,
00:57:45 and counter drug, and counter terrorism,
00:57:47 and counter Uyghur, you name it,
00:57:49 people want to partner with CIA.
00:57:50 So CIA is the most powerful
00:57:51 in terms of capability and wealth.
00:57:54 And then you’ve got the idea, you’ve got tech.
00:57:59 So tech alone, meaning corporate espionage,
00:58:04 economic espionage, nothing beats DGSE in France.
00:58:09 They’re the top.
00:58:10 They’ve got a massive budget
00:58:11 that almost goes exclusively to stealing foreign secrets.
00:58:14 They’re the biggest threat to the United States,
00:58:16 even above Russia and above China.
00:58:19 DGSE in France
00:58:20 is a massively powerful intelligence organization,
00:58:23 but they’re so exclusively focused
00:58:25 on a handful of types of intelligence collection
00:58:29 that nobody even really thinks that they exist.
00:58:31 And then in terms of just terrifying violence,
00:58:35 you have Mossad.
00:58:36 Mossad will do anything.
00:58:38 Mossad has no qualms doing what it takes
00:58:42 to ensure the survival
00:58:43 of every Israeli citizen around the world.
00:58:46 Most other countries will stop at some point,
00:58:49 but Mossad doesn’t do that.
00:58:51 So it’s the lines you’re willing to cross.
00:58:54 And the reasons that you’re willing to cross them.
00:58:57 The CIA will let an American stay in jail in Russia,
00:59:02 unlawfully, and seek a diplomatic solution.
00:59:06 I mean, the United States has let people,
00:59:07 there are two gentlemen from the 1950s
00:59:10 who were imprisoned in China for 20 years
00:59:12 waiting for diplomatic solutions to their release.
00:59:16 So we do not kill to save a citizen, but Mossad will.
00:59:26 And then they’ll not just kill,
00:59:28 they’ll do large scale infiltration.
00:59:31 They’ll do amazing things.
00:59:32 There is no, they spare no expense
00:59:35 because it’s a demonstration to their own people.
00:59:38 Again, going back to the whole idea of influence.
00:59:40 Every intelligence operation that sees the light of day
00:59:45 has two purposes.
00:59:47 The first purpose is the intelligence operation.
00:59:51 But if it was just the intelligence operation,
00:59:53 it would stay secret forever.
00:59:54 The second purpose
00:59:55 of every successful intelligence operation,
00:59:57 when they become public,
00:59:59 is to send a signal to the world.
01:00:02 If you work against us, we will do this to you.
01:00:05 If you work for us, we will take care of you in this way.
01:00:09 It’s a massive information campaign.
01:00:11 Do you think in that way, CIA is not doing a good job?
01:00:15 Because there is the FSB, perhaps much less so GRU,
01:00:20 but the KGB did this well,
01:00:24 which is to send a signal, like basically communicate
01:00:28 that this is a terrifying organization with a lot of power.
01:00:33 So Mossad is doing a good job of that.
01:00:35 Correct.
01:00:36 The psychological information warfare.
01:00:39 And it seems like the CIA also has a lot of kind of myths
01:00:47 about it, conspiracy theories about it,
01:00:49 but much less so than the other agencies.
01:00:52 CIA does a good job of playing to the mythos.
01:00:54 So when General Petraeus used to be the director of CIA.
01:00:58 Yeah, and your workout partner.
01:01:00 And my workout partner.
01:01:01 I read about this.
01:01:02 So I loved and hated those workouts with Petraeus
01:01:05 because he is a physical beast.
01:01:07 He’s a strong fit, at the time, 60 something year old man.
01:01:11 Let me take a tangent on that because he’s coming
01:01:13 on this podcast.
01:01:14 Oh, excellent man.
01:01:15 So can you say what you learned from the man
01:01:20 in terms of, or like what you think is interesting
01:01:25 and powerful and inspiring about the way he sees the world,
01:01:28 or maybe what you learned in terms of how to get strong
01:01:31 in the gym or anything about life.
01:01:34 Two things right away.
01:01:34 And one of them I was gonna share with you anyway.
01:01:36 So I’m glad that you asked the question.
01:01:37 So the first is that on our runs and man, he runs fast
01:01:43 and we would go for six mile runs through Bangkok.
01:01:45 And he talked openly about, I asked him,
01:01:51 how do you keep this mystery, this epic mythology
01:01:57 about your fitness and your strength?
01:02:00 How do you keep all of this alive with the troops?
01:02:04 And he had this amazing answer.
01:02:06 And he was like, I don’t talk about it.
01:02:08 Myths are born not from somebody orchestrating the myth,
01:02:13 but from the source of the myth, simply being secretive.
01:02:17 So he’s like, I don’t talk about it.
01:02:18 I’ve never talked about it.
01:02:19 I’ve never exacerbated it.
01:02:21 I just do what I do.
01:02:22 And I let the troops talk.
01:02:23 And he’s like, when it’s in favor, when it goes in favor
01:02:26 of discipline and loyalty and commitment, I let it run.
01:02:30 If it starts getting destructive or damaging,
01:02:33 then I have my leadership team step in to fix it.
01:02:37 But when it comes to the mythos,
01:02:40 the myth of him being superpowered soldier,
01:02:42 that’s what he wants every soldier to be.
01:02:44 So he lets it run.
01:02:45 And it was so enlightening when he told me,
01:02:48 when there’s a myth that benefits you, you just let it go.
01:02:51 You let it happen because it gets you further
01:02:54 without you doing any work.
01:02:55 It costs no investment for you.
01:02:56 So the catalyst of the virality of the myth
01:02:58 is just being mysterious.
01:03:00 And that’s what CIA does well,
01:03:02 to go back to your first question.
01:03:03 What does CIA do?
01:03:04 They don’t answer any questions.
01:03:06 They don’t say anything.
01:03:08 And wherever the myth goes, the myth goes,
01:03:11 whether it’s that they sold drugs
01:03:13 or use child prostitutes or whatever else,
01:03:14 wherever the myth goes, they let it go.
01:03:17 Because at the end of the day,
01:03:18 everybody sits back and says, wow, I really just don’t know.
01:03:22 Now, the second thing that I learned from Petraeus,
01:03:23 and I really am a big fan of Petraeus.
01:03:27 I know he made personal mistakes.
01:03:29 You don’t get to be that powerful
01:03:30 without making personal mistakes.
01:03:32 But when I worked out with him,
01:03:33 the one thing that my commanding officer
01:03:38 told me not to ask about,
01:03:39 he was like, never ask the general about his family.
01:03:44 I’m a family guy.
01:03:45 So as soon as I met General Petraeus,
01:03:48 one of the first things I asked him was,
01:03:49 hey, what was it like raising a family
01:03:51 and being the commander of forces in the Middle East?
01:03:55 Like you weren’t with your family very much.
01:03:57 And the thing I love about the guy,
01:03:59 he didn’t bite off my head.
01:04:00 He didn’t snap at me.
01:04:01 He didn’t do anything.
01:04:02 He openly admitted that he regretted
01:04:04 some of the decisions that he made
01:04:06 because he had to sacrifice his family to get there.
01:04:11 Relationships with his children,
01:04:13 absentee father, missing birthdays,
01:04:15 missing, we all say, we all say how sad it is
01:04:19 to miss birthdays and miss anniversaries,
01:04:20 yada, yada, yada.
01:04:21 Everybody knows what that feels like.
01:04:22 Even business people know what that feels like.
01:04:23 The actual pain that we’re talking about
01:04:26 is when you’re not there to handle
01:04:28 your 13 year old’s questions when a boy breaks up with her
01:04:31 or when you’re not there to handle the bloody lip
01:04:34 that your nine year old comes back with
01:04:35 from their first encounter with a bully.
01:04:37 Those are the truly heartbreaking moments
01:04:39 that a parent lives and dies by.
01:04:42 He missed almost all of those
01:04:45 because he was fighting a war that we forgot
01:04:48 and we gave up on 20 years later, right?
01:04:51 He’s so honest about that.
01:04:54 And it was really inspiring to me
01:04:57 to be told not to ask that question.
01:04:59 And when I broke that guidance, he didn’t reprimand me.
01:05:02 He just, he was authentic.
01:05:05 And it was absolutely one of the big decisions
01:05:07 that helped me leave CIA on my own in 2014.
01:05:10 And he was honest on the sacrifice you make.
01:05:15 The same man, the same man who just taught me a lesson
01:05:17 about letting a myth live,
01:05:21 that same guy was willing to be so authentic
01:05:24 about this personal mistake.
01:05:27 I like complicated people like that.
01:05:30 So what did you, what do you make of that calculation,
01:05:34 of family versus job?
01:05:36 You’ve given a lot of your life and passion
01:05:40 to the CIA, to that work.
01:05:44 You’ve spoken positively about that world, the good it does.
01:05:51 And yet you’re also a family man and you value that.
01:05:53 What’s that calculation like?
01:05:55 What’s that trade off like?
01:05:56 I mean, for me, the calculation is very clear.
01:05:57 It’s family.
01:05:58 I left CIA because I chose my family.
01:06:03 And when my son was born, my wife and I found out
01:06:06 that we were pregnant while we were still on mission.
01:06:08 We were a tandem couple.
01:06:09 My wife is also a former CIA officer, undercover like me.
01:06:12 We were operating together overseas.
01:06:14 We got the positive pregnancy test, like so many people do.
01:06:18 And she cried.
01:06:21 My wife was a bad ass.
01:06:23 I was just, I was like the accidental spy,
01:06:26 but my wife was really good at what she does.
01:06:28 And she cried and she was like, what do we do now?
01:06:32 It’s what we’ve always wanted, a child,
01:06:34 but we’re in this thing right now.
01:06:38 There’s no space for a child.
01:06:41 So long story short, we had our baby.
01:06:45 CIA brought us back to have the baby.
01:06:48 And when we started having conversations about,
01:06:50 hey, what do we do next?
01:06:52 Cause we’re not the type of people
01:06:53 to wanna just sit around and be domestic.
01:06:57 What do we do next?
01:06:58 But keep in mind, we have a child now.
01:07:00 So here’s some of our suggestions.
01:07:02 We could do this and we can do that.
01:07:04 Let us get our child to a place where we can put him
01:07:06 into an international school,
01:07:07 or we can get him into some sort of program
01:07:10 where we can both operate together again during the day.
01:07:17 But CIA just had no,
01:07:18 they had no patience for that conversation.
01:07:19 There was no, family is not their priority.
01:07:23 So the fact that we were a tandem couple,
01:07:26 two officers, two operators trying to have a baby
01:07:29 was irrelevant to them.
01:07:30 So when they didn’t play with us,
01:07:32 when they did nothing to help us prioritize parenthood
01:07:39 as part of our overall experience,
01:07:41 that’s when we knew that they never would.
01:07:43 And what good is it to commit yourself to a career
01:07:46 if the career is always going to challenge
01:07:48 the thing that you value most?
01:07:50 And that was the calculation that we made to leave CIA.
01:07:53 Not everybody makes that calculation.
01:07:55 And a big part of why I am so vocal about my time in CIA
01:08:00 is because I am immensely appreciative of the men and women
01:08:05 who to this day have failed marriages
01:08:09 and poor relationships with their children
01:08:12 because they chose national security.
01:08:14 They chose protecting America over their own family.
01:08:17 And they’ve done it even though it’s made them
01:08:21 abuse alcohol and abuse substances
01:08:23 and they’ve gotten themselves,
01:08:25 they’ve got permanent diseases and issues
01:08:29 from living and working abroad.
01:08:31 It’s just insane the sacrifice that officers make
01:08:35 to keep America free.
01:08:37 And I’m just not one of those people.
01:08:39 I chose family.
01:08:41 You said that your wife misses it.
01:08:44 Do you miss it?
01:08:45 We both miss it.
01:08:46 We miss it for different reasons.
01:08:47 We miss it for similar reasons, I guess,
01:08:49 but we miss it in different ways.
01:08:50 The people, the people at CIA are just amazing.
01:08:55 They’re everyday people like the guy and the gal next door,
01:09:00 but so smart and so dedicated and so courageous
01:09:04 about what they do and how they do it.
01:09:06 I mean, the sacrifices they make are massive,
01:09:08 more massive than the sacrifices I made.
01:09:10 So I was always inspired
01:09:12 and impressed by the people around me.
01:09:13 So both my wife and I absolutely miss the people.
01:09:16 My wife misses the work because you know everything.
01:09:20 When you’re inside, it’s all, I mean, we had top secret.
01:09:25 We had TS SCI clearances at the time.
01:09:27 I had a cat six, cat 12, which makes me nuclear cleared.
01:09:30 My wife had other privy clearances
01:09:32 that allowed her to look into areas that were specialized,
01:09:37 but there wasn’t a headline that went out
01:09:40 that we couldn’t fact check with a click of a few buttons.
01:09:44 And she misses that because she loved that kind of knowledge.
01:09:46 And now you’re just one of us living
01:09:48 in the cloud of mystery.
01:09:51 Exactly.
01:09:52 Not really knowing anything about what’s going on.
01:09:54 Exactly, but for me,
01:09:55 I’ve always been the person that likes operating.
01:09:59 And you know what you still get to do when you leave CIA?
01:10:01 You still get to operate.
01:10:02 Operating is just working with people.
01:10:04 It’s understanding how people think,
01:10:06 predicting their actions,
01:10:07 driving their direction of their thoughts, persuading them,
01:10:10 winning negotiations.
01:10:13 You still get to do that.
01:10:14 You do that every day.
01:10:15 And you can apply that in all kinds of domains.
01:10:18 Well, let me ask you on that.
01:10:21 You’re a covert CIA intelligence officer for several years.
01:10:25 Maybe can you tell me the story of how it all began?
01:10:28 How were you recruited?
01:10:30 And what did the job entail
01:10:32 to the degree you can speak about it?
01:10:34 Feel free to direct me if I’m getting too boring
01:10:36 or if the camera.
01:10:37 Every aspect of this is super exciting.
01:10:40 So I was leaving the United States Air Force in 2007.
01:10:46 I was a lieutenant getting ready to pin on captain.
01:10:51 My five years was up.
01:10:53 And I was a very bad fit for the US Air Force.
01:10:56 I was an Air Force Academy graduate, not by choice,
01:10:58 but by lack of opportunity, lack of options otherwise.
01:11:01 So I forced myself through the Academy,
01:11:03 barely graduated with a 2.4 GPA.
01:11:07 And then went on the Air Force taught me how to fly.
01:11:09 And then the Air Force taught me about nuclear weapons.
01:11:11 And I ended up as a nuclear missile commander in Montana.
01:11:18 And I chose to leave the Air Force
01:11:20 because I didn’t like shaving my face.
01:11:23 I didn’t like having short hair.
01:11:24 And I most definitely didn’t like shining my shoes.
01:11:26 And I did not wanna be one of the people
01:11:28 in charge of nuclear weapons.
01:11:29 So when I found myself as a person
01:11:30 in charge of 200 nuclear weapons,
01:11:32 I knew that I was going down the wrong road.
01:11:34 I have questions about this.
01:11:36 And more importantly, I have questions about your hair.
01:11:38 So you had short hair at the time?
01:11:40 I had, yeah, you have to.
01:11:41 Military regulations, you can’t have hair
01:11:42 longer than one inch.
01:11:43 Okay.
01:11:44 And this, the beautiful hair you have now,
01:11:48 that came to be in the CIA or after?
01:11:52 This, so I discovered I had messy hair in CIA
01:11:55 because I used to go muge, we called it muge.
01:11:58 I used to go Mujahideen style,
01:12:00 big burly beard and crazy wacky hair.
01:12:03 Because an ambiguously brown guy with a big beard
01:12:06 and long hair can go anywhere in the world
01:12:09 without anyone even noticing him.
01:12:12 They either think that he’s a janitor
01:12:14 or they think that he’s like some forgotten part of history
01:12:18 but nobody ever thinks that that guy is a spy.
01:12:21 So it was the perfect, for me,
01:12:23 it was one of my favorite disguises.
01:12:27 It’s what’s known as a level two disguise.
01:12:29 One of my favorite disguises to Don
01:12:30 was just dilapidated brown guy.
01:12:35 Can you actually, we’ll just take a million tangents.
01:12:37 What’s a level two disguise?
01:12:40 What are the different levels of disguise?
01:12:42 What are the disguises?
01:12:44 Yeah, there’s three levels of disguise by and large.
01:12:46 Level one is what we also know,
01:12:48 what we also call light disguise.
01:12:49 So that’s essentially, you put on sunglasses
01:12:52 and a ball cap and that’s a disguise.
01:12:55 You look different than you normally look.
01:12:57 So it’s just different enough
01:12:59 that someone who’s never seen you before,
01:13:01 someone who literally has to see you
01:13:02 just from a picture on the internet,
01:13:05 they may not recognize you.
01:13:06 It’s why you see celebrities walk around
01:13:08 with ball caps and oversized jackets and baseball hats
01:13:11 because they just need to not look
01:13:12 like they look in the tabloid
01:13:13 or not look like they look in TV.
01:13:16 That’s level one.
01:13:17 Let me jump from level one to level three.
01:13:19 Level three is all of your prosthetics,
01:13:22 all the stuff you see in Mission Impossible,
01:13:24 your fake ears, your fake faces, your fat suits,
01:13:28 your stilts inside your feet, all that’s level three.
01:13:32 Whenever they make any kind of prosthetic disguise,
01:13:35 that’s a level three disguise
01:13:37 because prosthetics are very damning
01:13:41 if you are caught with a prosthetic.
01:13:43 If you’re caught wearing a sudden,
01:13:45 wearing a baseball hat and sunglasses,
01:13:47 nobody’s gonna say you’re a spy.
01:13:49 But when you’re caught with a custom made nose prosthetic
01:13:54 that changes the way your face looks
01:13:55 or when someone pops out a fake jaw
01:13:57 and they see that your top teeth don’t look like they did
01:14:00 in this prosthetic, then all of a sudden
01:14:03 you’ve got some very difficult questions to ask
01:14:05 or to answer.
01:14:06 So level three is extremely dangerous.
01:14:08 Level one is not dangerous.
01:14:09 Level two is longterm disguise.
01:14:12 Level two is all the things that you can do
01:14:14 to permanently change the way you look
01:14:16 for a long period of time
01:14:17 so that whether you’re aggressed in the street
01:14:20 or whether someone breaks into your hotel room or whatever,
01:14:23 it’s real.
01:14:24 So maybe that’s, maybe you get a tattoo.
01:14:27 Maybe you cut your hair short.
01:14:28 Maybe you grow your hair long.
01:14:29 Maybe you go bald.
01:14:31 Maybe you start wearing glasses.
01:14:32 Well, glasses are technically a prosthetic,
01:14:34 but you can, if you have teeth pulled,
01:14:38 if you gain 20 pounds, really gain 20 pounds
01:14:42 or lose 15 pounds, whatever you might do,
01:14:44 all of that’s considered level two.
01:14:45 It’s designed for a longterm mission
01:14:48 so that people believe you are who you say you are
01:14:52 in that disguise.
01:14:53 A lot of that is physical characteristics.
01:14:55 What about what actors do,
01:14:59 which is the…
01:15:01 Method acting.
01:15:02 Yeah, the method acting,
01:15:03 sort of developing a backstory in your own mind,
01:15:07 and then you start pretending
01:15:11 that you host a podcast and teach at a university
01:15:15 and then do research and so on
01:15:17 just so that people can believe
01:15:19 that you’re not actually an agent.
01:15:22 Is that part of the disguise levels or no?
01:15:24 So yes, disguise has to do with physical character traits.
01:15:28 That’s what a disguise is.
01:15:29 What you’re talking about is known as a cover legend.
01:15:32 When you go undercover,
01:15:33 what you claim to be, who you claim to be,
01:15:35 that’s called your legend, your cover legend.
01:15:38 Every disguise would theoretically have
01:15:40 its own cover legend.
01:15:42 Even if it’s just to describe
01:15:43 why you’re wearing what you’re wearing,
01:15:45 it’s all a cover.
01:15:47 So the method acting,
01:15:48 this is a fantastic point
01:15:50 that I don’t get to make very often,
01:15:51 so I’m glad you asked.
01:15:52 The difference between CIA officers in the field
01:15:55 and method actors
01:15:56 is that method actors try to become the character.
01:15:59 They try to shed all vestiges of who they really are
01:16:04 and become the character,
01:16:05 and that’s part of what makes them so amazing,
01:16:07 but it’s also part of what makes them mentally unstable
01:16:12 over long periods of time.
01:16:13 It’s part of what feeds their depression,
01:16:14 their anxiety, their personal issues,
01:16:16 because they lose sight of who they really are.
01:16:18 Field officers don’t get that luxury.
01:16:20 We have to always, always remember
01:16:24 we are a covert CIA intelligence officer
01:16:26 collecting secrets in the field.
01:16:28 We have to remember that.
01:16:29 So we’re taught a very specific skill
01:16:32 to compartmentalize our true self separately,
01:16:38 but make that true self the true identity.
01:16:42 So then we can still live and act
01:16:44 and effectively carry out our cover legend
01:16:47 without ever losing sight,
01:16:49 without ever losing that compass true north
01:16:51 of who we actually are.
01:16:53 And then we can compartmentalize
01:16:55 and secure all the information that we need,
01:16:56 retain it, remember it,
01:16:58 but then return to our true self
01:17:00 when we get back to a position of safety.
01:17:03 Is it possible to do that?
01:17:04 So I just have kind of anecdotal evidence for myself.
01:17:09 I really try to be the exact same person in all conditions,
01:17:12 which makes it very easy.
01:17:15 Like if you’re not lying,
01:17:17 it makes it very easy to, first of all, to exist,
01:17:21 but also to communicate a kind of authenticity
01:17:23 and a genuineness, which I think is really important.
01:17:26 Like trust and integrity around trust
01:17:29 is extremely important to me.
01:17:30 It’s the thing that opens doors
01:17:32 and maintains relationships.
01:17:34 And I tend to think, like when I was in Ukraine,
01:17:39 so many doors just opened to the very high security areas
01:17:45 and everywhere else too.
01:17:46 Like I’ve just interacted with some incredible people
01:17:48 without any kind of concerns.
01:17:51 You know, who is this guy?
01:17:52 Is he gonna spread it?
01:17:54 You know, all that kind of stuff.
01:17:55 And I tend to believe that you’re able
01:17:58 to communicate a trustworthiness somehow
01:18:00 if you just are who you are.
01:18:05 And I think, I suppose method actors
01:18:07 are trying to achieve that by becoming something
01:18:09 and they can, I just feel like there is very subtle cues
01:18:14 that are extremely difficult to fake.
01:18:17 Like you really have to become that person, be that person.
01:18:22 But you’re saying as a CIA agent,
01:18:25 you have to remember that you are there
01:18:27 to collect information.
01:18:29 Do you think that gives you away?
01:18:31 So one of the flaws in your argument
01:18:34 is that you keep referring to how you feel.
01:18:38 I feel this, I feel that, I feel like this,
01:18:40 I feel like that.
01:18:41 That feeling is a predictable character trait
01:18:45 of all human beings.
01:18:46 It’s a pink matter, we call it pink matter.
01:18:49 It’s a cognitive trait.
01:18:52 You are not alone in trusting your feelings.
01:18:55 All people trust their feelings.
01:18:56 But because what CIA teaches us
01:18:59 is how to systematically create artificial relationships
01:19:04 where we’re the one in control of the source
01:19:06 that is giving us intelligence.
01:19:08 And the core element to being able to control
01:19:11 a relationship is understanding
01:19:13 the pink matter truth of feelings.
01:19:16 What all people feel becomes their point of view
01:19:19 on what reality is.
01:19:21 So when you understand and you learn how to manipulate
01:19:23 what people feel, then you can essentially direct them
01:19:26 to feel any way you want them to feel.
01:19:28 So if you want them to feel like they can trust you,
01:19:30 you can make them feel that way.
01:19:32 If you want them to feel like you’re a good guy
01:19:34 or a bad guy, if you want them to feel like
01:19:36 they should give you secrets even though their government
01:19:38 tells them not to, you can do that.
01:19:40 There are men who make women feel like they love them
01:19:43 and just so that the woman will sleep with them.
01:19:45 There are women who make men feel like they love them
01:19:47 just so the men will give them their money.
01:19:49 Manipulation is a core behavioral trait
01:19:52 of all the human species because we all understand
01:19:55 to some level how powerful feelings are,
01:19:58 but feelings are not the same thing
01:19:59 as logical, rational thought.
01:20:01 They’re two different sides of the brain.
01:20:03 What CIA teaches us how to do is systematically tap into
01:20:07 the right side, emotional side of the brain
01:20:10 so that we can quickly get past all of the stuff
01:20:13 you were just saying, all of the,
01:20:15 well, don’t you have to be convincing
01:20:16 and don’t you have to really know your story
01:20:18 and don’t you have to be able to defend it?
01:20:20 Don’t you have to have authenticity
01:20:21 and don’t you have to have genuine feelings?
01:20:25 Yes, all of those things are true
01:20:27 if you’re having a genuine relationship,
01:20:29 but in an artificial relationship,
01:20:31 there’s ways to bypass all of that
01:20:32 and get right to the heart of making someone
01:20:34 feel comfortable and safe.
01:20:35 I guess the question I’m asking
01:20:37 and the thing I was implying is that creating
01:20:41 an artificial relationship is an extremely difficult skill
01:20:45 to accomplish the level, like how good I am at being me
01:20:51 and creating a feeling in another person that I create.
01:20:56 For you to do that artificially,
01:20:58 that’s gotta be, you gotta be,
01:21:00 my sense is you gotta be really damn good at that kind of thing.
01:21:03 I would venture to say, I mean,
01:21:08 I don’t know how to measure how difficult the thing is,
01:21:10 but especially when you’re communicating with people
01:21:13 whose job depends on forming trusting relationships,
01:21:18 they’re gonna smell bullshit.
01:21:21 And to get past that bullshit detector is tough.
01:21:27 It’s a tough skill.
01:21:28 Well, it’s interesting.
01:21:29 So I would say that.
01:21:30 Or maybe I’m wrong actually on that.
01:21:32 I would say that once you understand the system,
01:21:34 it’s not that hard.
01:21:35 It makes a lot of sense.
01:21:37 But I would also say that to your exact point,
01:21:39 you are right that people smell bullshit.
01:21:42 People smell bullshit.
01:21:43 But here’s the thing.
01:21:45 If you come in smelling like goat shit,
01:21:48 you still smell like shit, but you don’t smell like bullshit.
01:21:51 So they don’t count you out right away.
01:21:53 And if you come in smelling like rotten tomatoes
01:21:57 or if you come in smelling like lavender
01:21:59 or if you come in smelling like vanilla
01:22:00 or if you come in without any smell at all,
01:22:02 all that matters is that you don’t smell like bullshit.
01:22:05 Here’s the thing that’s one of the secret sauces of CIA.
01:22:10 When you look and act like a spy, people think you’re a spy.
01:22:14 If you look and act in any other way,
01:22:16 you know what they never ever think you are?
01:22:19 A spy.
01:22:21 They might think you’re an idiot.
01:22:22 They might think you’re trailer trash.
01:22:24 They might think that you’re a migrant worker,
01:22:27 but they never think you’re a spy.
01:22:30 And that lesson in everyday life is immensely powerful.
01:22:35 If you’re trying to take your boss’s job,
01:22:39 as long as you don’t ever look like the employee
01:22:41 who’s trying to take the boss’s job,
01:22:43 the boss is focused on all the employees
01:22:44 who are trying to take his job.
01:22:46 Everybody’s prioritizing whether they know it or not.
01:22:48 The goal is to just not be the one that they’re targeting.
01:22:51 Target them without them knowing you’re targeting them.
01:22:54 So people just, when they meet you, they put you in a bin.
01:22:58 And if you want to avoid being put in a particular bin,
01:23:01 just don’t act like the person that would be,
01:23:04 just show some kind of characteristics
01:23:06 that bin you in some other way.
01:23:07 Exactly right.
01:23:08 You have to be in a bin.
01:23:09 Just choose the bin.
01:23:10 All right.
01:23:12 So you, knowing these methods,
01:23:16 when you talk to people, especially in civilian life,
01:23:19 how do you know who’s lying to you and not?
01:23:22 That gets to be more into the trained skill side of things.
01:23:26 There’s body cues, there’s micro expressions.
01:23:29 I’m not a big fan of,
01:23:31 I don’t believe that micro expressions alone do anything.
01:23:33 I also don’t believe that micro expressions
01:23:35 without an effective baseline do anything.
01:23:37 So don’t for a second think that I’m,
01:23:40 all the people out there pitching
01:23:41 that you can tell if someone’s lying to you
01:23:43 just by looking at their face, it’s all baloney.
01:23:46 In my world, that’s baloney.
01:23:47 Like the way you move your eyes or something like that.
01:23:49 Without knowing a baseline, without knowing.
01:23:51 For that individual. For that individual.
01:23:53 Then you actually don’t know.
01:23:54 And an individual’s baseline is based on education,
01:23:56 culture, life experience, you name it, right?
01:23:58 So this is huge.
01:24:00 But when you combine facial expressions
01:24:03 with body movements, body language, nonverbal cues,
01:24:06 and you add on top of that effective elicitation techniques
01:24:10 that you are in control of,
01:24:12 now you have a more robust platform
01:24:15 to tell if someone’s lying to you.
01:24:16 So there’s like a set of like interrogation trajectories
01:24:22 you can go down that can help you figure out a person.
01:24:26 Technically they’re interview, interview concepts.
01:24:30 Correct.
01:24:31 Because an interrogation,
01:24:32 an interrogation is something very different
01:24:33 than an interview.
01:24:34 And in the world of professionals,
01:24:36 an interrogation is very different.
01:24:37 What’s the difference?
01:24:38 The nature of how relaxed the thing is or what?
01:24:40 So in an interrogation, there’s a clear pattern of dominance.
01:24:44 There’s no equality.
01:24:45 Also, there’s no escape.
01:24:47 You are there until the interrogator is done with you.
01:24:49 Anybody who’s ever been reprimanded by mom and dad
01:24:51 knows what an interrogation feels like.
01:24:53 Anybody who’s ever been called into the principal’s office
01:24:54 or the boss’s office,
01:24:55 that’s what interrogation feels like.
01:24:57 You don’t leave until the boss says you can leave.
01:24:59 And you’re there to say,
01:25:00 it’s to answer questions the boss asks questions.
01:25:02 An interview is an equal exchange of ideas.
01:25:05 You are in control of this interview, for sure.
01:25:09 But if we were having coffee,
01:25:11 I could take control if I wanted to take control.
01:25:13 If I wanted to ask you personal questions, I would.
01:25:15 If I wanted to talk to you about your background, I could.
01:25:17 Why am I in control of this interview exactly?
01:25:19 Because the person in control
01:25:20 is the person asking questions.
01:25:22 I’m sitting here, as you’ve spoken about,
01:25:26 my power here is I’m the quiet one listening.
01:25:30 You’re exactly right.
01:25:31 Guess where this conversation goes?
01:25:33 Anywhere you choose to take it,
01:25:35 because you’re the one asking questions.
01:25:36 Every time I answer a question,
01:25:38 I am creating a pattern of obedience to you,
01:25:41 which subliminally, subconsciously,
01:25:43 makes me that much more apt to answer your questions.
01:25:45 Of course, you can always turn and start asking me questions.
01:25:48 But you’re saying that through conversation,
01:25:53 you can call it interviewing,
01:25:55 you can start to see cracks
01:26:02 in the story of the person
01:26:05 and the degree to which they exaggerate or lie
01:26:08 or to see how much they can be trusted, that kind of stuff.
01:26:13 What I’m saying is that through a conversation,
01:26:15 you develop a baseline.
01:26:16 Even just in the first part of our conversation,
01:26:20 I’ve been able to create some baseline elements about you.
01:26:23 You’ve been able to create baseline elements about me.
01:26:25 Maybe they’re just not a friend of mine.
01:26:27 From those baselines,
01:26:28 now we can push through more intentional questions
01:26:33 to test whether or not the person is being truthful
01:26:36 because they’re operating within their baseline,
01:26:39 or if you are triggering sensitivities
01:26:42 outside of their baseline,
01:26:43 and then you can start to see their tells.
01:26:45 That’s fascinating.
01:26:46 Yeah, baseline, even the tells, right?
01:26:49 The eye contact.
01:26:50 You’ve probably already formed a baseline
01:26:52 that I have trouble making eye contact.
01:26:54 And so if you ask me difficult questions
01:26:56 and I’m not making eye contact,
01:26:58 maybe that’s not a good signal of me lying or whatever.
01:27:01 Correct.
01:27:01 Because I always have trouble making eye contact,
01:27:04 stuff like that.
01:27:04 That’s really fascinating.
01:27:06 The majority of your eye movement is to the right?
01:27:07 Yeah.
01:27:08 Your right, my left, right?
01:27:10 Which is usually someone who’s,
01:27:11 if you ask micro expressionists,
01:27:13 that’s someone who’s referencing fact.
01:27:15 Yeah.
01:27:16 That’s not necessarily what’s happening for you
01:27:18 because you’re pulling concepts out of the air.
01:27:19 So it’s also a place
01:27:20 where you reference something other than fact.
01:27:22 It’s a place for you to find creativity.
01:27:24 So if I just thought that you were lying
01:27:25 because you look up and to the right, I would be wrong.
01:27:28 That’s so fascinating.
01:27:29 And a lot of that has to do with like habits
01:27:31 that are formed and all those kinds of things,
01:27:33 or maybe some right hand, left hand type of situation.
01:27:35 Right eye dominance.
01:27:36 Yeah, right eye dominance.
01:27:37 It’s gonna make you look to the right.
01:27:39 Is this a science or an art?
01:27:40 It’s a bit of both.
01:27:41 I would say that like all good art,
01:27:44 art is taught from a foundation of skills.
01:27:47 And those skills are played,
01:27:51 are taught in a very structured manner.
01:27:53 And then the way that you use the skills after that,
01:27:57 that’s more of the artistic grace.
01:27:59 So I’ve always called espionage an art.
01:28:01 Spying is an art.
01:28:03 Being able to hack human beings is an art,
01:28:06 but it’s all based in a foundation of science.
01:28:08 You still have to learn how to mix the color palette
01:28:10 and use certain brushes.
01:28:11 Do you think of that as a kind of the study
01:28:16 of human psychology?
01:28:17 Is that what a psychologist does or a psychiatrist?
01:28:20 What from this process have you learned about human nature?
01:28:25 Human nature.
01:28:26 I mean, I suppose the answer to that could be a book,
01:28:30 but it probably will be a book.
01:28:32 I’ll save you that, yeah.
01:28:33 But is there things that are surprising about human nature,
01:28:38 surprising to us civilians that you could speak to?
01:28:43 Yes, one thing is extremely surprising about human nature,
01:28:47 which is funny, because that’s not the answer
01:28:49 I would have said.
01:28:50 So I’m glad that you clarified this specific question.
01:28:53 The thing that’s surprising about human nature
01:28:55 is that human beings long, like in their soul,
01:29:02 there’s like a painful longing to be with other people.
01:29:06 And that’s really surprising,
01:29:08 because we all wanna pretend like we’re strong.
01:29:11 We all wanna pretend like we’re independent.
01:29:14 We all wanna pretend like we are the masters of our destiny.
01:29:18 But what’s truly consistent in all people
01:29:22 is this longing to commune with others like us.
01:29:29 My more practical answer about what I’ve learned
01:29:33 to be the truth is that human nature is predictable.
01:29:36 And that predictability is what gives people
01:29:38 an incredible advantage over other people.
01:29:41 But that’s not the surprising piece.
01:29:43 I mean, even when CIA taught me
01:29:45 that human nature is predictable, it just made sense.
01:29:47 I was like, oh yeah, that makes sense.
01:29:49 But what I never ever anticipated was
01:29:52 no matter where I’ve been in the world,
01:29:54 no matter who I’ve talked to,
01:29:54 no matter what socioeconomic bracket is that longing,
01:29:59 man, it hurts.
01:30:00 Loneliness sucks, and togetherness feels good,
01:30:04 even if you’re together with someone
01:30:05 you know isn’t the right person.
01:30:07 It still feels better than being alone.
01:30:09 I mean, that’s such a deep truth you speak to,
01:30:11 and I could talk about that for a long time.
01:30:15 There is, I mean, through these conversations in general,
01:30:18 whether it’s being recorded or not,
01:30:21 I hunger to discover in the other person that longing.
01:30:27 You strip away the other things,
01:30:29 and then you share in the longing for that connection.
01:30:32 And I particularly also have detected that in people
01:30:38 from all walks of life, including people
01:30:42 that others might identify as evil or hard,
01:30:47 as completely cold, it’s there.
01:30:52 It’s there.
01:30:53 They’ve hardened themselves in their search,
01:30:56 and who knows what dark place their brain is in,
01:30:59 their heart is in, but that longing is still there.
01:31:03 Even if it’s an ember, it’s there.
01:31:06 It’s the reason why in World War I and World War II,
01:31:11 you know, enemy combatants still shared cigarettes
01:31:13 on the front lines during periods of holidays
01:31:17 or bad weather or whatever else,
01:31:18 because that human connection, man, it triumphs over all.
01:31:22 See, that’s in part of what I refer to when I say love,
01:31:27 because I feel like if political leaders
01:31:31 and people in conflict at the small scale
01:31:34 and the large scale were able to tune into that longing,
01:31:42 to seek in each other that basic longing
01:31:45 for human connection, a lot of problems could be solved.
01:31:49 But of course, it’s difficult,
01:31:52 because it’s a game of chicken.
01:31:56 It’s if you open yourself up to reveal
01:31:59 that longing for connection with others,
01:32:02 people can hurt you.
01:32:03 Well, I would go a step farther,
01:32:04 and I would say that taking the connection away,
01:32:08 punishing, penalizing people by removing the connection
01:32:14 is a powerful tool, and that’s what we see.
01:32:18 That’s why we send people to jail.
01:32:20 That’s why we put economic sanctions on countries.
01:32:22 That’s why we ground our children
01:32:24 and send them to their rooms.
01:32:25 We are penalizing them.
01:32:27 Whether we know it or not, we’re using punitive damage
01:32:31 by taking away that basic human connection,
01:32:33 that longing for community.
01:32:36 What was your recruitment process and training process
01:32:40 and things you could speak to in the CIA?
01:32:46 As I was leaving the Air Force, all that was on my mind,
01:32:50 I don’t know what you were like at 27,
01:32:52 but I was a total tip shit at 27.
01:32:54 I’m not much better now at 42, but.
01:32:57 You and me, Bill.
01:32:58 Yeah, but I was like, I just wanted to be anything
01:33:04 other than a military officer,
01:33:06 so I was actually in the process of applying
01:33:09 to the Peace Corps through this thing called the internet,
01:33:12 which was still fairly rudimentary in 2007.
01:33:16 I had a computer lab that we went to,
01:33:18 and it had 10 computers in it,
01:33:20 and you had to log in and log out,
01:33:21 and slow internet and everything else,
01:33:22 but anyways, I was filling out an online application
01:33:25 to go work in the US Peace Corps.
01:33:28 I wanted to grow my hair out.
01:33:29 I wanted to stop wearing shoes that were shiny.
01:33:33 I wanted to meet a hippie chick
01:33:35 and have hippie babies in the wild
01:33:37 teaching Nigerian children how to read,
01:33:40 so that was the path I was going down,
01:33:42 and as I filled in all of my details,
01:33:45 there came this page that popped up,
01:33:47 and it was this blinking red page,
01:33:48 and it said, stop here.
01:33:50 You may qualify for other government positions.
01:33:53 If you’re willing to put your application
01:33:55 on hold for 72 hours,
01:33:57 that gives us a chance to reach out to you,
01:33:59 so again, 27 year old dipshit.
01:34:02 I was like, sure, I’ll put myself on hold
01:34:05 if I might qualify for other government opportunities,
01:34:07 and then about a day later, I got a phone call
01:34:09 from an almost unlisted number.
01:34:11 It just said 703, which was very strange to see
01:34:15 on my flip phone at the time, just one 703 area code,
01:34:18 and I picked it up, and it was a person
01:34:23 from Northern Virginia asking me
01:34:25 if I would be telling me that I was qualified
01:34:27 for a position in national security,
01:34:29 and if I would be interested, they’ll pay for my ticket
01:34:32 and fly me up to Langley, Virginia.
01:34:35 They didn’t say CIA.
01:34:36 They said Langley.
01:34:37 I put one on one together, and I was like,
01:34:39 maybe this is CIA, like, how cool is this?
01:34:43 Or maybe this is all make believe,
01:34:44 and this is totally fake, so either way,
01:34:46 it doesn’t hurt me at all to say yes.
01:34:47 They already have my phone number, so yes, yes, yes,
01:34:50 and then I remember thinking,
01:34:52 there’s no way that happened, and this isn’t real,
01:34:54 and then a day later, I got FedEx
01:34:57 or an overnight delivery of an airplane ticket
01:35:00 and a hotel reservation and a rental car reservation,
01:35:03 and then I just kept doing the next thing,
01:35:05 which I found out later on is a form of control.
01:35:07 You just do the next thing that they tell you to do,
01:35:10 and then before I knew it, I was interviewing
01:35:12 in a nondescript building with a person
01:35:15 who only told me their first name for a position
01:35:17 with the National Clandestine Service.
01:35:19 So you never really got a chance to think about it
01:35:21 because there’s small steps along the way,
01:35:23 and it kind of just leads you,
01:35:26 and maybe your personality is such that.
01:35:29 That’s an adventure.
01:35:30 It’s an adventure, and because it’s one step at a time,
01:35:34 you don’t necessarily see the negative consequences
01:35:36 of the adventure.
01:35:37 You don’t think about any of that.
01:35:38 You’re just stepping into the adventure.
01:35:41 And it’s easy.
01:35:42 There’s no work involved.
01:35:43 Somebody else is doing all the work,
01:35:44 telling me where to be and when.
01:35:46 It’s a lot like basic training in the military.
01:35:48 Anybody who’s ever been through basic training
01:35:49 will tell you they hated the first few days,
01:35:52 and then by the end, it was really comforting
01:35:54 because you just did what you were told.
01:35:56 They told you when to eat.
01:35:57 They made the decision of what to eat,
01:35:59 and then you just, you marched when they told you to march,
01:36:01 shined your shoes when they told you to shine your shoes.
01:36:03 Human beings love being told what to do.
01:36:06 What about the training process
01:36:08 for becoming a covert CIA agent?
01:36:14 Yeah, so the interview process is.
01:36:19 Yeah, the interview process, too.
01:36:21 How rigorous was that?
01:36:22 It was very rigorous.
01:36:23 That was where it became difficult.
01:36:26 Everything up to the first interview was easy,
01:36:28 but there’s three interviews,
01:36:30 and some people are lucky enough
01:36:31 to have four or five interviews if something goes wrong
01:36:34 or something goes awry with the first few interviews.
01:36:37 And again, this might be dated from what I went through,
01:36:40 but during the interview process is when they start,
01:36:43 they do your psychological evaluations.
01:36:45 They do your, they do personality assessments.
01:36:51 They do skills assessments.
01:36:53 They’ll start sending you back to wherever you’re living
01:36:56 with assignments, not intel assignments,
01:36:59 but actual homework assignments.
01:37:02 Write an essay about three parts of the world
01:37:05 that you think will be most impacted
01:37:08 in the next three to five years,
01:37:09 or prioritize the top three strategic priorities
01:37:12 for the United States and put it into 250 words
01:37:16 or 2,500 words and whatever else,
01:37:19 double spaced in this font, yada, yada, yada,
01:37:21 like super specific stuff.
01:37:22 It’s kind of stressful,
01:37:24 but it’s just like going back to college again.
01:37:26 So you go through all of those acts,
01:37:27 and then you submit this stuff to some PO box
01:37:30 that doesn’t have anybody that’s ever gonna respond to you,
01:37:33 and then you hope.
01:37:34 You just send it into the ether,
01:37:36 and you hope that you sent it right.
01:37:38 You hope that you wrote well enough.
01:37:40 You hope that your assessment was right,
01:37:42 whatever else it might be,
01:37:43 and then eventually get another phone call that says,
01:37:45 hey, we received your package.
01:37:46 You’ve been moved to the next level of interview,
01:37:49 and now we need you to go to this other nondescript building
01:37:52 in this other nondescript city,
01:37:53 and then you start meeting.
01:37:55 You start sitting in waiting rooms
01:37:59 with other groups of people
01:38:00 who are at the same phase of interview with you,
01:38:02 which were some of the coolest experiences
01:38:04 that I remember still.
01:38:05 One of my best friends to this day,
01:38:07 who I don’t get to talk to because he’s still undercover,
01:38:10 is a guy I met during those interview processes,
01:38:12 and I was like, oh, we met.
01:38:14 I saw what he was wearing.
01:38:14 He saw what I was wearing.
01:38:16 I was brown.
01:38:17 So you immediately connected,
01:38:18 and you liked the people there.
01:38:19 Close.
01:38:20 More like we immediately judge each other,
01:38:22 because we’re all untrained.
01:38:24 So he looked at me, and he was like,
01:38:26 brown dude with crazy hair, and I was wearing,
01:38:28 dude, I was dressed like a total ass.
01:38:29 I was dressed in a clubbing shirt.
01:38:32 I don’t know why I thought it would be a good idea
01:38:33 to go to a CIA interview in a clubbing shirt
01:38:36 with my buttons unbuttoned down to here.
01:38:39 And he was like, yeah, you were really,
01:38:40 after we got in, he was like,
01:38:42 yeah, dude, you were always really cool to talk to,
01:38:43 but I was like, there’s no way that idiot’s getting in.
01:38:46 And I remember looking at him and being like,
01:38:48 dude, you were just another white guy in a black suit.
01:38:50 They’re not looking for you, but here you are.
01:38:52 So it was just, those kinds of things were so interesting,
01:38:54 because we were totally wrong
01:38:55 about what CIA was looking for.
01:38:56 Until you’re in, you have no idea what they’re looking for.
01:38:59 And you’re just shooting in the dark.
01:39:02 Did they have you do like a lie detector test?
01:39:05 Yes, it’s called a polygraph.
01:39:07 Polygraph.
01:39:08 How effective, just interesting,
01:39:10 or our previous discussion, how effective are those?
01:39:12 Polygraphs are really interesting.
01:39:14 So one of the things that people don’t understand
01:39:16 about polygraphs is that polygraphs
01:39:17 aren’t meant to detect a lie.
01:39:19 Like they’re called a lie detector,
01:39:21 but they’re not actually meant to detect a lie.
01:39:23 They’re built to detect variants
01:39:27 from your physiological baseline.
01:39:29 So they’re essentially meant to identify sensitivities
01:39:33 to certain types of questions.
01:39:35 And then as they identify a sensitivity to a question,
01:39:37 it gives the interviewer an additional piece of information
01:39:40 to direct the next round of questions.
01:39:43 So then from there, they can kind of see
01:39:44 how sensitive you are to a certain level of questions.
01:39:46 And your sensitivity could be a sign of dishonesty,
01:39:50 but it could also be a sign of vulnerability.
01:39:54 So the interrogator themselves, the interviewer themselves,
01:39:57 they’re the one that have to make the judgment call
01:39:59 as to which one it is,
01:40:00 which is why you might see multiple interviewers
01:40:03 over the course of multiple polygraphs.
01:40:05 But that’s really what they’re all about.
01:40:07 So, I mean, outside of, they’re extremely uncomfortable,
01:40:11 like they’re mentally uncomfortable,
01:40:13 but then there’s also, you sit on a pad
01:40:15 because the pad is supposed to be able to tell
01:40:17 like your body movements, but also like your sphincter
01:40:20 contractions or whatever.
01:40:22 So you’re sitting on this pad, you’re plugged in,
01:40:24 you’re strapped in, you’re tied up,
01:40:26 and it takes so much time to get in there.
01:40:28 And then they start asking you questions,
01:40:30 baseline questions at first,
01:40:31 and then other questions from there.
01:40:33 And you’re just answering the best you can.
01:40:35 And you never know what they’re seeing
01:40:36 and you don’t know what they’re doing.
01:40:37 And it’s really hard not to get anxious of that anyways.
01:40:39 And then…
01:40:40 Are they the whole time monitoring the readings?
01:40:42 Yeah, from like a big, they’ve got multiple screens
01:40:45 and they’ve got just, it’s all information superiority.
01:40:47 They have information superiority.
01:40:49 You’re the idiot looking away from them
01:40:51 or looking sideways of them and trying not to move
01:40:54 because you’re afraid that if you like have gas
01:40:57 or if you move a little bit,
01:40:57 it’s gonna bury you from your baseline.
01:40:59 And the whole time you’re worried, your heart’s racing
01:41:01 and your blood pressure’s increasing,
01:41:02 which is a variance from baseline.
01:41:04 So yeah, that means it’s an interesting art.
01:41:06 Or your baseline.
01:41:07 Correct.
01:41:08 Maybe there’s some people that are just chilling
01:41:09 the whole time and that’s their baseline.
01:41:11 Right, right.
01:41:12 But that’s what they’re doing.
01:41:14 They’re establishing a baseline.
01:41:14 I mean, I guess that means the polygraph
01:41:16 is a skill that you develop to do it well.
01:41:22 So when people talk about beating a lie detector,
01:41:24 it’s not that they’re telling an effective lie.
01:41:26 That’s not hard.
01:41:27 It’s not hard to tell a lie to an interviewer.
01:41:31 And the interviewer doesn’t care
01:41:32 if you’re being honest or not honest about a topic.
01:41:34 What they’re looking for is sensitivity.
01:41:36 If they see no sensitivity, that’s a big sign for them.
01:41:40 That’s a big sign that you’re probably a pathological liar.
01:41:43 If you show sensitivity to many things,
01:41:46 then that’s a sign that you’re probably an anxious person
01:41:49 and they can still reset their baseline
01:41:51 because they can tell how your anxiety
01:41:53 is increasing in 15 minute increments.
01:41:56 It’s a unique skill.
01:41:58 I mean, a really good polygrapher is immensely valuable.
01:42:02 But yeah, it’s the misnomers,
01:42:04 the misconceptions about polygraphs are vast.
01:42:07 You also mentioned personality tests.
01:42:09 That’s really interesting.
01:42:10 So how effective are personality tests?
01:42:14 One for the hiring process,
01:42:15 but also for understanding a human being.
01:42:17 So personality is extremely important
01:42:19 for understanding human being.
01:42:20 And I would say that there’s a thousand different ways
01:42:22 of looking at personality.
01:42:23 The only one that I count with any significance is the MBTI.
01:42:28 And the MBTI is what all the leading spy agencies
01:42:30 around the world use as well.
01:42:32 Well, that’s kind of interesting to hear.
01:42:34 Oh yeah.
01:42:34 So there’s been criticisms of that kind of test.
01:42:36 There have been criticisms for a long time.
01:42:38 Yeah, and you think there’s value.
01:42:40 Absolutely, absolutely.
01:42:41 And there’s a few reasons why, right?
01:42:43 So first, MBTI makes the claim
01:42:45 that your core personality doesn’t change over time.
01:42:49 And that’s how it’s calibrated.
01:42:51 And one of the big arguments is that people say
01:42:53 that your personality can change over time.
01:42:55 Now, in my experience, the MBTI is exactly correct.
01:42:59 Your core personality does not change
01:43:01 because your core personality is defined
01:43:04 as your personality when all resources are removed.
01:43:08 So essentially, your emergency mode, your dire conditions,
01:43:13 that is your core personality.
01:43:15 We can all act a little more extroverted.
01:43:18 We can all be a little more empathetic
01:43:21 when we have tons of time and money and patience.
01:43:25 When you strip away all that time, money, and patience,
01:43:27 how empathetic are you?
01:43:28 How much do you like being around other people?
01:43:31 How much do you like being alone?
01:43:33 Do you make judgments or do you analyze information?
01:43:37 That’s what’s so powerful about MBTI
01:43:38 is it’s talking about what people are like
01:43:40 when you strip away resources.
01:43:42 And then because it’s so consistent,
01:43:44 it’s also only four codes.
01:43:46 It’s super easy to be able to assess a human being
01:43:50 through a dialogue, through a series of conversations,
01:43:54 to be able to hone in with high accuracy
01:43:57 what is there for letter code.
01:44:00 There’s only 16 options and it becomes extremely valuable.
01:44:04 Is it perfectly precise and does everybody do it the same?
01:44:08 I mean, those things are, the answers to those are no,
01:44:10 but is it operationally useful in a short period of time?
01:44:15 That is a resoundingly powerful yes.
01:44:18 Yeah, I just, I only know, I think the first letter,
01:44:20 it’s introverted and extroverted, right?
01:44:23 I’ve taken the test before,
01:44:25 just like a crude version of the test
01:44:27 and that’s the same problem you have with IQ tests.
01:44:30 There’s the right thorough way of doing it
01:44:33 and there’s like fun internet way.
01:44:34 And do you mind sharing what your personality?
01:44:42 My type index?
01:44:43 Yes.
01:44:44 I’m an ENTP, that’s an extrovert,
01:44:46 intuitive, perceiver, thinker, ENT, thinker, P, perceiver.
01:44:54 My wife is an ISFJ, which is the polar opposite of me.
01:44:59 E, I’m extroverted, she’s introverted,
01:45:01 I’m an intuitor, she’s a sensor, I’m a thinker,
01:45:05 she’s a feeler, I’m a perceiver, she’s a judger.
01:45:07 Is there good science on like longterm
01:45:10 successful relationships in terms of the dynamics of that,
01:45:13 the 16, I wonder if there’s good data on this.
01:45:16 I don’t think there’s a lot of good data
01:45:19 in personalities writ large because there’s not a lot
01:45:23 of money to be made in personality testing,
01:45:26 but I would say that with experience,
01:45:33 with a good MBTI test, with a good paid test,
01:45:36 a 400, 500 question test,
01:45:38 once you understand your own code
01:45:41 and then you’re taught how to assess the code of others,
01:45:44 with those two things kind of combined
01:45:46 because then you have experience and learning,
01:45:48 it becomes very useful and you can have high confidence
01:45:53 in the conclusions that you reach about
01:45:56 people’s professions, about people’s relationships
01:45:59 with family, about people’s relationships professionally,
01:46:02 people’s capabilities to deal with stress,
01:46:05 how people will perform when pushed outside
01:46:08 of their comfort zones, really, really powerful,
01:46:10 useful stuff in corporate world and in the espionage world.
01:46:14 So in terms of compressed representation
01:46:16 of another human being, you can’t do much better
01:46:20 than those four letters.
01:46:21 I don’t believe you can do much better.
01:46:23 In my experience, I have not seen anything better.
01:46:26 Yeah, it is kind of, it’s difficult to realize
01:46:30 that there is a core personality
01:46:32 or to the degree that’s true, it seems to be true.
01:46:35 It’s even more difficult to realize
01:46:38 that there is a stable, at least the science says so,
01:46:42 a stable, consistent intelligence, unfortunately,
01:46:48 you know, the G factor that they call,
01:46:51 that if you do a barrage of IQ tests,
01:46:53 that’s going to consistently represent that G factor.
01:46:57 And we’re all born with that, we can’t fix it.
01:46:59 And that defines so much of who we are.
01:47:01 It’s sad.
01:47:03 I don’t see it as sad, because it’s, for me,
01:47:06 the faster you learn it, the faster you learn
01:47:08 what your own sort of natural strengths and weaknesses are,
01:47:14 the faster you get to stop wasting time
01:47:17 on things that you’re never gonna be good at,
01:47:19 and you get to double down on the things
01:47:21 that you’re already naturally skilled or interested in.
01:47:23 So there’s always a silver lining to a cloud.
01:47:26 But I know now that I will never be a ballerina
01:47:29 or a ballerino, I know that I’ll never be an artist,
01:47:32 I’ll never be a musician, I’ll never be any of those things.
01:47:35 And when I was 18, that might’ve made me sad,
01:47:37 but now at 42, I’m like, well, shit, awesome.
01:47:40 I can go be something else good instead of always being bad.
01:47:44 You’re not gonna be a ballerina, ballerino.
01:47:46 Because I’m not graceful.
01:47:48 And you’ve learned this through years of experience.
01:47:51 Yeah, exactly.
01:47:52 Well, I don’t know if there’s an MBTI equivalent
01:47:55 for grace of movement.
01:47:56 I think it’s called S sensor.
01:47:58 Oh, okay.
01:47:59 Yeah, because a sensor is someone who’s able
01:48:02 to interact with the world around them
01:48:03 through their five senses very effectively.
01:48:06 Like if you talk to dancers, dancers can actually feel
01:48:08 the grace in all of their muscles.
01:48:10 They know what position their finger is in.
01:48:13 I don’t have any idea.
01:48:14 I don’t know what position my feet are in right now.
01:48:15 I had to look to make sure I actually feel the floor right.
01:48:18 Yeah, I definitely have.
01:48:20 Oh, that’s good to know.
01:48:21 So I don’t, I’m not a dancer, but I do have that.
01:48:25 You’re a musician, man.
01:48:27 Well, the music, I don’t know if that’s for sure.
01:48:29 Yeah, that’s true that there is that physical component,
01:48:32 but I think deeper,
01:48:33 cause there’s a technical aspect to that.
01:48:35 That’s just like, it’s less about feel,
01:48:39 but I do know jujitsu and grappling I’ve done all my life.
01:48:43 I don’t, you know, there’s some people who are clumsy
01:48:46 and they drop stuff all the time.
01:48:47 They run into stuff.
01:48:49 I don’t, I don’t, first of all, I don’t know how that happens,
01:48:51 but to me, I just have an awareness of stuff.
01:48:54 Like if there’s a little orientation.
01:48:56 Yeah, like, like I know that there’s a small object
01:49:00 I have to step over and I have a good sense of that.
01:49:03 It’s so, it’s so interesting.
01:49:04 Yeah, you’re just like born with that or something.
01:49:06 My wife is brilliant and she still walks into doors.
01:49:09 Yeah.
01:49:10 I mean, she’ll walk in a doorway.
01:49:11 She’ll bang her knee on the same wall that’s been there
01:49:14 for the last 50 years.
01:49:15 It’s for some reason, really hilarious.
01:49:17 That’s good for me.
01:49:20 You’ve been asked, I think on Reddit,
01:49:23 are there big secrets that you know that could lend you
01:49:26 and our country in terrible trouble
01:49:28 if you came out to the public and you answered,
01:49:30 yes, I wish I could forget them.
01:49:32 So let me ask you just about secrecy in general.
01:49:36 Are these secrets or just other secrets,
01:49:39 ones that the public will never know
01:49:43 or will it come out in 10, 20, 50 years?
01:49:47 I guess the deeper question is,
01:49:49 what is the value of secrecy and transparency?
01:49:53 The standard classification
01:49:56 for all human intelligence operations
01:49:59 is something called two five X two, 25 by two.
01:50:03 So 50 years, 25 years times two years or times two rounds.
01:50:07 So in essence, anything that I’ve seen
01:50:11 has the first chance of becoming public domain,
01:50:15 declassified after 50 years,
01:50:17 unless there’s some congressional requirement
01:50:19 for it to be reviewed and assessed earlier.
01:50:22 So by then, I’ll be 80 something years old
01:50:24 or potentially dead, which is either way.
01:50:28 That’s when it can come out
01:50:31 according to its typical classification.
01:50:34 The value of secrets I have seen
01:50:39 is that secrets create space.
01:50:44 Secrets give opportunity for security.
01:50:48 They give opportunity for thinking.
01:50:50 They give space
01:50:52 and space is an incredibly advantageous thing to have.
01:50:55 If you know something somebody else doesn’t know,
01:50:57 even if it’s just 15 or 20 minutes different,
01:50:59 you can direct, you can change the course of fate.
01:51:02 So I find secrets to be extremely valuable,
01:51:05 extremely useful.
01:51:07 Even at the place where secrets
01:51:10 are being kept from a large mass,
01:51:13 part of what all Americans need to understand
01:51:15 is that one of the trade offs
01:51:19 to building a system of government
01:51:23 that allows us to be first world and wealthy
01:51:26 and secure and successful,
01:51:28 one of the trade offs is that we have given up
01:51:30 a great deal of personal freedom.
01:51:32 And one of the personal freedoms that we give up
01:51:34 is the freedom of knowing what we wanna know.
01:51:39 You get to know what the government tells you,
01:51:41 you get to know what you need to know
01:51:43 or what you’ve learned yourself,
01:51:44 but you don’t get to know secrets.
01:51:47 People who do get to know secrets know them for a reason.
01:51:49 That’s why it’s called a need to know.
01:51:51 How difficult is it to maintain secrecy?
01:51:54 It’s surprisingly difficult as technology changes.
01:51:58 It’s also surprisingly difficult
01:52:00 as our culture becomes one where people want notoriety.
01:52:06 People wanna be the person who breaks the secret.
01:52:10 25 years ago, 40 years ago, that wasn’t the case.
01:52:13 There was a time in the United States
01:52:14 where if someone gave you a secret,
01:52:16 it was a point of personal honor not to share the secret.
01:52:20 Now we’re in a place where someone tells you a secret,
01:52:22 like that could turn into a Twitter post
01:52:24 that gets you a bunch of thumbs up
01:52:26 and a bunch of likes or whatever else.
01:52:27 An opportunity. Right.
01:52:28 So the value of secrets has changed.
01:52:31 And now there’s almost a greater value on exposing secrets
01:52:34 than there is on keeping secrets.
01:52:36 That makes it difficult to keep secrets,
01:52:38 especially when technology is going in the same direction.
01:52:40 Yeah, where is the line?
01:52:43 And by the way, I’m one of those old school people
01:52:45 with the secrets.
01:52:46 I think it’s a karma thing.
01:52:51 Again, back to the trust.
01:52:52 I think in the short term you can benefit
01:52:55 by sharing a secret.
01:52:57 But in the long term, if people know they can trust you,
01:53:00 like the juicy of the secret, it’s a test of sorts.
01:53:05 If they know you can keep that secret,
01:53:07 that means you’re somebody that could be trusted.
01:53:10 And I believe that not just effectiveness in this life,
01:53:14 but happiness in this life is informing a circle
01:53:17 of people you can trust.
01:53:18 Right, we’re taught that secrets and lies are similar
01:53:22 in that they have a limited shelf life.
01:53:24 If you treat them like food,
01:53:26 secrets and lies have a very limited shelf life.
01:53:29 So if you cash in on them while they’re still fresh,
01:53:33 you beat them before they spoil.
01:53:35 You get to take advantage of them before they spoil.
01:53:38 However, trust has no limit to its shelf life.
01:53:43 So it’s almost like you’re trading a short term victory
01:53:46 and losing a long term victory.
01:53:48 It’s always better to keep the secret.
01:53:50 It’s always better to let the lie live
01:53:53 because it will eventually come to light
01:53:56 from somebody else, not from you,
01:53:57 because it already has a limited shelf life.
01:53:59 But what you win in exchange
01:54:01 for not being the one that cashed in on the secret
01:54:03 is immense trust.
01:54:07 Let me ask you about lying and trust and so on.
01:54:12 So I don’t believe I’ve been contacted by
01:54:15 or interacted with the CIA, the MI6, the FSB,
01:54:20 Mossad or any other intelligence agency.
01:54:22 I’m kind of offended, but would I know if I was?
01:54:29 So from your perspective.
01:54:31 No, you would not know if you were.
01:54:33 For sure you’ve been on their radar.
01:54:35 Absolutely, you’ve got a file.
01:54:36 You’ve got a dossier somewhere.
01:54:38 Why would I be on their radar?
01:54:39 Because you’re a.
01:54:40 Who’s interesting?
01:54:41 It’s not necessarily that you are interesting
01:54:46 to someone as a foreign asset
01:54:48 or an intelligence collection source,
01:54:51 but your network is extremely interesting.
01:54:54 The networks are important too.
01:54:55 Correct, if someone had access to,
01:54:57 if someone was able to clone your phone,
01:55:01 every time you cross a border,
01:55:02 you go through some sort of security.
01:55:04 If you’ve ever been pulled into secondary
01:55:06 and separated from your bag,
01:55:08 that’s exactly when and how people clone computers.
01:55:10 They clone phones, they make whatever,
01:55:13 photocopies of your old school planner,
01:55:17 whatever it might be.
01:55:18 But for sure you are an intelligence target.
01:55:23 It just may be that you’re not suitable
01:55:24 to be a person who reports foreign intelligence.
01:55:28 We’ve got to understand that all people
01:55:30 are potential sources of valuable information
01:55:33 to the national security infrastructure
01:55:35 of our host country and any country that we visit.
01:55:38 Someone like you with your public footprint,
01:55:41 with your notoriety, with your educational background,
01:55:43 with your national identifications
01:55:46 becomes a viable and valuable target of information.
01:55:50 Yeah, so to speak to that,
01:55:56 I take security pretty seriously,
01:55:58 but not to the degree that it runs my life,
01:56:03 which I’m very careful about.
01:56:05 That’s good, I’m glad to hear that.
01:56:07 So the moment you start to think about germs, right?
01:56:11 Like you start to freak out
01:56:14 and you become sort of paralyzed by the stress of it.
01:56:17 So you have to balance those two things.
01:56:21 If you think about all the things
01:56:22 that could hurt you in this world
01:56:24 and all the risk you could take,
01:56:27 it can overwhelm your life.
01:56:29 That said, the cyber world is a weird world
01:56:32 because it doesn’t have the same.
01:56:36 I know not to cross the street without looking each way
01:56:39 because there’s a physical intuition about it.
01:56:41 I’m not sure, I’m a computer science guy,
01:56:45 so I have some intuition,
01:56:46 but the cyber world, it’s really hard
01:56:50 to build up an intuition of what is safe and not.
01:56:53 I’ve seen a lot of people just logging out
01:56:56 of your devices all the time, like regularly.
01:56:59 Just like that physical access step
01:57:01 is a lot of people don’t take.
01:57:03 I can just like walk in into the offices of a lot of CEOs
01:57:07 and it’s like everything’s wide open
01:57:10 for physical access of those systems,
01:57:13 which is kind of incredible for somebody,
01:57:16 that sounds really shady, but it’s not.
01:57:18 I’ve written key loggers,
01:57:20 like things that record everything you type
01:57:22 in the mouse you move.
01:57:23 And like I did that for, during my PhD,
01:57:27 I was recording everything you do on your device
01:57:30 and everything you do on your computer.
01:57:33 People sign up to the study, they willingly do this
01:57:36 to understand behavior.
01:57:37 I was trying to use machine learning
01:57:38 to identify who you are based on different biometric
01:57:42 and behavioral things, which allows me
01:57:44 to study human behavior and to see
01:57:46 which is uniquely identifiable.
01:57:49 And the goal there was to remove the need for a password.
01:57:53 But how easy it is to write a thing
01:57:56 that logs everything you type.
01:57:58 I was like, wait a minute, like I can probably get
01:58:01 a lot of people in the world to run this for me.
01:58:04 I can then get all of their passwords.
01:58:06 I mean, you could do so much,
01:58:10 like I can run the entirety of the CIA from just myself.
01:58:15 If I was, and I imagine there’s a lot
01:58:17 of really good hackers like that out there,
01:58:20 much better than me.
01:58:22 So I tried to prevent myself from being
01:58:25 all the different low hanging fruit attack vectors
01:58:28 in my life.
01:58:29 I try to make it difficult to be that.
01:58:33 But then I’m also aware that there’s probably people
01:58:35 that are like five steps ahead.
01:58:38 You’re doing the right thing.
01:58:40 What I always advocate is the low hanging fruit
01:58:44 is what keeps you from being a target of opportunity.
01:58:46 Because you’re half assed hackers,
01:58:49 you’re lazy hackers, you’re unskilled hackers.
01:58:53 They’re looking for low hanging fruit.
01:58:54 They’re looking for the person who gets the Nigeria email
01:58:57 about how you could be getting $5 million
01:58:59 if you just give me your bank account.
01:59:00 Exactly.
01:59:01 That’s what they’re looking for.
01:59:03 The thing that’s scary is that if you’re not
01:59:05 a target of opportunity,
01:59:06 if you become a intentional target,
01:59:10 then there’s almost nothing you can do.
01:59:11 Because once you become an intentional target,
01:59:14 then your security apparatus,
01:59:17 they will create a dedicated customized way vector
01:59:24 of attacking your specific security apparatus.
01:59:27 And because security is always after, right?
01:59:30 There’s always, there’s the leading advantage
01:59:32 and the trailing advantage.
01:59:34 When it comes to attacks,
01:59:36 the leader always has the advantage
01:59:38 because they have to create the attack
01:59:40 before anybody else can create a way
01:59:42 to protect against the attack.
01:59:44 So the attack always comes first
01:59:45 and that means they always have the advantage.
01:59:47 You are always stuck just leaning on,
01:59:49 this is the best security that I know of.
01:59:52 Meanwhile, there’s always somebody who can create a way
01:59:54 of attacking the best security out there.
01:59:57 And once they win, they have a monopoly.
01:59:59 They have all that time until a new defensive countermeasure
02:00:02 is deployed.
02:00:04 Yeah, I tend to think exactly as you said,
02:00:07 that the long hanging fruit protects against like,
02:00:09 yeah, crimes of opportunity.
02:00:11 And then I assume that people can just hack in
02:00:15 if they really want.
02:00:16 Think about how much anxiety we would be able to solve
02:00:19 if everybody just accepted that.
02:00:21 Well, there’s several things you do.
02:00:22 First of all, to be honest, it just makes me,
02:00:26 it keeps me honest.
02:00:28 Not to be a douchebag or like, not, yeah,
02:00:34 to assume everything could be public.
02:00:39 And so don’t trade information that could hurt people
02:00:44 if it was made public.
02:00:46 So I try to do that.
02:00:47 And the thing I try to make sure is I,
02:00:52 like Home Alone style, try to.
02:00:54 Booby trap.
02:00:55 I really would like to know if I was hacked.
02:00:59 And so I try to assume that I will be hacked and detect it.
02:01:06 Have a tripwire or something.
02:01:07 Yeah, a tripwire through everything.
02:01:10 And not paranoid tripwise, just like open door.
02:01:13 But I think that’s probably the future of life on this earth
02:01:17 is you’re going, like everybody of interest
02:01:19 is going to be hacked.
02:01:21 That hopefully inspires, now this is outside of company.
02:01:25 These are individuals.
02:01:25 I mean, there is, of course, if you’re actually operating,
02:01:30 like I’m just a, who am I?
02:01:31 I’m just a scientist person, podcasting person.
02:01:36 So if I was actually running a company
02:01:41 or was an integral part of some kind of military operation,
02:01:46 then you probably have to have an entire team that’s now
02:01:50 doing that battle of trying to be ahead of the best hackers
02:01:55 in the world that are attacking.
02:01:57 But that requires a team that full time is their focus.
02:02:01 And then you still get in trouble.
02:02:03 Correct, yeah.
02:02:04 So what I’ve seen as the norm, well, what I’ve seen
02:02:07 is the cutting edge standard for corporations
02:02:11 and the ultra wealthy and even intelligence organizations
02:02:16 is that we have tripwires.
02:02:19 It’s better if you can’t prevent from being hacked.
02:02:22 The next best thing is to know as soon as you get hacked
02:02:26 because then you can essentially terminate all the information.
02:02:30 If you know it fast enough, you can just
02:02:31 destroy the information.
02:02:32 This is what the ultra wealthy do.
02:02:34 They have multiple phones.
02:02:35 So as soon as one phone gets hacked, the tripwire goes off.
02:02:38 The operating system is totally deleted along
02:02:40 with all data on the phone.
02:02:41 And a second phone is turned on with a whole new separate set
02:02:46 of metadata.
02:02:47 And now for them, there’s no break in service.
02:02:49 It’s just, oh, this phone went black.
02:02:51 It’s got a warning on it that says it was hacked.
02:02:54 So trash it because they don’t care
02:02:55 about the price of the phone.
02:02:56 Pick up the next phone, and we move on.
02:02:58 That’s the best thing that you can do essentially outside
02:03:01 of trying to out hack the hackers.
02:03:04 And then even in your intelligence and military
02:03:06 worlds where cyber warfare is active,
02:03:09 the people who are aggressing are not
02:03:12 trying to create aggression that beats security.
02:03:16 They’re trying to find aggressive techniques,
02:03:19 offensive techniques that have no security built around them
02:03:22 yet.
02:03:23 Because it’s too cost and time intensive
02:03:25 to protect against what you know is coming,
02:03:28 it’s so much more efficient and cost effective
02:03:30 to go after new vectors.
02:03:32 So it just becomes like, it becomes almost a silly game
02:03:37 of your neighbor gets a guard dog.
02:03:41 So you get a bigger guard dog.
02:03:43 And then your neighbor gets a fence.
02:03:45 So you’re just constantly outdoing each other.
02:03:46 It’s called the security paradigm.
02:03:48 People just, they just one up each other
02:03:50 because it’s never worth it to just get to the same level.
02:03:53 You’re always trying to outdo each other.
02:03:54 Yeah, then maybe like banks have to fight that fight,
02:03:58 but not everybody can.
02:03:59 Right.
02:04:00 Yeah, no.
02:04:01 So you’re saying I operated at the state of the art
02:04:03 with the trip wires.
02:04:04 This is good to know.
02:04:04 Absolutely, man.
02:04:06 And also just not using anybody else’s services,
02:04:10 doing everything myself.
02:04:12 So that’s harder to figure out what the heck
02:04:14 this person is doing.
02:04:15 Because if I’m using somebody else’s service,
02:04:17 like I did with QNAP,
02:04:21 I have a QNAP NAS I use for cold storage
02:04:24 of unimportant things, but a large videos.
02:04:27 And I don’t know if you know, but QNAP is a company
02:04:29 that does NAS storage devices, and they got hacked.
02:04:34 And everybody that didn’t update as of a week ago
02:04:38 from the point of the zero day hack, everybody got hacked.
02:04:42 It’s several thousand machines, and they asked,
02:04:48 you can get your data back if you pay,
02:04:50 I forget what it was, but it was,
02:04:53 it was about a couple thousand dollars.
02:04:55 And QNAP can get all the data back for their customers
02:04:59 if they pay, I think, two million dollars.
02:05:01 Wow.
02:05:01 But that came from me relying on the systems
02:05:04 of others for security.
02:05:05 I assumed this company would have their security handled,
02:05:10 but then that was a very valuable lesson to me.
02:05:13 I now have layers of security and also an understanding
02:05:19 which data is really important, which is somewhat important,
02:05:22 which is not that important, and layering that all together.
02:05:26 So just so you know, the US government, the military,
02:05:28 woke up to that exact same thing about two years ago.
02:05:31 It’s still very new.
02:05:33 I mean, they were sourcing,
02:05:35 take night vision goggles, for example.
02:05:37 They were sourcing components and engineering
02:05:39 and blueprints for night vision goggles
02:05:41 from three, four, five different subcontractors
02:05:43 all over the country, but they never asked themselves
02:05:47 what the security status was of those subcontractors.
02:05:50 So fast forward a few years, and all of a sudden,
02:05:55 they start getting faulty components.
02:05:57 They start having night vision goggles that don’t work.
02:05:59 They start having supply chain issues
02:06:01 where they have to change their provider,
02:06:04 and the army doesn’t know that the provider is changing.
02:06:07 I mean, this is a strategy.
02:06:09 The idea of going through third party systems
02:06:12 is identifying the vulnerability in the supply chain.
02:06:15 That’s a savvy offensive practice
02:06:20 for more than just cyber hackers.
02:06:24 Let me ask you about physical hacking.
02:06:26 So I’m now, like I’m an introvert,
02:06:29 so I’m paranoid about all social interaction,
02:06:31 but how much truth is there?
02:06:35 It’s kind of a funny question.
02:06:37 How suspicious should I be when I’m traveling in Ukraine
02:06:40 or different parts of the world
02:06:42 when an attractive female walks up to me
02:06:44 and shows any kind of attention?
02:06:46 Is that like this kind of James Bond spy movie stuff,
02:06:49 or is that kind of stuff used by intelligence agencies?
02:06:54 I don’t think it’s used.
02:06:55 It’s absolutely used.
02:06:56 It’s called sexpionage.
02:06:58 That’s the term that we jokingly call it, is sexpionage.
02:07:02 But yeah, the art of attraction, appeal,
02:07:05 the manifestation of feelings through sexual manipulation,
02:07:11 all of that is a super powerful tool.
02:07:14 The Chinese use it extremely well.
02:07:15 The Russians use it extremely well.
02:07:18 In the United States,
02:07:19 we actively train our officers not to use it
02:07:23 because in the end it leads to complications
02:07:26 in how you professionally run a case.
02:07:28 So we train our officers not to use it.
02:07:30 However, you can’t control what other people think.
02:07:33 So if you’re an attractive male
02:07:34 or an attractive female officer,
02:07:36 and you’re trying to talk to an older general
02:07:40 who just happens to be gay or happens to be straight
02:07:43 and is attracted to you,
02:07:44 of course they’re gonna be that much more willing
02:07:45 to talk to an American who is also attractive.
02:07:48 So it’s hard to walk that back.
02:07:50 In all definitions.
02:07:51 So it could be all elements of charisma.
02:07:56 So attractiveness in a dynamic sense of the word.
02:08:00 So it’s visual attractiveness,
02:08:02 but the smile, the humor, the wit, the flirting,
02:08:05 all that kind of stuff that could be used
02:08:07 to the art of conversation.
02:08:10 There’s also elements of sexuality
02:08:12 that people underestimate, right?
02:08:14 So physical sexuality, physical attraction
02:08:17 is the most obvious one.
02:08:18 It’s the one that everybody talks about and thinks about.
02:08:20 But then there’s also sapiosexuality,
02:08:23 which is being sexually attracted to thoughts,
02:08:27 to intelligence.
02:08:28 And then you’ve got all the various varieties
02:08:31 of personal preferences.
02:08:34 Some people like people of a certain color skin,
02:08:36 or they like big noses, they like small noses,
02:08:39 they like big butts, they like small butts,
02:08:40 they like tall guys, they like bald guys,
02:08:42 whatever it might be.
02:08:43 You can’t ever predict what someone’s preferences,
02:08:47 sexual arousal preferences are going to be.
02:08:50 So then you end up walking into a situation
02:08:53 where then you discover, and just imagine,
02:08:56 imagine being an unattractive, overweight, married guy,
02:09:01 and you’re walking into an asset or a target meeting
02:09:04 with like a middle aged female
02:09:06 who is also not very attractive and also married.
02:09:09 But then it turns out that that person is a sapiosexual
02:09:11 and gets extremely turned on by intelligent conversation.
02:09:14 That’s exactly what you’re there to do.
02:09:16 Your mission is to have intelligent conversation
02:09:20 with this person to find out if they have access to secrets.
02:09:22 And by virtue of you carrying out your mission,
02:09:24 they become extremely aroused and attracted to you.
02:09:26 That is a very complicated situation.
02:09:29 It’s hard to know who to trust.
02:09:30 Like, how do you know your wife,
02:09:32 or how does your wife know
02:09:33 that you’re not a double agent from Russia?
02:09:37 There’s a large element of experience and time
02:09:42 that goes into that.
02:09:43 She’s also trained.
02:09:45 And I think my wife and I also.
02:09:47 Actually you think.
02:09:48 My wife and I also have the benefit
02:09:50 of being recruited young and together where.
02:09:56 So over time you can start to figure out things
02:09:58 that are very difficult to.
02:10:02 So you form the baseline,
02:10:03 you start to understand the person’s very,
02:10:04 it becomes very difficult to lie.
02:10:06 The most difficult thing in the world is consistency.
02:10:08 It’s the most difficult thing in the world.
02:10:10 Some people say that discipline or self discipline,
02:10:12 what they’re really talking about is consistency.
02:10:14 When you have someone who performs consistently
02:10:17 over long periods of time, under various levels of stress,
02:10:20 you have high, high confidence
02:10:21 that that is the person that you can trust.
02:10:23 You can trust, again,
02:10:25 you can trust them to behave within a certain pattern.
02:10:30 You can trust an asshole to be an asshole
02:10:33 without trusting the asshole
02:10:34 to take care of your kids, right?
02:10:36 So I don’t ever wanna mix up the idea of personal trust
02:10:40 versus trusting the outcome.
02:10:42 You can always trust a person
02:10:44 to operate within their pattern of behavior.
02:10:45 It just takes time for you to get a consistent,
02:10:49 to get consistent feedback
02:10:50 as to what that baseline is for them.
02:10:52 To form a good model, predictive model
02:10:55 of what their behavior is going to be like.
02:10:57 Right, and you know, it’s fascinating is I think
02:10:59 the challenge is building that model quickly.
02:11:03 So technology is one of those tools
02:11:05 that will be able in the future
02:11:07 to very quickly create a model of behavior
02:11:10 because technology can pull in multiple data points
02:11:13 in a very short period of time
02:11:15 that the human brain simply can’t pull in
02:11:17 at the same space, at the same speed.
02:11:20 That’s actually what I did my PhD on.
02:11:22 That’s what I did at Google
02:11:23 is forming a good representation,
02:11:25 unique representation in the entire world
02:11:29 based on the behavior of the person.
02:11:31 The specific task there is
02:11:33 so that you don’t have to type in the password.
02:11:35 The idea was to replace the password.
02:11:38 But it also allows you to actually study human behavior
02:11:40 and to think, all right,
02:11:41 what is the unique representation of a person?
02:11:44 How, because we have very specific patterns
02:11:48 and a lot of humans are very similar in those patterns,
02:11:51 what are the unique identifiers
02:11:52 within those patterns of behavior?
02:11:55 And I think that’s, from a psychology perspective,
02:11:57 a super fascinating question.
02:11:59 And from a machine learning perspective,
02:12:00 it’s something that you can,
02:12:02 as the systems get better and better and better,
02:12:04 and as we get more and more digital data
02:12:07 about each individual, you start to get,
02:12:09 you start to be able to do that kind of thing effectively.
02:12:11 And it’s, I mean, when I think of the fact
02:12:13 that you could create a dossier on somebody
02:12:14 in a matter of 24 or 48 hours,
02:12:16 if you could wire them for two days, right?
02:12:21 Internet of Things style,
02:12:22 you put it in their underwear or whatever, right?
02:12:23 Some chip that just reads everything.
02:12:26 How heavy are they walking?
02:12:27 How much time do they sleep?
02:12:28 How many times do they open the refrigerator?
02:12:30 When they log into their computer, how do they do it?
02:12:32 Like, which hand do they use when they log in?
02:12:34 What’s their most common swipe?
02:12:36 What’s their most visited website?
02:12:38 You could collect an enormous amount of normative data
02:12:42 in a short period of time where otherwise we’re stuck.
02:12:45 The way that we do it now, once or twice a week,
02:12:48 we go out for a coffee for two hours.
02:12:51 And two hours at a time over the course of six,
02:12:53 eight weeks, 12 weeks, you’re coming up with a 50%
02:12:57 assessment on how you think this person is going to behave.
02:13:00 Just that time savings is immense.
02:13:03 Something you’ve also spoken about is private intelligence
02:13:06 and the power and the reach and the scale
02:13:10 and the importance of private intelligence
02:13:12 versus government intelligence.
02:13:13 Can you elaborate on the role of what is private intelligence
02:13:16 and what’s the role of private intelligence
02:13:19 in the scope of all the intelligence
02:13:22 that is gathered and used in the United States?
02:13:26 Yeah, absolutely.
02:13:27 It’s something that so few people know about.
02:13:30 And it became a more mainstream topic
02:13:33 with the Trump administration.
02:13:35 Because Trump made it no secret that he was going to hire
02:13:39 private intelligence organizations
02:13:40 to run his intelligence operations.
02:13:42 And fund them.
02:13:43 So that really brought it to the mainstream.
02:13:44 But going all the way back to 9 11,
02:13:46 going all the way back to 2001,
02:13:48 when the 9 11 attacks happened,
02:13:51 there was a commission that was formed
02:13:56 to determine the reasons that 9 11 happened.
02:14:00 And among the lists that they determined,
02:14:02 of course they found out that the intelligence community
02:14:04 wasn’t coordinating well with each other.
02:14:06 There were fiefdoms and there was infighting
02:14:08 and there wasn’t good intel sharing.
02:14:10 But more than that, they identified
02:14:11 that we were operating at Cold War levels,
02:14:16 even though we were living in a time
02:14:18 when terrorism was the new biggest threat
02:14:20 to national security.
02:14:22 So the big recommendation coming out of the 9 11 commission
02:14:25 was that the intelligence organizations,
02:14:27 the intelligence community significantly increased
02:14:30 the presence of intelligence operators overseas
02:14:33 and in terms of analytical capacity
02:14:36 here in the United States.
02:14:38 When they made that decision,
02:14:40 it completely destroyed, it totally was incongruent
02:14:44 with the existing hiring process
02:14:46 because the existing hiring process for CIA or NSA
02:14:48 is a six to nine month process.
02:14:51 The only way they could plus up their sizes fast enough
02:14:55 was to bypass their own hiring
02:14:57 and instead go direct to private organizations.
02:15:00 So naturally the government contracted with the companies
02:15:04 that they already had secure contracts with,
02:15:07 Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Khaki, you name it.
02:15:12 And then over time from 2001 to now,
02:15:15 or I guess that started really in 2004
02:15:17 when they started significantly increasing
02:15:19 the presence of private intelligence officers.
02:15:22 From then until now, it’s become a budgetary thing.
02:15:26 It’s become a continuity of operations thing.
02:15:30 And now the reason Northern Virginia
02:15:33 has become one of the wealthiest zip codes in America
02:15:37 is because of the incredible concentration
02:15:40 of private intelligence that is supporting CIA, NSA,
02:15:43 DIA, FBI, and all the slew of IC partners.
02:15:46 By the way, does Palantir play a role in this?
02:15:49 Palantir is one of those organizations
02:15:51 that was trying to pitch their product
02:15:54 to an intelligence community because they have,
02:15:57 it’s a fantastic product on paper.
02:16:01 But the challenge was the proprietary services,
02:16:05 the proprietary systems that we current that we used
02:16:08 in CIA prior to Palantir continued to outperform Palantir.
02:16:13 So just like any other business decision,
02:16:16 if you’ve got homegrown systems
02:16:18 that outperform external systems,
02:16:20 then it’s not worth it to share the internal information.
02:16:23 Got it.
02:16:24 So what the close connection between Peter Thiel
02:16:29 and Donald Trump, did that have a role to play
02:16:33 in Donald Trump’s leveraging of private intelligence
02:16:38 or is that completely disjoint?
02:16:40 I think that they’re related but only circumstantially.
02:16:45 Because remember, Donald Trump
02:16:46 wasn’t really investing in CIA.
02:16:48 So the last thing he wanted to do
02:16:51 was spend his network, WASTA,
02:16:54 WASTA is a term that we call influence,
02:16:56 it’s an Arabic term for influence.
02:16:58 Trump didn’t wanna use his WASTA putting Thiel into CIA
02:17:02 only to lose Thiel’s contract
02:17:03 as soon as Trump left office.
02:17:04 So instead, it was more valuable to put Peter Thiel’s tool
02:17:08 to use in private intelligence.
02:17:09 And then of course, I think he nominated Peter Thiel
02:17:11 to be his Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State.
02:17:15 At some point in time, he tried to present,
02:17:17 like presidentially appoint Peter Thiel
02:17:19 into a position of government authority.
02:17:23 What do you think of figures like Peter Thiel?
02:17:27 Do they wield, and I’m sure there’s figures
02:17:30 of similar scale and reach and power
02:17:35 in private intelligence.
02:17:37 What do you think about their role and power
02:17:40 in this whole, like without public accountability
02:17:44 that you would think directors of CIA perhaps have?
02:17:47 So this is where private intelligence
02:17:49 has both a strength and a weakness.
02:17:53 The ultimate law overriding,
02:17:56 that’s overseeing private intelligence
02:17:58 is not government legislation.
02:18:03 It’s the law of economics.
02:18:05 If they produce a superior product,
02:18:07 then they will have a buyer.
02:18:09 If they do not produce a superior product,
02:18:11 they will not have a buyer.
02:18:13 And that’s a very simple business principle.
02:18:16 Whereas in the current national security infrastructure,
02:18:20 you can create a crap product,
02:18:22 but the taxpayer dollars are always going to be spent.
02:18:25 So it’s really thrown things for a loop.
02:18:28 Especially during the Trump administration.
02:18:29 And this is one of the things that I will always say
02:18:32 I liked about the Trump administration.
02:18:34 It shown, it put a big blazing bright light
02:18:38 on all of the flaws within our system.
02:18:41 One of those flaws being this executive power
02:18:45 over the intelligence organizations
02:18:47 and the lack of accountability
02:18:50 for intelligence organizations to produce a superior product.
02:18:53 When that light got shown down,
02:18:59 that’s when you also saw Trump start to go after,
02:19:01 if you remember, there was a period
02:19:02 where he was taking security clearances away
02:19:04 from retiring officers.
02:19:06 That became a big hot issue.
02:19:08 That became something that people were very opposed to
02:19:11 when they didn’t realize that that process
02:19:14 of taking security clearances away,
02:19:17 that incentivized seasoned senior officers
02:19:19 to stay in service.
02:19:21 Because with private intelligence
02:19:23 paying a premium during the Trump administration,
02:19:25 because Trump was paying a premium
02:19:26 to the private intelligence world,
02:19:29 when senior officers found that it was more profitable
02:19:33 to retire early, keep their clearance,
02:19:35 and go work for Raytheon, Trump saw that
02:19:38 as bypassing service to the American people.
02:19:41 You’ve made a career in CIA, you’ve made a career in NSA,
02:19:44 you should stay there.
02:19:44 If you leave, you lose your clearance
02:19:46 because you no longer have a need to know.
02:19:49 He upset the apple cart with that.
02:19:51 And unfortunately, the narrative that came out
02:19:54 in many ways was a negative narrative against Trump,
02:19:56 when in fact, he was actually doing quite a service
02:20:00 to the American people, trying to take away
02:20:03 the incentive of senior officials leaving their service
02:20:07 in order to just profiteer in the private intelligence.
02:20:10 So in that way, he was kind of supporting the CIA
02:20:15 in making sure that competent people
02:20:19 and experienced people stay in CIA,
02:20:22 are incentivized to stay there.
02:20:24 Correct, I think that there was definitely,
02:20:27 he understood incentives.
02:20:29 I mean, Donald Trump understands incentives.
02:20:32 So he was trying to incentivize them to stay,
02:20:34 but I think he was also playing a safety card
02:20:36 because he didn’t want former CIA officials
02:20:40 who were not listening to him
02:20:42 to then move into private intel organizations
02:20:44 that he may be hiring, only to then have them undermine him
02:20:47 from both sides of the coin.
02:20:49 So there was a little bit of offensive calculation
02:20:53 in there as well.
02:20:54 But do the dynamics and the incentives of economics
02:20:56 that you referred to that the private intelligence
02:20:58 operates under, is that more or less ethical
02:21:01 than the forces that maybe government agencies operate under?
02:21:07 What’s your intuition?
02:21:08 Is capitalism lead, so you mentioned it leads
02:21:12 to maximizations of efficiency and performance,
02:21:16 but is that correlated with ethical behavior
02:21:19 when we’re talking about such hairy activities
02:21:24 like collection of intelligence?
02:21:26 The question of ethics is a great question.
02:21:27 So let me start this whole thing out by saying,
02:21:31 CIA hires people on a spectrum
02:21:36 of our ability to be morally flexible, ethically flexible.
02:21:41 All people at their heart are ethically flexible.
02:21:45 I would never punch somebody in the face, right?
02:21:48 Some people out there would say,
02:21:49 I would never hurt another human being.
02:21:51 But as soon as a human being posed a direct threat
02:21:53 to their daughter or their son or their mother,
02:21:56 now all of a sudden they’re gonna change
02:21:58 their ethical stance in self defense, right?
02:22:01 But at the end of the day,
02:22:02 it’s still hurting another person.
02:22:05 So what CIA looks for is people who are able
02:22:07 to swing across that spectrum for lesser offenses, right?
02:22:12 More flexibility.
02:22:15 I do not believe that private intelligence
02:22:18 and the laws of economics lend themselves
02:22:21 to increased ethics or increased ethical behavior
02:22:25 in the short term.
02:22:27 But what ends up happening is that in the long term,
02:22:31 in order to scale economic benefits,
02:22:34 you are forced to act within norms of your customer base.
02:22:39 So as the norms of that customer base
02:22:42 dictate certain requirements,
02:22:44 the company has to adapt to those requirements
02:22:46 in order to continue to scale.
02:22:49 So if a company tries to ostracize LGBTQ
02:22:54 or if they try to ostracize men or ostracize women,
02:22:58 they’re limiting their ability to grow economically.
02:23:01 They have to adapt to whatever is the prevailing
02:23:05 ethical requirement of their customer base.
02:23:09 That’s such an interesting question
02:23:10 because you look at big pharma and pharmaceutical companies,
02:23:14 and they have quite a poor reputation in the public eye.
02:23:20 And some of it, maybe much of it is deserved,
02:23:23 at least historically speaking.
02:23:26 And so you start to wonder, well,
02:23:28 can intelligence agencies use some of the same methods
02:23:33 or can these use some of the same technique
02:23:36 to manipulate the public,
02:23:40 like what they believe about those agencies
02:23:42 in order to maximize profit as well?
02:23:45 Sort of finding shortcuts or unethical paths
02:23:49 that allow you to not be ultimately
02:23:53 responsible to the customer.
02:23:55 Absolutely.
02:23:56 And I would go a step further to say that
02:23:58 the covert nature of intelligence operations
02:24:01 is really attractive when it comes to the private sector,
02:24:06 because now they have all the same money
02:24:08 with none of the oversight,
02:24:10 and all they have to do is deliver.
02:24:13 So without the oversight, what’s holding you back?
02:24:17 And for anybody who’s ever run a business,
02:24:20 anybody who’s ever started a startup
02:24:21 or tried to make something succeed,
02:24:23 we all know that there come those times
02:24:25 where you have to skirt the boundaries
02:24:28 of propriety or morality or commitments
02:24:34 or promises to other people,
02:24:35 because at the end of the day,
02:24:37 if your business fails, it’s on you.
02:24:39 So if you promise to deliver something to a client,
02:24:43 you’ve got to deliver it to the client,
02:24:44 even if that means you stay up late
02:24:47 or if you lie on your taxes, whatever it might be,
02:24:49 there’s a certain level of do or die.
02:24:52 Yeah, I personally have a sort of optimistic view
02:24:55 that ultimately the best way is to stay
02:25:00 within the ethical bounds, kind of like what you suggested.
02:25:02 If you want to be a company that’s extremely successful,
02:25:05 is win with competence, not with cheating,
02:25:09 because cheating won’t, I believe, win in the long term.
02:25:15 But in terms of being publicly responsible
02:25:21 to your decisions, I mean, I’ve already been supposed
02:25:24 to talk to Peter Thiel twice on this podcast,
02:25:27 and it’s just been complicated.
02:25:28 If I were to put myself into his shoes,
02:25:33 why do podcasts?
02:25:35 The risk is too high to be a public person at all.
02:25:40 And so I totally understand that.
02:25:42 At the same time, I think if you’re doing things
02:25:47 by the book and you’re the best in the world at your job,
02:25:55 then you have nothing to worry about.
02:25:56 And you can advertise that and you recruit,
02:25:59 you help recruit, I mean, that’s the work of capitalism
02:26:02 is you want to advertise that this is the place
02:26:07 where the best people in the world at this thing work.
02:26:10 True, I think that your point of view is accurate.
02:26:14 I would also say that the complexities
02:26:19 of what makes somebody make a decision
02:26:22 can only really be properly calculated with a baseline.
02:26:26 So because there is no baseline
02:26:27 that you or I have on Peter Thiel,
02:26:29 it’s difficult to really ascertain why he does
02:26:33 or doesn’t accept invites or why he does or doesn’t appear.
02:26:35 Well, let me ask your opinion on the NSA,
02:26:41 and then maybe you could mention
02:26:42 about bulk collection in general in the CIA,
02:26:46 but let’s look at some history with the NSA and Snowden.
02:26:51 What’s your opinion on the mass surveillance
02:26:55 that is reported to have been conducted by the NSA?
02:27:02 We’ve talked about ethics.
02:27:04 Are you troubled by the, from a public perception,
02:27:09 the unethical nature of mass surveillance
02:27:15 of especially American citizens?
02:27:18 This is a topic that I never get tired of talking about,
02:27:21 but it’s very rare that anyone ever really agrees with me,
02:27:25 just so you know.
02:27:26 I see where you’re, well, I think there’s a nuance thing
02:27:30 here and maybe we’ll find some agreement.
02:27:32 The truth is that the American experience after 9 11
02:27:37 is nothing like the American experience now.
02:27:40 So all the terminology, all the talk about privacy
02:27:45 and privacy laws and mass surveillance
02:27:47 and all this other stuff,
02:27:48 it was a completely different time then.
02:27:50 And that’s not to say it was an excuse,
02:27:52 because to this day, I will still say mass collection,
02:27:57 bulk collection of data that allows
02:28:00 for an expedient identification of a threat
02:28:02 to national security benefits all of us,
02:28:06 but people don’t understand what they want.
02:28:09 Like people don’t understand what the value
02:28:11 of their own privacy is.
02:28:13 First of all, the fact that people think
02:28:14 they have personal privacy is laughable.
02:28:17 You have no privacy.
02:28:19 The cell phone that you carry in your pocket,
02:28:20 you’re giving permission to those apps constantly.
02:28:22 You’re giving commercial organizations,
02:28:24 what you and I have already said,
02:28:25 are less tied to ethical responsibility.
02:28:28 You’re giving them permission to collect enormous amounts
02:28:31 of private data from you all the time.
02:28:34 And do you know what happens if AT&T or Verizon
02:28:37 sees some nefarious activity on your account?
02:28:40 They do nothing.
02:28:42 They might send a note to FBI because they have to,
02:28:45 according to some checklist.
02:28:47 But when NSA was collecting intelligence
02:28:49 on metadata from around the United States,
02:28:51 they were very specifically looking for terrorist threats
02:28:54 that would harm American lives.
02:28:58 Man, NSA can clone my phone.
02:29:00 I will give them my children’s phone.
02:29:01 I will give them the passwords to every one of my accounts
02:29:04 if it means that there’s a likelihood
02:29:07 that my family will be safer from a nefarious actor
02:29:09 who’s intent on hurting us.
02:29:13 NSA doesn’t care about your affair.
02:29:15 NSA doesn’t care if you’re cheating on your taxes.
02:29:17 NSA doesn’t care if you talk shit about your boss
02:29:20 or if you hate the US president.
02:29:22 Nobody cares about that.
02:29:24 Your intelligence community is there
02:29:26 to find threats to national security.
02:29:29 That’s what they’re there to do.
02:29:31 What Snowden did when he outed that whole program,
02:29:36 the fact that the court, the justice system,
02:29:38 the civilian justice system went back
02:29:41 and essentially overruled the ruling
02:29:44 of the intelligence courts before them
02:29:47 just goes to show how the general mass community
02:29:51 really shouldn’t have a say
02:29:53 in what happens in the intelligence community.
02:29:55 They really shouldn’t.
02:29:56 You have politicians and you have the opportunity
02:30:00 to elect people to a position and then you trust them.
02:30:03 That’s what a representative republic is.
02:30:05 You vote the people in,
02:30:07 you trust them to work on your behalf.
02:30:09 They make decisions without running them by you.
02:30:11 They make decisions that they believe
02:30:14 are in the best interest of their constituency
02:30:16 and that’s how our form of democracy works.
02:30:21 It worked, we were safer.
02:30:23 Now that we don’t have that information
02:30:25 and now that there’s this giant looming question
02:30:27 of whether or not NSA is there to serve people
02:30:28 or is collecting mass surveillance
02:30:31 against all American people,
02:30:33 that’s not really a true accurate representation
02:30:35 of what they were ever doing.
02:30:36 They were looking for the needle in a haystack
02:30:39 of the series of transactions in metadata
02:30:42 that was going to lead to American deaths.
02:30:45 We are now less secure because they can’t do that
02:30:48 and that bothers me.
02:30:50 So you said a few really interesting things there.
02:30:53 So because you are kind of an insider,
02:30:56 or were for a time an insider, meaning you were able
02:30:59 to build up an intuition about the good, the bad,
02:31:03 and the ugly of these institutions, specifically the good.
02:31:07 A lot of people don’t have a good sense of the good.
02:31:09 They know the bad and the ugly
02:31:11 or can infer the bad and the ugly.
02:31:14 You mentioned that the one little key little thing there
02:31:18 at the end saying the NSA doesn’t care
02:31:22 about whether you hate the president or not.
02:31:24 Now that’s what people really worry about
02:31:28 is they’re not sure they can trust the government
02:31:32 to not go into full dictatorial mode
02:31:36 and basing your political preference, your oppositions,
02:31:40 your, basically one of the essential powers,
02:31:46 the freedom of speech in the United States
02:31:48 is the ability to criticize your government.
02:31:49 Exactly.
02:31:50 And that, they worry, well, can’t the government
02:31:56 get a hold of the NSA and start to ask the basic question,
02:31:59 well, can you give me a list of people
02:32:02 that are criticizing the government?
02:32:03 Think about, so let’s just walk through that exact example,
02:32:06 right, because this is, it’s a preponderance,
02:32:08 it’s a preponderance fear, it’s a ridiculous fear
02:32:12 because you would have to tap on multiple elements
02:32:15 of government for anything to happen.
02:32:16 So for example, let’s just say that somebody goes
02:32:20 to the NSA and says, hey, can you give us a readout
02:32:22 on all the people who are tweeting terrible things
02:32:25 about the president?
02:32:26 Okay, cool, here’s your hundred million people,
02:32:28 whatever it is, right?
02:32:30 Here’s all the people saying negative things
02:32:31 about the government.
02:32:32 So now they have a list, what do they do next?
02:32:35 Well, let’s just make it simple.
02:32:37 They stay with NSA and they say, surveil them even more,
02:32:40 tap their phones, tap their computers,
02:32:42 I wanna know even more.
02:32:43 So then they get this preponderance of evidence.
02:32:46 What do you do with evidence?
02:32:47 You take it to a court.
02:32:49 Well, guess what no court is going to support?
02:32:52 Anything that goes against the freedom of speech.
02:32:56 So the court is not going to support
02:32:58 what the executive is asking them to do.
02:33:01 Even before you take somebody to court,
02:33:03 you have to involve law enforcement.
02:33:05 Essentially, you have to send some sort of police force
02:33:08 to go apprehend the individual who’s in question.
02:33:11 Well, guess what doesn’t meet criteria
02:33:13 for any police force anywhere in the United States?
02:33:16 Arresting people who say negative things
02:33:20 about the president.
02:33:21 Now, if somebody poses a threat to the life
02:33:25 of a public figure or the threat to life of a politician,
02:33:27 that’s a completely different case,
02:33:29 which means the standards of evidence are much higher
02:33:31 for them to arrest that person.
02:33:32 So unless you create a secret police force,
02:33:36 then your actual public police force
02:33:37 is never gonna take action.
02:33:39 So all these people who are afraid of this exact situation
02:33:42 that you’re outlying,
02:33:43 they need the creation of a secret police force,
02:33:46 the creation of a secret court
02:33:48 that operates outside the judicial system,
02:33:50 the creation of a secret intelligence service
02:33:52 that operates outside of foreign intelligence collection,
02:33:54 all so that a handful of people
02:33:57 who don’t like the president get what?
02:34:00 Whisked away, assassinated, put in prison, who knows what?
02:34:04 Think about the resources that would be,
02:34:06 the amount of money and time
02:34:08 and how hard would it be to keep that secret,
02:34:10 to have all of those things in motion.
02:34:13 The reason it worked in Russia and Soviet Germany
02:34:15 or Russia and communist Germany
02:34:17 was because everybody knew there was a secret police.
02:34:21 Everybody knew that there was a threat
02:34:23 to work to speaking out against the government.
02:34:25 It’s completely different here.
02:34:26 Well, so there’s a lot to say.
02:34:28 So one is yes, if I was a dictator
02:34:32 and I wanted to, and just looking at history,
02:34:36 let me take myself out of it,
02:34:38 but I think one of the more effective ways
02:34:41 is you don’t need the surveillance.
02:34:43 You can pick out a random person
02:34:45 and in a public display, semi public display,
02:34:50 basically put them in jail for opposing the government,
02:34:54 whether they oppose it or not,
02:34:56 and the fear, that sends a message to a lot of people.
02:34:59 That’s exactly what you see happening in China.
02:35:02 That’s what you just light out.
02:35:03 It’s genius, and that is the standard.
02:35:06 You don’t need the surveillance for that.
02:35:07 Yep.
02:35:09 But that said, if you did do the surveillance,
02:35:13 so that’s the support, the sort of,
02:35:15 the incentives aren’t aligned.
02:35:17 It seems like a lot of work to do
02:35:18 for the thing you could do without the surveillance.
02:35:20 Right.
02:35:21 But yes, the courts wouldn’t,
02:35:25 if you were to be able to get a list of people,
02:35:29 which I think that part you could do.
02:35:31 Correct.
02:35:32 That oppose the government.
02:35:34 You could do that just like you said on Twitter publicly.
02:35:36 You could make a list.
02:35:38 And with that, you can start to,
02:35:41 especially if you have a lot of data on those people,
02:35:43 find ways in which they did violate the law.
02:35:46 Not because they oppose the government,
02:35:48 but because in some other way.
02:35:50 They’ll park your tickets or didn’t pay the taxes.
02:35:53 That’s probably a common one,
02:35:55 or like screwed up something about the taxes.
02:35:57 I just happen to know Russia and Ukraine,
02:36:00 they’re very good at this kind of stuff.
02:36:03 Knowing how the citizens screwed everything up,
02:36:06 because especially in those countries,
02:36:08 everybody’s breaking the law.
02:36:10 Because in a corrupt nation,
02:36:13 you have to bend the law to operate the war.
02:36:16 The number of people that pay taxes fully
02:36:18 in those nations is just very low, not zero.
02:36:22 And so they then use that breaking of the law
02:36:26 to come up with an excuse to actually put you in jail
02:36:29 based on that.
02:36:31 So it’s possible to imagine.
02:36:33 But yes, I think,
02:36:34 I think that’s the ugly part of surveillance.
02:36:39 But I do think, just like you said,
02:36:41 the incentives aren’t correct.
02:36:43 Like you really don’t need to get all of the secret police
02:36:47 and all of these kinds of organizations working.
02:36:49 If you do have a charismatic, powerful leader
02:36:53 that built up a network that’s able to control
02:36:55 a lot of organizations to a level of authoritarianism
02:37:00 in a government, they’re just able to do the usual thing.
02:37:03 One, have propaganda machine to tell narratives.
02:37:06 Two, pick out people that they can put in jail
02:37:10 for opposing the state.
02:37:12 And maybe loud members of the press
02:37:15 start silencing the press.
02:37:16 There’s a playbook to this thing.
02:37:19 It doesn’t require the surveillance.
02:37:21 The surveillance, you know what is useful
02:37:24 for the surveillance is the thing you mentioned in China,
02:37:27 which is encourage everybody in the citizenry
02:37:34 to watch each other,
02:37:35 to say there’s enemies of the state everywhere.
02:37:38 And then you start having children reporting
02:37:40 on their appearance and that kind of stuff.
02:37:42 Again, don’t need a surveillance state for that.
02:37:46 Now the good of a surveillance system,
02:37:49 if it’s operating within ethical bounds,
02:37:53 is that yes, it could protect the populace.
02:37:55 So you’re saying like the good given on your understanding
02:37:59 of these institutions, the good outweighs the bad.
02:38:03 Absolutely, so let me give you just a practical example.
02:38:06 So people don’t realize this,
02:38:07 but there’s multiple surveillance states that are out there.
02:38:10 There are surveillance states that are close allies
02:38:12 with the United States.
02:38:13 One of those surveillance states
02:38:14 is the United Arab Emirates, the UAE.
02:38:18 Now I lived in the UAE from 2019 to 2020,
02:38:23 came back on a repatriation flight after COVID broke out.
02:38:26 And, but we were there for a full year.
02:38:28 We were residents, we had IDs, we had everything.
02:38:31 Now, when you get your national ID in the Emirates,
02:38:35 you get a chip and that chip connects you to everything.
02:38:39 It connects you to cameras,
02:38:41 it connects you to your license plate on your car,
02:38:44 to your passport, to your credit card, everything.
02:38:46 Everything is intertwined, everything is interlinked.
02:38:49 When you drive, there are no police.
02:38:51 There are no police on the roads.
02:38:52 Every 50 to 100 meters, you cross a camera
02:38:56 that reads your license plate, measures your speed.
02:38:59 And if you’re breaking the speed limit,
02:39:00 it just immediately charges your credit card
02:39:02 because it’s tied, it’s all tied together.
02:39:04 Totally surveillance.
02:39:05 That technology was invented by the Israelis
02:39:08 who use it in Israel.
02:39:13 When I was in Abu Dhabi and I was rear ended at high speed
02:39:17 by what turned out to be an Emirati official,
02:39:19 a senior ranking official of one of the Emirates.
02:39:23 It was caught on camera.
02:39:25 His ID was registered, my ID was registered.
02:39:27 Everything was tied back to our IDs.
02:39:28 The proof and the evidence was crystal clear.
02:39:31 Even still, he was Emirati, I was not.
02:39:34 So when I went to the police station to file the complaints,
02:39:37 it was something that nobody was comfortable with
02:39:39 because generally speaking,
02:39:41 Emiratis don’t accept legal claims
02:39:45 against their own from foreigners.
02:39:46 But the difference was that I was an American
02:39:48 and I was there on a contract
02:39:50 supporting the Emirati government.
02:39:51 So I had these different variances, right?
02:39:54 Long story short, in the end,
02:39:57 the surveillance state is what made sure
02:39:59 that justice was played
02:40:01 because the proof was incontrovertible.
02:40:07 There was so much evidence collected
02:40:09 because of the surveillance nature of their state.
02:40:11 Now, why do they have a surveillance state?
02:40:12 It’s not for people like me.
02:40:14 It’s because they’re constantly afraid
02:40:16 of extremist terrorist activity happening inside Abu Dhabi
02:40:21 or inside the UAE
02:40:22 because they’re under constant threat from Islam
02:40:25 and they’re from extremists
02:40:26 and they’re under constant threat from Iran.
02:40:28 So that’s what drives the people to want a police state,
02:40:32 to want a surveillance state.
02:40:33 For them, their survival is paramount
02:40:36 and they need the surveillance to have that survival.
02:40:38 For us, we haven’t tasted that level of desperation and fear
02:40:43 yet or hopefully never,
02:40:45 but that’s what makes us feel
02:40:46 like there’s something wrong with surveillance.
02:40:48 Surveillance is all about the purpose.
02:40:50 It’s all about the intent.
02:40:52 Well, and like you said,
02:40:53 companies do a significant amount of surveillance
02:40:56 to provide us with services that we take for granted.
02:41:00 For example, just one of the things to give props
02:41:04 to the digital efforts
02:41:06 of the Zelensky administration in Ukraine.
02:41:08 I don’t know if you’re aware,
02:41:09 but they have this digital transformation efforts
02:41:12 where you could put, there’s an, it’s laughable to say
02:41:19 in the United States,
02:41:20 but they actually did a really good job
02:41:22 by having a government app that has your passport on it.
02:41:25 It’s all the digital information.
02:41:27 You can get a doctor.
02:41:28 It’s like everything that you would think America
02:41:31 would be doing, like license, like all that kind of stuff,
02:41:35 it’s in an app.
02:41:36 You could pay, there’s payment to each other.
02:41:39 And that’s all coming, I mean,
02:41:41 there’s probably contractors somehow connected
02:41:43 to the whole thing,
02:41:44 but that’s like under the flag of government.
02:41:46 And so that’s an incredible technology.
02:41:49 And I didn’t, I guess, hear anybody talk about surveillance
02:41:53 in that context, even though it is, but they all love it.
02:41:56 And it’s super easy.
02:41:57 And they, frankly already, it’s so easy and convenient.
02:42:00 They’ve already taken for granted that,
02:42:02 of course, this is what you do.
02:42:04 Of course, your passport is on your phone.
02:42:06 For everybody to have housed in a server
02:42:09 that you have no idea where it’s at,
02:42:10 that could be hacked at any time by a third party.
02:42:13 They don’t ask these kinds of questions
02:42:14 because it’s so convenient,
02:42:16 as we do for Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple,
02:42:23 Microsoft products we use.
02:42:27 Security and convenience are on two opposite sides
02:42:29 of another spectrum.
02:42:30 The more convenient something is, the less secure.
02:42:33 And the more secure something is, the less convenient.
02:42:36 And that’s a battle that we’re always working
02:42:39 with as individuals, and then we’re trying
02:42:41 to outsource that battle to our politicians.
02:42:43 And our politicians are, frankly,
02:42:44 just more interested in being politicians.
02:42:46 Yeah, that said, I mean, people are really worried
02:42:49 about giving any one institution a large amount of power,
02:42:54 especially when it’s a federal government institution,
02:43:00 given some history.
02:43:02 First of all, just history of the corruption,
02:43:04 of power corrupting individuals and institutions.
02:43:08 And second of all, myth or reality of certain institutions
02:43:15 like the CIA misbehaving.
02:43:17 Well, let me actually ask you about the Edward Snowden.
02:43:20 So you, outside of the utility that you’re arguing for
02:43:26 of the NSA surveillance program,
02:43:29 do you think Edward Snowden is a criminal or a hero?
02:43:34 In terms, in the eyes of the law, he’s a criminal.
02:43:38 He broke the law, he broke the confidence,
02:43:41 he made us, he was under security obligation.
02:43:43 And then when he ran away, he ran away
02:43:45 to all of the worst villains in the world
02:43:47 from the US perspective to basically seek protection.
02:43:53 That’s how you act in the face of accusation
02:43:59 is in essence part of the case that you build for yourself.
02:44:03 So running away to China, Russia, Cuba,
02:44:07 there was a Latin Ecuador, I think,
02:44:09 that just paints a very negative picture
02:44:11 that does not suggest that you were doing anything
02:44:13 that was ethical and upright
02:44:14 and in favor of the American people
02:44:16 if you’re gonna run to American enemies to support yourself.
02:44:19 So for sure, in the eyes of law, he’s a criminal.
02:44:22 In the eyes of a group of people
02:44:26 who are largely ignorant to what they lost,
02:44:30 to them, he’s a hero.
02:44:32 To me, he’s just kind of a sad case.
02:44:35 I personally look at Snowden as a sad, unfortunate case.
02:44:41 His life is ruined, his family name is tarnished.
02:44:46 He’s forever going to be a desperate pawn.
02:44:51 And that’s all because of the decisions that he made
02:44:54 and the order that he made them.
02:44:55 I’m not sure his name is tarnished.
02:44:57 I think the case you’re making is a difficult case to make.
02:45:01 And so I think his name represents fighting one man,
02:45:08 it’s like Tiananmen Square standing before the tank,
02:45:11 is like one man fighting the government.
02:45:15 And I think that there is some aspect
02:45:18 which, taking that case aside,
02:45:21 that is the American spirit,
02:45:24 which is hold the powerful accountable.
02:45:28 So whenever there’s somebody in power,
02:45:31 one individual can change.
02:45:38 One man can make a difference.
02:45:39 Can make a difference, yeah.
02:45:40 Very Knight Rider of you.
02:45:42 I mean, that’s the American individualism.
02:45:45 And so he represents that.
02:45:46 And I think there’s a huge skepticism
02:45:49 against large federal institutions.
02:45:52 And I think if you look at the long arc of history,
02:45:56 that actually is a forcing function
02:45:58 for the institutions to behave their best.
02:46:01 So basically hold them accountable.
02:46:08 What’s nice about this is that we can agree to disagree
02:46:11 and history will be the one that decides.
02:46:13 But there’s a reason that Edward Snowden
02:46:18 needs to do something new every 16 or 18 months
02:46:23 to remain relevant, right?
02:46:25 Because if he didn’t, he would just be forgotten.
02:46:28 Because he was not a maverick
02:46:30 who changed history for the better.
02:46:32 He was a man who broke a law and now he’s on the run.
02:46:37 And to some people, he is a hero.
02:46:41 To other people, he is a criminal.
02:46:42 But to the vast majority, he’s just a blip
02:46:46 on a radar of their everyday life
02:46:48 that really makes no difference to them at all.
02:46:50 So actually let’s linger on that.
02:46:51 So just to clarify, do you think,
02:46:54 are you making the difficult case
02:46:57 that the NSA mass surveillance program
02:47:00 was one, ethical and two, made a better world for Americans?
02:47:04 I am making the case that at the time,
02:47:08 it was exactly what we needed to feel safe in our own homes.
02:47:13 But what about to be safe, actually be safe?
02:47:16 So this is what’s difficult because any proof
02:47:19 that was that they collected
02:47:20 that actually prevented an attack from happening
02:47:23 is proof we’ll never know about.
02:47:24 This is the really unfortunate side
02:47:27 of intelligence operations.
02:47:28 And I’ve been at the front end of this.
02:47:30 You work your ass off.
02:47:32 You take personal risk.
02:47:33 You make personal sacrifice to make sure
02:47:35 that something terrible doesn’t happen.
02:47:38 Nobody knows that that ever happens.
02:47:39 Does that have to be that way?
02:47:41 Does it have to remain secret
02:47:44 every time the NSA or the CIA saves the lives of Americans?
02:47:50 It does for two reasons.
02:47:52 It has to be secret.
02:47:52 First, the mythos.
02:47:55 The same thing we were talking about with General Petraeus.
02:47:58 You can’t brag about your victories
02:48:01 if you want to let the myth shape itself.
02:48:05 You can’t do that.
02:48:06 The second thing is once a victory is claimed,
02:48:14 the danger comes from letting your enemy know
02:48:17 that you claimed the victory
02:48:19 because they can reverse engineer
02:48:20 and they can start to change how they did things.
02:48:22 If a terrorist act, if a terrorist cell tries
02:48:25 to execute an operation and the operation fails,
02:48:27 from their point of view, they don’t know why it failed.
02:48:29 They just know that it failed.
02:48:30 But then if the US or if the American government comes in
02:48:33 and says, we took apart this amazing attack,
02:48:37 now they have more information, right?
02:48:39 The whole power of secrets, like we talked about before,
02:48:41 the power of secrets is in knowing
02:48:43 that not everybody has them.
02:48:44 There’s only a shelf life.
02:48:46 So take advantage of the shelf life.
02:48:48 You get space.
02:48:49 So you gotta keep it a secret.
02:48:51 There is no tactical advantage from sharing a secret
02:48:56 unless you are specifically trying to achieve
02:48:59 a certain tactical advantage from sharing that secret,
02:49:01 which is what we’ve seen so much of
02:49:03 with US intel sharing with Ukraine.
02:49:05 There’s a tactical advantage from sharing a secret
02:49:07 about Russian military movements or weaknesses in tanks
02:49:10 or supply chain challenges, whatever it might be.
02:49:14 Well, let me argue that there might be an advantage
02:49:16 to share information with the American public
02:49:19 when a terrorist attack or is averted
02:49:25 or the lives of Americans are saved,
02:49:28 because what that does.
02:49:30 Is make every American think that they’re not that safe.
02:49:34 There is no tactical advantage there.
02:49:36 You think so?
02:49:37 Absolutely.
02:49:38 What about?
02:49:38 If the Austin PD started telling you every day
02:49:44 about these crazy crimes that they prevented,
02:49:48 would that make you feel more safe?
02:49:49 It would make you feel like they’re doing their job.
02:49:51 Is that obvious to you, make us feel less safe?
02:49:53 Because if we see competence,
02:49:55 that there is extremely competent defenders
02:49:59 of this territory of these people,
02:50:02 wouldn’t that make us feel more safe or no?
02:50:05 The human nature is not to assign competence.
02:50:08 So empirically, humans overvalue losses
02:50:14 and undervalue gains.
02:50:17 That’s something that we’ve seen from finance
02:50:19 to betting and beyond.
02:50:21 If the Austin Police Department starts telling you
02:50:23 about all these heinous crimes that were avoided
02:50:26 because of their hard work,
02:50:28 the way that your brain is actually going
02:50:30 to process that information is you are going to say,
02:50:33 if this is all the stuff that they’ve stopped,
02:50:36 how bad must this place be?
02:50:39 How much more haven’t they stopped?
02:50:41 I take your point, it’s a powerful psychological point,
02:50:45 but looking at the other picture of it,
02:50:49 looking at the police force, looking at the CIA, the NSA,
02:50:53 those people, now with the police,
02:50:56 they’re seeing, there’s such a negative feeling
02:51:00 amongst Americans towards these institutions.
02:51:03 Who the hell wants to work for the CIA now
02:51:06 and the police force?
02:51:07 Like, you’re gonna be criticized,
02:51:12 like that’s a, I mean, that’s really bad for the CIA.
02:51:16 It’s terrible.
02:51:18 Like, as opposed to being seen as a hero,
02:51:20 like for example, currently soldiers are for the most part
02:51:25 seen as heroes that are protecting this nation.
02:51:30 That’s not the case for the CIA.
02:51:32 Soldiers weren’t seen as heroes in the Vietnam War, right?
02:51:36 You’ve got to remember that when you,
02:51:39 so first of all, public service is a sacrifice.
02:51:43 We oftentimes forget that.
02:51:45 We start to think, oh, government jobs are cushy
02:51:47 and they’re easy, and it must be so easy
02:51:49 to be the president,
02:51:50 because then you’re basically a celebrity overnight.
02:51:52 Public service is a sacrifice, it’s a grind.
02:51:57 For all of the soldiers, the submariners,
02:52:02 the missileers, the police officers,
02:52:05 intelligence specialists,
02:52:06 they all know what it’s like to give things up,
02:52:09 to serve a public that can turn its opinion
02:52:12 at any given time.
02:52:14 And history is what defines it.
02:52:16 The more important thing is to understand that
02:52:19 if you want a true open and fair democracy,
02:52:22 you cannot control a narrative.
02:52:25 And starting to share all of your victories
02:52:27 or starting to share your biggest victories
02:52:29 with the intent of shaping public opinion
02:52:31 to be supportive of the police force or supportive of CIA
02:52:35 or supportive of you name it, is shaping a narrative
02:52:39 that is intentional operational use of influence
02:52:43 to drive public opinion.
02:52:45 That is something nobody wants to get into.
02:52:47 It is much more professional to be a silent sentinel,
02:52:50 a silent servant, humbly carrying the burden
02:52:54 of public service in the United States
02:52:56 where we are a fair and open democracy.
02:52:59 Why, why not celebrate the killing of Bin Laden?
02:53:04 We did.
02:53:05 The search, discovery, and the capture
02:53:06 and the killing of Bin Laden.
02:53:08 Wasn’t that, actually the details of that,
02:53:10 how much of the details of that,
02:53:12 how he was discovered were made public?
02:53:15 I think some of it was made public enough.
02:53:17 Why not do that?
02:53:19 Doesn’t that make heroes out of the people
02:53:21 that are servants?
02:53:23 Or do people who serve to do service for this nation,
02:53:28 do they always have to operate
02:53:30 in a thankless manner in the shadows?
02:53:34 I think that’s a very good question.
02:53:36 The folks who I left behind when I left CIA,
02:53:41 who continue to serve as faceless,
02:53:45 nameless heroes every day, I am grateful to them.
02:53:51 The truth is that if they were motivated by something else,
02:53:56 they wouldn’t be as good as they are at doing what they do.
02:53:59 And I see your point about,
02:54:03 shouldn’t we be celebrating our victories?
02:54:07 But when celebrating our victories
02:54:09 runs the risk of informing our enemies how we operate,
02:54:15 giving away our informational advantage,
02:54:17 giving away our tactical battlefield advantage,
02:54:19 and running the risk of shaping a narrative intentionally
02:54:22 among our own American people,
02:54:24 now all of a sudden we’re turning into exactly the thing
02:54:27 that the American people trust us not to become.
02:54:31 Yeah, but then you operate in the secrecy,
02:54:34 and then there’s corrupt and douchebag people everywhere.
02:54:39 So when they, even inside the CIA and criminals,
02:54:42 inside the CIA there’s criminals in all organizations,
02:54:45 in all walks of life, human nature as such,
02:54:48 that this is always the case,
02:54:50 then it breeds conspiracy theories.
02:54:53 It does.
02:54:54 And sometimes those conspiracy theories
02:54:56 turn out to be true.
02:54:57 But most times they don’t.
02:54:59 That’s just part of the risk of being a myth.
02:55:04 Can you speak to some of the myths?
02:55:05 So MKUltra, so.
02:55:08 Not a myth.
02:55:09 Not a myth.
02:55:10 So this is a fascinating human experimentation program
02:55:14 undertaken by the CIA to develop procedures
02:55:17 for using drugs like LSD to interrogate people
02:55:20 through, let’s say, psychological manipulation
02:55:23 and maybe even torture.
02:55:25 The scale of the program is perhaps not known.
02:55:29 How do you make sense that this program existed?
02:55:32 Again, you’ve gotta look through the lens of time.
02:55:33 You’ve gotta look at where we were historically
02:55:35 at that time.
02:55:36 There was the peak of the Cold War.
02:55:38 Our enemies were doing the same kind of experimentation.
02:55:41 It was essentially another space race.
02:55:44 What if they broke through a new weapon technology
02:55:49 faster than we did?
02:55:50 What would that mean for the safety and security
02:55:52 of the American people?
02:55:54 So right decision or wrong decision,
02:55:57 it was guided by and informed
02:56:00 by national security priorities.
02:56:02 So from this program that was designed to use drugs
02:56:06 to drive interrogation and torture people
02:56:08 was born something very productive, Operation Stargate,
02:56:12 which was a chance to use remote viewing and metaphysics
02:56:17 to try to collect intelligence.
02:56:19 Now, even though in the end, the outcome of MKUltra
02:56:23 and the outcome of Stargate were mixed,
02:56:25 nobody really knows if they did or didn’t do
02:56:27 what they were supposed to do,
02:56:28 we still know that to this day,
02:56:30 there’s still a demand in the US government and in CIA
02:56:34 for people who have sensitivities to ethereal energies.
02:56:39 By the way, is there any proof
02:56:40 that that kind of stuff works?
02:56:41 Or it just shows that there’s interest.
02:56:46 It shows that there’s openness
02:56:47 to consider those kinds of things.
02:56:49 But is there any evidence that that kind of stuff works?
02:56:51 If there’s evidence, I haven’t seen it.
02:56:54 Speaking from a science based point of view only,
02:56:58 if energy and matter can always be exchanged,
02:57:03 then a person who can understand
02:57:05 and become sensitive to energy
02:57:09 is a person who could become sensitive
02:57:11 to what does become matter.
02:57:13 Yeah, I mean, the basics of the physics might be there,
02:57:17 but a lot of people probably are skeptical.
02:57:20 I’m skeptical too, but I’m just trying to look at it.
02:57:21 You should be open minded, right?
02:57:23 I mean, that’s actually, you know,
02:57:26 that’s what science is about, is remain open minded,
02:57:28 even for the things that are long shots,
02:57:30 because those are the things
02:57:31 that actually define scientific revolutions.
02:57:34 What about Operation Northwoods?
02:57:37 It was a proposed 1962 false flag operation
02:57:41 by the DOD and the CIA to be carried out by the CIA
02:57:46 to commit acts of terrorism on Americans
02:57:50 and blame them on Cuba.
02:57:52 So JFK, the president, rejected the proposal.
02:57:55 What do you make that this was on the table,
02:57:58 Operation Northwoods?
02:57:59 So it’s interesting.
02:58:00 First, I’m glad that JFK rejected it.
02:58:02 That’s a good sign.
02:58:05 So we have to understand that good ideas
02:58:09 are oftentimes born from bad ideas.
02:58:12 I had a really good friend of mine
02:58:14 who actually went on to become a pastor,
02:58:16 and he used to say all the time
02:58:18 that he wanted all the bad ideas on the table.
02:58:20 Like, give me all your bad ideas
02:58:21 every time we had any kind of conversation.
02:58:23 And I was always one of those people who was like,
02:58:25 isn’t a bad idea just a waste of time?
02:58:28 And he was like, no,
02:58:28 because the best ideas oftentimes come from bad ideas.
02:58:31 So again, Cuban missile crisis,
02:58:35 mass hysteria in the United States
02:58:36 about nuclear war from Cuba,
02:58:38 missiles blowing up American cities faster
02:58:41 than we could even see them coming.
02:58:43 It makes sense to me that a president would go to,
02:58:45 especially the part of CIA,
02:58:48 which is the Special Activities Division,
02:58:51 it makes perfect sense to me
02:58:52 that the president would go to a division
02:58:54 called Special Activities,
02:58:55 whose job it is to create crazy ideas
02:58:59 that have presidential approval,
02:59:02 but nobody knows they exist.
02:59:04 So it makes sense that he would challenge a group like that
02:59:07 to come up with any wacky idea, right?
02:59:09 Come up with anything.
02:59:10 Just let’s start with something,
02:59:11 because we can’t bring nothing to the table.
02:59:13 We have to do something about this Cuban issue.
02:59:15 And then that’s how an operation like that
02:59:17 could reasonably be born.
02:59:19 Not because anybody wants to do it,
02:59:20 but because they were tasked by the president
02:59:22 to come up with five ideas.
02:59:24 And it was one of the ideas.
02:59:27 That still happens to this day.
02:59:29 The president will still come in,
02:59:31 but it’ll basically send out a notice
02:59:33 to his covert action arm.
02:59:34 And he will say, I need this.
02:59:38 And I need it on Wednesday.
02:59:39 And people have to come back with options
02:59:41 for the thing he asked for, a finding.
02:59:44 He will issue a presidential finding.
02:59:46 And then his covert action arms have to come back and say,
02:59:48 here’s how we would do this
02:59:49 and hide the hands of the Americans.
02:59:53 How gangster was it of JFK to reject it though?
02:59:55 His baller, right?
02:59:57 That’s like, that is a mic drop right there.
03:00:00 Nope, not doing that.
03:00:01 Yep, doing that.
03:00:03 A thing that crosses an ethical line,
03:00:07 even in a time where the human,
03:00:10 the entirety of human civilization hangs in a balance,
03:00:13 still forfeit that power.
03:00:16 That’s a beautiful thing about the American experiment.
03:00:20 That’s a few times throughout the history
03:00:22 that this has happened,
03:00:23 including with our first president, George Washington.
03:00:28 Well, let me ask about JFK.
03:00:30 25 times two, and they still keep that stuff classified.
03:00:35 So do you think the CIA had a hand
03:00:40 in the assassination of JFK?
03:00:43 I cannot imagine in any reasonable point of view
03:00:48 that the organization of CIA had anything to do
03:00:51 with the assassination of JFK.
03:00:53 So it’s not possible to infiltrate the CIA,
03:00:57 a small part of the CIA in order to attain political
03:01:02 or criminal gains, or financial.
03:01:07 Yeah, absolutely it’s possible to infiltrate CIA.
03:01:10 There’s a long history of foreign intelligence services
03:01:14 infiltrating CIA, from Aldrich Ames
03:01:17 to Jerry Lee recently with China.
03:01:20 So we know CIA can be infiltrated,
03:01:24 even if they are infiltrated,
03:01:25 and even if that’s interlocutor execution
03:01:29 that interlocutor executes on their own agenda
03:01:35 or the agenda as directed by their foreign adversary,
03:01:39 their foreign handler,
03:01:41 that’s different than organizational support for an event.
03:01:45 So I do think it’s possible
03:01:47 they could have been infiltrated at the time,
03:01:49 especially it was a major priority
03:01:52 for the Cubans and the Russians
03:01:54 to infiltrate some aspect of US intelligence,
03:01:58 multiple moles were caught in the years following.
03:02:03 So it’s not surprising
03:02:05 that there would be a priority for that.
03:02:07 But to say that the organization of CIA
03:02:09 was somehow in cahoots with,
03:02:12 to independently assassinate their own executive,
03:02:15 that’s a significant stretch.
03:02:16 I’ve seen no evidence to support that.
03:02:18 And it goes contrary to everything I learned
03:02:21 from my time at CIA.
03:02:24 Well, let me ask you,
03:02:26 do you think CIA played a part in enabling drug cartels
03:02:29 and drug trafficking,
03:02:31 which is another big kind of
03:02:35 shadow that hangs over the CIA?
03:02:37 At the beginning of the drug war,
03:02:39 I would imagine the answer is yes.
03:02:42 CIA has its own counter narcotics division,
03:02:45 a division that’s dedicated to fighting
03:02:47 and preventing narcotics
03:02:49 from coming into the United States.
03:02:51 So when you paint a picture for me,
03:02:53 like do you think the CIA was complicit
03:02:56 in helping drug trafficking or drug use?
03:02:59 When I say yes,
03:03:01 my exception is I don’t think they did that
03:03:03 for Americans inside the United States.
03:03:05 If the CIA can basically set it up
03:03:07 so that two different drug cartels shoot each other
03:03:10 by assisting in the transaction
03:03:13 of a sale to a third country
03:03:17 and then leaking that that sale happened
03:03:20 to a competing cartel,
03:03:21 that’s just letting cartels do what they do.
03:03:23 That’s them doing the dirty work for us.
03:03:25 So especially at the beginning of the drug war,
03:03:27 I think there was tons of space,
03:03:28 lots of room for CIA to get involved
03:03:31 in the economics of drugs
03:03:33 and then let the inevitable happen.
03:03:35 And that was way more efficient,
03:03:36 way more productive than us trying to send our own troops
03:03:40 in to kill a bunch of cartel warlords.
03:03:43 So that makes a ton of sense to me.
03:03:45 It just seems efficient.
03:03:46 It seems very practical.
03:03:47 I do not believe that CIA would like,
03:03:49 I don’t think all the accusations out there
03:03:50 about how they would buy drugs and sell drugs
03:03:53 and somehow make money on the side from it.
03:03:55 That’s not how it works.
03:03:56 So do you think there’s, on that point,
03:03:59 a connection between Barry Seal,
03:04:02 the great governor and then President Bill Clinton,
03:04:05 Oliver North and Vice President and former CIA Director
03:04:08 George H.W. Bush and the little town
03:04:11 with a little airport called Mena, Arkansas?
03:04:14 So I am out of my element now.
03:04:17 This is one I haven’t heard many details about.
03:04:19 Okay, so your sense is any of the drug trafficking
03:04:25 has to do with criminal operations
03:04:28 outside of the United States and the CIA
03:04:30 just leveraging that to achieve its ends
03:04:35 but nothing to do with American citizens
03:04:37 and American politicians.
03:04:39 With American citizens, again, speaking organizationally.
03:04:43 So that would be my sense, yes.
03:04:45 Let me ask you about, so back to Operation Northwoods
03:04:50 because it’s such a powerful tool,
03:04:55 sadly powerful tool used by dictators throughout history,
03:04:59 the false flag operation.
03:05:04 So I think there’s, and you said the terrorist attacks
03:05:09 in 9 11 were, it changed a lot for us,
03:05:14 for the United States, for Americans.
03:05:18 It changed the way we see the world.
03:05:19 It woke us up to the harshness of the world.
03:05:22 I think there’s, to my eyes at least,
03:05:25 there’s nothing that shows evidence
03:05:27 that 9 11 was a quote inside job.
03:05:30 But is the CIA or the intelligence agencies
03:05:37 or the US government capable of something like that?
03:05:41 But that’s the question.
03:05:42 So there’s a bunch of shadiness
03:05:46 about how it was reported on.
03:05:47 I just can’t, that’s the thing I struggle with.
03:05:53 While there’s no evidence that there was an inside job,
03:05:57 it raises the question to me,
03:05:59 well, could something like this be an inside job?
03:06:02 Because it sure as heck, now looking back 20 years,
03:06:06 the amount of money that was spent on these wars,
03:06:09 the military industrial complex,
03:06:11 the amount of interest in terms of power and money involved,
03:06:17 organizationally, can something like that happen?
03:06:22 You know Occam’s razor.
03:06:24 So the harem’s razor is that you can never prescribe
03:06:28 to conspiracy what could be explained through incompetence.
03:06:34 That is one of, those are two fundamental guidelines
03:06:37 that we follow all the time.
03:06:38 The simplest answer is oftentimes the best
03:06:40 and never prescribe to conspiracy
03:06:43 what can be explained through incompetence.
03:06:44 Can you elaborate what you mean by we?
03:06:47 We as intelligence professionals.
03:06:50 So you think there’s a deep truth to that second razor?
03:06:55 There is more than a deep truth.
03:06:57 There’s ages of experience for me and for others.
03:07:01 So in general, people are incompetent.
03:07:04 If left to their own means they’re more incompetent
03:07:09 than they are malevolent at a large organizational scale.
03:07:13 People are more incompetent of executing a conspiracy
03:07:18 than they are of competently, yeah,
03:07:22 than they are of competently executing a conspiracy.
03:07:25 That’s really what it means is that it’s so difficult
03:07:28 to carry out a complex lie
03:07:30 that most people don’t have the competency to do it.
03:07:33 So it doesn’t make any sense to lead thinking of conspiracy.
03:07:36 It makes more sense to lead assuming incompetence.
03:07:40 When you look at all of the outcomes,
03:07:41 all the findings from 9 11, it speaks to incompetence.
03:07:45 It speaks brashly and openly to incompetence
03:07:48 and nobody likes talking about it.
03:07:50 FBI and CIA to this day hate hearing about it.
03:07:53 The 9 11 commission is gonna go down in history
03:07:56 as this painful example of the incompetence
03:07:58 of the American intelligence community.
03:08:01 And it’s going to come back again and again.
03:08:02 Every time there’s an intel flap,
03:08:04 it’s gonna come back again and again.
03:08:06 What are you seeing?
03:08:07 Even right now, we miss the US intelligence infrastructure,
03:08:12 misjudged Afghanistan, misjudged Hong Kong,
03:08:16 misjudged Ukraine’s and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
03:08:20 Those were three massive misjudgments in a few years.
03:08:24 That speaks, it’s just embarrassing.
03:08:27 Exactly right.
03:08:28 So all the sort of cover up looking things around 9 11
03:08:33 is just people being embarrassed by their failures.
03:08:36 If they’re taking steps to cover anything up,
03:08:39 it’s just their own, it’s a painful reminder
03:08:43 of their lack of competency at the time.
03:08:46 Now, I understand that conspiracy theorists
03:08:48 want to take inklings of information
03:08:51 and put them together in a way that is the most damning,
03:08:55 but that goes back to our point about overvaluing losses
03:08:59 and undervaluing gains.
03:09:00 It’s just predictable human behavior.
03:09:03 Let me ask you about this because it comes up often.
03:09:07 So I’m from MIT and there’s a guy by the name
03:09:10 of Jeffrey Epstein that still troubles me to this day
03:09:15 that some of the people I respect
03:09:17 were interacted with this individual
03:09:20 and fell into his influence.
03:09:23 The charm, charisma, whatever the hell he used
03:09:31 to delude these people, he did so successfully.
03:09:36 I’m very open minded about this thing.
03:09:38 I just, I would love to learn more,
03:09:40 but a lot of people tell me, a lot of people I respect,
03:09:44 that there’s intelligence agencies behind this individual.
03:09:47 So they were using Jeffrey Epstein
03:09:50 for getting access to powerful people
03:09:54 and then to control and manipulate those powerful people.
03:09:57 The CIA, I believe, is not brought up as often as Mossad.
03:10:01 And so this goes back to the original aspect
03:10:04 of our conversation is how much each individual
03:10:06 intelligence agency is willing to go to control,
03:10:10 to manipulate, to achieve its means.
03:10:13 Do you think there is, can you educate me?
03:10:16 If, obviously you don’t know, but you can bet,
03:10:21 what are the chances the intelligence agencies
03:10:23 are involved with the character of Jeffrey Epstein?
03:10:26 In some way, shape, or form with the character of Epstein,
03:10:29 it’s 100% guaranteed that some intelligence organization
03:10:33 was involved, but let’s talk about why.
03:10:36 Let’s talk about why, okay?
03:10:38 There’s multiple types of intelligence assets,
03:10:41 just like we were talking earlier.
03:10:43 There’s foreign intelligence reporting assets,
03:10:47 there’s access agents,
03:10:50 and then there’s agents of influence.
03:10:51 Three different categories of intelligence, right?
03:10:54 One is when you talk about foreign intelligence reporters,
03:10:58 these are people who have access to secrets
03:10:59 and their job is to give you their secrets
03:11:02 in exchange for gold or money or alcohol or prostitution
03:11:04 or whatever else, right?
03:11:05 Their job is to give you secrets
03:11:07 and then you pay them for the secrets.
03:11:09 Access agents, their job is to give you physical access
03:11:13 or digital access to something of interest to you.
03:11:17 So maybe they’re the ones that open a door
03:11:19 that should have been locked and let you come in
03:11:21 and stick your thumb drive in the computer.
03:11:23 Or maybe they’re the ones that share a phone number
03:11:25 with somebody and then they’re just like,
03:11:27 just don’t tell them you got the phone number from me.
03:11:29 Their job is to give you access.
03:11:31 Then you have these agents of influence.
03:11:33 An agent of influence’s job is to be part of your effort
03:11:38 to influence the outcomes in some way
03:11:42 that benefits your intelligence requirements, right?
03:11:45 Of these three types of people,
03:11:48 the least scrupulous and the most shady
03:11:52 is your agent of influence.
03:11:54 Because your agent of influence
03:11:55 understands exactly what they’re doing.
03:11:57 They know they’re working with one guy
03:11:59 and they know they’re using the influence
03:12:02 to manipulate some other guy.
03:12:04 When it comes to powerful people,
03:12:06 especially wealthy, powerful people,
03:12:10 the only thing that interests them is power.
03:12:13 Money is not a challenge anymore.
03:12:16 Prestige, notoriety, none of those things are a challenge.
03:12:19 The rest of us, we’re busy trying to make money.
03:12:21 We’re busy trying to build a reputation.
03:12:22 We’re busy trying to build a career, keep a family afloat.
03:12:25 At the highest levels, they’re bored.
03:12:27 They don’t need any of that.
03:12:28 The only thing that they care about
03:12:30 is being able to wield power.
03:12:31 So a character like Jeffrey Epstein
03:12:35 is exactly the kind of character
03:12:37 that the Chinese would want, the Russians would want,
03:12:41 Mossad would want, the French would want.
03:12:43 It’s too easy because the man had access
03:12:47 to a wide range of American influential people.
03:12:52 For corporate espionage uses,
03:12:54 for economic espionage uses,
03:12:56 for national security espionage uses,
03:12:59 it doesn’t make any sense
03:13:01 that a person like that wouldn’t be targeted.
03:13:03 It doesn’t.
03:13:04 So the question is.
03:13:05 Who?
03:13:07 Who, and whether, I think the really important distinction
03:13:14 here is was this person, was Jeffrey Epstein created,
03:13:18 or once he’s achieved and built his network,
03:13:21 was he then infiltrated?
03:13:23 And that’s a really sort of important difference.
03:13:26 Like at which stage do you connect a person like that?
03:13:29 You start to notice maybe they’re effective
03:13:32 at building a network, and then you start making,
03:13:36 building a relationship to where at some point
03:13:39 it’s a job, they’re working for you.
03:13:41 Or do you literally create a person like that?
03:13:43 Yeah, so intelligence organizations
03:13:45 have different strategies here.
03:13:47 In the United States, we never create.
03:13:49 We don’t have a budget cycle that allows us to create.
03:13:53 I mean, the maximum budget cycle
03:13:55 in the United States is five years.
03:13:57 So even if we were to try to invest in some seed operation
03:14:00 or create some character of influence,
03:14:03 essentially every year you have to justify
03:14:06 why you’re spending budget.
03:14:07 And that becomes very difficult in a democracy like ours.
03:14:10 However, Russia and China are extremely adept
03:14:13 at seed operations, longterm operations.
03:14:17 They are willing to invest and develop
03:14:20 and create an agent that serves their purposes.
03:14:25 Now, to create someone from scratch like Jeffrey Epstein,
03:14:31 the probabilities are extremely low.
03:14:33 They would have had to start
03:14:34 with like a thousand different targets
03:14:36 and try to grow a thousand different,
03:14:38 if you will, influencers, and then hope
03:14:41 that one of them hits,
03:14:42 kind of like a venture capital firm, right?
03:14:44 Invest in many, hope that a few hits.
03:14:46 More likely, they observed him at some point
03:14:50 in his own natural rise.
03:14:52 They identified his personal vulnerability,
03:14:54 very classic espionage technique.
03:14:57 And then they stepped in, introduced themselves mid career
03:15:00 and said, hey, we know you have this thing that you like
03:15:03 that isn’t really frowned upon by your own people,
03:15:06 but we don’t frown upon it.
03:15:07 And we can help you both succeed
03:15:10 and have an endless supply of ladies along the way.
03:15:14 I recently talked to Ryan Graves, who’s a lieutenant.
03:15:17 Ryan Graves, who’s a fighter jet pilot,
03:15:20 about many things.
03:15:22 He also does work on autonomous weapon systems,
03:15:26 drones, and that kind of thing,
03:15:27 including quantum computing.
03:15:29 But he also happens to be one of the very few pilots
03:15:33 that were willing to go on record
03:15:35 and talk about UFO sightings.
03:15:39 Does the CIA and the federal government
03:15:42 have interest in UFOs?
03:15:44 In my experience at CIA, that is,
03:15:47 an area that remains very compartmented.
03:15:51 And that could be one of two reasons.
03:15:54 It could be because there is significant interest
03:15:56 and that’s why it’s so heavily compartmented.
03:15:58 Or it could be because it’s an area that’s non,
03:16:02 that’s just not important.
03:16:03 It’s a distraction.
03:16:04 So they compartment it so it doesn’t distract
03:16:08 from other operations.
03:16:10 One of the areas that I’ve been quite interested in
03:16:15 and where I’ve done a lot of research and I’ve done some work
03:16:17 in the private intelligence and private investigation side
03:16:19 is with UFOs.
03:16:22 The place where UFOs really connect
03:16:25 with the federal government is when it comes
03:16:26 to aviation safety and predominance of power.
03:16:30 So FAA and the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. military
03:16:34 are very invested in knowing what’s happening
03:16:36 in the skies above the United States.
03:16:38 And that’s of primary interest to them.
03:16:41 When they can rule out the direct threat to national security
03:16:45 of UFOs, then they become less interested.
03:16:47 That said, when you have unexplained aerial phenomenon
03:16:52 that are unexplained, that can’t directly be tied
03:16:56 to anything that is known of the terrestrial world,
03:17:02 then they’re left without an answer to their question.
03:17:05 They don’t know if it’s a threat or not a threat.
03:17:08 But I think that’s a very important question.
03:17:10 But I think the scarier concern
03:17:12 for the U.S. national government
03:17:13 or for the U.S. federal government,
03:17:15 the scarier concern that nobody talks about
03:17:17 is what if the UFO isn’t alien?
03:17:20 What if it is actually a cutting edge war machine
03:17:25 that we are eons behind ever being able to replicate?
03:17:29 Or the other concern is that it’s a system,
03:17:34 it’s a machine from a foreign power
03:17:36 that’s doing intelligence collection.
03:17:38 Correct.
03:17:39 Not just military purposes, it’s actually collecting data.
03:17:43 Well, they fall, a lot of times the federal government
03:17:46 will see the two as the same.
03:17:47 It’s a hostile tool from a foreign government.
03:17:50 So collection of information is a hostile act.
03:17:53 Absolutely, that’s why the Espionage Act exists.
03:17:56 That’s why it’s a criminal offense
03:17:58 if you’re committing espionage in the United States
03:18:00 as a U.S. citizen or a foreign citizen.
03:18:03 So I guess they keep digging
03:18:04 until they can confirm it’s not a threat.
03:18:07 But it just, and you’re saying that there’s not,
03:18:10 from your understanding, much evidence that they’re doing.
03:18:12 So it could be because they’re compartmentalized.
03:18:17 But you’re saying private intelligence institutions
03:18:21 are trying to make progress on this.
03:18:25 Yeah, it’s really difficult to know the scale.
03:18:29 Yeah, there’s an economic interest
03:18:31 in the private intelligence world.
03:18:33 Because, for example, if you understand
03:18:36 why certain aerial phenomenon are happening over a location,
03:18:40 then you can use that to inform investors,
03:18:43 whether to invest in that location
03:18:44 or avoid investment in that location.
03:18:47 But that’s not a national security concern.
03:18:48 So it doesn’t matter to the federal government.
03:18:52 Could these UFOs be aliens?
03:18:54 Now I’m going into a territory of you as a human being
03:18:57 wondering about all the alien civilizations
03:19:00 that are out there.
03:19:01 The humbling question.
03:19:03 We are not alone.
03:19:05 You think we’re not alone.
03:19:07 It’s an improbability that we are alone.
03:19:10 If by virtue of the fact that sentient human life exists,
03:19:15 intelligent human life exists,
03:19:17 all the probabilities that would have to be destroyed
03:19:19 for that to be true simply speak over the galaxies
03:19:22 that exist that there’s no possible way we’re alone.
03:19:26 It’s a mathematical equation.
03:19:27 It’s a one or a zero, right?
03:19:30 And for me, it has to exist.
03:19:32 It’s impossible otherwise rationally for me to think
03:19:35 that we are truly the only intelligent life form
03:19:37 in all of the universe.
03:19:40 But to think that an alien life form
03:19:44 is anything like us at all is equally as inconceivable.
03:19:49 To think that they’re carbon based bipedal humanoid
03:19:54 alien species that just happened to fly around
03:19:57 in metal machines and visit alien planets
03:20:01 in a way that they become observed
03:20:03 is, it’s just silly, it’s the world of sci fi.
03:20:07 Well, let me push.
03:20:08 Every good scientist,
03:20:09 because we always assume that they’re superior
03:20:11 to us in intelligence.
03:20:12 Yes.
03:20:13 When any scientist carries out an experiment,
03:20:16 the whole objective of the experiment is to observe
03:20:19 without being disclosed or being discovered.
03:20:23 So why on earth would we think that the superior species
03:20:26 makes the mistake of being discovered over and over again?
03:20:31 So to push back on that idea,
03:20:32 if we were to think about us humans trying to communicate
03:20:35 with ants, first we observe for a while.
03:20:39 There’ll be a bunch of PhDs written,
03:20:41 a bunch of people just sort of collecting data,
03:20:45 taking notes, trying to understand about this thing
03:20:48 that you detected that seems to be a living thing,
03:20:50 which is a very difficult thing to define
03:20:52 from an alien perspective or from our perspective
03:20:55 if we find life on Mars or something like that.
03:20:57 Okay, so you observe for a while.
03:20:59 But then if you want to actually interact with it,
03:21:02 how would you interact with the ants?
03:21:04 If I were to interact with the ants,
03:21:06 I would try to infiltrate.
03:21:10 I would try to figure out what is the language
03:21:15 they use to communicate with each other.
03:21:17 I would try to operate at their physical scale,
03:21:21 like in terms of the physics of their interaction,
03:21:24 in terms of the information, methods, mediums
03:21:28 of information exchange with pheromones or whatever,
03:21:31 however the heck, ants.
03:21:33 So I would try to mimic them in some way.
03:21:36 So in that sense, it makes sense
03:21:38 that the objects we would see, you mentioned bipedal.
03:21:44 Yes, of course it’s ridiculous that aliens
03:21:46 would actually be very similar to us,
03:21:50 but maybe they create forms in order to be like,
03:21:54 here, the humans will understand it.
03:21:58 And this needs to be sufficiently different from humans
03:22:00 to know that there’s something weird.
03:22:02 I don’t know, I think it’s actually
03:22:05 an incredibly difficult problem of figuring out
03:22:07 how to communicate with a thing way dumber than you.
03:22:11 People assume if you’re smart,
03:22:14 it’s easier to talk to the dumb thing.
03:22:16 But I think it’s actually extremely difficult
03:22:19 when the gap in intelligence is just orders of magnitude.
03:22:23 And so of course you can observe,
03:22:26 but once you notice the thing is sufficiently interesting,
03:22:30 how do you communicate with that thing?
03:22:32 So this is where, one of the things
03:22:34 I always try to highlight is how conspiracies are born.
03:22:38 Because many people don’t understand how easy it is
03:22:41 to fall into the conspiratorial cycle.
03:22:44 So the first step to a conspiracy being born
03:22:47 is to have a piece of evidence that is true.
03:22:52 And then immediately following the true evidence
03:22:55 is a gap in information.
03:22:57 And then to fill in the gap of information,
03:23:00 people create an idea and then the next logical outcome
03:23:05 is based on the idea that they just created,
03:23:08 which is an idea that’s based on something
03:23:10 that was imagined in the first place.
03:23:12 So the idea, the factual thing is now two steps away
03:23:15 and then three steps away, four steps away
03:23:17 as the things go on.
03:23:18 And then all of a sudden you have this kernel of truth
03:23:20 that turned into this wild conspiracy.
03:23:23 So in our example, you talked about humans
03:23:26 trying to communicate with ants.
03:23:27 Ants are not intelligent.
03:23:28 There’s no, ants are not intelligent species.
03:23:30 They’re a drone species that’s somehow commanded
03:23:33 through whatever technology, whatever.
03:23:36 Spoken like a typical human, but yes.
03:23:37 Whatever biological thing is in the queen, right?
03:23:40 But they’re not, it’s not a fair equivalent.
03:23:42 But let’s look at gorillas
03:23:43 or let’s look at something in the monkey family, right?
03:23:45 Where largely we agree that there is some sort
03:23:48 of intelligence there or dolphins,
03:23:50 some sort of intelligence, right?
03:23:52 It is a human thing, a human thing to want to observe
03:23:59 and then communicate and integrate.
03:24:02 That’s a human thing, not an intelligent life thing.
03:24:06 So for us to even think that a foreign
03:24:09 and intelligent alien species would want to engage
03:24:12 and communicate at all is an extremely human assumption.
03:24:16 And then from that assumption,
03:24:18 then we started going into all the other things you said.
03:24:20 If they wanted to communicate,
03:24:21 wouldn’t they want to mimic?
03:24:23 If they wanted to mimic,
03:24:24 wouldn’t they create devices like ours?
03:24:26 So now we’re three steps removed from the true fact
03:24:29 of there’s something unexplainable in the skies.
03:24:34 Yeah, so the fact is there’s something unexplainable
03:24:37 in the skies and then we’re filling in the gaps
03:24:40 with all our basic human biases and assumptions.
03:24:43 Exactly.
03:24:44 But the thing is.
03:24:45 Now we’re getting right back to Project Northwood.
03:24:47 We need some plan.
03:24:48 I don’t care how crazy the idea is, guys.
03:24:50 Give me some plan.
03:24:51 So that’s where we come up with.
03:24:53 Maybe it’s an alien species trying to communicate
03:24:55 or maybe it’s an alien, a hostile threat
03:24:57 that’s trying to take over the world or who knows what.
03:25:00 Maybe it’s.
03:25:01 But you have to somehow construct hypotheses
03:25:07 and theories for anomalies.
03:25:10 And then from that, amidst giant pile of the ridiculous,
03:25:16 emerges perhaps a deeper truth over a period of decades.
03:25:21 And at first, that truth is ridiculed
03:25:24 and then it’s accepted, that whole process.
03:25:29 The Earth revolving around the sun?
03:25:30 Yeah, the Earth revolving around the sun.
03:25:32 But to me, it’s interesting because it asks us
03:25:37 looking out there with SETI, just looking for alien life,
03:25:41 is forcing us to really ask questions about ourselves,
03:25:45 about what is life, how special.
03:25:48 First of all, what is intelligence?
03:25:49 How special is intelligence in the cosmos?
03:25:52 And I think it’s inspiring and challenging
03:25:55 to us as human beings,
03:25:57 both on a scientific and engineering level,
03:26:00 but also on a philosophical level.
03:26:01 I mean, all of those questions that are laid before us
03:26:04 when you start to think about alien life.
03:26:06 So you interviewed Joe Rogan recently.
03:26:09 Yeah.
03:26:09 And he said something that I thought was really,
03:26:12 really brilliant during the podcast interview.
03:26:14 He said that you.
03:26:15 He’s gonna love hearing that.
03:26:16 But go ahead, sorry.
03:26:18 But he said that he realized at some point
03:26:22 that the turn in his opinion about UFOs happened
03:26:25 when he realized how desperately he wanted it to be true.
03:26:30 This is the human condition.
03:26:33 We are pink matter works the same way
03:26:35 as everybody’s pink matter.
03:26:36 And one of the ways that our pink matter works
03:26:38 is with this thing, with what’s known as a cognitive bias.
03:26:41 It’s a mental shortcut.
03:26:42 Essentially, your brain doesn’t want to process
03:26:45 through facts over and over again.
03:26:46 Instead, it wants to assume certain facts are in place
03:26:48 and just jump right to the conclusion.
03:26:50 It saves energy, it saves megabytes.
03:26:52 So what Joe or Joe Rogan,
03:26:56 I feel weird calling him Joe, I don’t know him,
03:26:57 but what Joe identified on his own.
03:26:59 Mr. Rogan.
03:27:00 What Mr. Rogan identified on his own.
03:27:03 Yeah.
03:27:04 Was his own cognitive loop.
03:27:06 And then he immediately grew suspicious of that loop.
03:27:10 That is a super powerful tool.
03:27:11 That is something that most people
03:27:13 never become self actualized enough to realize
03:27:15 that they have a cognitive loop,
03:27:17 let alone questioning their own cognitive loop.
03:27:20 So that was, when it came to this topic specifically,
03:27:23 that was just something that I thought was really powerful
03:27:25 because you learn to not trust your own mind.
03:27:30 Just for the record, after he drinks one whiskey,
03:27:34 all that goes out.
03:27:36 I think that was just in that moment in time, like, you know.
03:27:40 A moment of brilliance.
03:27:41 A moment of brilliance is, I think he still is, you know,
03:27:48 he’s definitely, one of the things that inspires me about Joe
03:27:50 is how open minded he is, how curious he is.
03:27:53 He refuses to let sort of the conformity
03:27:55 and the conventions of any one community,
03:27:58 including the scientific community,
03:28:00 be a kind of thing that limits his curiosity,
03:28:04 of asking what if, like the whole, it’s entirely possible.
03:28:08 I think that’s a beautiful thing.
03:28:10 And it actually represents what the best of science is,
03:28:13 that childlike curiosity.
03:28:15 But, so it’s good to sort of balance those two things,
03:28:18 but then you have to wake up to it, like,
03:28:21 is this, is there a chance this is true,
03:28:24 or do I just really want it to be true?
03:28:27 And that.
03:28:27 Like that hot girl that talks to you overseas?
03:28:29 Yeah.
03:28:30 Yeah.
03:28:32 For a brief moment.
03:28:35 There’s actually a deeper explanation for it
03:28:37 that I’ll tell you off the mic that perhaps
03:28:41 a lot of people can kind of figure out.
03:28:42 Anyway.
03:28:43 Just to take it one step further,
03:28:44 cause I love this stuff.
03:28:45 Personally, I love pink matter stuff.
03:28:48 In your interview with Jack Barsky,
03:28:50 Jack’s a good friend of mine, a good dude.
03:28:52 An incredible person.
03:28:53 Yeah.
03:28:53 In your conversation with Jack Barsky,
03:28:55 you guys, he started talking to you about
03:28:58 how his recruiters were feeding back to him his own beliefs,
03:29:02 his own opinions about himself, how smart he was,
03:29:05 how good he was, how uniquely qualified he was.
03:29:08 That’s all pink matter manipulation.
03:29:10 Feeding right back to the person
03:29:12 what they already think of themselves
03:29:14 is a way to get them to invest and trust you faster
03:29:17 because obviously you value them for all the right reasons
03:29:21 because that’s how they see themselves.
03:29:22 So that loop that the KGB was using with Jack,
03:29:28 Jack did not wake up to that loop at the time.
03:29:31 He woke up to it later.
03:29:32 So it happens to all of us.
03:29:35 We’re all in a loop.
03:29:37 It’s just whether it’s about oat milk
03:29:39 or whether it’s about aliens
03:29:41 or whether it’s about the Democrats trying to take your guns,
03:29:44 whatever it is, everybody’s in a loop
03:29:47 and we’ve got to wake up to ask ourselves,
03:29:49 just like you said, is it true
03:29:51 or do we just really want it to be true?
03:29:53 And until you ask yourself that question,
03:29:55 you’re just one of the masses trapped in the loop.
03:29:58 Yeah, that’s the really, the Nietzsche gaze into the abyss.
03:30:03 It’s a dangerous thing.
03:30:05 That’s the path to insanity is to ask that question.
03:30:08 You want to be doing it carefully,
03:30:10 but it’s also the place where you can truly discover
03:30:14 something fundamental about this world
03:30:15 that people don’t understand
03:30:17 and then that and lay the groundwork for progress,
03:30:21 scientific, cultural, all that kind of stuff.
03:30:24 Absolutely.
03:30:27 What is one spy trick?
03:30:28 This is from a Reddit that I really enjoy.
03:30:31 What’s one spy trick and you’re full of a million spy tricks.
03:30:36 People should follow you.
03:30:37 You did an amazing podcast.
03:30:39 You’re just an amazing person.
03:30:40 Thank you.
03:30:42 What is the one spy trick you would teach everyone
03:30:45 that they can use to improve their life instantly?
03:30:47 Now you already mentioned quite a few,
03:30:50 but what else could jump to mind?
03:30:54 My go to answer for this has not really changed much
03:30:56 over the last few years.
03:30:57 So the first, the most important spy trick
03:31:00 to change everything immediately
03:31:02 is something called perception versus perspective.
03:31:06 We all look at the world through our own perception.
03:31:10 My dad used to tell me,
03:31:11 my stepdad used to tell me that perception is reality.
03:31:13 And I was arguing this with him when I was 14 years old.
03:31:17 I told you so dad, you’re still wrong.
03:31:20 But perception is your interpretation
03:31:22 of the world around you, but it’s unique only to you.
03:31:26 There’s no advantage in your perception.
03:31:28 That’s why so many people find themselves
03:31:30 arguing all the time,
03:31:31 trying to convince other people of their own perception.
03:31:35 The way that you win any argument,
03:31:37 the way that you get ahead in your career,
03:31:39 the way that you outsell or out race anybody
03:31:45 is when you move off of perception
03:31:47 and move into perspective.
03:31:49 Perspective is the act or the art
03:31:52 of observing the world from outside of yourself,
03:31:56 whether that’s outside of yourself as like an entity,
03:31:59 just observing in a third from a different point of view,
03:32:02 or even more powerful, you sit in the shoes,
03:32:05 you sit in the seat of the person opposite you.
03:32:07 And you think to yourself, what is their life like?
03:32:10 What do they feel right now?
03:32:13 Are they comfortable?
03:32:13 Are they uncomfortable?
03:32:14 Are they afraid?
03:32:15 Are they scared?
03:32:16 What’s the stressor that they woke up to this morning?
03:32:18 What’s the stressor that they’re gonna go to sleep
03:32:20 with tonight?
03:32:21 When you shift places and get out of your own perception
03:32:24 and into someone else’s perspective,
03:32:27 now you’re thinking like them,
03:32:29 which is giving you an informational advantage.
03:32:31 But you know what they’re all doing?
03:32:33 Everyone else out there is trapped in their own perception,
03:32:36 not thinking about a different perspective.
03:32:39 So immediately you have superior information,
03:32:42 superior positioning,
03:32:44 you have an advantage that they don’t have.
03:32:46 And if you do that to your boss,
03:32:48 it’s gonna change your career.
03:32:50 If you do that to your spouse,
03:32:51 it’s gonna change your marriage.
03:32:52 If you do that to your kids,
03:32:53 it’s gonna change your family legacy
03:32:55 because nobody else out there is doing it.
03:32:58 It’s so interesting how difficult empathy is for people
03:33:01 and how powerful it is,
03:33:03 especially for, like you said,
03:33:05 with spouse, like intimacy.
03:33:07 Yeah.
03:33:08 Like stepping outside of yourself
03:33:10 and really putting yourself in the shoes of the other person
03:33:12 considering how they see the world.
03:33:14 And that’s, I really enjoy that
03:33:17 because how does that exactly lead to connection?
03:33:21 I think when you start to understand
03:33:26 the way the other person sees the world,
03:33:30 you start to enjoy the world through their eyes
03:33:32 and you start to be able to share,
03:33:34 in terms of intimacy,
03:33:35 share the beauty that they see together
03:33:39 because you understand their perspective.
03:33:41 And somehow you converge as well.
03:33:43 Of course, that allows you to gather information better
03:33:46 and all that kind of stuff.
03:33:47 And that allows you to work together better,
03:33:50 to share in all different kinds of ways.
03:33:53 But for intimacy, that’s a really powerful thing.
03:33:55 And also for, actually,
03:33:59 like people you really disagree with
03:34:00 or people on the internet you disagree with and so on,
03:34:03 I find empathy is such a powerful way
03:34:07 to resolve any tensions there.
03:34:09 Even like people like trolls or all that kind of stuff,
03:34:12 I don’t deride them.
03:34:14 I just kind of put myself in their shoes
03:34:15 and it becomes like an enjoyable comradery with that person.
03:34:21 So I wanna draw a pretty hard line
03:34:23 between perspective and empathy.
03:34:26 Because empathy is, frankly, an overused term
03:34:32 by people who don’t really know
03:34:33 what they’re saying sometimes.
03:34:34 I think you know what you’re saying,
03:34:35 but the vast majority of people listening.
03:34:37 I would argue that, but that’s fine.
03:34:39 As soon as you say empathy,
03:34:40 they’re gonna just be like,
03:34:41 oh, yeah, I’ve heard this a thousand times.
03:34:44 Empathy is about feeling what other people feel.
03:34:49 Or understanding.
03:34:50 It’s more about feeling, would you say?
03:34:51 Yeah, it’s about feelings.
03:34:53 It’s about understanding someone else’s feelings.
03:34:54 Feeling, it’s not the same as sympathy
03:34:58 where you feel their feelings.
03:34:59 Empathy is about recognizing that they have feelings
03:35:01 and recognizing that their feelings are valid.
03:35:04 Perspective is more than just feelings.
03:35:07 It’s about the brain.
03:35:09 It’s about the pink matter on the left side
03:35:12 and the right side of the brain.
03:35:14 Yes, I care about feelings,
03:35:16 and this goes directly to your point about connection.
03:35:18 Yes, I care about feelings,
03:35:20 but I also care about objectives.
03:35:22 What is your life, what is your aspirational goal?
03:35:25 What was it like to grow up as you?
03:35:27 What was it like to experience this
03:35:29 and how did this shape your opinion on that?
03:35:30 And what is it that you’re going to do next?
03:35:35 More than just feelings, actual tactical actions.
03:35:38 And that becomes extremely valuable
03:35:41 in the operational world
03:35:42 because if you can get into someone’s head,
03:35:45 left brain and right brain, feelings and logic,
03:35:47 you can start anticipating
03:35:48 what actions they’re gonna take next.
03:35:50 You can direct the actions that they’re going to take next
03:35:52 because you’re basically telling them the story
03:35:54 that’s in their own head.
03:35:55 When it comes to relationships and personal connection,
03:35:58 we talked about it earlier,
03:36:00 the thing that people want the most is community.
03:36:05 They want someone else who understands them.
03:36:08 They want to be with people.
03:36:09 They don’t want to be alone.
03:36:11 The more you practice perspective, empathy or no empathy,
03:36:15 the more you just validate that a person is there.
03:36:19 I am in this time and space with you in this moment.
03:36:22 Feelings aside, that is powerful.
03:36:27 That is intimate.
03:36:29 And whether you’re talking about lovers
03:36:31 or whether you’re talking about a business exchange
03:36:32 or whether you’re talking about collaborators in a crime,
03:36:35 I’m here with you ride or die, let’s do it.
03:36:39 That’s powerful.
03:36:41 How much of what you’ve learned in your role at the CIA
03:36:46 transfer over to relationships,
03:36:48 the business relationship to other aspects of life?
03:36:51 This is something you work closely with powerful people
03:36:53 to help them out.
03:36:55 What have you learned about the commonalities,
03:36:57 about the problems that people face?
03:36:59 Man, I would say about a solid 95% of what I learned
03:37:05 at CIA carries over to the civilian world.
03:37:07 That 5% that doesn’t is,
03:37:10 it would carry over in a disaster, right?
03:37:13 There’s knowing how to shoot on target
03:37:16 with my non dominant hand really only has one purpose.
03:37:20 It’s not gonna happen day to day, right?
03:37:23 Knowing how to do a dead drop that isn’t discoverable
03:37:25 by the local police force isn’t gonna be useful right now,
03:37:28 but it could be useful in disaster.
03:37:30 But the 95% of stuff that’s useful,
03:37:32 it’s all tied to the human condition.
03:37:34 It’s all tied to being able to
03:37:39 understand what someone’s thinking,
03:37:41 understand what someone’s feeling,
03:37:43 direct their thoughts, direct their emotions,
03:37:45 direct their thought process, win their attention,
03:37:47 win their loyalty, win influence with them,
03:37:51 grow your network, grow your own circle of influence.
03:37:54 I mean, all of that is immensely, immensely valuable.
03:37:59 As an example, the disguise,
03:38:00 the disguise thing that we talked about earlier,
03:38:03 disguise in and of itself has mixed utility.
03:38:06 If you’re Brad Pitt and you don’t want anybody
03:38:08 to know you’re Brad Pitt, you put on a level one disguise
03:38:09 and that’s great.
03:38:10 Or maybe you call me and I walk you through
03:38:12 a level two disguise so that you can go to Aruba
03:38:14 and nobody’s gonna know you’re in Aruba, right?
03:38:16 Whatever it is.
03:38:18 But even there with the 5%
03:38:20 that doesn’t apply to everyday life,
03:38:22 there’s still elements that do.
03:38:24 For example, when a person looks at a human being’s face,
03:38:28 the first place they look is the same part of the face
03:38:32 as if they were reading a piece of paper.
03:38:34 So in English, we start from the top left
03:38:36 and we read left to right, top to bottom.
03:38:38 So when an English speaking person
03:38:40 interacts with another person,
03:38:42 the first thing they look at isn’t their eyes.
03:38:45 It’s the upper left from their point of view,
03:38:49 corner of their face, right?
03:38:52 They look there and the information they get
03:38:54 is hair color, hair pattern, skin color, right?
03:38:58 That’s it.
03:38:59 Before they know anything else about the face.
03:39:01 This is one of the reasons why somebody can look at you
03:39:02 and then you ask them, what color are my eyes?
03:39:05 I don’t really remember.
03:39:06 Because the way they read the face,
03:39:07 they read it from left to right, top to bottom.
03:39:10 So they’re paying a lot of attention
03:39:11 to the first few things they see
03:39:12 and then they’re paying less attention
03:39:14 as they go down the face.
03:39:14 The same scrolling behavior that you see
03:39:17 on the internet, right?
03:39:18 So when you understand that through the lens of disguise,
03:39:21 it allows you to make a very powerful disguise.
03:39:23 The most important part of your disguise
03:39:24 is here if you’re English speaking, right?
03:39:27 Here if you’re speaking some foreign languages
03:39:29 that read right to left, right?
03:39:31 If you’re, if it’s Chinese,
03:39:32 you know that they’re gonna look from here down
03:39:34 because they read left down.
03:39:35 So.
03:39:36 So interesting.
03:39:37 So yeah, knowing that really helps you
03:39:39 sort of configure the things
03:39:40 in terms of physical appearance.
03:39:41 That’s interesting.
03:39:42 Correct, correct.
03:39:43 So when it comes to how to make a disguise,
03:39:45 not so useful to the ultra wealthy usually.
03:39:47 But when it comes to how to read a face
03:39:50 or more importantly, how people are going to read your face,
03:39:52 that’s extremely important because now you know
03:39:55 where to find the first signs of deception
03:39:58 in a baseline or anything else.
03:39:59 You mentioned that the idea of having privacy
03:40:04 is one that we kind of, we think we can,
03:40:10 but we really don’t.
03:40:12 Is it possible for maybe somebody like me
03:40:14 or a regular person to disappear from the grid?
03:40:18 Absolutely.
03:40:18 Yeah, and it’s not as hard as you might think.
03:40:20 It’s not convenient.
03:40:21 Again, convenience and security.
03:40:24 You can disappear tomorrow, right?
03:40:26 I can walk you through three steps right now
03:40:27 that are gonna help you disappear tomorrow,
03:40:29 but none of them are convenient.
03:40:31 They’re all extremely secure, right?
03:40:33 The first thing you do is every piece
03:40:35 of digital technology you have
03:40:36 that is connected to you in any way is now dead.
03:40:41 You just let the battery run out.
03:40:42 Forever.
03:40:43 Forever.
03:40:44 You never touch it again, starting at this moment.
03:40:46 What you have to do is go out and acquire a new one.
03:40:50 Realistically, you will not be able to acquire a new one
03:40:52 in the United States by buying it
03:40:55 because to do so, you would tie it to your credit card.
03:40:58 You would tie it to a location, a time, a place,
03:41:00 a registered name, whatever else.
03:41:02 So you would have to acquire it essentially by theft
03:41:05 or through the black market.
03:41:07 So you would want something
03:41:08 because you’re gonna need the advantage of technology
03:41:11 without it being in your name.
03:41:13 So you go out and you steal a phone or you steal a laptop.
03:41:16 You do whatever you have to do to make sure
03:41:17 that you can get on with the password
03:41:19 and whatever else that might be.
03:41:20 As dirty or as clean as you want that to be,
03:41:22 we’re all morally flexible here,
03:41:24 but now you have a technological device
03:41:27 that you can work with.
03:41:29 And then from there on,
03:41:31 you’re just doing whatever you have to do,
03:41:32 whether you’re stealing every step of the way
03:41:35 or whether you run a massive con.
03:41:38 Keep in mind that we often talk about con men and cons.
03:41:42 Do you know what the root,
03:41:43 the word that con is a root word for?
03:41:46 Confidence.
03:41:48 That’s what a con man is.
03:41:49 A con man is a confidence man.
03:41:51 Just somebody who is so brazenly confident
03:41:54 that the people around them
03:41:55 living in their own perception, not perspective,
03:41:58 and their perception, they’re like,
03:42:00 well, this guy really knows what he’s talking about,
03:42:01 so I’m gonna do what he says.
03:42:04 So you can run a massive con
03:42:05 and that can take care of your finances,
03:42:07 that can take care of your lodging,
03:42:08 whatever else it is.
03:42:10 You are whoever you present yourself to be.
03:42:13 So if you wanna go be Bill for the afternoon,
03:42:18 just go tell people your name is Bill.
03:42:19 They’re not gonna question you.
03:42:21 So the intelligence,
03:42:24 the natural web of intelligence gathering systems
03:42:28 we have in the United States and in the world,
03:42:31 are they going to believe for long that you’re Bill?
03:42:37 Are they?
03:42:37 Until you do something that makes them think otherwise.
03:42:39 If you are consistent,
03:42:41 we talked about consistency being the superpower.
03:42:43 If you are consistent, they will think you’re Bill forever.
03:42:46 How difficult is that to do?
03:42:49 It’s not convenient.
03:42:50 It’s quite difficult.
03:42:51 Does that require training?
03:42:53 It does require training.
03:42:55 Because why do criminals always get caught?
03:42:57 Because they stop being consistent.
03:42:59 Criminals, I’ve…
03:43:04 I never hesitate to admit this,
03:43:07 but people tell me I should hesitate to admit it.
03:43:09 So now I hesitate because of the guidance
03:43:11 I’ve gotten to hesitate, right?
03:43:13 I like criminals.
03:43:14 I’m friends with a number of criminals
03:43:16 because the only people who get me,
03:43:17 like right away who get me, are criminals.
03:43:20 Because we know what it’s like
03:43:23 to basically abandon all the rules,
03:43:25 do our own thing our own way,
03:43:26 and watch the world just keep turning.
03:43:29 Most people are so stuck in the trap
03:43:33 of normal thought and behavior
03:43:36 that when I tell them, they just don’t…
03:43:37 Just go tell people your name is Bill.
03:43:39 Most people are going to say,
03:43:40 psh, that’s not going to work.
03:43:42 But a criminal will be like, oh yeah, I did that once.
03:43:44 I just told everybody my name is Nancy,
03:43:46 you know, dude, and they still believe me.
03:43:48 Criminals just get it, right?
03:43:50 So what happens with criminals
03:43:53 is they go to the school of hard knocks.
03:43:56 They go to…
03:43:57 They learn criminal behavior on the job.
03:44:00 Spies go to school.
03:44:02 We go to the best spy school in the world.
03:44:05 We go to Langley’s, the farm, right?
03:44:07 What’s known as Field Tradecraft Course, FTC,
03:44:10 in a covert location for a covert period of time
03:44:12 and covert, covert, covert.
03:44:13 So if anybody from CIA is watching,
03:44:14 I’m not breaking any rules.
03:44:16 It’s all on Wikipedia, but it’s not coming from me.
03:44:19 But we do…
03:44:19 That’s how we do it.
03:44:20 They train us from a hundred years of experience
03:44:24 and the best ways to carry out covert operations,
03:44:27 which are all just criminal activities overseas.
03:44:30 We learn how to do it the right way
03:44:32 so that we don’t get caught.
03:44:33 We learn how to be consistent.
03:44:34 More importantly, we learn how to create an operation
03:44:37 that has a limited lifespan
03:44:39 because the longer it lives, the more at risk you are.
03:44:43 So you want operations to be short, concise,
03:44:46 on the X, off the X.
03:44:48 Limit your room for mistakes.
03:44:49 Criminals want the default
03:44:52 to wanting these longterm operations
03:44:55 because they don’t want to have to recreate a new way
03:44:56 to make money every 15 days.
03:45:00 You mentioned, if anybody from the CIA is watching,
03:45:03 so I’ve seen you talk about the fact
03:45:07 that sort of people that are currently working at the CIA
03:45:10 would kind of look down on the people who’ve left the CIA
03:45:14 and they divide them, especially if you go public,
03:45:16 especially if there’s a book and all that kind of stuff.
03:45:19 Do you feel the pressure of that to be quiet,
03:45:23 to not do something like this conversation
03:45:30 that we’re doing today?
03:45:31 I feel the silent judgment.
03:45:34 That’s very real.
03:45:35 I feel it for myself and I feel it for my wife
03:45:36 who doesn’t appear on camera very often,
03:45:38 but who’s also former CIA.
03:45:40 We both feel the judgment.
03:45:42 We know that right now, three days after this is released,
03:45:47 somebody’s gonna send an email on a closed network system
03:45:50 inside CIA headquarters and there’s a bunch of people
03:45:52 who are gonna laugh at it,
03:45:53 a bunch of people who are gonna say that who knows what.
03:45:56 It’s not gonna be good stuff.
03:45:56 A bunch of people you respect probably.
03:45:58 A bunch of people who I’m trying to bring honor to.
03:46:01 Whether I know them or respect them is irrelevant.
03:46:04 These are people who are out there doing the deed every day
03:46:08 and I wanna bring them honor and I wanna do that in a way
03:46:11 that I get to share what they can’t share
03:46:14 and what they won’t share when they leave
03:46:16 because they will also feel the silent pressure,
03:46:18 the pressure to the shame, the judgment, right?
03:46:22 But the truth is that I’ve done this now long enough.
03:46:25 The first few times that I spoke out publicly,
03:46:29 the response to being a positive voice
03:46:32 for what the sacrifice is that people are making,
03:46:34 it’s so refreshing to be an honest voice
03:46:39 that people don’t normally hear that it’s too important.
03:46:43 One day I’m gonna be gone
03:46:44 and my kids are gonna look back on all this
03:46:46 and they’re gonna see their dad
03:46:48 trying to do the right thing for the right reasons
03:46:51 and even if my son or daughter ends up at CIA
03:46:53 and even if they get ridiculed for being,
03:46:55 oh, you’re the Bustamante kid, right?
03:46:57 Your dad’s a total sellout, whatever it might be.
03:47:01 Like I want them to know dad was doing what he could
03:47:04 to bring honor to the organization
03:47:06 even when he couldn’t stay in the organization anymore.
03:47:09 So you said when you were 27,
03:47:11 I think you didn’t know what the hell you’re doing.
03:47:15 So now that you’re a few years older and wiser,
03:47:21 let me ask you to put on your wise sage hat
03:47:24 and give advice to other 27 year olds
03:47:27 or even younger 17, 18 year olds
03:47:30 that are just out of high school, maybe going to college,
03:47:34 trying to figure out this life,
03:47:35 this career thing that they’re on.
03:47:37 What advice would you give them
03:47:39 about how to have a career
03:47:42 or how to have a life they can be proud of?
03:47:45 What’s a powerful question, man?
03:47:49 Have you figured it out yet yourself?
03:47:51 No, I think I’m a grand total of seven days smarter
03:47:55 than I was at 27.
03:47:57 It’s not a good average.
03:47:57 Progress.
03:48:00 There’s still time.
03:48:01 There’s still time.
03:48:02 So for all the young people out there deciding what to do,
03:48:08 I would just say the same thing that I do say
03:48:10 and I will say to my own kids.
03:48:12 You only have one life.
03:48:14 You only have one chance.
03:48:16 If you spend it doing what other people expect you to do,
03:48:21 you will wake up to your regret at some point.
03:48:25 I woke up when I was 38 years old.
03:48:29 My wife in many ways is still waking up to it
03:48:32 as she watches her grandparents pass
03:48:34 and an older generation pass away.
03:48:38 The folks that really have a blessed life
03:48:42 are the people who learn early on
03:48:45 to live with their own rules, live their own way
03:48:50 and live every day as if it’s the last day.
03:48:53 Not necessarily to waste it by being wasteful or silly,
03:48:58 but to recognize that today is a day
03:49:00 to be productive and constructive for yourself.
03:49:04 If you don’t want a career,
03:49:06 today’s not the day to start pursuing a career
03:49:07 just because someone else told you to do it.
03:49:09 If you wanna learn a language,
03:49:11 today’s a day to find a way to buy a ticket
03:49:13 to another country and learn through immersion.
03:49:15 If you want a date, if you wanna get married,
03:49:17 if you want a business,
03:49:19 today is the day to just go out
03:49:21 and take one step in that direction.
03:49:25 And as long as you, every day you just make one new step,
03:49:28 just like CIA recruited me, just do the next thing.
03:49:32 If the step seems like it’s too big,
03:49:34 then there’s probably two other steps
03:49:36 that you can do before that.
03:49:37 Just make constant progress, build momentum,
03:49:40 move forward and live on your own terms.
03:49:43 That way you don’t ever wake up to the regret.
03:49:47 And it’ll be over before you know it.
03:49:50 Whether you regret it or not, it’s true.
03:49:52 What do you think is the meaning of this whole thing?
03:49:55 What’s the meaning of life?
03:49:56 Self respect, that’s a fast answer.
03:50:00 There’s a story behind it if you want the story.
03:50:01 I would love to have the story.
03:50:03 There’s a covert training base in Alabama in the south,
03:50:08 far south and like the armpit of America
03:50:10 where elite tier one operators
03:50:12 go to learn human intelligence stuff.
03:50:16 And there’s a bar inside this base.
03:50:18 And on the wall is just, it’s scribbles of opinions.
03:50:23 And the question in the middle of the wall
03:50:25 says what’s the meaning of life?
03:50:27 And all these elite operators over the last 25 or 30 years,
03:50:31 they all go, they get drunk and they scribble their answer
03:50:33 and they circle it with a Sharpie, right?
03:50:35 Love, family, America, freedom, right, whatever.
03:50:40 And then the only thing they have to do
03:50:41 is if they’re gonna write something on there,
03:50:43 they have to connect it with something else on the wall,
03:50:46 at least one other thing.
03:50:47 So if they write love, they can’t just leave it
03:50:48 floating there, they have to write love in a little bubble
03:50:51 and connect it to something else, connect it to family,
03:50:53 whatever else.
03:50:54 When you look at that wall,
03:50:58 the word self respect is on the wall
03:51:00 and it’s got a circle around it.
03:51:02 And then you can’t see any other word
03:51:04 because of all the things that connect to self respect.
03:51:08 Just dozens of people have written over,
03:51:11 have written their words down and been drawn
03:51:14 and scribbled over because of all the lines
03:51:15 that connect to self respect.
03:51:17 So what’s the meaning of life?
03:51:18 From my point of view,
03:51:19 I’ve never seen a better answer.
03:51:22 It’s all self respect.
03:51:23 If you don’t respect yourself, how can you do anything else?
03:51:25 How can you love someone else
03:51:26 if you don’t have self respect?
03:51:27 How can you build a business you’re proud of
03:51:28 if you don’t have self respect?
03:51:29 How can you raise kids?
03:51:31 How can you make a difference?
03:51:32 How can you pioneer anything?
03:51:33 How can you just wake up and have a good day
03:51:37 if you don’t have self respect?
03:51:40 The power of the individual,
03:51:42 that’s what makes this country great.
03:51:46 I have to say, after I was born,
03:51:49 I have to say after traveling quite a bit in Europe
03:51:52 and especially in a place of war,
03:51:55 coming back to the United States
03:51:57 makes me really appreciate
03:51:58 about the better angels of this nation,
03:52:02 the ideals it stands for, the values it stands for.
03:52:04 And I’d like to thank you for serving this nation for time
03:52:10 and humanity for time
03:52:12 and for being brave enough and bold enough
03:52:16 to still talk about it and to inspire others,
03:52:19 to educate others for having many amazing conversations
03:52:25 and for honoring me by having this conversation today.
03:52:28 You’re an amazing human.
03:52:30 Thanks so much for talking today.
03:52:31 Lex, I appreciate the invite, man.
03:52:32 It was a joy.
03:52:34 Thanks for listening to this conversation
03:52:36 with Andrew Bustamante.
03:52:38 To support this podcast,
03:52:39 please check out our sponsors in the description.
03:52:41 And now let me leave you with some words
03:52:44 from Sun Tzu in The Art of War.
03:52:47 Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night.
03:52:52 And when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.
03:52:55 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.