Kind: captions
Language: en
massage will do anything mossad has
no qualms doing what it takes to ensure
the survival of every israeli citizen
around the world
most other countries will stop at some
point
but mossad doesn't do that
the following is a conversation with
andrew bustamante
former cia covert intelligence officer
and u.s air force combat veteran
including the job of operational
targeting encrypted communications and
launch operations for 200 nuclear
intercontinental ballistic missiles
andrews over seven years as a cia spy
have given him a skill set and a
perspective on the world that is
fascinating to explore
this is the lex friedman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now dear friends
here's andrew bustamante
the central intelligence agency was
formed almost 75 years ago
what is the mission of the cia how does
it work the mission of the cia is to
collect intelligence from around the
world that supports a national security
mission and be the central repository
for all other intelligence agencies so
that it's one collective source where
all intelligence can be synthesized and
then passed forward to the decision
makers that doesn't include domestic
intelligence is primarily looking
outward outside the united states
correct cia is the foreign intelligence
collection
kingspoke if you will
fbi does domestic and then department of
homeland security does domestic law
enforcement essentially handles all
things domestic
intelligence is not law enforcement so
we technically cannot work inside the
united states is there clear lines to be
drawn between like you just said the fbi
cia fbi and the other u.s intelligence
agencies like the dia defense
intelligence agency department of
homeland security
nsa national security agency and and
there's a list there's a list of about
33 different intelligence organizations
yeah so the army the navy has
all the different organizations have
their own intelligence groups so is
there is there clear lines here to be
drawn or is the cia the the giant
integrator of all of these uh it's a
little bit of both to be honest so yes
there are absolutely lines and
more so than the lines there are lines
that divide what our primary mission is
everything's got to be prioritized
that's one of the benefits and the
superpowers of the united states is we
prioritize everything
so different intelligence organizations
are prioritized to collect certain types
of intelligence and then
within the confines of how they collect
they're also given unique authorities
authorities are a term that's directed
by the executive branch different
agencies have different authorities to
execute missions in different ways
fbi can't execute the same way cia
executes and cia can't execute the same
way nga
executes but then at the end excuse me
when it's all collected then yes cia
still acts as a final synthesizing
repository to create what's known as the
president's daily brief the pdb the only
way cia can create the pdb is by being
the single source of all source
intelligence from around the ic the
intern the intelligence community which
are those
30 some odd and always changing
organizations that are sponsored for
intelligence operations what does the
pdb the president's daily brief look
like how long is it what does it contain
so first of all it looks like the most
expensive book report you can ever
imagine it's got its own binder it's all
very high-end it feels important it
looks important it's not like a cheap
trapper keeper
um it's somewhere between i would give
it probably between 50 and 125 pages a
day is produced every day around two
o'clock in the morning by a dedicated
group of analysts
and uh and each
page is essentially
a short paragraph to a few paragraphs
about a priority happening that affects
national security from around the world
the president rarely gets to the entire
briefing in a day he relies on a briefer
instead to prioritize
what inside the briefing needs to be
shared with the president because some
days the pdb will get briefed in
10 minutes and some days it'll be
briefed over the course of two hours it
depends on the president's schedule
how much competition is there for the
first page
and uh so
how much jockeying there is for
attention
for
i imagine for all the different
intelligence agencies
and within the cia there's probably
different groups that are modular and
they're all care about different
nations or different uh
cases and
is there do you understand
how much competition there is for the
attention for the limited attention of
the president you're 100 correct in
how the agency and how
officers and managers of the agency
handle the pdb there's a ton of
competition everybody wants to be the
first on the radar everybody wants to be
on the first page the thing that we're
not baking into the equation is the
president's interests
the president dictates what's on the
first page of his pdb and he will tell
them usually the day before i want to
see this on the first page tomorrow
bring this to me in the beginning i
don't want to hear about what's
happening in mozambique i don't really
care about what's happening in saudi
arabia i want to see one two three and
regardless of whether or not those are
the three biggest things in the world
the president's the executive
he's the one he's the ultimate customer
so we do what the cus the customer says
that has backfired in the past if you
haven't already started seeing how that
could go wrong
that is backfired in the past but that
is essentially what happens when you
serve in the executive branch you serve
the executive
so what's the role the director of the
cia versus the president
what's that dance like so the the
president really leads
the focus of the cia the president is
the commander-in-chief for the military
but the the executive the president is
also the executive for
the entirety of the intelligence
community so he's the the ultimate
customer
if you look at it like a business
the customer the person spending the
money is the president and the director
is the ceo
so if the director doesn't create what
the president wants there's going to be
a new director that's why the director
of cia is a presidential appointed
position sometimes they're extremely
qualified intelligence professionals
sometimes they're just professional
politicians or soldiers that get put
into that seat because the president
trusts them to do what he wants them to
do
another a
gaping
area that causes problems but that's
still the way it is
so you think this is a
problematic configuration of the whole
system massive flaw in the system it is
a massive flaw in the system because
if you're essentially appointing a
director to do what you want them to do
then you're
assigning a crony and that's what we
define corruption as within the united
states and inside the united states we
say if you pick somebody outside of
merit for any other reason other than
merit then it's cronyism or it's
nepotism
here that's exactly what our structure
is built on all presidential appointees
are appointed on something other than
merit so for an intelligence agency to
be effective it has to
discover the truth and communicate that
truth and maybe if you're appointing the
director of that agency you're not
they're less likely to communicate the
truth to you unless the truth aligns
perfectly with your desired worldview
well not necessarily perfectly because
there are other steps right they have to
be they have to go in front of congress
and they have to have the support of of
multiple legislatures uh or legislators
but they
they're
the challenge is that the short list of
people who even get the opportunity
aren't a meritorious list it's a short
list based off of who the president is
picking or who the would-be president is
picking now i think we've proven
that an intelligence organization can be
an intelligence organization can be
extremely effective even within the
flawed system yeah the challenge is how
much more effective could we be if we
improved and that's
i think that's the challenge that faces
a lot of the us government i think
that's a challenge that has resulted in
what we see today when it comes to the
decline of american power and american
influence the rise of foreign influence
attack
authoritarian powers
and a shrinking u.s economy a growing
chinese economy and it's just
we have questions hard questions we need
to ask ourselves about how we're going
to handle the future what aspect of that
communication between the president and
the cia could be fixed to
to help
fix the problems that you're referring
to in terms of the decline of american
power so
when you talk about the president
wanting to prioritize what the president
cares about
that immediately shows a break between
what actually matters to the long-term
success of the united states versus what
happened what benefits the short-term
success of the current president because
any
president
is just a human being and has a very
narrow focus and narrow focus is not a
long-term calculation exactly what's the
maximum amount of years a president can
be president
eight yeah he has to be he or she in the
united states in the united states
according to our current constitution
yeah
but they they're very limited
uh in terms of what they have to
prioritize and then if you look at a
four-year cycle two years of that is
essentially preparing for the next
election cycle so what's only two years
of really quality attention you get from
the president who's the chief executive
of all the intelligence community so the
most important thing to them is not
always the most important thing to the
long-term survival of the united states
what do you make of the hostile
relationship that to me at least stands
out of the presidents between donald
trump and the cia
was that a very kind of
personal
bickering i mean is there something
interesting to you about the dynamics
between that particular president and
that particular instantiation of the
intelligence agency man there were lots
of things fascinating to me about that
that relationship so first what's the
good and the bad sorry gentry so let me
start with the good first because
there's a lot of people who don't think
there was any good
so the good thing is we saw
that
the president who's the chief
customer the executive to the cia
when the president doesn't want to hear
what cia has to say he's not going to
listen
i think that's an important lesson for
everyone to
take home
if the president doesn't
care what you have to say he's going to
take funding away or she will take
funding away they're going to take
attention away they're going they're
going to
shut down your operations your missions
they're going to kill the careers of the
people working there think about that
for the four years that president trump
was the president
basically everybody at cia their career
was put on pause some people's careers
were ended some people voluntarily left
their career there
because they found themselves working
for a single customer that didn't want
what they had to produce so for people
who don't know
donald trump did not display significant
deep interest in the output
uh he did not trust it yeah he was a
disinterested customer exactly right
the information and then what do
disinterested customers do
they go find someone else to create
their product and that's exactly what
donald trump did he did it through the
private intelligence world funding
private intelligence companies to run
their own operations that brought him
the information he cared about when cia
wouldn't it also didn't help that cia
stepped outside of their confines right
cia is supposed to collect foreign
intelligence and not comment on domestic
matters they went way outside of that
when they started challenging the
president when they started questioning
the results when they started
publicly
claiming russian influence that's all
something the fbi could have handled by
itself the justice department could have
handled by itself cia had no place
to contribute to that conversation and
when they did all they did was undermine
the relationship they had with their
primary customer
let me
sort of focus in on this relationship
between the president
or the leader and the intelligence
agency and look outside the united
states
it seems like authoritarian regimes or
regimes throughout history if you look
at stalin and hitler if you look at
today with vladimir putin
the negative effects of power corrupting
the mind of a leader
manifest itself is that they start to
get bad information from the
intelligence agencies so the this kind
of thing that you're talking about over
time
they start hearing information they want
to they want to hear the agency starts
producing only
um the kind of information they want to
hear and their the leaders world view
starts becoming distorted
to where
the propaganda they generate
is also the thing that the intelligence
agencies provide to them and so they
start getting this they start believing
their own propaganda and they start
getting a distorted view of the world
sorry for the sort of uh
walking through in a weird way but i
guess i want to ask do you think
let's look at vladimir putin
specifically
do you think he's
getting accurate information about the
world do you think he knows the truth of
the world whether that's the war in
ukraine whether that's the behavior of
the other nations in nato the united
states in general what do you think
it's rare that i'll talk about just
thinking it's i prefer to share
my assessment why i assess things a
certain way rather than just what's my
random opinion
in my assessment vladimir putin is
winning
russia is winning they're winning in
ukraine but they're also winning the
battle of influence against the west
they're winning in the face of economic
sanctions they're winning
empirically when you look at the math
they're winning
so when you ask me whether or not putin
is getting good information from
intelligence services when i look at my
overall assessment of multiple data
points he must be getting good
information do i know how or why i do
not i don't know how or why it works
there i don't know how such
deep cronyism such deep corruption
can possibly yield true real results and
yet somehow there are real results
happening so it's either excessive waste
and an accidental win or there really is
a system and a process there that's
functioning so this winning idea is very
interesting in what way short term and
long term is russia winning some people
say there was a miscalculation of the
way the invasion happened
uh there was an assumption that you
would be able to successfully take kiev
you you'd be able to successfully
capture the east the south and the north
of ukraine
and
with
what now appears to be significantly
insufficient troops spread way too thin
across way too large of a front
so that seems to be like an intelligence
failure
and uh and that doesn't seem to be like
winning
in another way it doesn't seem like
winning if we put aside the human cost
of war
it doesn't seem like winning
because the hearts and minds of the west
were completely on the side of ukraine
this particular leader in vladimir
zelinski captured the attention of the
world and the hearts and minds of
europe
the west
and many other nations throughout the
world both financially in terms of
military equipment and in terms of
sort of
social and cultural and emotional
support for the independence fight of
this nation that seems to be like a
miscalculation
so
against that pushback
why do you think there's still kernels
of
uh winning in this on the russian side
what you're laying out isn't incorrect
and
the miscalculations are not
unexpected anybody who's been to a
military college including the army war
college in pennsylvania where so many of
our military leaders
are brought up
when you look at the conflict in ukraine
it fits the exact mold of what an
effective
long-term
military conflict protracted military
conflict would and should look like for
military dominance now did zielinski and
did the did the ukrainians shock the
world absolutely but in that they also
shocked american intelligence which like
you said miscalculated the whole world
miscalculated how the ukrainians would
respond putin did not move in there
accidentally he had an assessment he had
high likelihood of a certain outcome and
that outcome did not happen
why did he have that calculation because
in 2014 it worked
he invaded
he took crimea in 14 days he basically
created
a
an infiltration campaign that turned key
leaders over in the first few days of
the conflict
so essentially there was no conflict it
worked in 2008 when he took georgia
nobody talks about that
he invaded georgia the exact same same
way and it worked so in 2008 it worked
in 2014 it worked there was no reason to
believe it wasn't going to work again
so he just carried out the same campaign
but this time
something was different that was a
miscalculation for sure on the part of
putin and the reason that there was no
support from the west because let's not
forget
there is no support there is nothing
other than the lend lease act
which is putting ukraine in massive debt
right now to the west
that's the only form of support they're
getting from nato or the united states
so
if somebody believed ukraine would win
if somebody believed ukraine had a
chance they would have gotten more
material support than just debt and we
can jump into that anytime you want to
but the whole world miscalculated
everybody thought russia was going to
win in 14 days i i said that they would
win 14 days because that was the
predominant calculation
once the first invasion didn't work then
the military does what professional
militaries do man they they re-evaluate
they re-uh reorganize leaders and then
they they take a new approach you saw
three approaches the first two did not
work the first two campaigns against
ukraine did not work the way they were
supposed to work the third has worked
exactly like it's supposed to work you
don't need kiev to win ukraine you don't
need hearts and minds to win ukraine
what do you need yeah what you need is
control of of natural resources which
they're taking in the east and you need
access to the heart beat the blood flow
of food and money into the country which
they're taking in the south
the fact that ukraine had to go to the
negotiation table
with russia and turkey
in order to get exports
out of the black sea approved again
demonstrates just how much ukraine is
losing
the the aggressor had a seat at the
negotiation table
to allow ukraine the ability to even
export one of its top exports if russia
would have said no then they would not
have had that russia has that's like
someone holding your throat it's like
somebody holding your jugular vein and
saying
if if you don't
do what i tell you to do
then i'm not gonna let you breathe i'm
not gonna let blood flow to your brain
so do you think
it's possible that russia takes the
south
of ukraine
it takes
um
so starting from
mariupol
the herson region
all the way to odessa all the way to
odessa and into
into
moldova
i believe all that will happen before
the fall
fall of this year fall of this year
before winter hits europe nato
wants germany needs to be able to have
sanctions lifted so they can tap into
russian power there's no way they can
have those sanctions lifted unless
russia wins
and russia also knows
that all of europe all of nato is the
true
the true people feeling the pain of the
war outside of ukraine
are the nato countries because they're
so heavily reliant on russia and as
they have supported american sanctions
against russia their people feel the
pain economically
their people feel their pain what are
they going to do in the winter because
without russian gas
their their people are going to freeze
to death ukrainian people people all
over nato
i
ukraine
everybody knows ukraine's at risk
everybody knows ukrainians are dying
the game of war isn't played
just it isn't even played majority by
the people who are fighting the game of
war is played by everyone else it's an
economic game it's not a military game
the flow of resources and energy
attention food exactly right
i was on the front in the hersan region
this very area that you're referring to
and i spoke to a lot of people and those
the morale
is incredibly high
and i don't think
the people in that region
soldiers
volunteer soldiers
civilians
are going
to give up that land without dying i
agree with you
i mean in order to take odessa
would require a
huge amount of artillery
and slaughter of civilians essentially
they're not going to use artillery
odessa because odessa is too important
to
russian culture
it's going to be even uglier than that
it's going to be
clearing up streets clearing of
buildings person by person troop by
troop it'll be a lot like what it was in
marvel
just shooting at civilians because they
can't afford to just do bombing raids
because they're going to destroy
cultural
significant architecture that's just too
important to the russian culture and
that's going to demoralize their own
russian people
i have to do a lot of thinking to try to
understand what i even feel i don't know
but
in terms of information the thing that
the soldiers are saying that the russian
soldiers are saying the thing the
russian soldiers really believe
is that they're freeing they're
liberating
the ukrainian people
from
[Music]
nazis
um and they believe this
because i visited ukraine i spoke to
the over 100
probably a couple hundred ukrainian
people from different walks of life
it feels like the russian
soldiers at least under a cloud of
propaganda
they're not operating on a clear view of
the whole world
and
given all that i just don't see
russia taking the south
without committing
war crimes
and if vladimir putin is aware of what's
happening in terms of the treatment of
civilians
i don't see
him pushing forward all the way to take
the south
because that's not going to be
effective strategy for him
to win the hearts and minds of his
people
autocracies don't need to win hearts and
minds that's a staunchly democratic
point of view
hearts and minds mean very little to
people who understand core
basic
needs and
uh
and
true power
you don't see xi jinping worrying about
hearts and minds in china you don't see
you don't see it in north korea you
don't see it in in congo you don't see
it in most of the world hearts and minds
are a luxury
in reality what people need is food
water power they need
income to be able to secure a lifestyle
it's
it is absolutely sad i am not in any way
shape or form
saying that my
assessment on this is
is enriching or enlightening or or uh
hopeful it's just
fact it's just calculatable empirical
evidence
if
putin loses in ukraine the losses the
influential losses the economic losses
the lives lost the power lost is too
great
so it is better for him
to push and push and push through war
crimes through everything else war
crimes are something defined by the
international court system the
international court system has russia as
part of its board
and the international court system is
largely powerless
outs when it comes to enforcing its own
outcomes so the real risk gain scenario
here for for russia is
is
is significantly in favor of gain over
risk
the other thing that i think is
important to talk about is we
everybody
is trapped in the middle of a gigantic
information war yes there's battlefield
bullets and cannons and tanks but
there's also a massive and from
informational war the same
narrative that you see
these
ground troops in ukraine these russian
ground troops in ukraine believing
they're clearing the land of nazis
that information is being fed to them
from their own home country
i don't know why people seem to think
that the information that they're
reading in english is any more or less
true the enti every piece of news coming
out of the west every piece of
information coming out in the english
language is also a giant narrative
being
shared intentionally to try to undermine
the morale and the faithfulness of
english-speaking russians which somebody
somewhere knows exactly how many of
those there are
so we have to recognize that we're not
getting true information from other side
because there is a strategic value in
making sure that there is just the right
amount of miss or disinformation out
there not because someone's trying to
lie to americans but because someone is
trying to influence the way
english-speaking russians think
and in that world that's exactly why you
see so many news
articles cited to anonymous sources
government officials who do not want to
be named there's no nothing that links
back responsibility there right there's
nothing that can go to court there
but this the information still gets
released and that's that's enough to
make ukrainians believe
that the united states is going to help
them or that the west is going to help
them it's enough to make russians think
that
that they're going to lose and maybe
they should just
they should just give up now and leave
from the battlefield now we have to
understand we are in the middle of a
giant information war
maybe you can correct me but it feels
like in the english-speaking world it's
harder to control
it's harder to fight the information war
because of you know some people say
there's not really a freedom of speech
in this country but i think uh if you
compare there's a lot more freedom of
speech and it's just harder to control
narratives when there's a bunch of
um
guerrilla journalists that are able to
just publish anything they want on
twitter or anything it's just harder to
control narratives so people don't
understand where freedom of speech is
that's the first major problem and it's
it's shameful how many people in the
united states do not understand what
freedom of speech actually protects
so
that aside you're absolutely right
fighting the information war in the west
is extremely difficult because
anyone with a blog anyone with a twitter
account anyone i mean anyone can call
themselves a journalist essentially we
live in a world we live in a country
where people read the headline and they
completely bypass the author line and
they go straight into the content and
then they decide whether the content's
real or not based on how they feel
instead of based on empirical measurable
evidence
so you mentioned the len lease act
and the support of the united states
support of ukraine by the united states
are you skeptical to the level of
support that the united states is
providing and is going to provide
over over time the strategy that the
united states has taken to support
ukraine is similar to the strategy we
took to support great britain during
world war ii
the the enactment of the lend least act
is a perfect example of that the lend
lease act means that we are lending or
leasing equipment to the ukrainian
government
in exchange for future payment
so every time a rocket is launched every
time a drone crashes into a tank that's
that's a bill
that ukraine is
is just racking up it's like when you go
to a restaurant you start drinking shots
sometime the bill will come due this is
exactly what we did when
europe and when great britain was in the
face of uh nazi invasion we signed the
same thing into motion do you know that
that the uk did not pay off the debt
from world war ii until 2020
they've been paying that debt
since the end of world war ii so what
we're doing is we're indebting ukraine
against the promise that perhaps they
will secure their freedom which nobody
seems to want to talk about what freedom
is actually going to look like for
ukrainians right what are the true
handful of outcomes the realistic
outcomes that could come of this and
what which of those outcomes really
looks like freedom to them
especially in the face of the fact that
they're going to be
trillions of dollars in debt to the west
for supplying them with the training and
the weapons and the food and the med
kits and everything else that we're
giving them because none of it's free
it's all coming due it's all we're a
democracy but we're also
a capitalist country we we can't afford
to just give things away for free but we
can give things away at a discount we
can give things away lay away but the
bill will come due and unfortunately
that is not part of the conversation
that's being had with the american
people so debt is a way
to establish some level of control power
is power
that said
having a very
close relationship between ukraine and
the united states does not seem to be
a negative possibility
when ukrainians think about their future
in terms of freedom that's one thing and
uh the other there's some aspect of this
war that i've just noticed that um
one of the people i talked to said
that all
great nations
uh have a
independence war they have to have a war
for their independence in order there's
something it's dark but there's
something about
war just being a catalyst for finding
your own identity as a nation so you can
have
leaders you can have sort of signed
documents you can have all this kind of
stuff but there's something about war
that really brings the country together
and actually tried to figure out what is
at the core of the spirit of the people
that defines this country and
they see this war
as that as the independence wars to
define the heart of what the country is
so there's a there's been before the war
before this invasion
there was a lot of factions in the
country there was
a lot of
influence from oligarchs and corruption
and so on a lot of that
was the factions were brought together
under one umbrella
effectively to become one nation because
of this invasion so they see that as a
positive
direction for
the
defining of what a free
democratic country looks like after the
war at in their perspective after the
wars won
it's a difficult situation because
i'm trying to make sure that that you
and all everybody listening understands
that
what's happening in ukraine among
ukrainians is noble and brave and
courageous and
beyond the expectations of
anyone
the fact is
there is no material support coming from
the outside the american in the american
revolution was won
because of french involvement french
ships french troops french generals
french military might
the
uh independence of
of uh communist china was won
through russian support russian generals
russian troops on the ground fighting
with the communists
that's how revolutions are won that's
how independent countries are born
ukraine doesn't get any of that
no one is stepping into that because
we live in a world right now
where there simply is no economic
benefit to the parties in power
to support ukraine to that level and war
is a game of economics the economic
benefit of ukraine is crystal clear
in favor of russia which is why putin
cannot lose he will not let himself lose
short of something completely unexpected
right i'm talking 60 70 probability
ukraine loses but there's still 20 30
probability of the unimaginable
happening
who knows what that might be and
oligarch assassinates putin or a nuclear
bomb goes off somewhere or who knows
what right
there's still a chance that something
unexpected will happen and change the
tide of the war but when it comes down
to
the core calculus here
ukraine is the agricultural bed to
support a future russia russia knows
they know they have to have ukraine they
know that they have to have it to
protect themselves against military
pressure from the west they have to have
it for agricultural reasons they have
major
oil
and natural gas pipelines that flow
through
eastern ukraine they they cannot let
ukraine fall
outside of their sphere of influence
they cannot
the united states
doesn't really have any economic vested
interest in ukraine ideologics you know
ideological points of view and promises
aside there's no economic benefit and
the same thing goes for nato nato has no
economic investment in ukraine ukrainian
output ukrainian
food goes to the middle east and africa
it doesn't go to europe
so the whole
the sai the west siding with ukraine is
exclusively ideological and it's putting
them in a place where they fight a war
with russia so the whole world can see
russia's capabilities ukraine is a
it's sad as it is to say man ukraine is
a pawn on a table
for superpowers to calculate each
other's capacities
right now we've only talked about russia
and united states we haven't even talked
about iran we haven't even talked about
china
right it is a pawn on a table this is a
chicken fight so that people get to
watch and see what the other trainers
are doing
well a lot of people might have said the
same thing about the united states back
in the independence fight so
there is there is possibilities as
you've said
we're not
uh saying zero percent chance and it
could be a reasonably high percent
chance that this becomes one of the
great democratic nations that the 21st
century is remembered by absolutely and
so uh
you said
american support so ideologically first
of all
you don't assign much
long-term
power to that
that us could support ukraine purely on
ideological grounds
just look in the last four years the
last three years do you remember what
happened in hong kong right before kovid
china swooped into hong kong
violently
beating protesters killing them in the
street imprisoning people without just
without just cause and hong kong was a
democracy
and the whole world stood by and let it
happen
and then what happened in afghanistan
just a year ago
and the whole world stood by and let the
taliban take power again after 20 years
of loss
this we are showing a repeatable
point of view we will talk american
politicians american administrations we
will say a lot of things we will promise
a lot of ideological pro-democracy
rah-rah
statements we will say it
but when it comes down to putting our
own people our own economy our own gdp
at risk
we step away from that fight
america is currently supplying
military equipment to ukraine absolutely
and a lot of that military equipment has
actually been the thing that turned the
tides of war a couple of times already
currently that's the highmar systems
so you mentioned sort of
putin can't afford to lose
but winning can look a different way so
you've kind of defined so on at this
moment
the prediction is that winning looks
like capturing not just the east
but the south of ukraine
but
you could have narratives of winning
that return back to the
uh what was at the beginning of this
year before the invasion correct that
crimea
is still with russia
there's some kind of negotiated thing
about donbass where it still stays with
ukraine but there's some public
government yeah yeah
that's what they have in georgia right
now
and that could still be defined through
mechanisms
as russia winning as russian winning for
russia and then for ukraine as ukraine
winning
uh and
and for the west as uh democracy winning
and you kind of negotiate i mean that
seems to be how
geopolitics works is everybody can walk
away with a win-win story
and then the world progresses
with the lessons learned that's the high
likely that's the most probable outcome
the most probable outcome is that
ukraine remains
in air quotes a sovereign nation
it's not going to be truly sovereign
because it will become
it will
have to have new government put in place
zielinski will it's extremely unlikely
he will be president
because he has gone too far to
demonstrate his
power over the people and his ability to
separate the ukrainian people from the
autocratic power of russia so he would
have to be
unseated whether he goes into exile
or whether he is peacefully left alone
is all going to be part of negotiations
but the thing the thing to keep in mind
also
is that a negotiated peace really just
means a negotiated ceasefire we've seen
this happen all over the world north
korea and south korea are technically
still just in negotiated cease power
what you end up having is
russia will allow
ukraine to call itself ukraine
to operate independently to have their
own debt to the united states russia
doesn't want to take on that debt
and then
in exchange for that they will have
firmer guidelines as to how nato can
engage with ukraine and then that
becomes an example for all the other
former soviet satellite states which are
all required economically
by russia not required economically by
the west
and then you end up seeing how it just
you can see how the whole thing plays
out once you realize
that the keystone
is ukraine
there is something about ukraine
the deep support by the ukrainian people
of america
that
is in contrast with
for example afghanistan
that
it seems like ideologically ukraine
could be a beacon of freedom used in
narratives by the united states
to fight geopolitical wars in that part
of the world that they would be a good
partner
for this idea of democracy of freedom
of all the values that america stands
for they're a good partner and so it's
valuable
if you sort of have a cynical pragmatic
view sort of like henry kissinger type
of view
it's valuable to have them as a partner
so valuable that it makes sense to
support them
in achieving a negotiated ceasefire
that's on the side of ukraine but
because of this particular leader this
particular culture
this particular
dynamics of how the war enrolled
and things like twitter and the way
digital communication currently works it
just seems like this is a powerful
symbol of freedom that's useful for the
united states if we're starting to take
the pragmatic
view don't you think
it it's possible
that uh united states
supports ukraine
financially militarily enough for it to
get an advantage in this war i think
they've already got an advantage in the
war the fact the war is still going on
demonstrates the asymmetrical advantage
the fact that
russia has stepped up to the negotiating
table with them several times
without just
turning to
chechen
i mean remember what happened in
chechnya
without turning to chechnya levels just
mass
blind destruction
which was another putin war
to see that those things have happened
demonstrates the asymmetric advantage
that the west has given i think the
the
true way to look at the benefit of
ukraine as a
shining example of freedom in europe for
the west
isn't to understand whether or not they
could they absolutely could
it's the question of how valuable is
that
in europe how valuable is ukraine which
before
january before february
nobody even thought about ukraine and
the people who did know about ukraine
knew that it was a extremely corrupt
former soviet state
with 20 of its national population
self-identifying as russian
like you there's a reason putin went
into ukraine there's a reason he's been
promising he would go into ukraine for
the better part of a decade
because
the the circumstances were aligned it
was a corrupt country that
self-identified as russian in many ways
it was a it was supposed to be an easier
of multiple marks in terms of the former
soviet satellite states to go after
that's all part of the miscalculation
that the rest of the world saw too
when we thought it would fall quickly
so to think that it could be a shining
shining example of freedom is accurate
but is it as shining a star as germany
is it as shining a star as the uk is it
as shining a star is romania is it as
shiny as star as
uh as france like it's got a lot of
democratic freedom-based countries in
europe to compete against to be
this shining stellar example and in
exchange on counterpoint to that it has
an extreme amount of strategic value to
russia which has no interest in making
it a shining star of the example of of
democracy and freedom outside of
research in terms of the shininess of
the star i would argue yes if you look
at how much you captivated the intention
of the world the attention the world has
made no material difference man that's
what i'm saying that's your estimation
but you know are you sure we can
we can't
um if you can convert that into
political influence
into money don't you think attention is
money
attention is money in democracies in
capitalist countries
yes which serves as a counterweight to
sort of authoritarian regimes so for for
putin resources matter for the united
states also resources matter but the
attention
and uh the belief the people also
matter because that's how you attain and
maintain political power this so going
to that exact example
then i would highlight that our current
administration has the lowest approval
ratings of any president in history
so if people were very fond of the war
going on in ukraine wouldn't that
counterbalance some of our upset some of
the distinct coming from the economy and
some of the dissent coming from from the
the great recession and or the second
great or the great resignation and
whatever is happening with the draw with
the down stock market you would think
that people would feel like they're
sacrificing for something if they really
believed that ukraine mattered that they
would they would stand next to the
president who is who is so staunchly
driving and leading the west against
this conflict well i think the
opposition to this particular president
i personally believe has less to do with
the policies and more to do
with
a lot of the other human factors
and
but again empirically this is i look at
things through a very empirical lens a
very a very cold
fact based lens and there are multiple
data points that suggest that the
american people
ideologically sympathize with ukraine
but they really just want their gas
prices to go down they really just want
to be able to pay less money at the
grocery store for their food and they
most definitely don't want their sons
and daughters
to die in exchange for ukrainian freedom
it does hurt me to see the
politicization of this war as well
i think that has
that's maybe has to do with the kind of
calculation you're referring to
but it seems like it doesn't it seems
like there's a cynical whatever takes
attention of the media for the moment
the the red team chooses one side and
the blue team chooses another
and then um
i think correct me if i'm wrong but i
believe the democrats went into full
like support of ukraine on the ideal
logical side and then i guess
republicans are saying why are we
wasting money the prices are the the gas
prices are going up that's that's a very
crude kind of analysis but they
basically picked whatever argument on
whatever side and now
more and more and more this particular
war in ukraine is becoming
a kind of pawn in the game of politics
that's
first the midterm elections then
building up towards the presidential
elections and stops being about
the philosophical the social the
geopolitical aspects
parameters of this war and more
biologists like whatever the heck
captivates twitter and we're gonna use
that for politics you're right in sense
of the fact that it's i wouldn't say
that the red team and the blue team
picked opposite sides on this what i
would say is that
media
discovered that talking about ukraine
wasn't as profitable as talking about
something else
people simply the american people who
read media or who watch media they
simply became
bored reading about news that didn't
seem to be changing much and
we turned back into wanting to read
about our own economy and we wanted to
hear more about cryptocurrency and we
wanted to hear more about the
kardashians and that's that's what we
care about so that's what media writes
about that's how
a capitalist market driven world works
and that's how the united states works
that's why in both red papers and blue
papers red sources and blue sources you
don't see ukraine being mentioned very
much if anything
i would say that your republicans are
probably more in support of what's
happening in ukraine right now because
we're creating new weapon systems our
military is getting stronger we're
sending these military we get to test
military systems in combat
in ukraine
that's
priceless in the world of the military
the military industrial complex being
able to field test combat test a weapon
without having to sacrifice your own
people
is incredibly valuable you get all the
data you get all the performance metrics
but you don't have to put yourself at
risk that is one of the major benefits
of what we're seeing from supporting
ukraine with weapons and with troops the
long-term benefit to what will come of
this for the united states
practically speaking in the lens of
national security through military
readiness
through
future economic benefits those are super
strong the geopolitical fight is is
essentially moot
because ukraine is not a geopolitical
player it was not for
for 70 years
and after this conflict is over it will
not again just think about what you were
just saying with the american people's
attention span to twitter and whatever
is currently going on if the ukraine
conflict resolved itself today
in either in any direction
how many weeks do you think before no
one talked about ukraine anymore do you
think we would make it two weeks do you
think we'd make it maybe seven days it
would be headline news for one or two
days
and then we'd be on to something else
it's just an unfortunate reality
of how the world works in a capitalist
democracy
yeah
it just breaks my heart how much
you know i know that there's
yemen and syria and
that nobody talks about anymore still
raging conflicts going on
it just it breaks my heart how much
generational hatred is born
i happen to be from
uh my family is from ukraine and from
russia and so for me just personally
it's a part of the world i care about
in terms of its history i because i
speak the language i can appreciate the
beauty of the literature the music the
art the the cultural history of the 20th
century through all the dark times
through all the the hell
of um the dark sides of authoritarian
regimes the destruction of war there's
still just a beauty that i'm able to
appreciate that i can't appreciate about
china
brazil
other countries because i don't speak
their language this one i can appreciate
and so
in that way this is personally really
painful to me to see
so much of that history the beauty in
that history suffocated by the hatred
that is born through this kind of
geopolitical
game
uh fought mostly by
the politicians the leaders people are
beautiful and that's what you're talking
about people are just
people are beautiful creatures
culture
and art
and
science like these are beautiful
beautiful things that come about because
of human beings
and the thing that gives me hope
is that
no matter what conflict the world has
seen and we've seen some devastating
horrible crimes against humanity already
we saw nuclear bombs go off in japan
we saw
we saw genocide happen in rwanda we've
seen horrible things happen
but people persevere
language culture arts science they all
persevere they all shine through
some of the most people don't even
realize how gorgeous the architecture
and the culture is inside iran people
have no idea
chinese people
in the
rural parts of china are some of the
kindest most amazing people you'll ever
meet and korean art and korean dance
korean drumming i know nobody has ever
even heard of korean drumming korean
drumming is this magical beautiful thing
and the north in north korea does it
better than anybody in the world
taekwondo in north korea is just
exceptional to watch north korea in
north korea nobody knows these how do
you know about taekwondo north korea i
have questions
but fascinating that's that's uh like
people don't think about that but the
culture the beauty of the people still
flourishes even in the toughest
absolutely and we always will we always
will because that is what people do
and that is that is just the truth of it
and it breaks my heart to see travesties
that people commit against people
but whether you're looking at a micro
level like what happens with shootings
here in the united states or whether you
look at a macro level like geopolitical
power exchanges and
intra and interstate conflicts like what
you see in syria and what you see in
ukraine
those are disgusting terrible things war
is a terrible thing that is a famous
quote
but people
will persevere people will
come through
i hope so i hope so
and i hope we don't do something
um that i'll probably also ask you about
later on is things that
um destroy the possibility of
perseverance which is things like
nuclear war things things that can do
such tremendous
uh damage that we we will never recover
but yeah i i
amidst your pragmatic pessimism
i think both you and i have a kind of uh
maybe small flame of optimism in there
about the perseverance of the human
species in general
let me ask you about
intelligence agencies outside of the cia
can you illuminate
what is the most powerful intelligence
agency in the world
the cia the fsb formerly the kgb the mi6
mossad
uh i've got a chance to interact with a
lot of israelis while in ukraine just
incredible people yeah in terms of both
training and skill just all
every fr american soldiers too just um
american military is incredible i just
uh the competence and skill of the
military
um the united states israeli i got to
interact in ukrainian as well it's just
it's striking it's beautiful i i just
love people i love carpenters or people
that are just extremely good at their
job and they take pride in their
craftsmanship it's uh it's beautiful to
see and i imagine the same kind of thing
happens inside of intelligence agencies
as well that we don't get to appreciate
because of the secrecy same thing with
like lockheed martin maybe the the cto
of lockheed martin it breaks my heart as
a person who loves
engineering um because of the
cover of secrecy we'll never get to know
some of the incredible engineering that
happens inside vlocky martin and boeing
and raytheon yeah um you know there's
kind of this idea that these are
you know people have conspiracy theories
and they kind of assign evil to these
companies in some to some part but i
think there's beautiful people inside
those companies brilliant people and
uh some incredible science and
engineering is happening there anyway
that said
the cia the fsb the mi6 mossad
china i know very little about the
mss ministry of state security i don't i
don't know how much you know
uh or just other intelligence agencies
in india pakistan i've also heard raw is
powerful and so is iss or
issi
and then of course european nations in
germany and france
yeah so um
what can you say about the power the
influence of the different intelligence
agencies within their nation and outside
yeah so to answer your question
uh your original question which is the
most powerful i'm gonna have to give you
a few different answers
so
the most powerful intelligence
organization in the world in terms of
reach
is the chinese mss the ministry of state
security because
they have created
a
single solitary intelligence service
that has global reach and is integrated
with chinese culture
so that essentially every chinese person
anywhere in the world is an informant to
the mss because it all that's their way
of serving
this this is the middle kingdom jungwoo
the central kingdom the chinese word for
china
so they're the strongest they're they're
it's the the most powerful intelligence
service in terms of reach most assets
most informants most intelligence is
deeply integrated with a citizenry
correct with their culture you know what
a chinese person who lives in syria
thinks of themselves as a chinese person
do you know what a chinese person a
chinese national living in the united
states thinks of themselves as a chinese
person right americans
living abroad often think of ourselves
as expats expatriates living on the
local economy embracing the local
culture that is not how chinese people
view traveling around the world and by
the way if i may mention
i believe
the way messiah operates
is similar kind of thing because people
from israel
living abroad still think of themselves
as jewish and israeli first
first so that allows you to integrate
the culture and yep the faith-based
aspects exactly right but the number of
people in israel is much much smaller
exactly number one people in china so
when it comes to reach china wins that
game yeah when it comes to professional
capability it's it's the cia
by far because
budget-wise capability-wise weapon
system-wise modern technology-wise cia
is the leader around the world which is
why every other intelligence
organization out there wants to partner
with cia
they want to learn from cia they want to
train with cia they want to they want to
partner on counter narcotics and counter
drug and counter terrorism and counter
wieger you name it people want to
partner with cia so ci is the most
powerful in terms of capability and
wealth
and then you've got
the idea you've got
tech
so tech alone
meaning
corporate espionage
economic espionage nothing beats nothing
beats dgse in france they're the top
they've got a massive budget that almost
goes exclusively to stealing foreign
secrets they're the biggest threat to
the united states even above russia and
above china
dgse in france is a massively powerful
intelligence organization but they are
so exclusively focused on a handful of
types of intelligence collection that
nobody even really thinks that they
exist
and then in terms of
just terrifying violence you have
massage mossad will do anything mossad
has
no qualms doing what it takes to ensure
the survival of every israeli citizen
around the world most other countries
will stop at some point
but mossad doesn't do that
so it's the lines you're willing to
cross
and the reasons that you're willing to
cross them you know there's
cia will let an american stay in jail in
russia
unlawfully and seek a diplomatic
solution i mean the united states has
let people there there are two gentlemen
in from the 1950s who were imprisoned in
china for 20 years waiting for
diplomatic solutions
to their release
so
that's it's
we do not kill
to save a citizen
but mossad will
and then they'll not just kill they'll
like do large-scale infiltration
amazing things there is no they they
spare no expense because it's a
demonstration to their own people again
going back to the whole idea of
influence
every
intelligence operation
that sees the light of day has two
purposes
the first purpose is the intelligence
operation
but if it was just the intelligence
operation it would stay secret forever
the second purpose of every successful
intelligence operation when they become
public is to send a signal to the world
if you work against us we will do this
to you
if you work for us
we will take care of you in this way
it's a massive information campaign
do you think in that way cia is not
doing a good job
because there's you know the fsb
perhaps much less so jru but
the kgb did this well
which is to send a signal like basically
communicate
that
this is a terrifying organization with a
lot of power and so mossad is doing a
good job of that correct
the psychological information warfare
uh and it seems like the cia
also
has has a lot of kind of myths about it
conspiracy theories about it but much
less so than the other agencies
cia does a good job of playing to the
mythos so when uh general petraeus used
to be the director of cia 2000 and your
workout partner in my workout i write
about this so i i loved and hated those
workouts with petraeus because he is a
physical
beast he's a strong fit
at the time 60 something year old man
let me take a tangent on that because
he's coming on this podcast oh excellent
man so uh can you say
what you've learned from the man uh in
terms of
or like what you think is interesting
and powerful and inspiring about the way
he sees the world or maybe what you
learn in terms of how to get uh strong
in the gym yeah or anything about life
two things right away and one of them i
was gonna share with you anyway so i'm
glad that you asked the question so the
first
is
that
on our runs and man he runs fast and we
would go for six mile runs through
bangkok
and uh and
he talked openly about i asked him
how do you keep this
this
this mystery this epic
mythology about your fitness and your
strength how do you keep all of this
alive with the troops
and he had this amazing answer and he
was like i don't talk about it
myths are born
not from somebody orchestrating the myth
but from the source of the myth simply
being secretive
so he's like i don't talk about i've
never talked about it i've never
exacerbated it i just do what i do and i
let the troops talk and he's like when
it's in favor when it goes in favor of
of discipline and loyalty and commitment
i let it run if it starts getting
destructive or damaging then i have my
my leadership team step in to fix it but
when it comes to the
the mythos the myth of him being
superpowered soldier that's what he
wants every soldier to be so he lets it
run and he was fanta it was so
enlightening when he told me when
there's a myth that benefits you you
just let it go you let it happen
because it gets you further without you
doing any work it costs no investment so
the catalyst of the virality of the myth
is just being mysterious and and that's
what cia does well to go back to your
first question what does cia do they
don't answer any questions they don't
say anything and wherever the myth goes
the myth goes
whether it's that they sold drugs or
used child prostitutes or whatever else
wherever the myth goes they let it go
because at the end of the day everybody
sits back and says wow i really just
don't know
now the second thing that i learned from
petraeus and i i
really am a big fan of petraeus i know
he made personal mistakes you don't get
to be that powerful without making
personal mistakes but when i worked out
with him the one thing that that my uh
the one thing that my commanding officer
told me not to ask about he was like
never ask the general
about his family i'm a family guy so as
soon as i met general petraeus
one of the first things i asked him was
hey what was it like raising a family
and being
the commander of forces in the middle
east like you weren't with your family
very much and the thing i love about the
guy
he didn't bite off my head he didn't
snap at me he didn't do anything he
openly admitted that he regretted some
of the decisions that he made because he
had to sacrifice
his family to get there
relationships with his children
uh absentee father missing birthdays
missing we ju we all say we all say how
sad it is to miss birthdays and miss
anniversaries yadda yadda everybody
knows what that feels like even business
people know what that feels like
the actual pain that we're talking about
is when you're not there to handle your
13 year old's questions when a boy
breaks up with her or what you're when
you're not there to handle the bloody
lip that your nine-year-old comes back
with from their first encounter with a
bully
those are the truly heartbreaking
moments that a parent
lives and dies by
he missed
almost all of those because he was
fighting a war that we forgot and we
gave up on 20 years later right it's
he's so honest about that
and it was really
inspiring to me to be told not to ask
that question and when i broke that
guidance
he didn't reprimand me he just
he was authentic and it was absolutely
one of the big decisions that helped me
leave cia on my own in 2014. and he was
honest on the sacrifice
you make
the same man the same man who just
taught me a lesson about
letting a myth
live
that same guy
was willing to be so authentic about
this personal
mistake
i like complicated people like that
so what did you um what do you make of
that calculation of family versus job
you've
given a lot of your life and passion
to the cia to that work
it uh you spoken positively about that
that world
the good it
does um
and yet you're also a family man you
value that what's that calculation like
what's that trade off i mean for me the
calculation is very clear it's family i
left cia
because i chose my family and when my
son was born my my wife and i found out
that we were pregnant while we were
still on mission we were a tandem couple
my wife is also a former cia officer
undercover like me we were operating
together overseas
we got the positive pregnancy tests like
so many people do
and
uh and she cried my wife was a badass i
was just
i was like the accidental spy but my
wife was really good at what she does
and and she cried and she was like what
what do we do now like it's what we've
always wanted a child
but
we're in this thing right now
there's no space for a child
so long story short um
we had our baby we cia brought us back
to have the baby
and when we started having conversations
about hey what what do we do next
because we're not the type of people to
want to just sit around and
be domestic
what do we do next but keep in mind we
have a child now so here's some of our
suggestions we could do this and we can
do that let us get our child to a place
where we can put him into an
international school or we can get him
into some sort of program where we have
we can both operate together again
during the day
um but cia just had no they had no
patience for that conversation there was
no
family is not their priority
so the fact that we were a tandem couple
two officers two operators trying to
have a baby was irrelevant to them so
when they didn't play with us when they
did nothing to help us
prioritize parenthood
as part of our overall experience that's
when we knew that they never would and
what good is it to commit yourself to a
career
if the career is always going to
challenge the thing that you value most
and that was the calculation that we
made to leave cia
not everybody makes that calculation
and a big part of why i am so vocal
about my time at cia is because i am
immensely appreciative
of the men and women who to this day
have
failed marriages and poor relationships
with their children because they chose
national security they chose protecting
america over their own family
um and they've done it
even though it's made them
you know abuse alcohol and abuse
substances and who and they've gotten
themselves they've got permanent
permanent
diseases and issues from living and
working abroad
it's just
insane the sacrifice that officers make
to keep america
free and i'm just not one of those
people i chose family
you said that your wife misses it do you
miss it we both miss it we miss it for
different reasons we miss it for similar
reasons i guess but we miss it in
different ways the people the people at
cia are just
amazing they're they're people that
they're everyday people like the guy and
the gal next door
but so smart and so dedicated and so
courageous about what they do and how
they do it i mean the sacrifices they
make are massive more massive than the
sacrifices i made so i was always
inspired and impressed by the people
around me so both my wife and i
absolutely miss the people my wife
misses the work because you know
everything when you're inside
it's all i mean we had we had top secret
we had ts sci clearances at the time i
had a cat 6 cat 12 which makes me
nuclear cleared
my wife had other privy clearances that
allowed her to look into you know areas
that were uh specialized
but there was not there wasn't a
headline that went out that we couldn't
fact check with a click of a few buttons
and she misses that because she loved
that kind and now you're just one of us
living in the
you know the cloud of mystery exactly
knowing anything about what's going on
exactly but for me i've always been the
person that likes
operating and you know what you still
get to do when you leave cia you still
get to operate operating is just working
with people it's understanding how
people think predicting their actions
driving their their direction of their
thoughts persuading them winning
negotiations like it's
you still get to do that you do that
every day and you can apply that in all
kinds of domains
well let me ask you
on that you were a covert cia
intelligence officer for several years
maybe can you tell me the story of how
it all began how were you recruited
and what did the job entail to the
degree you can speak about it feel free
to direct me if i'm getting too boring
or if the
every aspect of this is super exciting
so uh so i was leaving the united states
air force in 2007
i was a
i was a lieutenant getting ready to pin
on captain my five years was up
and i was a very bad fit for the u.s air
force i was an air force academy
graduate not by choice but by lack of
opportunity like a lack of options
otherwise so i forced myself through the
academy barely graduated with a 2.4 gpa
and then went on the air force taught me
how to fly and then the air force taught
me about nuclear weapons and i ended up
as a as a
nuclear missile commander in
montana and i chose to leave the air
force because
i didn't like shaving my face i didn't
like having short hair and i most
definitely didn't like shining my shoes
and i did not want to be one of the
people in charge of nuclear weapons so
when i found myself as a person in
charge of 200 nuclear weapons i knew
that i was going down the wrong road i
have questions about this
and more importantly i have questions
about your hair so you have short hair
at the time i had yeah you have to
military regulations you can't have hair
longer than one inch okay and this
the the beautiful hair you have now that
that came to be
in the cia or after this so i discovered
i had messy hair and cia because i used
to uh i used to go muj we called it mooj
i used to go mujahideen style big burly
beard and crazy wacky hair yeah because
an ambiguously brown guy
with a big beard and long hair
can go anywhere in the world without
anyone
even noticing him they either think that
he's a janitor or they think that he's
like some forgotten part of history but
nobody ever thinks that that guy is a
spy so it was the perfect
for me it was
one of my favorite
uh
disguises it's what's known as a level
two disguise one of my favorite
disguises to don was just
dilapidated brown guy
uh can you actually we'll just take a
million tangent what what's the
skies
uh what what's uh what are the different
levels of disguise what are the
disguises yeah there's three levels of
disguise by and large level one is what
we also know what we also call light
disguise so that's essentially you put
on sunglasses and a ball cap and and
that's a disguise you look different
than you normally look
so it's just different enough that
someone who's never seen you before
someone who literally has to see you
just from a picture on the internet they
may not recognize you it's why you see
celebrities walk around with ball caps
and oversized jackets and baseball hats
because they just need to not look like
they look in the tabloid or not look
like they look in tv
that's level one
uh let me jump from level one to level
three level three is all of your
prosthetics all the stuff you see in
mission impossible your fake ears your
fake faces your fat suits your stilts
inside your leg your feet uh all that's
level three whenever they make any kind
of prosthetic disguise
that's a level three disguise because
prosthetics are
very damning
if you are caught with a prosthetic if
you're caught
wearing a sudden wearing a baseball hat
and sunglasses nobody's gonna say you're
a spy but when you're caught with a
custom-made you know nose uh
prosthetic that changes the way your
face looks or when someone pops out a
fake jaw and they see that your top
teeth don't look like they did
in this prosthetic then all of a sudden
you've got some very difficult questions
to ask or to answer so level three is
extremely dangerous level one is not
dangerous level two is long-term
disguise level two is all the things
that you can do to permanently change
the way you look for a long period of
time so that whether
you're aggressed in the street or
whether someone breaks into your hotel
room or whatever
it's real
so maybe that's uh maybe you get a
tattoo maybe you cut your hair short
maybe you grow your hair long maybe you
go bald maybe you start wearing glasses
well glasses are technically a
prosthetic but
you can
you if you have teeth pulled if you gain
20 pounds really gain 20 pounds or lose
15 pounds whatever you might do all of
that is considered level two it's
designed for a long-term mission
so that
people believe you are who you say you
are in that disguise a lot of that is
physical characteristics right what
about like um you know what actors do
which is the
method acting yeah the method acting
sort of
developing a back story in your own mind
and then you start
um
you know pretending that you host the
podcast and
teach at a university and then do
research and so on just so that people
can believe yeah that you're not
actually uh agent uh what is that part
of the disguise levels or no so yes
disguise has to do with physical
character traits that's what a disguise
is what you're talking about is known as
a cover legend
when you go undercover what you claim to
be who you claim to be that's called
your legend your cover legend every
disguise would theoretically have
its own cover legend
even if it's just to describe why you're
wearing what you're wearing it's all a
cover
so the method acting this is a fantastic
point that i don't get to make very
often so i'm glad you asked
the difference between cia officers in
the field and method actors is that
method actors try to become
the character they try to
shed all vestiges of who they really are
and become the character and that's part
of what makes them so amazing but it's
also part of what
like
makes them mentally unstable over long
periods of time it's part of what feeds
their depression their anxiety their
personal issues because they lose sight
of who they really are
field officers don't get that luxury we
have to always always remember
we are a covert cia intelligence officer
collecting secrets in the field we have
to remember that so we're taught
a very specific skill to
compartmentalize
our true self
separately but make that true self
the true identity so then we can still
live and act and and
effectively carry out our cover legend
without ever losing
sight without ever losing that compass
true north of who we actually are and
then we can compartmentalize and secure
all the information that we need retain
it remember it but then return to our
true self
when we when we get back to a position
of safety is it possible to do that so
i i just have kind of anecdotal evidence
for myself i really try to be the exact
same person in all conditions which
makes it very easy
like if you're not lying
it makes it very easy to
first of all to exist but also to
communicate a kind of authenticity and
genuineness which i think is really
important like trust
and integrity around trust is extremely
important to me it's the thing that
opens doors
and maintains relationships
and
i tend to think
like when i was in ukraine so many doors
just opened to the hot like very high
security
areas and everywhere else too like i've
just interacted with some incredible
people without any kind of concerns
you know who's this guy is he gonna
spread it you know all that kind of
stuff and they i tend to believe that
you're able to communicate a
trustworthiness somehow if
if you just
are who you are and
and i think i suppose method actors are
trying to achieve that by becoming
something and they can
i just feel like there is very subtle
cues
that are extremely difficult to fake
like you really have to become that
person
be that person but you're saying
as a cia agent you have to remember that
you are
there to collect information do you
think that gives you a way
so one of the flaws in your argument
is that you keep referring to how you
feel
i feel this i feel that i feel like this
i feel like that
that
feeling
is a predictable
character trait of all human beings it's
a pink matter
we call pink matter it's a cognitive
trait
you are not alone in trusting your
feelings all people trust their feelings
but because
what cia teaches us is how to
systematically create artificial
relationships
where we're the one in control of the
source that is giving us intelligence
and the core element to being able to
control a relationship is understanding
the pink matter truth of feelings
what all people feel becomes their point
of view on what reality is so when you
understand and you learn how to
manipulate what people feel
then you can essentially direct them to
feel any way you want them to feel so if
you want them to feel like they can
trust you
you can make them feel that way if you
want them to feel like you're a good guy
or a bad guy if you want them to feel
like they should give you secrets even
though their government tells them not
to you can do that there are men who
make women feel like they love they love
them and just so the woman will sleep
with them there are women who make men
feel like they love them just so the men
will give them their money
manipulation is a as a core behavioral
trait of all the human species because
we all understand to some level how
powerful feelings are but feelings are
not the same thing as logical rational
thoughts they're two different sides of
the brain
what cia teaches us how to do is
systematically tap into
the right side emotional side of the
brain so that we can
quickly get past all of the stuff you
were just saying all of the
well don't you have to be convincing and
don't you have to really know your story
and don't you have to be able to defend
it don't you have to have authenticity
and don't you have to have uh genuine
genuine feelings yes all of those things
are true
if you're having a genuine relationship
but in an artificial relationship
there's ways to bypass all of that and
get right to the heart of making someone
feel comfortable and safe i guess the
question i i'm asking and the thing i
was
implying is that creating an artificial
relationship was an extremely difficult
skill
to accomplish the level
like
how good i am at being me
and creating a feeling in another person
that i create
for you to do that artificially that's
gotta be you gotta be my sense is you
gotta be really damn good at that kind
of thing i i would venture to say
it's i mean
i don't know how to measure how
difficult the thing is but especially
when you're communicating with people
whose job depends on forming trusting
relationships they're gonna smell
bullshit
and
to to get get past that bullshit
detector is tough it's a tough skill
well it's interesting so i would i would
say that
or maybe i'm wrong actually on that i
would say that once you understand the
system it's not that hard it makes a lot
of sense but i would also say that to
you to your exact point you are right
that people smell bullshit people smell
bullshit but here's the thing
if you come in smelling like
goat shit
you still smell like shit but you don't
smell like bullshit
so they don't count you out right away
and if you come in smelling like
rotten tomatoes or if you come in
smelling like lavender or if you come in
smelling like vanilla or if you come in
without any smell at all all that
matters is that you don't smell like
bullshit here's the thing that's that's
one of the secret sauces of cia
when you look and act like a spy people
think you're a spy
if you look and act in any other way you
know what they never ever think you are
a spy
they might think you're an idiot they
might think you're a they might think
you're trailer trash they might think
that you're a
a migrant worker but they never think
you're a spy yeah and that's what's that
lesson in everyday life
is immensely powerful if you're trying
to if you're trying to take your boss's
job as long as you don't ever look like
the bot the employee who's trying to
take the boss's job the boss is focused
on all the employees who are trying to
take his job everybody's prioritizing
whether they know it or not the goal is
to just not be the one that they're
targeting target them without them
knowing you're targeting them so people
just
when they meet you they put you in a bin
and if you want to avoid being put in a
particular bin just don't act like the
person that would be
just show some kind of characteristics
that bing you in some other way exactly
right you have to be in a bin just
choose the bin
all right so
uh
you
knowing these methods when you talk to
people especially in civilian life how
do you know
who's lying to you and not
that gets to be
more into the trained skill side of
things there's body cues
there's micro expressions i'm not a big
fan of
i don't believe that micro expressions
alone do anything i also don't believe
that micro expressions without without
an effective bass line do anything so
don't for a second think that i'm
all the people out there pitching that
you can tell if someone's lying to you
just by looking at their face it's all
it's all baloney in my world that's
baloney like the way you move your eyes
or something like that without knowing a
baseline without knowing for that
individual for that individual then you
actually don't know and an individual's
baseline is based on education culture
life experience you name it right so
this is huge
but when you combine facial expressions
with body movements body language
nonverbal cues and you add on top of
that effective elicitation techniques
that you are in control of now you have
a more robust
platform to tell if someone's lying to
you so there there's like a
set of like interrogation
trajectories you can go down that can
help you
figure out a person technically their
interview interview
like this concepts correct because an
interrogation an interrogation is
something very different than an
interview and in the world of
professionals and interrogation is very
different what's the difference the the
nature of how relaxed the thing is or
what so in an interrogation there's a
clear pattern of dominance there's no
equality got it also there's no escape
you are there until the interrogator is
done with you right anybody who's ever
been reprimanded by mom and dad knows
what an interrogation feels like
anybody's ever been called into the
principal's office or the boss's office
that's what interrogation feels like you
don't leave until the boss says you can
leave and you're there to say to answer
questions the boss asks questions an
interview is an equal exchange of ideas
you are in control of this interview
for sure but if we were having coffee
i could take control if i wanted to take
control if i wanted to ask you personal
questions i would if i wanted to talk to
you about your background i could
why am i in control of this interview
exactly because the person in control is
the person asking questions
yeah
sitting here as you've spoken about uh
my power here is i'm the quiet one
listening
you're exactly right guess where this
conversation goes yeah anywhere you
choose to take it because you're the one
asking questions every time i answer a
question i am creating a pattern of
obedience to you
which subliminally subconsciously makes
me that much more apt to answer your
questions of course you can always turn
that and ask start asking me questions
it should you know uh so but you're
saying that there's through this this
through conversation you can call it
interviewing you can start to
you can start to see
um
see cracks
in the story of the person
and the degree to which they exaggerate
or lie or
to see how much they could be trusted
that kind of stuff what i'm saying is
that through a conversation you develop
a baseline right like even just in the
last the last the first part of our
conversation i've been able to create
some baseline elements about you
you've been able to create baseline
elements about me maybe they're just not
friend of mind
from those baselines now we can push
through more intentional questions
to test
got it to test whether or not the person
is being truthful because they're
operating within their baseline or if
you are triggering
uh sensitivities outside of their
baseline and then you can start to see
their tells
that's fascinating yeah baseline like uh
even even like yeah the tells right the
the eye contact like you you've probably
already formed a bass line that i i have
trouble making eye contact and so like
so if you ask me difficult questions and
i'm not making eye contact maybe that's
not a good signal of me lying or
whatever correct because i always have
trouble making eye contact stuff like
that that's really fascinating the
majority of your eye movement is to the
right yeah my your right my left yes
right which is usually someone who's if
you ask micro expressionists that's
someone who's referencing fact yeah
that's not necessarily what's happening
for you because you're pulling concepts
out of the air so it's also a place
where you reference something other than
fact it's a place for you to find
creativity yeah so if i just thought
that you were lying because you look up
into the right
i would be wrong that's so fascinating
and a lot of that has to do with like
habits that are formed and all those
kinds of things or maybe some right hand
left hand type of situation right eye
dominance yeah right that's going to
make you look to the right
is this a science or an art it's a bit
of both i would say that like all good
art
art is taught from a foundation of
skills
and those skills are
are
played are taught in a very structured
manner and then the way that you
use the skills after that that's more of
the artistic grace
so i've always called espionage an art
spying is an art
being able to hack human beings is an
art but it's all based in a foundation
of science you still have to learn how
to mix the color palette and use certain
brushes
do you think of that as as a kind of uh
the study of human psychology is that
what a psychologist does or
psychiatrists what from this process
have you learned
about human nature
human nature i mean i suppose the answer
to that
could be a book
but
uh it probably will be a book i'll save
you that yeah but
sort of is there
is there things that are surprising
about human nature surprising to uh
us civilians that you could speak to yes
one thing is extremely surprising about
human nature
um which is funny because that's not the
answer i would have said so i'm glad
that you clarified this specific
question
the thing that's surprising about human
nature is that human beings
long
like
in their soul there's like a painful
longing
to be with other people
and that's really surprising because you
we all want to pretend like we're strong
we all want to pretend like we're
you know independent we all want to
pretend like we are
the masters of our destiny but
what's truly consistent in all people is
this
like longing to commune
with others like us
my
my more practical answer about what i've
learned to be the truth is that people
human nature is predictable
and that predictability is what gives
people an incredible advantage over
other people
but that's not the surprising piece i
mean even when cia taught me that human
nature is predictable it just made sense
i was like oh yeah that makes sense
but what i never ever anticipated was
no matter where i've been in the world
no matter who i've talked to no matter
what
socioeconomic bracket is that longing
man it hurts
loneliness sucks
and togetherness feels good even if
you're together with someone you know
isn't the right person it still feels
better than being alone
i mean that's such a deep truth you
speak to and and
i i could talk about that for a long
time there is i mean through these
conversations
in general whether it's being recorded
or not
i
hunger
to discovering the other person that
longing you strip away the other things
and then you share in the longing for
that connection and i particularly also
have detected that
in um
people from all walks of life yes
including
people that others might identify as
evil yeah or
hard as uh
completely
cold
it's there it's there they've hardened
themselves
in their search
and who knows what dark place their
brain is in their heart is in
but that that longing is still there
even if it's an ember it's there
it's the reason why
why
in world war one and world war ii
you know enemy combatants still shared
cigarettes on the front lines you know
during periods of holidays or bad
weather or whatever else because that
human connection man it triumphs overall
see that's
in part of what i refer to when i say
love
because i feel like if uh like political
leaders and
people in conflict that the small scale
and the large scale were
able
to tune into that longing
to seek in each other that basic longing
for human connection a lot of problems
could be solved
but of course
um
it's difficult because uh it's a it's a
game of chicken
because uh if you open yourself up to
reveal that longing for connection with
others
people can hurt you well i would go a
step farther and i would say that taking
the connection away
punishing
penalizing people by removing the
connection
is a powerful tool
and that's what we see that's why we
send people to jail that's why we put
economic sanctions on countries that's
why we ground our children and send them
to their rooms we are penalizing them
whether we know it or not we're
using punitive damage by taking away
that basic human connection that longing
for
for community
what was your recruitment process and
training process and things you could
speak to
in in the cia
as i was leaving the air force
all that was on my mind i don't know
what you were like at 27 but i was a
total dipshit at 27. i'm not much better
now at 42 but yeah you owe me
but i would say make it yeah but i was
like i just wanted to be anything other
than a military officer so i was
actually in the process of applying to
the peace corps
through this thing called the internet
which was still fairly rudimentary in
2007.
i had a computer lab that we went to and
it had 10 computers in it you had to log
in and log out and slow internet and
everything else but anyways i was
filling out an online application
to go work in the us peace corps i
wanted to grow my hair out i wanted to
stop wearing
shoes that were shiny i wanted to meet a
hippie chick and have hippie babies in
the wild teaching nigerian children how
to read
so that was the path i was going down
and as i filled in all of my details
there came this page that popped up and
it was this blinking red page and it
said stop here you may qualify for other
government positions
if you're willing to put your
application on hold for 72 hours
that gives us a chance to reach out to
you
so again 27 year old dipshit i was like
sure i'll put myself on hold if i might
qualify for other government
opportunities and then about a day later
i got a phone call from an un an almost
unlisted number it just said 703
which was very strange to see on my flip
phone at the time just one 703 area code
and i picked it up and and it was
it was a person
from northern virginia asking me if i
would be telling me that i was qualified
for
a position in national security and if i
would be interested they'll pay for my
ticket and fly me up to to langley
virginia they didn't say cia they said
langley i put 101 together and i was
like maybe this is cia yeah like this
could how cool is this yeah or maybe
this is all make-believe and this is
totally fake so either way it doesn't
hurt me at all to say yes they already
have my phone number so yes yes yes and
then i i remember thinking there's no
way that happened and
this isn't real and then a day later i
got a fedex or an overnight delivery of
an airplane ticket and a hotel
reservation and a rental car reservation
and then i just kept doing the next
thing which i found out later on is a
form of control you just do the next
thing that they tell you to do
and then before i knew it i was
interviewing in a nondescript building
with an with a person who only told me
their first name
uh for a position with the national
clandestine service so you never really
got a chance to think about it because
there's a small steps along the way and
it kind of just leads you
uh
and you're maybe your personality is
such that
that's an adventure it's an adventure
and it you know because it's one step at
a time you don't necessarily see the
negative consequences of the adventure
you don't think about any of that you're
just stepping on
stepping into the adventure and it's
easy there's no work involved somebody
else is doing all the work telling me
where to be and when it's a lot like
basic training in the military anybody
who's ever been through basic training
will tell you they hated the first few
days and then by the end it was really
comforting because you just did what you
were told they told you when to eat they
made the decision of what to eat then
you just you marched when they told you
to march shine your shoes when they told
you to shine your shoes human beings
love
being told what to do
what about the training process
um
for for for beco becoming a covert cia
agent yeah so
uh so the interview process
is yeah the interview process too was
that how rigorous was that it was it was
very rigorous that was where it became
difficult
everything up to the first interview was
easy but there's three interviews
and some people are lucky enough to have
four or five interviews if something
goes wrong or something goes awry with
the first few interviews
and again this might be dated from what
i went through but uh
but during the interview process is when
they start they do your psychological
evaluations they do your
they do
personality assessments they do skills
assessments they'll start sending you
back to your wherever you're living
with assignments not
not intel assignments but actual like
homework assignments
write an essay about three parts of the
world that you think will be most
impacted in the next three to five years
or you know prioritize the top three
strategic priorities for the united
states and you know put it into 250
words or 2 500 words and whatever else
double-spaced in this font yada yada
like super specific stuff that's kind of
stressful
uh but it's just like going back to
college again so you go through all of
those acts and then you submit this
stuff to some po box that
doesn't have anybody's ever going to
respond to you and then you hope you
just send it into the ether
and you hope that you hope that you sent
it right you hope that you wrote right
well enough you hope that your
assessment was right
whatever else it might be and then
eventually get another phone call that
says hey we received your package you've
been moved to the next level of
interview and now we need you to go to
this other nondescript building and this
other nondescript city and then you
start meeting
you start
sitting in waiting rooms with other
groups of people who are at the same
phase of interview with you
which were some of the coolest
experiences that i remember still
one of my best friends to this day who i
don't get to talk to because he's still
undercover
is a guy i met during those interview
processes and i was like oh we met i saw
what he was wearing he saw what i was
wearing
i was immediately connected and you like
the people there close more like we
immediately judge each other because
we're all untrained right so he looked
at me and he was like
brown dude with crazy hair and i was
wearing dude i was dressed like a total
ass i was dressed in like a a clubbing
shirt yeah i don't know why i thought
it'd be a good idea to go to ci
interview in like a clubbing shirt with
my buttons on button down to here yeah
and he was like yeah you were really
after we got in he was like yeah dude
you were always really cool to talk to
but i was like
there's no way that idiot's getting in
and i remember looking at him being like
dude you were just another white guy in
a black suit yeah they're not looking
for you but here you are yeah so it's
just those kinds of things were so
interesting because we were totally
wrong about what cia was looking for
until you're in you have no idea what
they're looking for um and you're just
uh you're just shooting in the dark did
they have you do like a lie detector
test yes it's called a polygraph
polygraph
how effective just interesting for our
previous discussion how effective are
those polygraphs are really interesting
so one of the things that people don't
understand about polygraphs is that
polygraphs aren't meant to detect a lie
like they're called a lie detector yeah
but they're not actually meant to detect
a lie
they're built to detect variants
from your physiological baseline so
they're essentially meant to identify
sensitivities to certain types of
questions
and then as they identify a sensitivity
to a question it gives the interviewer
an additional piece of information
to direct the next round of questions
so then from there they can kind of see
how sensitive you are to a certain level
of questions and your sensitivity could
be a sign of dishonesty but it could
also be a sign of
vulnerability
so the interrogator themselves the
interviewer themselves they're the ones
that have to make the
the judgment call as to which one it is
which is why you might see multiple in
uh interviewers over the course of
multiple polygraphs
but that's really what they're all about
so i mean outside of they're extremely
uncomfortable like
they're mentally uncomfortable but then
there's also you gotta you sit on a pad
because the pad is supposed to be able
to tell like your body movements but
also like your sphincter
uh contractions or whatever so you're
sitting on this pad you're plugged in
you're strapped in you're tied up and it
takes so much time to get in there and
then they start asking you questions
baseline questions at first and then
other questions from there
and you're just answering the best you
can
and you never know what they're seeing
and you don't know what they're doing
and it's really hard not to get anxious
of that anyways
and they the whole time monitoring the
the readings yeah from like a big
they've got multiple screens and they've
got just it's all information
superiority they have information
superiority you're the idiot looking
away from them or looking sideways of
them
and trying not to move because you're
afraid that if you like have gas or if
you move a little bit it's going to vary
you from your baseline yeah and the
whole time you're worried your heart's
racing and your blood pressure is
increasing which is a variance from
baseline yeah so yeah that means it's
it's an interesting art or your baseline
correct maybe there's some people that
are just chilling the whole time and
that's their baseline right
right but that's what they're doing
they're establishing based i mean i
guess that means the polygraph is uh is
a
is a skill that you develop absolutely
to do it well so when people talk about
beating a lie detector it's not that
they're telling an effective lie that's
not hard it's not hard to tell a lie
to an interviewer
what in the interview doesn't care if
you're being honest or not honest about
a topic what they're looking for is
sensitivity
if they see no sensitivity
that's a big sign for them that's a big
sign that you're probably a pathological
liar
if you show sensitivity to many things
then that's a sign that you're probably
an anxious person and they can still
reset their baseline because they can
tell how your anxiety is increasing
you know in 15 minute increments it's
it's a unique skill i mean a really good
polygrapher is a is immensely valuable
but the uh yeah it's the misnomers the
misconceptions about polygraphs are vast
you also mentioned personality tests
that's really interesting so how how
effective personality tests one for the
hiring process but also for
understanding a human being so
personality is extremely important for
understanding human being and i would
say that there's a thousand different
ways of looking at personality the only
one that i count with any with any
significance is the mbti and the mbti is
what all the leading spy agencies around
the world use as well
well that's kind of interesting to hear
oh yeah there's been criticisms of that
kind of test there have been criticisms
for a long time yeah and you think
there's value absolutely absolutely and
here's there's a few reasons why right
so first mbti makes the claim that your
core personality doesn't change over
time uh and that's how it's that's how
it's calibrated and one of the big
arguments is that people say that your
personality can change over time
now what i in my experience the mbti is
exactly correct you can your core
personality does not change because your
core personality is is defined as your
personality when all resources are
removed
so essentially your emergency mode your
dire conditions that is your core
personality
we can all act a little more extroverted
we can all
you know be a little more empathetic
when we have tons of time and money and
patience
when you strip away all that time money
and patience how empathetic are you how
how much do you like being around other
people how much do you like being alone
do you make judgments or do you do you
analyze information
that's what's so powerful about mbti is
it's talking about what people are like
when you strip away resources and then
because it's so consistent it's also
only four codes it's super easy
to be able to assess a human being
through a dialogue through a series of
conversations to be able to hone in with
high accuracy
what is there for code
four letter code there's only 16 options
and it becomes extremely valuable is it
perfectly precise and does everybody do
it the same i mean those things are the
answers to those are no but is it
operationally useful
in a short period of time that is a
resoundingly powerful yes
yeah i just i only know i think the
first letter it's the introvert and
extroverted right yeah uh
i i i've taken the test before just
like a crude version of the test and
that's the same problem you have with iq
tests yeah there's the right
uh thorough way of doing it and then
there's like fun internet way
and uh
i do you mind sharing what your
uh
personality um my my type index yes i'm
an entp that's an extrovert intuiter
perceiver
uh
thinker ent thinker p perceiver my wife
is an isfj
which is the polar opposite of me e i'm
extroverted she's introverted i'm an
intuiter she's a censor uh
i'm a thinker she's a feeler i'm a
perceiver she's a judger is there good
science on like uh
long-term successful relationships in
terms of the dynamics of that the 16
i wonder if there's good data on this i
don't i don't think there's a lot of
good data in personalities writ large
yeah because there's not a lot of money
to be made in personality testing but i
would say that there's uh that with with
experience
with a good mbti test with a good paid
test a 400 500 question test
once you understand your own code and
then you're you're taught how to assess
the code of others
with those two things kind of combined
because then you have experience in
learning
it's
it becomes very useful and you can have
high confidence in this in the
conclusions that you reach about
people's professions about people's
relationships with family about people's
relationships professionally people's
capabilities to deal with stress
how people will perform
when pushed outside of their comfort
zones
really really powerful useful stuff in
corporate world and in the espionage
world so in terms of compressed
representation of another human being
um
you can't do much better than those four
letters i don't believe you can do much
better in my experience i have not seen
anything better yeah it is kind of
it's uh difficult to realize that there
is a core personality or the degree
that's true it seems to be true
it's even more difficult to realize that
there is a stable
at least the science says so a stable
consistent intelligence
unfortunately
uh you know the g factor that they call
that uh if you do a barrage of iq test
that's going to um
consistently represent that g-factor and
we're all born with that we can't fix it
yeah that defines so much of who we are
it's sad i don't see it as sad because
it's for me
the faster you learn it the faster you
learn what your own
sort of
natural strengths and weaknesses are
the faster you get to stop wasting time
yeah
on things that you're never going to be
good at and you get to double down on
the things that you're already naturally
skilled or interested in so there is a
there's always a silver lining to a
cloud but i know now that i will never
be a ballerina
or a ballerina i know that i'll never be
an artist i'll never be a musician
i'll never be any of those things and
when i was 18 that might have made me
sad but now at 42 i'm like well shit
awesome i can go be something else good
instead of always being bad you're not
going to be a ballerina oh let me know
because i'm not graceful
and you've you've you've learned this
after years of experience yeah exactly
well i don't know if there's an mbti
equivalent for the for grace of movement
i think it's called s sensor
oh yeah because a sensor is someone
who's able to interact with the world
around them through their five senses
very effectively
like if you talk to dancers dancers can
actually feel the grace in all of their
muscles they know what position their
finger is in
i don't have any idea i don't know what
position my feet are in right now i had
to look to make sure i actually feel the
floor right yeah i definitely have
oh that's good to know so i don't you
know i'm not a dancer but i do have that
you're a musician man like well the
music i don't be able to plug a guitar
sure yeah that's true that there is that
physical component but i think
deeper because there's a technical
aspect to that that's just like um
it's less about feel but i do know
jujitsu you know and grappling i've done
all my life
i don't
you know there's some people who are
clumsy and they drop stuff all the time
they run into stuff
i don't i don't first of all i don't
know how that happens but to me i just
have an awareness of stuff like if
there's a spiritual orientation yeah
like
like i know that there's a small object
i have to step over and i have a good
sense of that
it's so it's so interesting yeah you're
just like born with letters my wife is
brilliant and she still walks into doors
yeah i mean she'll walk in a doorway
she'll bang her knee on the same wall
that's been there for the last 50 years
it's it's uh for some reason really
hilarious so it's good
you've been asked i think on
reddit other big secrets that you know
that could land you and our country in
terrible trouble if he came out to the
public and you answered yes i wish i
could forget them so let me ask you just
about
secrecy in general
are these secrets or just other secrets
ones that the public will never know
or will it come out in 10 20 50 years
i guess the the deeper question is what
is the value of secrecy yes transparency
the uh
the standard classification for all
human intelligence operations is is
something called 225x2 25x2 so 50 years
25 years times two years or times two
rounds
so
in essence anything that i've seen
has the first chance of becoming
public domain declassified after 50
years unless there's some congressional
requirement for it to be reviewed and
assessed earlier
so by then you know i'll be 80 something
years old or or potentially dead which
is
either way
that's when it's it can come out uh
according to its typical classification
the
the value of secrets i
i have seen
is that secrets create
space
secrets give opportunity
for
security they give opportunity for
thinking they give space and space is an
incredibly advantageous thing to have if
you know something somebody else doesn't
know even if it's just 15 or 20 minutes
different you can direct you can change
the course of faith so i i find secrets
to be extremely valuable extremely
useful
even
at the place where secrets are being
kept from a large mass
part of what all americans need to
understand is that
one of the
one of the trade-offs to building
a
system of government that allows us to
be
first world and wealthy and secure and
successful one of the trade-offs is that
we have given up a great deal of
personal freedom and one of the personal
freedoms that we give up is the freedom
of knowing
what we want to know
you get to know what the government
tells you you get to know what you need
to know or what you've learned yourself
but you don't get to know secrets
people who do get to know secrets know
them for a reason that's why it's called
a need to know
how difficult is it to maintain secrecy
it's surprisingly difficult as the best
technology changes uh it's also
surprisingly difficult
as as our culture becomes one where
people want notoriety people want to be
the person who breaks the secret
25 years ago 40 years ago that wasn't
the case there was a time in the united
states where if someone gave you a
secret
it was a point of personal honor not to
share the secret yes now we're in a
place where someone tells you a secret
like that could turn into a
twitter post that gets you a bunch of
thumbs up and a bunch of likes or
whatever else an opportunity right so
the value of secrets has changed and now
there's almost a greater value on
exposing secrets than there is on
keeping secrets
that's that makes it difficult to keep
secrets especially when technology is
going in the same direction yeah where
is the line
and by the way i'm one of those old
school people with the secrets i i think
it's a karma thing again back to the
trust
i think in the short term you can
benefit by sharing a secret
but in the long term if people know they
can trust you like the juicy is a secret
if it's a test of sorts
if if they know you can keep that secret
that means like you're somebody that
could be trusted and i believe that like
not just effectiveness in this life but
happiness in this life is is informing a
circle of people you can trust right
we're taught that secrets and lies are
similar
in that they have a limited shelf life
if you treat them like food secrets and
lies have a very limited shelf life
so if you cash in on them
while they're still fresh
you beat them before they spoil you get
to take the advantage take advantage of
it before they spoil however
trust
has no limit to its shelf life
so it's almost like you're trading a
short-term victory
and losing a long-term victory
it's always better to keep the secret
it's always better to let the lie live
because it will eventually come to light
from somebody else not from you because
it already has a limited shelf life but
what you win in exchange for not being
the one that cashed in on the secret is
immense trust
me ask you about
lying and trust and so on so um i don't
believe i've been contacted by or
interacted with the cia the mi6
the fsb massage or any other
intelligence agency
i'm kind of offended
but uh would i know if i was so from
your perspective no you would not know
if you were
for sure you've been on their radar
absolutely you've got a file you've got
a dossier somewhere why would i be on
their radar because you're uh you're
interesting
it's not that it not it's not
necessarily that you are interesting to
someone as a foreign asset or an
intelligence collection source but your
network is extremely interesting it's
networks are important correct if
someone had access to if someone was
able to clone your phone
every time you cross a border you go
through some sort of security if you've
ever been pulled into secondary and
separated from your bag that's exactly
when and how people clone computers they
clone phones
they make whatever photocopies of your
of your old school
planner whatever it might be but
but for sure
you are an intelligence target it just
may be that you're not suitable to be in
a person who reports foreign
intelligence we've got to understand
that all people are potential sources of
valuable information to the national
security infrastructure of our host
country and any country that we visit
someone like you with your public
footprint with your notoriety with your
educational background with your
national identifications
becomes a
viable and valuable target of
information
yeah that's
so
to speak to that
um
you know i take security pretty
seriously but not
to the degree that
you know it runs my life
which i'm very careful about because
it's good i'm glad to hear that
so
the moment you start to think about
germs
right
like you you start to freak out and you
become sort of paralyzed by the stress
of it so you have to balance those two
things um you know
uh if you think about all the things
that could hurt you in this world and
all the risk you can take is um
it can overwhelm your life that said
the cyber world is a weird world because
it's uh it doesn't have the same you
know i know
i know not to cross the street without
looking each way because there's a
physical intuition about it i i'm not
sure
you know i'm a computer science guy so i
have some intuition but it's
the cyber world you it's really hard to
build up an intuition what is safe and
not you know i've seen a lot of people
you know just logging out of your
devices all the time like regularly just
like that physical access step is a lot
of people don't take i can just like
walk in into the offices of a lot of
ceos and it's like why don't
everything's wide open uh for it's for
physical access of those systems which
is kind of incredible for uh somebody
that sounds really shady but it's not
i've written key loggers like things
that record everything you type in the
mouse you move
and like i i did that for
um
during my phd i was recording everything
you do on your device and everything you
do on your computer to unders like
people sign up to the study they
willingly do this to understand behavior
i was trying to use machine learning to
identify who you are based on different
biometric
and behavioral things
which allows me to study human behavior
and to see which is
uniquely identifiable and the goal there
was to remove the need for a password
but the how easy it is to write a thing
that logs everything you type
i was like wait a minute like i can
probably get a lot of people in the
world to run this for me i can then get
all of their passwords
uh i mean you could do
so much
like i can run the entirety of the cia
from
just myself if i was and i imagine
there's a lot of really good hackers
like that out there much better than me
um
so i tried to prevent myself from being
all the different low-hanging fruit
attack vectors in my life
i try to make it difficult
to be that but then i'm also aware that
there's probably people that are like
five steps ahead
you're doing the right thing
what what i
always advocate is the low-hanging fruit
is what keeps you from being a target of
opportunity
because
you're
half-assed hackers your lazy hackers
your unskilled hackers
they're looking for low-hanging fruit
they're looking for the person who gets
the nigeria email about how you could be
getting five million dollars if you just
give me your bank account exactly that's
what they're looking for
the thing that's scary is that if you're
not a target of opportunity if you
become a intentional target
then there's almost nothing you can do
because once you become an intentional
target
then your security apparatus
they they will in they will create a
dedicated customized
uh way vector of attacking your specific
security apparatus and
because security is always after right
there's always there's the there's the
leading advantage and the trailing
advantage
when it comes to attacks the leader
always has the advantage because they
have to create the attack before anybody
else can
create a way to protect against the
attack so the attack always comes first
and that means they always have the
advantage you are always stuck just
leaning on
this is the best security that i know of
meanwhile there's always somebody who
can create a way of attacking the best
security out there and once they win
they have a monopoly they have
all that time until a new defensive
counter measure is deployed
yeah i tend to think
exactly as you said that uh the
long-hanging fruit protects against like
uh yeah crimes of opportunity
and then i assume that people can just
hack in
if they really want uh think about how
much anxiety we would be able to solve
if everybody just accepted that
well there's several things you do first
of all i
to be honest it just makes me it keeps
me honest
not to be a douchebag or like uh
not
yeah to to uh
to assume everything could be public
and you know and so don't trade in
information that could hurt people if it
was made public
so i tried to do that
and the thing i tried to make sure
is i like home alone style try
a booby trap i really would like to know
if i was hacked right and so i try to
assume that i will be hacked
and
detect it yeah uh have a tripwire of
something yeah tripwires through through
everything
uh and not paranoia-wise just like uh
open door but that's that i think that's
probably the future
of life on this earth is you're going
like everybody of interest is going to
be hacked
um that hopefully inspires now this is
outside of company there's uh these are
individuals i mean there's
of course if you're actually operating
like i'm just a who am i i'm just a
scientist person
um
podcasting person so
if i was actually running a company
or
was an integral part of some kind of
military operation
then you have to probably have to have
an entire team that's now doing that
battle
of like being trying to be ahead of like
the best hackers in the world that are
attacking but that that requires a team
that like full time is their focus
yeah and then you still get in trouble
correct yeah so what i've seen as the
norm well what i've seen is the cutting
edge
standard for corporations and the ultra
the ultra wealthy and even uh
intelligence organizations
is that we have tripwires
it's better if you can't prevent from
being hacked
the next best thing is to know as soon
as you get hacked
because then
you can essentially terminate all the
information
if you know it fast enough you can just
destroy the information this is what the
ultra wealthy do they have multiple
phones so as soon as one phone gets
hacked the tripwire goes off the
operating system is totally deleted
along with all data on the phone and a
second phone is turned on with a whole
new separate set of metadata
and now they for them there's no break
in service it's just oh this phone went
black it's got a warning on it that says
it was hacked so trash it because they
don't care about the price of the phone
pick up the next phone and we move on
that's that's the best thing that you
can do essentially outside of trying to
out hack the hackers
uh and then even in your intelligence
and military worlds where the cyber
where cyber warfare is active
the people who are aggressing
are not trying to create aggression that
beats security they're trying to find
aggressive techniques offensive
techniques that have no security built
around them yet because it's too cost
and time intensive to protect against
what you know is coming it's so much
more efficient and cost effective to go
after new vectors
so it just becomes like
it becomes almost a silly game of
of your neighbor gets a guard dog
so you get a bigger guard dog
and then your neighbor gets a fence so
you're just constantly outdoing each
other it's called the the security
paradigm people just they just one up
each other because it's never worth it
to just get to the same level you're
always trying to out to each other yeah
and then maybe like banks have to fight
that fight but not not everybody can
right
yeah no so you're saying i operated at
the state of the art with the trip wires
this is good to know absolutely man and
also just not
not using anybody else's services doing
this doing the everything myself
so that's harder to figure out what the
heck this person is doing because if i'm
using somebody else's service like i did
with qnap
i have a queued up nasa used for cold
storage of unimportant things but at
large
videos and i don't know if you know but
qnap is a company that does nas storage
devices and they got hacked
and everybody that didn't update
as of a week ago from the point of the
zero day hack
everybody got hacked it's several
thousand machines and they
asked um
you can get your data back if you pay
i forget what it was but it was um it's
about a couple thousand dollars
and
the qnap can get all the data back for
their customers if they pay i think two
million dollars wow
but that came from me relying on the
systems of others for security i was i
assumed
this
company would have their security
handled but then those very valuable
lesson to me i now have
uh like layers of security and also
an understanding which data is really
important which is somewhat important
which is not that important and layering
that all together so just so you know
the us government the military woke up
to that exact same thing about two years
ago
it's still very new i mean they were
sourcing
take night vision goggles for example
they were sourcing components and
engineering and blueprints for night
vision goggles from three four five
different subcontractors all over the
country but they never asked themselves
what the security status was of those
self of those subcontractors
so
you know fast forward you know a few
years
and uh and all of a sudden they start
getting faulty components they start
having night vision goggles that don't
work they start having supply chain
issues where they have to change their
their provider
and and the army doesn't know that the
provider is changing
i mean this is a strategy the the idea
of of going through third-party systems
is identifying the vulnerability in the
supply chain that's a that's a
a savvy
uh offensive practice for
for more than just you know cyber
hackers
let me ask you about physical hacking uh
so i'm now
like i'm an introvert so i'm a paranoid
about all social interaction but
um
how much truth is there is kind of a
funny question uh how suspicious should
i be when i'm traveling in ukraine or
different parts of the world when when
an attractive female walks up to me and
shows any kind of attention
is that is that like this kind of james
bond spy movie stuff or is that kind of
stuff used by
intelligence agencies i don't think it's
used it's absolutely used it's called
sexbionage
it's that's the term that we jokingly
call it is espionage
but yeah the the art of attraction
appeal
um
the manifestation of feelings through
sexual manipulation
all of that is
a super powerful tool
the chinese use it extremely well the
russians use it extremely well
in the united states we actively train
our officers not to use it
because in the end it leads to
complications in how you professionally
run a case so we train our officers not
to use it however
you can't control what other people
think so if you're an attractive male or
an attractive female officer and you're
hap you're trying to talk to a
you know an older general who just
happens to be gay or happens to be
straight and is attracted to you of
course they're going to be that much
more willing to talk to an american who
is also attractive
so it's well it's hard to walk that back
in all definitions so it could be
all elements of charisma
that's
so
you know uh attractiveness in the
dynamic sense of the word so it's visual
attractiveness but the the smile the
humor the wit the the flirting all that
kind of stuff that could be used
to uh
correct to the art of conversation
there's also elements of sexuality that
people
underestimate right so physical
sexuality physical attraction is the
most obvious one it's the one that
everybody talks about and thinks about
but then there's also sapiosexuality
which is being sexually attracted to
uh to thoughts to intelligence
and then you've got all the various
varieties of
of
personal preferences some people like
people of a certain color skin or they
like big noses they like small noses
they like big butts they like small
butts they like tall guys they like bald
guys whatever it might be
you can't ever predict
what someone's preference is sexual
arousal preferences are going to be
so then you end up walking into a
situation where then you discover
you know and just imagine imagine being
being an unattractive overweight married
guy
and you're walking into
an asset or a target meeting with like a
middle-aged female who is also not very
attractive and also married but then it
turns out that that person is a
sapiosexual and gets extremely turned on
by intelligent conversation that's
exactly what you're there to do your
exact your mission is to have
intelligent conversation with this
person to find out if they have access
to secrets and by virtue of you carrying
out your mission they become extremely
aroused and attracted to you that is a
very complicated situation it's hard to
know to trust like how do you know your
wife
or how does your wife know that you're
not a double agent from russia
i there's a a large element of
uh of experience and time that goes into
that she's also trained
and i i think my wife and i also think
yeah my wife and i also have the benefit
of of
being recruited
uh young and together where
so over time you can start to figure out
things that are very difficult to
do so you form the baseline you start to
understand the person's very it becomes
very difficult to lie the most difficult
thing in the world is consistency it's
the most difficult thing in the world
some people say that discipline or
self-discipline what they're really
talking about is consistency when you
have someone who performs consistently
over long periods of time under various
levels of stress
you have high high confidence that that
is the person that you can trust you can
trust again
you can trust them to behave within a
certain pattern
you can trust an asshole to be an
asshole
without trusting the asshole to take
care of your kids right so i don't ever
want to mix up the idea of personal
trust
versus trusting the outcome you can
always trust a person to operate within
their pattern of behavior it just takes
time for you to get a consistent
uh to get consistent feedback as to what
that baseline is for them to to form a
good model
predictive model of what their behavior
is going to be like right and you know
what's fascinating is i think
the challenge is building that model
quickly
so technology is one of those tools that
will be able in the future to very
quickly create
a model of behavior because
technology can pull in multiple data
points
in a very short period of time that the
human brain simply can't pull in at the
same period at the same space at the
same speed well that's actually what i
did my phd on that's what i did at
google is forming a good representation
unique representation across the entire
world based on the behavior of the
person the the specific task there is so
that you
don't have to type in the password the
idea was to replace the password but it
also allows you to actually study human
behavior and to think all right what is
the unique representation of a person
how
um
because we have very specific patterns
and a lot of humans are very similar in
those patterns
what are the unique identifiers within
those patterns of behavior
and that's i think that's from a
psychology perspective a super
fascinating question and from a machine
learning perspective it's something that
you can as the systems get better and
better and better and as we get more and
more digital data about each individual
you start to get
you start to be able to do that kind of
thing effectively and it's i mean when i
think of the fact that you could create
a dossier on somebody in a matter of 24
or 48 hours if you could wire
them for two days
right internet of things style you put
it in their underwear or whatever right
some some chip that just reads
everything
how heavy are they walking how much time
do they sleep how many times they open
the refrigerator when they log into
their computer how do they do it like
which hand do they use when they log in
yeah what what's their most common swipe
what's their most visited website you
could
collect an enormous amount of normative
data in a short period of time where
otherwise we're stuck
the way that we do it now
once or twice a week we go out for a
coffee for two hours
and two hours at a time over the course
of six eight weeks 12 weeks you're
coming up with a 50 assessment on how
you think this person is going to behave
just that time savings is immense
something you've also spoken about is
private intelligence and the the power
and the
the reach and the scale and the
importance of private intelligence
versus government intelligence can you
elaborate on the role of what is private
intelligence and what's the role of
private intelligence
in the scope of all the intelligence
that is gathered
and used in the united states yeah
absolutely it's a it's something that so
few people know about and it became a
more mainstream topic with the trump
administration
because trump made it no secret that he
was going to hire private intelligence
organizations to run his intelligence
operations and fund them so that really
brought it to the mainstream but going
all the way back to 911 going all the
way back to 2001
when
when the 9 11 attacks happened
there was a commission
that was formed
to
determine
the
reasons that 9 11 happened and among the
lists that they determined of course
they found out that the intelligence
community wasn't coordinating well with
each other there were fife dumbs and
there was infighting and there wasn't
good intel sharing
but more than that they identified that
we were operating uh
at cold war levels even though we were
living in a time when terrorism was the
new biggest threat to national security
so the big recommendation coming out of
the 911 commission was that the
intelligence organizations the
intelligence community significantly
increased the presence of intelligence
operators
overseas and in terms of analytical
capacity here in the united states
when they made that decision it
completely destroyed it totally was
incongruent
with the existing hiring process because
the existing hiring process for cia or
nsa is a six to nine month process
the only way they could plus up their
sizes fast enough
was to bypass their own hiring and
instead go direct to private
organizations
so
naturally the government contracted with
the companies that they already had
secure contracts with boeing raytheon
northrop grumman khaki
you know you name it and then over time
from 2001 to now or i guess that started
really in 2004 when they started
significantly increasing their private
the presence of private intelligence
officers
uh from there from then until now it's
become a budgetary thing it's become
it's become a continuity of operations
thing and now
the reason northern virginia has become
one of the wealthiest zip codes in
america is because of the incredible
concentration of private intelligence
that is supporting cia nsa dia fbi and
all the slew of ic partners
by the way does volunteer play a role in
this palantir is one of those
organizations that
that was trying to pitch their product
to an intelligence community because
they have it's a fantastic product on
paper
um but the challenge was
the proprietary
services the proprietary systems that we
current that we used in cia prior to
palantir
continued to outperform palantir
so
just like any other business decision
if you've got homegrown systems that
outperform external systems and it's not
worth it to share the internal
information
got it so
what
uh the close connection between peter
thiel
and donald trump
did that have a role to play in the
um
in donald trump's leveraging of private
intelligence or is that completely
disjoint i think that they're related
but only
circumstantially because remember donald
trump wasn't really investing in cia
so the last thing he wanted to do
was spend
his his network wasta wasta is a term
that we call influence it's an arabic
term for influence
trump didn't want to use his wasta
putting teal into cia
only to lose teal's contract as soon as
trump lost office so instead it was more
valuable to put peter thiel's tool to
use in private intelligence and then of
course i think he nominated peter thiel
to be his
secretary of defense secretary of state
at some point in time he tried to
present like presidentially appoint
peter thiel into a position of of uh
government authority
what do you think of figures like um
like peter thiel
do they wield and i'm sure there's
figures of similar
scale and reach and power in private
intelligence what do you think about
their
role in power
in this whole like without public
accountability yeah that you would think
directors of cia perhaps have so this is
where
private intelligence has both a strength
and a weakness
the ultimate law overriding that that's
overseeing private intelligence is not
is not um
government legislation
it's the law of economics
if they produce a superior product then
they will have us a buyer if they do not
produce a superior product they will not
have a buyer
and that's a very simple business
principle
whereas in
the current
national security infrastructure you can
create a crap product
but the taxpayer dollars are always
going to be spent
so it's really thrown things for a loop
especially during the trump
administration and this is one of the
things that i will always say i liked
about the trump administration
it's shown it put a big blazing bright
light on all of the flaws within our
system
one of those flaws being
this
executive power over the intelligence
organizations and the lack of the
of accountability for intelligence
organizations to produce a superior
product
when
that light got shown down
that's when you also saw trump start to
go after if you remember there was a
period where he was taking security
clearances away from retiring officers
that became a big
hot issue that became something that
people were very opposed to
when they didn't realize that that that
process of taking security clearances
away
that incentivized seasoned senior
officers to stay in service
because with private intelligence paying
a premium during the trump
administration because trump was paying
a premium to the private intelligence
world
when
when senior officers found that it was
more profitable to retire early
keep their clearance and go work for
raytheon trump saw that as bypassing
service to the american people you've
made a career in cia you've made a
career in nsa you should stay there if
you leave you lose your clearance
because you no longer have a need to
know
he upset the apple cart with that
and unfortunately the narrative that
came out in many ways was a negative
narrative against trump when in fact
he was
actually doing quite a service to the
american people trying to
take take away the incentive
of senior officials leaving their
service in order to just profits here in
the private intelligent world so in that
way he was kind of supporting the
the cia
in in
making sure that competent people
and experienced people stay and say are
incentivized to stay there correct i
think that there was there was
definitely
he understood incentives i mean donald
trump understands incentives
so he was in trying to incentivize them
to stay but i think he was also
playing a safety card because he didn't
want
former cia officials who were not
listening to him to then move into
private intel organizations that he may
be hiring only to then have them
undermine him from both sides of the of
the coin so there was a little bit of
of offensive uh calculation in there as
well but do the dynamics and the
incentives of economics that you refer
to that the private intelligence
operates under
is that more or less ethical than the
forces
that uh maybe government agencies
operate under like what's your intuition
is capitalism
lead
so you mentioned at least to
maximizations of efficiency and
performance but is that correlated with
ethical behavior
when we're talking about
such hairy activities like collection of
intelligence the question of ethics is a
great question so let me let me start
this whole thing out by saying
cia hires people
on a on a spectrum
of our ability to be morally flexible
ethically flexible
all people at their heart are ethically
flexible
i would never punch somebody in the face
right some people out there would say i
would never hurt another human being but
as soon as a human being posed a direct
threat to their daughter or their son or
their mother now all of a sudden they're
going to change their ethical stance
in self-defense
right but at the end of the day it's
still hurting another hurting another
person
so what cia looks for is people who are
able to swing across that that spectrum
for lesser offenses right more
flexibility
i do not believe that private
intelligence
and the laws of economics lend
themselves to increased ethics or
increased ethical behavior
in the short term
but what ends up happening is that in
the long term
in order to scale economic benefits
you are forced to
act within
norms of your customer base
so as the norms of that customer base
dictate certain requirements
the company has to adapt to those
requirements in order to continue to
scale
so if if a company tries to ostracize
lgbtq or if they try to ostracize
men or ostracize women they're limiting
their ability to grow economically
they have to adapt to whatever is the
prevailing
ethical requirement of their customer
base
that's such an interesting question
because you you look at big pharma and
pharmaceutical companies
and
they have a quite a poor reputation in
the public eye
and some of it
maybe much of it is deserved at least
historically speaking
and so you start to wonder well can
intelligence agencies
use some of the same technique to
manipulate the public
like what they believe about those
agencies
in order to maximize profit as well sort
of finding shortcuts or unethical
paths
that allow you to not be ultimately
responsible to the customer absolutely
and i would go a step further to say
that
the covert nature of intelligence
operations
is really attractive
when it comes to the private sector
because now they have all the same money
with none of the oversights and all they
have to do is deliver so
without the oversight
what's holding you back
and in in a lot of for anybody who's
ever run a business anybody's ever
started a startup or tried to make
something succeed we all know that there
come those times where you have to skirt
the boundaries of
proprietary propriety or
or morality or commitments or promises
to other people because at the end of
the day
if your business fails it's on you
so if you promise to deliver something
to a client you've got to deliver it to
the client even if that means you stay
up late or if you lie on your taxes
whatever it might be there's there's a
certain level of do or die
yeah i personally have a sort of
optimistic view that ultimately the best
way
is to stay within ethical balance kind
of like what you suggested if you want
to be a company that's extremely
successful
is uh win with competence not with
cheating because cheating won't
i believe win in the long term
but uh
in terms of
being publicly responsible to your
decisions i mean i've already been
supposed to talk to peter thiel twice on
this podcast and it's just been
complicated
if i were to put myself into his shoes
why
do podcasts the the risk is too high to
be a public person at all
and so i totally understand that at the
same time
i think if you're doing things by the
book
and you're
the best
in the world at your job
um then you have nothing to worry about
and you can advertise that and you
recruit you help recruit i mean that's
that's the work of capitalism is you
want to advertise that
um this is the place where the best
people in the world at this thing work
true i think that your
point of view is accurate i would also
say that
there
the complexities of what makes somebody
make a decision
can only really be
properly calculated with a baseline so
because there is no baseline that you or
i have on peter thiel it's difficult to
really ascertain
why he does or doesn't accept invites or
why he does or doesn't appear well let
me ask your opinion on
the nsa
and then maybe you could mention about
bulk connection
collection in general in the cia but you
know let's let's look at some history
with nsa and snowden what's your opinion
on the
mass surveillance
that is um reported to have been
conducted by the
nsa
we talked about ethics
are you troubled by the
from a public perception
the
unethical nature of mass surveillance of
especially american citizens
this is a topic that i never get tired
of talking about but it's very rare that
anyone ever really agrees with me
just so you know
so i see where you're well what i think
there's a nuanced thing here maybe we'll
find some agreement the truth is that
the
american experience after 9 11
is nothing like the american experience
now so all the terminology all the all
this talk about
privacy and privacy laws and mass
surveillance and all this other stuff it
was a completely different time then and
that's not to say it was an excuse
because to this day i will still say
mass
mass collection bulk collection of data
that allows for an expedient
identification of a threat to national
security
benefits all of us
but people don't understand
what they want like people don't
understand what the value of their own
privacy is
first of all the fact that people think
they have personal privacy is laughable
you have no privacy the cell phone that
you carry in your pocket you're giving
permission to those apps constantly
you're giving commercial organizations
what you and i have already said are
less tied to ethical responsibility
you're giving them permission to collect
enormous amounts of private data from
you all the time and you know what
happens if at t or verizon sees some
some nefarious activity on your account
they do nothing they might send a note
to fbi because they have to according to
some checklist
but when nsa was collecting intelligence
on metadata from around the united
states they were very specifically
looking for terrorist threats that would
harm american lives
i don't man nsa can clone my phone i
will give them my children's phone i
will give them the passwords to every
one of my accounts if it means that
there's a likelihood that my family will
be safer from a nefarious actor who's
intent on hurting us
nsa doesn't care about your affair nsa
doesn't care if you're cheating on your
taxes nsa doesn't care if you're if you
talk shit about your boss or if you hate
the u.s president nobody cares about
that
your intelligence community is there to
find
threats to national security that's what
they're there to do
what snowden did
when he outed that whole program
the fact that the court the justice
system the civilian justice system went
back and essentially overruled
the ruling of the intelligence courts
before them
just goes to show
how
the general mass community really
shouldn't have a say in what happens in
the intelligence community they really
shouldn't you have
politicians and you have the you have
the opportunity to elect people to a
position and then you trust them that's
what a representative republic is
you vote the people in you trust them to
work on your behalf they make decisions
without running them by you
they make decisions that that that they
believe are in the best interest of
their constituency and that's how our
form of democracy works
it worked we were safer
now that we don't have that information
and now that there's this giant looming
question of whether or not nsa is there
to serve people or is collecting mass
surveillance against all american people
that's not really a true accurate
representation of what they were ever
doing they were looking for the needle
in a haystack of the tre of the series
of transactions in metadata that was
going to lead to american deaths we are
now less secure because they can't do
that and that bothers me
so you said a few really interesting
things there so because you are kind of
an insider war for time an insider
meaning you were able to build up an
intuition about
the the good the bad and the ugly of
these institutions
uh specifically the good a lot of people
don't have a good sense of the good they
know the bad and the ugly
or can infer the bad and the ugly you
mentioned that
the one little
key little thing there at the end
saying the nsa doesn't care
about whether you hate the president or
not
now that's what people really worry
about
is
they they're not sure they can trust the
government to not
uh go into full dictatorial mode
and and uh based on your political
preference your oppositions your
basically one of the essential powers
uh
uh the freedom of speech in the united
states is ability to criticize your
government exactly and that
they they worry while
can't the government get a hold of the
nsa and start to ask the basic question
well
can you give me a list of people that
are criticizing the government think
about so let's just walk through that
exact example right because this is
it's a preponderance it's a it's a
preponderance fear it's a ridiculous
fear because of
you would have to tap on multiple
elements of government for anything to
happen so for example
let's just say that somebody goes to the
nsa and says hey can you give us a
readout on all the people who are
tweeting terrible things about the
president okay cool here's your 100
million people whatever it is right
here's all the people saying negative
things about the government
so now they have a list
what do they do next well let's just
make it simple they stay with nsa and
they say surveil them even more tap
their phones tap their computers i want
to know even more so then they get this
preponderance of evidence
what do you do with evidence
you take it to a court
well guess what no court is going to
support
anything that goes against
the freedom of speech
so the court is not going to support
what the executive is asking them to do
even before you take somebody to court
you have to involve law enforcement
essentially you have to send some sort
of police force to go apprehend the
individual who's in question
well guess what doesn't meet criteria
for any police force anywhere in the
united states arresting people
who have
who say negative things about the
president now if somebody poses a threat
to the life
of a public figure or the threat to life
of a politician that's a completely
different case which means the standards
of evidence are much higher for them to
arrest that person so unless you create
a secret police force
then your actual public police force is
never going to take action so all these
people who are afraid of this this exact
situation that you're outlining they
need the creation of a secret police
force the creation of a secret court
that operates outside the judicial
system the creation of a secret
intelligence service that operates
outside of foreign intelligence
collection
all so that a handful of people who
don't like the president
get what whisked away assassinated put
in prison who knows what
think about the resources that would be
the amount of money and time and how
hard would it be to keep that secret to
have all of those things in motion
the reason it worked in in russia and
soviet germany or russia and communist
germany was because everybody knew there
was a secret police everybody knew that
like that there was a threat to work to
speaking out against the government it's
completely different here well so
there's a lot to say so one is yes if i
was a dictator
and i wanted to and just looking at
history
let me let me take myself out of it but
i think one of the more effective ways
is you don't need the surveillance you
can pick out a random person and and
in a public display semi-public display
you know basically put them in jail for
opposing the government whether they
oppose it or not and the fear
that sends a message to a lot of people
that's exactly what you see happening in
china
that's what you just light out it's
genius and that is the that is the
standard you don't need the surveillance
for that yep
but that said if you did do the
surveillance
uh so that's the support the sort of the
incentives aren't aligned it seems like
a lot of work to do for the thing you
could do without the surveillance right
but
you know
yes the courts wouldn't uh if if you
were to be able to get a list of people
which i think that part you could do
correct uh and that opposed the
government you could do that on like
just like you said on twitter publicly
you could make a list
and
with that you can start to if especially
if you have a lot of data on those
people find ways in which they did
violate the law
not because they oppose the government
but because in some other way the
parking tickets or uh didn't pay the
taxes that's probably a common one or
like screwed up something about the
taxes
i just happen to know russia and ukraine
they they're very good at this kind of
stuff that knowing good how the citizens
screwed everything up because especially
in those countries everybody's breaking
the law
because in a corrupt nation you have to
bend the law to operate
like the number of people that pay taxes
fully in those nations is just very low
if not zero
and so uh
they then use that breaking of the law
to come up with an excuse to actually
put you in jail based on that
you know so it's possible to imagine but
yes i think
i think that's the ugly part of
surveillance but i do think just like
you said the incentives aren't correct
like you really
don't need to get all of the secret
police and all these kinds of
organizations working if you do have
a charismatic powerful leader that built
up a network that's able to control a
lot of organizations to to a level of
authoritarianism
in a government they're just able to do
the usual thing one have propaganda
machine to tell narratives
to pick out you know uh
people that they can put in jail for
opposing the state
and maybe loud members of the press
start silencing the press there's
there's like a there's a playbook to
this thing right it doesn't require the
surveillance
the surveillance
you know what is useful for the
surveillance is the thing you mentioned
in china which is
encourage
everybody
in the citizenry to watch each other to
say there's enemies of the state
everywhere
and then you start having children
reporting on their parents and that kind
of stuff again
don't need a surveillance date for that
now the good of a surveillance
system if it's
operating within ethical bounds is that
yes it could protect the populace so
you're saying like the good
given on your understanding of these
institutions
the good outweighs the bad
absolutely so let me give you just a
practical example so
people don't realize this but there's
multiple surveillance states that are
out there there are surveillance states
that are close allies with the united
states
one of those surveillance states is is
the united arab emirates the uae
now i lived in the uae
from 2019 to 2020
came back on a repatriation flight after
covet broke out
and but we were there for a full year we
were we were residents we had ids we had
everything now when you get your
national id in the emirates
you get a chip
and that chip connects you to everything
it connects you to cameras it connects
you to your
license plate on your car to your
passport to your credit card everything
everything is intertwined everything is
interlinked
when you drive there are no police there
are no police on the roads every
50 to 100 meters you cross a camera that
reads your license plate measures your
speed and if you're breaking the speed
limit it just immediately charges your
credit card because it's tied it's all
tied together totally surveillance that
technology was invented by the israelis
who use it in israel
when i was in abu dhabi and i was
rear-ended at high speed
by what turned out to be an emirati
official a senior ranking official of
one of the emirates
it was caught on camera
his id was registered my id was
registered everything was tied back to
our ids the proof and the evidence was
crystal clear
even still he was emirati i was not so
when i went to the police station to
file the complaint
it was something that nobody was
comfortable with because generally
speaking emiratis don't
don't accept legal claims against their
own from foreigners but the difference
was that i was an american and i was
there on a contract supporting the
emirati government so i had these
different variances right
long story short in the end
the surveillance state is what made sure
that justice was played
because the proof was
was incontrovertible
there was so much evidence collected
because of the surveillance nature of
their state now why do they have a
surveillance state it's not for people
like me
it's because they're constantly afraid
of extreme extremist terrorist activity
happening inside abu dhabi or inside the
uae because they're under constant
threat from islam and there are from
from extremists and they're under
constant threat from iran so that's what
drives
the people to want a police state to
want a surveillance state for them
their survival is paramount and they
need the surveillance to have that
survival for us we haven't tasted that
level of desperation and fear
yet or hopefully never but that's what
makes us feel like there's something
wrong with surveillance
surveillance is all about the purpose
it's all about the intent
well and like like you said companies do
a significant amount of surveillance to
provide us with services that we uh take
for granted for example just um one of
the things
to give props to the digital efforts of
the zielenski administration in ukraine
i don't know if you're aware but they
they have this digital transformation
efforts where
you can put like there's an
it's uh
it's laughable to say in the united
states but they actually did a really
good job of having a government app
that has your passport on it it's all
the digital information you can get a
doctor it's like everything that you
would think america would be doing
uh you know like license like all that
kind of stuff it's in an app you could
pay this payment to each other
and that's all coming i mean there's
probably contractors somehow connected
to the whole thing but that's like under
the flag of government and so that's an
incredible technology and i didn't i
guess hear anybody talk about
surveillance in that context even though
it is but they all love it and it's
super easy and they frankly already it's
so easy and convenient they've already
taken for granted that of course this is
what you do of course your passport is
on your phone yeah for everybody to have
yeah housed on a server that you have no
idea where it's at that can be hacked at
any time by a third party
they don't ask these kinds of questions
because it's so convenient as we do for
uh
for
google
facebook twitter
uh apple microsoft um products we use
security and convenience are on two
opposite sides of another spectrum yeah
the more convenient something is the
less secure and the more secure
something is the less convenient
and that's a that's a battle that we're
always
we're always working with as individuals
and then we're trying to outsource that
battle to our politicians and our
politicians are frankly just more
interested in being politicians
yeah that said i mean people are really
worried about
giving any one institution
a large amount of power
especially when it's a federal
government institution
um given some history
first of all just history of the
corruption
of power corrupting individuals
and institutions
and
second of all
myth or reality
of certain institutions like the cia
misbehaving
well let me actually ask you about the
edward snowden
so you outside of the
utility that you're arguing for of the
nsa surveillance program
do you think edward snowden is a
criminal
or a hero
in terms in the eyes of the law
he's a criminal
he
he broke the law he broke the confidence
he made us he was under security
obligation
and then when he ran away he ran away to
all of the worst villains in the world
from the u.s perspective to basically
seek
protection
that's
that how you act in the face of
accusation
is in in essence part of the case that
you build for yourself
so running away to china russia cuba
there was a latin ecuadore i think
that just paints a very negative picture
that does not suggest that you were
doing anything that was ethical and
upright and in favor of the american
people if you're going to run to
american enemies to support yourself
so for sure in the eyes of law he's a
criminal in the eyes of
a group of people
who are largely ignorant to what they
lost
to them he's a hero
to me he's just kind of a sad case
i personally look at snowden as
a sad
unfortunate case his life is ruined
his family name is tarnished
he's
forever going to be a desperate
pawn
and that's all because of the decisions
that he made
and the order that he made them i'm not
sure his name is tarnished i think
the case you're making is a difficult
case to make
and so i think his name represents
fighting
one man
uh it's like tiananmen square standing
before the tank
is like one man uh fighting the the
government
and i think that there is some aspect to
which
taking that side case aside
that is the american
spirit
which is
hold the powerful accountable
so whenever there's somebody in power
one individual can
change
um
can can uh
one man can make a difference it can
make a difference
yeah of you well i mean
that's the american individualism and so
he represents that and i think there's a
huge skepticism
against large federal institutions
and i think if you look at the long arc
of history
that actually is a forcing function for
the institutions to behave their best
so
basically hold them accountable
if
what's nice about this is that we can
agree to disagree and history will be
the one that decides but but once
like there's a reason that edward
snowden needs to do something
new every 16 or 18 months to remain
relevant
right
because if he didn't he would just be
forgotten
because he was not a maverick who
changed history for the better he was a
man who broke a law and now he's on the
run
and to some people he is a hero
to other people he is a criminal but to
the vast majority he's just a blip on a
radar of their everyday life that really
makes no difference to them at all so
actually let's linger on that so just to
clarify do you think
are you making the difficult case that
the nsa mass surveillance program
was one ethical and two made a better
world for americans i am i am making the
case
that at the time it was exactly what we
needed
to feel safe in our own homes but what
about to be safe actually be safe this
is you so this is what's difficult
because any proof
that was that they collected
that actually prevented an attack from
happening is proof we'll never know
about this is the
the really unfortunate side of
intelligence operations and i've been at
the front end of this
you work your ass off you take personal
risk you make personal sacrifice to make
sure that something terrible doesn't
happen
nobody knows that that ever happens does
that have to be that way is does it is
does it have to remain secret every time
the nsa or the cia saves
saves the lives of americans it does for
two reasons it has to be secret first
the mythos
the same thing we were talking about
with with general petraeus
you can't brag about your victories
if you want to let the myth
shape itself
you can't do that the second thing is
it's once something is
once a victory is claimed
the danger comes from letting your enemy
know that you claimed the victory
because they can reverse engineer and
they can start to change how they did
things if a terrorist act if a terrorist
cell tries to execute an operation the
operation fails
from their point of view they don't know
why it failed they just know that it
failed but then if the u.s or if the
american government comes in and says we
took apart this
this amazing attack now they have more
information right the whole power of
secrets like we talked about before the
power of secrets isn't knowing that not
everybody has them there's only a shelf
life
so take advantage of the shell the shelf
life you get space so you got to keep it
a secret there is no tactical advantage
from sharing a secret
unless
you are specifically trying to achieve a
certain tactical advantage from sharing
that secret which is what we've seen so
much of with us intel sharing with
ukraine there's a tactical advantage
from sharing a secret about russian
military movements or weaknesses in
tanks or you know supply chain
challenges whatever it might be well let
me argue that there might be an
advantage to
share information with the american
public when
a terrorist attack
or
is averted or the lives of americans are
saved because what that does
is make every american think that
they're not that safe
there is no tactical advantage there
you think so absolutely
if if
if the
austin pd
started telling you every day about the
these crazy crimes that they prevented
would that make you feel more safe it
would make you feel like they're doing
their job is that obvious do you make us
feel less safe because if we see
confidence
that there is uh
extremely competent defenders
of this territory of these people
wouldn't that make us feel more safer no
the human human nature is not to assign
competence so
uh empirically humans
overvalue
losses and undervalue gains that's
something that we've seen from finance
to betting and beyond
if the austin police department starts
telling you about all these heinous
crimes that they
that were avoided because of their hard
work
the way that your brain is actually
going to process that information is you
are going to say
if this is all the stuff that they've
stopped
how bad
must this place be
how much more haven't they stopped i i
take your point it's a powerful
psychological point but i
looking at the other picture of it
uh looking at the police force looking
at the cia the nsa
those people and now with the with the
police they're seeing
there's such a negative feeling amongst
americans towards these institutions
who the hell wants to work for the cia
now and the police force like that's
you're going to be
criticized
like that's a i mean that's really bad
for the cia it's terrible like as
opposed to being seen as a hero like for
example currently
uh soldiers are for the most part seen
as heroes that are protecting this
nation
that's not the case for the cia
soldiers weren't seen as heroes in the
vietnam war
right you've got to remember that when
you
so first of all public service
is a sacrifice yeah we oftentimes forget
that we start to think oh government
jobs are cushy and they're easy and it
must be so easy to be the president
because then you're basically a
celebrity overnight
public service is
a sacrifice it's a grind
for all of the soldiers
the soldiers the the submariners the
missileers the
police officers intelligence specialists
they all know what it's like to give
things up
to serve a public that can turn its
opinion
at any given time
and history is what defines it the more
important thing is to understand that if
you want a true open and fair democracy
you cannot control a narrative
and starting to share all of your
victories or starting to share your
biggest victories with the intent of
shaping public opinion to be supportive
of the police force or supportive of cia
or supportive of
you name it is shaping a narrative that
is intentional operate operational use
of influence
to drive public opinion
that is something nobody wants to get
into it is much more professional to be
a silent sentinel a silent servant
humbly carrying the burden of public
service in the united states where we
are a fair and open democracy
why
why not celebrate
uh the killing of bin laden we did the
search discovery in the capture and the
killing of bin laden wasn't that
actually the details of that how many
how much of the details of that how he
was discovered
were made public i think some of it was
made public enough why not do that
doesn't that make heroes out of the
people that are
servants or do you do this
do people who serve to do service for
this nation do they always have to
operate in a thankless
manner in the shadows
that's i think that's a very good
question
the the folks
who i left behind when i left cia who
continue to serve
as faceless
nameless
heroes every day
i am grateful to them
the truth is that if you
if they were motivated by something else
they wouldn't be as good as they are at
doing what they do
and
i i see your point about
shouldn't we be celebrating our
victories
but when celebrating our victories
runs the risk of informing our
our
enemies how we operate giving away our
informational advantage giving away our
tactical battlefield advantage and
running the risk of shaping a narrative
intentionally among our own american
people
now all of a sudden we're turning into
exactly the thing that the american
people trust us not to become
yeah but then you operate in the secrecy
and then there's there's uh
corrupt and douchebag people everywhere
so when they
even inside the cia and criminals inside
the cia there's criminals in all
organizations in all walks of life human
nature is such that this is always the
case
then it breeds conspiracy theories it
does
and sometimes those conspiracy theories
turn out to be true but most times they
don't that's just part of the risk of
being a myth
can you speak to some of the myths so mk
ultra
so not a myth not a myth so this is a
fascinating human experimentation
program
undertaken by the cia to develop
procedures for using drugs like lsd to
interrogate people
through
let's say psychological manipulation and
maybe even torture
the scale of the program is perhaps not
known
uh how do you make sense that this
program existed again you've got to look
through the lens of time you've got to
look at where we were historically at
that time there was the peak of the cold
war
our enemies were doing the same kind of
experimentation it was essentially
another space race what if they broke
through a new
weapon technology faster than we did
what would that mean for the safety and
security of of the american people
so
right decision or wrong decision it was
guided by
and informed by national security
priorities
so from this program that was designed
to
use drugs to drive interrogation and
torture people was born something very
productive
operation stargate
which was a chance to use remote viewing
and metaphysics to try to collect
intelligence now even though in the end
the outcome of mkultra and the outcome
of stargate were mixed nobody really
knows if they did or didn't do what they
were supposed to do
we still know that to this day
there's still a demand
in the us government and ncia for people
who have sensitivities to
ethereal energies
oh by the way is there any proof that
that kind of stuff works or just
it just shows
it shows that there's interest it shows
that there's openness to consider those
kinds of things but is there any
evidence that that kind of stuff works
if there's evidence i haven't seen it
yeah
speaking
from a science-based point of view only
if energy and matter
can always be exchanged
then a person who can understand and
and become sensitive to energy is a
person who could
become sensitive to what does become
matter
yeah i mean
the basics of the physics might be there
but a lot of people probably are
skeptical i'm skeptical too but i'm just
like you should be open-minded i mean
that's that's that's actually you know
that's what science is about is remain
open-minded even for the things that are
long shots because those are the things
that actually define scientific
revolutions
what about operation northwoods
it was a proposed 1962 false flag
operation by the dod
and
the cia to be carried out by the cia to
commit acts of terrorism on americans
and blame them on cuba
so jfk the president rejected the
proposal
what do you make that this was on the
table operation northwoods so it's
interesting uh first i'm glad that jfk
rejected it that's uh that's a good sign
so
we have to understand that good ideas
are oftentimes born from bad ideas
i had a really good friend of mine who
actually went on to become a pastor
and he used to say all the time that he
wanted all the bad ideas on the table
like give me all your bad ideas every
time we had any kind of conversation and
i i was always one of those people who's
like isn't a bad idea just a waste of
time
and he was like no because the best
ideas oftentimes come from bad ideas so
again cuban missile crisis uh
mass hysteria in the united states about
nuclear war from cuba missiles blowing
up american cities faster than we could
even see them coming it makes sense to
me that a president would go to
especially the part of cia which is the
special activities division it makes
perfect sense to me that the president
would go to a division called special
activities whose job it is to create
you know
crazy ideas that have presidential uh
approval but nobody knows they exist
so it makes sense that he would
challenge a group like that to come up
with any wacky idea right come up with
anything just let's start with something
because we can't have we can't bring
nothing to the table we have to do
something about this cuban issue and
then that's how an operation like that
could reasonably be born not because
anybody wants to do it but because they
were tasked by the president to come up
with five ideas
and it was one of the ideas
that still happens to this day this the
president will still come in but will
basically send out a notice to his
covert action arm and he will say
i need this
and i need it on wednesday and people
have to come back with options for the
thing he asked for
a finding he will issue a presidential
finding and then his covert action arms
have to come back and say here's how we
would do this and hide the hands of the
americans
how gangster was it of jfk to reject it
though this baller right
that's like that is the that is a mic
drop right there nope not doing that so
yep doing that
you know a thing
that crosses an ethical line even in it
in a time where the human
the entirety of human civilization hangs
in a balance still forfeit that power
that's um that's a beautiful thing about
the american experiment that's a few
times throughout the history that's has
happened including with our first
president george washington
uh well let me ask about jfk
[Laughter]
25 times two
and they still keep that stuff
classified
so
do you think
the cia had a hand in the assassination
of jfk
i cannot imagine
in any reasonable point of view that the
organization of cia had anything to do
with the assassination of jfk so it's
not a possible to infiltrate the cia
a small part of the city in order to
attain political or criminal
uh gains
i think financial yeah absolutely it's
possible to infiltrate cia there's a
long history of
of foreign intelligence services
infiltrating cia from aldrich ames to
jerry lee recently with china
so we know cia can be infiltrated
even if they are infiltrated and even if
that interlocutor
executes on
their own agenda or their the agenda as
directed by their foreign adversary
their foreign handler
that's different than organizational
support for an event
so i do
think it's possible they could have been
infiltrated at the time especially it
was a massive
a major priority for the cubans and the
russians to infiltrate some aspect of of
u.s intelligence multiple
moles were caught in the years following
so it's it's not surprising that there
would be a priority for that but to say
that the organization of cia was somehow
in cahoots
with to independently assassinate their
own executive
that's a significant stretch i've seen
no evidence to support that and it goes
contrary to everything i learned from my
time at cia
well let me ask you do you think say
played a part in enabling
drug cartels and drug trafficking which
is another big kind of
um
shadow that hangs over the cia at the
beginning of the drug war i would
imagine the answer is yes
we cia has its own counter-narcotics
division
a division that's dedicated to fighting
and preventing narcotics from coming
into the united states
so when you when you paint a picture for
me like do you think the cia was
complicit in
in
helping drug trafficking or drug use
when i say yes my exception is i don't
think they did that for americans inside
the united states
if the cia can basically set it up so
that two different drug cartels shoot
each other
by
assisting in the transaction of
of
a sale to a third country
and then leaking that that sale happened
to a competing cartel that's just
letting cartels do what they do that's
them doing the dirty work for us so
especially at the beginning of the drug
war i think there was tons of space lots
of room for cia to get involved in the
economics of drugs
and then let the inevitable happen and
that was way more efficient way more
productive than
us trying to send our own troops in to
kill a bunch of cartel warlords so that
makes a ton of sense to me it just seems
efficient it seems very practical i do
not believe that cia would like i don't
think all the accusations out there
about how they would
buy drugs and sell drugs and somehow
make money on the side from it that's
not how it works so do you think there's
a
on that point a connection between barry
seal
the great governor and then president
bill clinton oliver north and vice
president former cia director george h.w
bush and the little town with a little
airport called mina arkansas
so i am out of my element now this is
this is one i haven't heard many details
about okay
your your senses any of the
drug trafficking
has to do with
criminal operations outside the united
states and the cia just leveraging that
to
achieve its ends but nothing to do with
american citizens and american
politicians uh with american citizens
again speaking organizationally so that
that would be my sense yes
let me ask you about uh so back to
operation northwoods because it's such a
powerful
tool
sadly powerful tool used by dictators
throughout history
the false flag operation
um
so i think there's
and you said
the terrorist attacks in 911 were
changed a lot
for us for for the for the united states
for americans
it changed the way we see the world who
woke us up to the harshness of the world
i think
there's uh to my eyes at least there's
nothing that shows evidence that 911 was
a quote inside job
but
is the cia or the intelligence agencies
or the us government capable of
something like that
but that's the question
so yeah i there you know there's a bunch
of shadiness about how it was reported
on i just can't
that's the thing i struggle with
um
while there's no evidence that there was
an inside job
it raises the question to me
well
could something like this be an inside
job because it sure as heck now looking
back 20 years
the amount of money they'll spend on
these wars the military-industrial
complex the min the amount of interest
in terms of power and money involved
organizationally
can um can something like that happen
you know occam's razor so the harem's
razor is that you can never prescribe to
conspiracy
what could be explained through
incompetence yeah right that is one of
those are two two fundamental guidelines
that we follow all the time right the
simplest answer is oftentimes the best
and never prescribe to conspiracy what
can be explained through incompetence
can you can you elaborate what you mean
by we
we as beings as intelligence
professionals
so you see there's a deep truth to that
uh that second razor there is
more than a deep truth there is
there's ages of experience for me and
for others so in general people are
incompetent if left to their own
means they they're they're more
incompetent
then they are malevolent
at a large organizational scale uh
people are more incompetent of executing
a conspiracy
than they are of
competently
yeah than they are of competently
executing a conspiracy
that's really what it means is that it's
so difficult to carry out a complex lie
that most people don't have the
competency to do it so it doesn't make
any sense to lead thinking of conspiracy
it makes more sense to lead assuming
incompetence
when you look at all of the outcomes all
the findings from 9 11 it speaks to
incompetence it speaks brashly and
openly to incompetence and nobody likes
talking about it
fbi and cia to this day hate hearing
about it the 911 commission is going to
go down in history as this painful
example of the incompetence of the
american intelligence intelligence
community and it's going to come back
again and again every time there's an
intel flap it's going to come back again
and again uh what are you seeing even
right now we miss we missed the u.s
intelligence infrastructure misjudged
afghanistan
misjudged hong kong misjudged ukraine's
and
russia's invasion of ukraine those were
three massive misjudgments in a few
years
it's it's just embarrassing just
embarrassing exactly right so
all the sort of
cover-up looking things around 9 11 is
just people being embarrassed by their
failures
if if they're taking steps to cover
anything up it's just
their own
it's a it's a painful reminder of their
lack of competency at the time
now i understand that conspiracy
theorists want to take
inklings of information and put them
together in a way that that is the most
damning but that goes back to our point
about overvaluing losses and
undervaluing gains it's just predictable
human behavior
let me ask you about this because it
comes up often
so i'm from mit and there's a guy by the
name of jeffrey epstein
that still troubles me to this day that
some of the people i respect
were
interacted with this individual and
fell into his
influence
the charm charisma whatever the whatever
the hell he used
to uh delude these people
he did so successfully
i'm very open-minded about this thing i
just i would love to learn more but a
lot of people tell me
a lot of people i respect
that there's intelligence agencies
behind this individual so they were
using jeffrey epstein for
uh for getting access to powerful people
and then to control and manipulate those
powerful people
the cia i believe is not brought up as
often as mossad
and so this goes back to the original
aspect of our conversation is how much
each individual intelligence agencies is
willing to go to control to manipulate
to achieve its and means do you think
there is can you educate me if um
obviously you don't know but you can bet
what are the chances the intelligence
agencies are involved with the character
of jeffrey epstein in some way shape or
form with the character of epstein it's
a hundred percent guaranteed damn that
some intelligence organization was
involved but let's let's talk about why
let's talk about why okay
yeah there's multiple types of
intelligence assets
just like we were talking earlier
there's
foreign intelligence reporting assets
there's access agents
and then there's agents of influence
three different categories of of
intelligence right one is uh when you
talk about foreign intelligence
reporters these are people who have
access to secrets and their job is to
give you their secrets in exchange for
gold or money or alcohol or prostitution
or whatever else right their job is to
give you secrets and then you pay them
for the secrets
access agents their job is to give you
physical access or digital access
to something of interest to you so maybe
they're the ones that open a door that
should have been locked and let you come
in and stick your thumb drive in the
computer yes or maybe they're the ones
that that share a phone number with
somebody and then you're they're just
like just don't tell them you got the
phone number for me their job is to give
you access
then you have these agents of influence
an agent of influence's job is to be
part of
your effort to influence the outcomes
in some way that benefits your
intelligence requirements right
of these three types of people
the least scrupulous
and the most shady
is your agent of influence because your
agent of influence understands exactly
what they're doing they know they're
working with one guy
and they know they're giving they're
using the influence to to manipulate
some other guy
when it comes to powerful people
especially wealthy powerful people
the only thing that interests them is
power
money is not a challenge anymore
prestige notoriety none of those things
are a challenge the rest of us we're
busy trying to make money we're busy
trying to build a reputation we're busy
trying to build a career keep a family
afloat
at the highest levels they're bored they
don't need any of that the only thing
that they care about is being able to
wield power so
a character like jeffrey epstein is
exactly the kind of character that the
chinese would want the russians would
want
mossad would want the french would want
it's it's too easy because the man had
access to a wide range
of american influential people
for corporate espionage uses for for
economic espionage uses for national
security espionage uses it doesn't make
any sense
that a person like that wouldn't be
targeted it doesn't so the question is
who um
who
and whether
i think the
the the the really important distinction
here is was this person was jeffrey
epstein created
or once he's achieved and built his
network was he then infiltrated and
that's a really
sort of
important difference like at which stage
do you connect a person like that you
start to notice maybe they're effective
at building a network and then you start
making uh building a relationship to
where at some point they're it's a job
they're working for you or do you
literally create a person like that yeah
so intelligence organizations have
different strategies here in the united
states we never create
we don't have a budget cycle that allows
us to create
i mean the maximum budget cycle in the
united states is five years
so even if we were to try to invest in
some c operation or create some
character of influence essentially every
year you have to justify why you're
spending budget and that becomes very
difficult in a democracy like ours
however russia and china are extremely
adept at seed operations long-term
operations they are willing to invest
and develop and and
create
an agent that serves their purposes now
to create someone from scratch like
jeffrey epstein
the probabilities are extremely low they
would have had to start with like a
thousand different targets and try to
grow a thousand different if you will
influencers
and then hope that one of them hits kind
of like a venture capital firm right and
best and many hope that a few hits
more likely they
observed him
at some point in his own natural rise
they identified his personal
vulnerability very classic espionage
technique and then they stepped in
introduced themselves mid-career and
said hey we know you have this
thing that you like that isn't really a
it's frowned upon by your own people but
we don't frown upon it and we can help
you both succeed
and
you know have an endless supply of
ladies along the way
i've recently talked to ryan graves
who's a lieutenant ryan grace who's a
fighter jet pilot
um
about
many things he also does work on
autonomous weapon systems drones and
that kind of thing including quantum
computing but
he also happens to be one of the
very few pilots that were willing to go
on record and talk about ufo sightings
does the cia and the federal government
have interest in ufos
in my experience at cia that is
an area that remains very compartmented
and that could be
one of two reasons it could be because
there is significant interest and that's
why it's so heavily compartmented or it
could be because it's an area
that's
non-it's just not important it's a it's
a distraction so they compartment it so
it doesn't
distract from other operations
one of the areas that i've
been
quite interested in and where i've done
a lot of research and i've done some
work in the private intelligence and
private investigation side is with ufos
the place where ufos really connect with
the federal government is when it comes
to aviation safety
and predominance of power
so
faa and the us air force and the us
military are very invested in knowing
what's happening in the skies above the
united states
and that's of primary interest to them
when they can rule out
the direct threat to national security
of ufos then they become less interested
that said
when you have unexplained aerial
phenomenon
that are unexplained
that
can't directly be tied to
uh to anything that is known of the
terrestrial world
then they they're left
without an answer to their question they
don't know if it's a threat or not a
threat
but i think the scarier concern for the
u.s national government or for the u.s
federal government the scarier concern
that nobody talks about is what if the
ufo isn't alien what if it is actually
a
cutting-edge
war machine that we are eons behind ever
being able to replicate or
the other concern is that it's a
it's a system it's a machine from a
foreign power that's doing intelligence
collection correct so it's not just
military purposes it's actually
collecting data well they fall
a lot of times the federal government
will see the two is the same it's a
hostile
tool from a foreign collection of
information is a hostile act absolutely
that's why the espionage act exists
that's why it's a criminal offense if
you're committing espionage in the
united states as a u.s citizen or a
foreign citizen
so i guess they keep digging until they
can confirm it's not a threat but it
just um and you're saying that there's
not from you understanding much evidence
that they're doing so it could be
because they're
compartmentalized
but you're saying private intelligence
institutions are
trying to to make progress on this
yeah it's really difficult to know uh
there's a vested yeah there's an
economic interest in the private invest
in the private intelligence world
because for example if you understand
why certain aerial phenomena are
happening over a location
then
you can use that to inform investors
whether to invest in that location or
avoid investment in that location but
that's not a national security concern
so that doesn't it doesn't matter to the
federal government
could these ufos be aliens now i'm going
into territory of you as a human being
wondering about all the alien
civilizations that are out there
the hum the humbling question we are not
alone
you think we're not alone there's it's
an improbability
that we are alone if by virtue of the
fact that sentient human life exists
intelligent human life exists
all the probabilities that would have to
be destroyed for that to be true
simply speak over the galaxies that
exist that there's no possible way we're
alone
it's a mathematical equation it's a it's
a one or a zero right and for me it has
to exist
it's impossible otherwise rationally for
me to think that we are truly the only
intelligent life form in all of the
universe
but
to think that
an alien life form is anything like us
at all
is equally as
inconceivable
to think that they're carbon-based
bipedal humanoid
alien species that just happen to fly
around in metal machines
and visit alien planets in a way that
they become observed
is uh it's just silly it's the world of
sci-fi well
every good scientist
because we always assume that they're
superior to us and intelligence yes when
any scientist carries out an experiment
the whole objective of the experiment is
to observe without
being disclosed or being discovered yeah
so why on earth would we think that the
superior species makes the mistake of
being discovered over and over again
so to push back on that idea if we were
to think about us humans trying to
communicate with ants
first we observe for a while there'll be
a bunch of phds written a bunch of
people just uh sort of collecting data
taking notes trying to understand about
this
thing that you detected that seems to be
a living thing which is a very difficult
thing to define from an alien
perspective or from our perspective we
find life on mars or something like that
okay so you observe for a while
but then if you want to actually
interact with it how would you interact
with the ants
if i were to interact with the ants i
would try to uh infiltrate
i would try to put like
figure out what is the language they
used to communicate with each other
uh i would
try to operate at their physical scale
like uh in terms of the physics of their
interaction in terms of the
information methods mediums of
information exchange with pheromones or
whatever however the heck ants so i
would try to mimic them in some way so
in that sense it makes sense
that
um
the objects we would see
you mentioned bipedal yes of course it's
ridiculous that aliens would actually be
very similar to us but maybe they create
forms in order to be like
here uh the the the humans will
understand it and this needs to be
sufficiently different from humans to
know that there's something weird i
don't know i i i think it's actually an
incredibly difficult problem of figuring
out how to communicate with a thing way
dumber than you
people assume like
if you're smart it's easy to talk to the
dumb thing but i think it's actually
extremely difficult when the gap in
intelligence is just orders of magnitude
and so of course you can observe
but once you notice the thing is
sufficiently interesting
how do you communicate with that thing
so this is where one of the things i
always try to highlight is how
conspiracies are born
because
many people don't understand how easy it
is to fall into the conspiratorial
cycle
so the first step to a conspiracy being
born is to have
an a
piece of evidence that is true
and then immediately following the true
evidence
is a gap in information
and then to fill in the gap of
information
people
create an idea
and then
the next logical outcome is based on the
idea that they just created which is an
idea that's based on something that was
imagined in the first place
so the idea the factual thing is now two
steps away and then three steps away
four steps away as the things go on and
then all of a sudden you have this
kernel of truth that turned into this
wild conspiracy
so in our example
you talked about humans trying to
communicate with ants ants are not
intelligence
there's no ants not intelligent species
they're drone species that's somehow
commanded through whatever technology
whatever whatever spoken like a typical
human but yes whatever biological thing
is in the queen right but they're
they're not it's not a fair equivalent
but let's look at gorillas or let's look
at something in the monkey family right
where
largely we agree that there there is
some sort of intelligence there or
dolphins some sort of intelligence right
it is a human thing a human thing to
want to observe
and then communicate
and integrate
that's a human thing not an intelligent
life thing
so for us to even think that a foreign
and intelligent alien species would want
to engage and communicate at all
is an extremely human
assumption
and then from that assumption then we
started going into all the other things
you said if they wanted to communicate
wouldn't they want to mimic if they
wanted to mimic wouldn't they create
devices like ours so now we're three
steps removed from the the true fact of
there's something unexplainable in the
skies
yeah so the the fact is there's
something unexplainable in the skies and
then we're cons we're filling in the
gaps with all our basic human biases and
assumptions exactly but the thing is now
we're getting right back to project
northwood
we need some plan i don't care how crazy
the idea is guys give me some plan so
that's where we come up with well maybe
it's an alien species trying to
communicate or maybe it's an alien a
hostile threat that's trying to take
over the uh the world or who knows what
maybe it's but you have to
uh
you have to somehow construct hypotheses
and theories uh for anomalies
and then
from that
amidst giant pile of the ridiculous
emerges perhaps a deeper truth
absolutely over over a period of decades
and and uh at first that truth is
ridiculed and then it's accepted you
know that whole
process um the earth revolving around
the sun yeah the earth revolving around
the sun and but you know
to me it's interesting because it asks
us looking out there with seti just
looking for alien life
is
forcing us to really ask questions about
ourselves about what is life how special
first of all what is intelligence how
special is intelligence in the cosmos
and i think it's it's um inspiring and
challenging to us as human beings
both on a
scientific and engineering level but
also on a philosophical level i mean all
those questions that are laid before us
when you start to think about alien life
so you you interviewed joe rogan
recently yeah and he said something that
i thought was really
really brilliant during the podcast
interview he said that he's gonna love
hearing that very good sorry but he he
said that he realized at some point
that the turn in his opinion about ufos
happened when he realized how
desperately he wanted it to be true
this is
the human condition
we our pink matter works the same way as
everybody's pink matter and one of the
ways that our pink matter works is with
this thing with what's known as a
cognitive bias it's a mental shortcut
essentially your brain doesn't want to
process through facts over and over
again instead it wants to assume certain
facts are in place and just jump right
to the conclusion it saves energy it
saves megabytes
so what joe
what joe or joe rogan i feel weird
calling him joe i don't know him but
what joe identified on his own mr rogan
what mr rogan identified on his own yeah
was his own cognitive loop
and then he immediately grew suspicious
of that loop
that is a super powerful tool that is
something that most people never become
self-actualized enough to realize that
they have a cognitive loop let alone
questioning their own cognitive loop so
that was
when it came to this topic specifically
that was just something that i thought
was really powerful
because
you learned to not just not trust
yourself on the record
after he drinks one whiskey all that
goes out
i think that was just in that moment in
time
like you know
of brilliance a moment of release
because i i think he still is uh
you know um
he's
he's definitely one of the things that
inspires me about joe is how open-minded
he is how curious he is he refuses to
let sort of the conformity and the
conventions
of any one community including the
scientific community be a kind of uh
thing that limits his curiosity of
asking what if
uh it's like the the whole it's entirely
possible i think that's a beautiful
thing it actually represents
what uh the best of science is that
childlike curiosity but so it's good to
sort of balance those two things but
then you have to wake up to it like
is is this is there a chance this is
true or do i just really want it to be
true and that like that hot girl that
talks to you overseas yeah
yeah
for a brief moment
there's there's actually a deeper
explanation for it that i'll tell you
off the mic that
perhaps a lot of people can kind of
figure out anyway just to take it one
step further because i love this stuff
personally i love pink i love pink
matter stuff
and your interview with jack barsky
jack's good a good friend of mine a good
dude incredible person yeah in your
conversation with jack barsky
you guys uh he started talking to you
about
how his recruiters were feeding back to
him his own beliefs his own opinions
about himself how smart he was how good
he was how uniquely qualified he was
that's all pink matter manipulation
feeding right back to the person what
they already think of themselves is a
way to get them to invest and trust you
faster because obviously you value them
for all the right reasons because that's
how they see themselves so that that
loop
that
the kgb was using with jack
jack did not wake up to that loop at the
time he woke up to it later
so it's it's happens to all of us we're
all in a loop
it's just whether it's about
oat milk or whether it's about aliens or
whether it's about
you know the democrats trying to take
your guns whatever it is everybody's in
a loop and we've got to wake up to to
ask ourselves just like you said
is it true or do we just really want it
to be true and until you ask yourself
that question you're just one of the
masses trapped in the loop
yeah that's the that's the really the
the nietzsche gaze into the abyss it's a
dangerous thing it's that's the path to
insanity is to ask that question you
want to be doing it carefully but it's
also the place where you can truly
discover
something fundamental about this world
that people don't understand and then
that and lay the groundwork for
progress scientific
uh cultural all that kind of stuff
absolutely
what is one spy trick this is from a
reddit i really enjoy it what's one spy
trick and and you're
full of a million spy tricks um people
should follow you you did an amazing
podcast you're just an amazing person
thank you
um what is the one spy trick you would
teach everyone that they can use to
improve their life instantly now you
already mentioned
uh quite a few but what what else could
jump to mind
my go-to answer for this has not really
changed much over the last few years so
the first the most important spy trick
to change everything immediately
is something called perception versus
perspective
we all look at the world through our own
perception
my dad used to tell me my step-dad used
to tell me that perception is reality
and i i was i was arguing this with him
when i was 14 years old i told you so
dad you're still wrong yeah
but perception is your interpretation of
the world around you but it's unique
only to you there's no advantage in your
perception that's why so many people
find themselves arguing all the time
trying to convince other people of their
own perception
the way that you win
any argument the way that you get ahead
in your career the way that you out
sell or out
out race anybody is when you move off of
perception and move into perspective
perspective is the act or the art of
observing the world from outside of
yourself
whether that's
outside of yourself as like an entity
just observing in a third from a
different point of view or even more
powerful you sit in the shoes you sit in
the seat of the person opposite you and
you think to yourself what is their life
like what do they feel right now uh you
know are they comfortable are they
uncomfortable are they afraid are they
scared what are they what's the stressor
that they woke up to this morning what's
the stressor that they're gonna go to
sleep with tonight
when you shift places and get out of
your own perception and into someone
else's perspective now you're thinking
like them which is giving you an
informational advantage but you know
what they're all doing everyone else out
there
is trapped in their own perception
not thinking about a different
perspective so immediately you have
superior information superior
positioning you have an advantage that
they don't have
and if you do that to your boss
it's going to change your career if you
do that to your spouse it's going to
change your marriage if you do that to
your kids it's going to change your
family legacy because nobody else out
there is doing it
it's so interesting how difficult
empathy is for people
and how powerful it is especially for
for like you said the spouse like
intimacy yeah like
stepping outside of yourself and really
putting yourself in the shoes of the
other person considering how they see
the world and that that that's uh
i really enjoy that because um
how does that exactly lead to connection
i
i think
when you start to understand
the way the other person sees the world
you start to enjoy the world through
their eyes and you start to be able to
share in terms of intimacy
share the beauty that they see together
because you understand their perspective
and that's and somehow you converge as
well of course that allows you to gather
information better and all that kind of
stuff and like
that that allows you to work together
better to uh share in all different
kinds of ways but for intimacy that's a
really powerful thing and also for um
actually like people you really disagree
with or people on the internet you
disagree with and so on i find empathy
is
is such a powerful way
to uh resolve any tensions there even
like people like trolls or all that kind
of stuff i don't deride them i just kind
of put myself in their shoes and it it
it becomes like an enjoyable
uh camaraderie with that but what's that
so i want to draw a pretty hard line
between between perspective yeah and
empathy
because empathy is frankly an overused
term
um by people who don't really know what
they're saying sometimes i think you
know what you're saying but the vast
majority of people listening i would ask
you that but that's fine as soon as you
say empathy they're gonna just be like
oh yeah i know i've heard this a
thousand times yes
empathy is about feeling
what other people feel
and
or understanding feeling would you say
yeah it's about feelings it's about
understanding someone else's feelings
feeling uh
it's not the same as sympathy where you
feel their feelings empathy is about
recognizing that they have feelings and
recognizing that their feelings are
valid
perspective is more than just feelings
it's about
it's about the brain it's about the pink
matter
on the left side and the right side of
the brain
yes i care about feelings
and this goes directly to your point
about connection yes i care about
feelings but i also care about
objectives what is your life what is
your aspirational goal what was it like
to grow up as you yeah what was it like
to experience this and how did this
shape your opinion on that and you know
what
what is it that you're going to do next
more than just feelings actual tactical
actions and that's that becomes
extremely valuable in the operational
world because if you can get into
someone's head left brain and right
brain feelings and logic you can start
anticipating what actions they're going
to take next you can direct the actions
that they're going to take next because
you're basically telling them the story
that's in their own head
when it comes to relationships and
personal connection
we talked about it earlier the thing
that people
want the most is
community they want someone else who
understands them they want to be with
people they don't want to be alone
the more you practice perspective
empathy or no empathy the more you just
validate that a person is there i am in
this time and space with you in this
moment
feelings aside right
that is powerful
that is intimate and when whether you're
talking about lovers or whether you're
talking about a business exchange or
whether you're talking about
collaborators in a crime
i'm here with you write or die
let's do it right that's powerful
how much of what you've learned
in your role at the cia
transfer over to relationships the
business relationship to other aspects
of life this is something you work
closely with powerful people to help
them out
what have you learned about the
commonalities about the problems that
people face
man uh i would say about
a solid 95
of what i learned at cia carries over to
the civilian world that five percent
that doesn't
is
it would carry over in a disaster right
there's
knowing how to shoot
on target with my non-dominant hand
really only has one purpose
it's not going to happen day to day
right knowing how to do a dead drop that
isn't discoverable by the local police
force isn't going to be useful right now
but it could be useful in disaster
but the 95 of stuff that's useful it's
all tied to the human condition it's all
tied to
uh being able to
understand what someone's thinking
understand what someone's feeling
direct their thoughts direct their
emotions direct their thought process
win their attention win their loyalty
win influence with them grow your
network grow your own circle of
influence
i mean all of that is immensely
immensely valuable
uh as an example the disguise the
disguise thing that we talked about
earlier
disguise in and of itself
has mixed utility if you're brad pitt
and you don't anybody know you're brad
pitt you put on a level one disguise and
that's great or maybe you call me and i
i walk you through a level two disguise
so that you can go to aruba and nobody's
gonna know you're in ruby right whatever
it is
but even there with the five percent
that doesn't apply to everyday life
there's still elements that do for
example when a person looks at a human
being's face
the first place they look is the same
part of the face as if they were reading
a piece of paper so in english we start
from the top left and we read left to
right top to bottom so when an
english-speaking person interacts with
another person the first thing they look
at isn't their eyes
it's the upper
left from their point of view
corner of their
face yeah yeah right they look there and
that's the information they get is hair
color hair pattern skin color right
that's it before they know anything else
about the face this is one of the
reasons why somebody can look at you and
then you ask them what color are my eyes
i don't really remember because the way
they read the face they read it from
left to right top to bottom
so they're paying a lot of attention to
the first few things they see and then
they're paying less attention as they go
down the face the same scrolling
behavior that you see
on the internet right so when you
understand that through the lens of
disguise it allows you to make a very
powerful disguise the most important
part of your disguise is here if you're
english speaking right here if you're
speaking some foreign languages that
read right to left
right if you're if it's chinese you know
they're going to look from here down
because they read left down
so it's so interesting
so yeah knowing that really helps you
sort of configure the things in terms of
physical appearance that's correct
correct so when it comes to how to make
a disguise not so useful to the ultra
wealthy usually but when it comes to how
to read a face or more importantly how
people are going to read your face
that's extremely important because now
you know
where to find the first signs of
deception in a baseline or anything else
you mentioned that
the
idea of having privacy
is um
uh is is one that we kind of we think we
can but we really don't
is it possible for maybe somebody like
me or a regular person to disappear from
the grid absolutely yeah and it's not as
hard as you might think it's not
convenient again convenience and
security
you can disappear tomorrow right i can
walk you through three steps right now
that can help you disappear tomorrow but
none of them are convenient they're all
extremely secure
right the first thing you do is every
piece of digital technology you have
that's that is connected to you in any
way is now
dead
you just let the battery run out forever
forever you never touch it again
starting at this moment what you have to
do is go out and acquire
a new one
realistically you will not be able to
acquire a new one in the united states
by buying it
because to do so you would tie it to
your credit card you would tie it to a
location a time a place a registered
name whatever else so you would have to
require it essentially by theft
or through the black market so you would
want something because you're going to
need the advantage of technology without
it being in your name so you go out and
you steal a phone or you steal a laptop
you do whatever you have to do to make
sure that you can get on with the
password and whatever else that might be
as as dirty or as clean as you want that
to be we're all morally flexible here
but now you have a technological device
that you can work with
and then from there on you're just doing
whatever you have to do whether you're
stealing every step of the way or
whether you uh
you run a massive con
keep in mind that we often talk about
con men and cons do you know what the
root the word that khan is a root word
for
confidence
that's what a con man is a con man is a
confidence man just somebody who is so
brazenly confident that the people
around them living in their own
perception not perspective and their
perception they're like well this guy
really knows what he's talking about so
i'm gonna do what he says so you can run
a massive con and that can take care of
your finances that can take care of your
lodging whatever amount whatever else it
is you are whoever you present yourself
to be
so if you want to go be
if you want to be bill for the afternoon
just go tell people your name is bill
they're not going to question you
so the
intelligence the natural
web of intelligence gathering
systems we have in the united states and
in the world
are they going to
believe for long that your bill
are they until you do something that
makes them think otherwise if you are
consistent we talked about consistency
being the superpower if you are
consistent they will think you're bill
forever
how how difficult is that is that to do
it's it's not convenient it's quite
difficult is that like required training
it does require training um because why
do criminals always get caught because
they stop being consistent criminals i
i've i've
as
i i never hesitate to admit this but
people tell me i should hesitate to
admit it so now i hesitate
because of the guidance i've gotten to
hesitate right
i like criminals i'm friends with a
number of criminals because the only
people who get me like right away who
get me are criminals because we know
what it's like
to basically abandon all the rules
do our own thing our own way and watch
the world just keep turning yeah most
people are so stuck in the
in the
trap of normal thought and behavior that
when i tell them they just don't just go
tell people your name is bill
most people are going to say
that's not going to work but a criminal
will be like oh yeah i did that once
yeah i just told everybody my name was
nancy and dude and they still believe me
yeah
criminals just get it right so
uh
what happens with criminals is they go
to the school of hard knocks they go to
they learn criminal behavior on the job
spies go to school
we go to the best spy school in the
world we go to langley's
uh the farm right what's known as field
tradecraft course ftc in a covert
location for a covert period of time and
covert covert covert so if anybody from
ci is watching i'm not breaking any
rules it's all on wikipedia but it's not
coming from me yeah
but we do that's how we do it they train
us
from
100 years of experience in the best ways
to carry out covert operations which are
all just criminal activities overseas
we learn how to do it the right way so
that we don't get caught we learn how to
be consistent more importantly we learn
how to create an operation that has a
limited life span
because the longer it lives the more at
risk you are so you want operations to
be short concise
on the x off the x
limit your room for mistakes criminals
want law they default to wanting these
long term
operations because they don't want to
have to recreate a new way to make money
every 15 days
you mentioned if anybody from the cia is
watching uh so i've i've seen you talk
about
um
the fact that sort of people that are
currently working at the cia would
uh kind of look down on the people
who've left to say and they deride them
especially if you go public especially
if there's a book and all that kind of
stuff
uh do you feel the pressure of that to
be quiet
to to not to you know um
to not do something like this
conversation that we're doing today i
feel the silent judgment
it's that's very real i feel it for
myself and i feel it for my wife who
doesn't appear on camera very often but
who's also former cia
we we both feel the judgment we know
that right now
three days after this is released
somebody's going to send an email on a
closed network system inside cia
headquarters and there's a bunch of
people who are going to laugh at it a
bunch of people who are going to say
that who knows what it's not a bunch of
people you respect probably a bunch of
people who i'm trying to bring honor to
whether i know them or respect them is
irrelevant
these are people who are out there doing
the deed every day and i want to bring
them honor
and i want to do that in a way that
i get to share what they can't share and
what they won't share when they leave
because they will also feel the silent
pressure the pressure to
the shame the judgment right
but the truth is that i've i've done
this now long enough the first few times
that i spoke out publicly
uh the response to being a positive
voice for what the sacrifices that
people are making
it's so refreshing to be of an honest
voice that people don't normally hear
that it's too important one day i'm
going to be gone and my kids are going
to look back on all this and they're
going to see their dad
trying to do the right thing for the
right reasons
and even if my son or daughter ends up
at cia and even if they get ridiculed
for being no you're the bustamante kid
right your dad's a total sellout
whatever it might be
like i want them to know
you know dad was doing what he could to
bring honor to the organization even
when he couldn't stay in the
organization anymore
so you said when you were 27 i think you
didn't know what the hell you're doing
um so
now that you're
a few years older and wiser
let me ask you to put on your wise sage
hat
and give advice to other 27 year olds or
even younger 17 18 year olds
that are just out of high school maybe
going to college
trying to figure out this life this
career thing that they're on
what advice would you give them
about how to have a career or how to
have a life they can be proud of
a powerful question man
um
have you figured it out yet yourself no
i'm i think i'm a man i'm a grand total
of seven days smarter than i was at 27.
it's not a good average progress
there's still time there's still time
so for all the young people out there
deciding
what to do
i'm i would just say the same thing that
i would say that i do say and i will say
to my own kids you only have one life
you only have one chance
if you spend it doing what other people
expect you to do
you will wake up to your regret at some
point
i woke up when i was
38 years old
my wife in many ways is still waking up
to it as she watches her grandparents
pass and
an older generation pass away
the folks that i've
that really have a blessed life
are the people who learn early on
to live with
their own rules live their own way
and live every day as if it's the last
day
not necessarily to waste it by being
wasteful or silly but to recognize that
today is a day to be productive and
constructive
for yourself
if you don't want a career today is not
the day to start pursuing a career just
because someone else told you to do it
if you want to learn a language today's
a day to find a way to buy a ticket to
another country and learn through
immersion if you want a date if you want
to get married if you want
a business today is the day to just go
out and take one
step in that direction
and as long as you
every day you just make one new step
just like cia recruited me just do
the next thing if the if the step seems
like it's too big
then there's probably two other steps
that you can do before that
just make constant progress build
momentum move forward
and live on your own terms that way you
don't ever wake up to the regret
and it'll be over before you know it
whether you regret it or not it's true
uh what what do you think is the meaning
of this whole thing what's the meaning
of life self-respect
that's a fast answer there's a story
behind it if you want the story i would
love to have the story there's a covert
training base in alabama in the sin
south and far south and like the armpit
of america where elite tier 1 operators
go to learn
human intelligence stuff
and there's a bar inside this base and
on the wall is
just
it's scribbles of
opinions and the question in the middle
of the wall says what's the meaning of
life and all these elite operators over
the last 25 or 30 years they all go they
get drunk and they scribble their answer
and they circle it with a sharpie right
love
family
america freedom right whatever
and then they're the only thing they
have to do is if they're going to write
something on there they have to connect
it with something else on the wall at
least one other thing so if they write
love they can't just leave it floating
there they have to write love in a
little bubble and connect it to
something else connect it to family
whatever else when you look at that wall
the word self-respect is on the wall
and it's got a circle around it and then
you can't see any other word because of
all the things that connect to
self-respect
just dozens of people have written over
have written their words down and been
drawn and scribbled over because of all
the lines that connect with self-respect
so what's the meaning of life from my
point of view i've never seen a better
answer
it's all self-respect if you don't
respect yourself how can you do anything
else how can you love someone else if
you don't have self-respect how can you
build the business you're proud of if
you don't have self-respect how can you
raise kids how can you make a difference
how can you pioneer anything how can you
just wake up and have a good day
if you don't have self-respect
the power of the individual that's what
uh
that's what makes this country great i
have to say after traveling quite a bit
in europe and especially in in a place
of war
um coming back to the united states
makes me really appreciate about the the
the better angels of this nation the
ideals it stands for the values it
stands for and i'd like to thank you for
serving
this nation for time and humanity for
time
and um
for being brave enough and bold enough
to still talk about it and to inspire
others to educate others for having uh
many amazing conversations and for
honoring me by having this conversation
today you're you're an amazing human
thanks so much for talking today lex i
appreciate the invite man and it was a
joy
thanks for listening to this
conversation with andrew bustamante to
support this podcast please check out
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and now let me leave you some words from
sun tzu in the art of war
let your plans be dark and impenetrable
as night
and when you move
fall like a thunderbolt
thank you for listening and hope to see
you next time
you