Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh - Was Epstein CIA or Israeli Spy?

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

YERRR – this week the boys go deep state mode with an unfiltered look at the CIA, Mossad, and America’s relationship with Israel. From Epstein’s real role, to Trump’s chaotic intel briefings, to why Oct 7th caught everyone off guard—this one’s full spy thriller meets Flagrant insanity. If you’ve ever wondered what’s really going on behind the curtain—this is the one. All that and more on this week’s episode of FLAGRANT. INDULGE. 00:00 Fat vs Fit 1:44 Does Andrew work for CIA? 8:02 What do we get out of relationship with Israel? 10:38 Will we forget about this genocide? It’s worth for US? 16:32 Intelligence is inconsistent + AIPAC need 19:02 Israel doesn’t trust the US & Vice Versa 23:05 Sharing Intelligence + Mossad knew about 9/11? 29:12 Mossad acts like CIA from the past 30:50 How did Israel miss Oct 7th? Who has jurisdiction? 34:44 Terrorist organisation 36:04 PDF Files & Mossad + Epstein 45:34 Why the need for Epstein? Protecting Informants 52:08 Trump is a dishonest person 54:16 Intelligences’ view of Trump + Mass resignations 59:01 US isn’t safe long term + Thanks Obama 1:02:09 Hunting Osama Bin Laden + Pakistani Paranoia 1:04:21 Accurate Spy representation in media 1:06:43 Decapitating Leadership effective? Netanyahu’s interests 1:09:53 Promoting + Book about CIA mission 1:15:38 CIA has “rules” 1:16:54 Ukraine v Russia + American & Chinese influences 1:28:13 Issue with China being no. 1? Unravelling the US 1:35:10 The world hates the US + Russian motivations 1:40:31 Propaganda war with China + Hot war 1:47:31 Biggest threat to US = CHINA 1:49:15 Tariffs are negotiating tools + No professional politicians 1:54:12 Bustamante is still leaving the US 2:00:25 Getting fake passports is easy 2:02:50 Bustamante’s Book = most accurate modern spy novel 2:14:31 Dealing with stolen valor + Hard to leave 2:17:14 Vulnerabilities being CIA + Mission comes first 2:20:53 Leaving with clearances + Going back 2:24:14 Lightning Questions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up, guys. Welcome to Flagrin. I'm your fat co-host, Akatsi. And we are here with CIA agent, former and probably present, author of the book Shadow Cell. One of my favorite guests ever, even though he still works for the agency. Andrew Bustamonte, guys, give it up for him. Thank you for coming through, man. Thank you for coming through. I'm sorry you got fat. That's new. That's new since the last time. We were saying this off pod. I have been fatter on this podcast. I must have just hidden it better. I'm not. saying I'm not fat now, I am, but I'm less fat, slightly. So the comments didn't bother me as much, but if you look at the episode with Ralph Barbosa, every comment is about how fat I am, and they're so funny. Are they making comments about how fit you are? It's almost like your just how black is. They've talked about that. They didn't make a way of transfer. I gave him a fat transfer. Yeah, can you teach them how to go deep butter cover? Hey, Miles, where's your favorite

comment about how fat I am? Do we have one on deck or Joey can pull it up? I don't have a favorite one off deck, but they were all great. Oh, God, they were so good. I was genuinely laughing at them. I was with my wife just dying laughing. And she can't go nowhere. She married my fat ass. So what's you going to do about it? I saw some banger. Someone said the camera adds 10 pounds. Look like Akash ate five cameras.

Unfortunately, that's a heater. That's so good, dude. That was just my bargain joke right there. That was, yeah. No one wrote there. Oh, my God. It's so good. That's a bag. One too many non-bred. Arcosch were eating good? Hell yeah, dude.

No, the funniest one was just, Akash looks like he gained 50 pounds in the last week. It's just like so blunt. Okay, anyway, Andrew, Mr. Bustamante, as your fat co-host, I have some questions for you to chew on, get it? Okay. Address, if you want to just address, everybody thinks you still work for CIA. What do you have to say to that? Alex thinks it, I believe. I do.

So, Alex is the exception. Everybody else is an idiot. Okay. If you think I still work for CIA, you are so far off, like, so far off in terms of anything rational, logical. Well, no, no, no. I just don't know an agent would say if they're trying to throw you off the tracks. I don't believe you work for CIA, but we have to address this. It is rational and logical to think because you are seemingly very, like, pro-CIA.

You don't have a lot of negative things to say about them. So a person could make the leap that, oh, he probably still works for the agency. So let's do an actual CIA drill, right? Because this shit happens in CIA all the time. where you have two very smart people who sit there and they're like, this is what's happening and somebody else is like, nope, this is what's happening.

And they're polar opposites. So me working for CIA still is the polar opposite of me not working for CIA. So when you have this kind of impasse in intelligence, you go through something called an analysis of competing hypotheses in ACH. This sounds like some shit he's workshop.

I'm going to be honest. Go ahead. Competing hypothesis. Workshop with like corporate clients. Okay, okay. Is that what you mean? Sure. That's what they want me to mean.

That's what I mean. Okay. So you have to look at the two options and then compare objectively the likelihood, the logic, the reasoning behind the two. So let's start with the camp that I am still working for CIA. So what are our objective, like rational arguments for why you think I still work for CIA? It would make sense for the CIA, for CIA, whatever, to hire an incredibly charismatic,

likeable, well-spoken person to defend. their actions in the guise of no longer working for CIA. Okay. So that is that is not objective. It's subjective because what you're saying is it would make sense. So it makes sense to you. My mic not make sense to someone else. But let's still use it. So that's one point in the I still work for CIA camp. What's the theoretically people say you can never leave the CIA. Once you're in, you're always in. Once you're in your which based on the fact that we signed two contracts, right? We signed two secrecy agreements with them, one that's civilian and one that's federal.

So that actually is demonstrably true. So we technically can't ever leave because they always have to approve what we publish, what we make. So that's two things and two points in the Andy still works for CIA camp. You generally speak somewhat positively about the CIA in general operations.

I think that still goes back to point one. The charismatic person who defends CIA. Yeah. What else? They want someone in the industry rubbing shoulders and buddy buddy with all the celebrities and people that you're around. The Epstein argument right there. That is actually who I was thinking of,

and I got uncomfortable sitting next to you. But a very valid and strategic argument, the last time I was here, you were the one that made all the really good spy, like, strategic observations. So I love that you're still doing it out of you. He wanted to work for CIA, or FBI. Was it CIA?

Yeah. He wanted to work for CIA. And then he started working for us, and his whole life went downhill. Yeah. But your bank account went up for like, you're going to do. It's okay.

So that's three points in that camp. Anything else? Why would I still work for CIA? Miles, I feel like you got one. Ready. No, I was just going to say Alex Media would be the worst CIA agent, possibly ever in the history of mankind. Or the best.

Or the best. So bad. Nobody would tell us when he was sort of a cop. Oh, yeah. I just can't imagine the abuse of power. Oh, absolutely. I got a fourth thing. Your wife was CIA.

Okay. So you are metaphorically and literally in bed with CIA. Yeah, you're married to, you're married to the agency, would be right? Okay. We'll keep that one, too, then. Okay. So three, three of the four, three of the four were subjected, but we'll keep all four. Now, let's do the thought exercise of why you would defend that I'm not in CIA. I have nothing. You really have nothing? I have nothing. I mean, you say you're not. Okay. Do you have other CIA examples of people like me? I don't think so. Okay, so there are no other examples out there. So I would be like a one, a original and only one success story. But it would make, and I honestly don't believe this, but the narrative seems to be out there, and I want to help you at least address it. I mean, there's other people that claim their former CIA.

And it would make sense that in this YouTube landscape, this is the new entertainment landscape, this you would be the first, or there would be a first. Yeah, there would be a first, but would the first also happen to also be someone that they planted? I mean, theoretically. Theoretically, but you could also argue, how many things has CIA done right?

Like, when you hear about CIA, Argo. After they made a movie about it, right? So most of what CIA does right, nobody ever hears about, which is an argument for why I would still be CIA. But the second truth is most of what they do publicly, they do wrong. So if they were to try to plant somebody publicly, it would probably go terribly wrong, right?

How is they an organization like that going to actually keep up with the pace of business? How are they going to keep up with the pace of media? How are they going to control every channel, every person who goes out there? Why is it not every video is a hit? Why is it only some videos are a hit? Well, you can't control the YouTube algorithm, nor would I expect the agency to control the YouTube algorithm. But having a smart, charismatic, handsome guy to go be their mouthpiece. Enough videos will hit and penetrate that our job will get done.

Our message will get across. I just can't imagine. I can't imagine that you guys haven't thought. of the same thing Andrew Tate thought of. You know what I mean? Let's just have a bunch of accounts getting clips out of me and making us look good. Okay. It's all

fair. Now, again, I'm not, I don't think this, but as we talk this out, I doubt myself. Exactly. The thought exercise really led to me being unsure. Now, we're still going to have a great episode. And whether you represent the agency or not, I think it's great because you can answer some questions

that we have about larger issues, I think. And I would love to start whether you guys are okay with. to start with this one, because we've asked a few people and never gotten a solid answer. I've listened to some stuff of yours. You seem to be reasonably pro-Israel, which is fine. Our question that we ask people is, what does the United States government get out of their relationship with Israel? So it's a great question, and I want to make sure that we understand something. So I am pragmatically pro-Israel. Having Israel as an American ally is a very pragmatic, practical decision.

Okay. Right? It's kind of like a 401K. It's a good idea. Okay. but you can still hate your 401K. You can still have it mismanaged. It can still be something where you're like, I wish there was a better alternative, but I have no other option

because my company chose this 401K. That's kind of the relationship that I think the United States has with Israel right now. Israel is, if you think of, if you think of when you were a kid and you like made the whole egg drop experiment in elementary school,

you put an egg inside of something so that you can drop it from the roof, where you drop it from the ceiling or drop it from the third floor. Some people put it inside of a box, people attach it to a parachute, but everybody puts the egg into something, because the egg is what they care about. The thing on the outside is the thing they don't really care about, but the thing that's supposed to absorb the impact of the ground. That's what Israel is for the United

States. Okay. Israel is supposed to absorb the impact. He might be Mossad. I heard you say on another pod that all Mossade agents are hot. I'm getting a lot of, I'm getting more compliments on this couch. Oh, we all want to fuck you. I'm just really like to. Absolutely. Yeah. I hope my wife is watching right now. Yeah, C-I-K, dude. You know what I'm talking about it.

Okay, but so they absorb the impact of potential adversaries in the Middle East. Correct. They also give us a foothold on another side of the world that if we ever need to rapidly deploy, we just have to move people from here to there because all the weapons they have are already our weapons. They're flying our jets. They're using our tanks. They're using our artillery. We still own them or we sold them to them?

We sold them, but they're buying American brand. So now all of a sudden, if we needed to launch an American front, and even if Israel didn't want to be actively involved in that front, we have a whole deta. We have a cachet sitting there waiting for us. No, is this not the case with Saudi? Not the case with Saudi. It is the case with Jordan, right?

Saudi Arabia is a very different beast than Israel, because Saudi Arabia is independently wealthy, right? They have oil wealth. They have royalty. They don't need our money. Israel, their economy, is heavily. tied to our economy. So they do need us to sell. They do need us to buy from them, Saudi Arabia's and the United Arab Emirates. He's calling Jews broke. That's crazy. That's great. Okay, but then here's

my question just from, I guess, a PR standpoint. There is, I think most of us would agree, there's a genocide happening. And the United States seemingly just kind of supports Israel on this thing. and that is a very bad look for us globally. So is that allyship worth it? And if that protection is enough, well, I guess you can answer that and then I have a follow-up. Yeah, yeah.

So, yes, it's worth it because whether you want to admit it or not, we're going to forget about this genocide in the next 15 to 20 years. Because we've already forgot about the genocide that happened on Clinton's watch when the Houthoos killed the Tutsis.

Now, this is what I had this exact thought. There have been many times, it's sadly in Africa where the United States just kind of didn't acknowledge a genocide and the media landscape went with that and never talked about it and we didn't support it but we just kind of didn't do anything what it seems to many of us i'm no i'm no geopolitical expert at all i'm dumb with most of this stuff but it seems like not only are we turning or kind of turning a blonde eye we are looking at it and being like no

that's okay and that is a very different thing that's true we support those guys nobody was saying we support the tootsie kill yeah we support the toothsees they're defending themselves they have the right to defend nobody who's saying that's that we just kind of ignored it it seems like and i hate that this hope that doesn't get clipped up for some anti-semitism shit because it has nothing to do with jewish people as a race or culture or whatever this is about a government yeah what they seem to be doing is a genocide and we're like hey they are allowed to do that i agree with you well there was the international outcry was so much more significant in the 90s whereas right now the international outcry is there but that's

not really what we're seeing or hearing here instead what we're seeing here is well they have a right to defend themselves. And there's all the comparisons to 9-11. There's actually not a lot of objective comparison between 9-11 and what happened on October 7th. They're very, very different settings, right? But we're still drawing all these comparisons as if we are making the argument that the mass killing of non-participant non-aggressors in Gaza, Palestinian women, children, and civilians, non-extremists, as if that's okay. Yeah. And I think to that end, I don't know that we're going to forget about this in 15, 20 years. I think there will be a stain that didn't necessarily exist with Houthis and Tutsu's,

and I think it happened in Sudan as well. I read a book that I already forgot. What is the what? It was called the book, but it's about a genocide. So that's happened. But this, I think, will leave a longer stain. Do you not feel that way? The reason I don't feel that way is because, first of all, most Americans don't understand

what a Palestinian is. And I, and I would... It's someone getting killed in Palestine. And I mean, it's probably a woman or just. child getting murdered in Palestine and here's what's fucked up what's Palestine uh well it is it is the nation that will soon to be known as israel it's like prince but it doesn't exist right and that's one of the things that makes it so hard for people to conceptualize there is no technical Palestine okay there is Israel and then there's other areas of Israel that are called other things Gaza west bank

there's no Palestine right even the united states who has kind of quietly advocated for a two-party, a two-state solution. There is an Israel, and there for sure is terrorism. We all know terrorism very well. Every American knows terrorism very well. So we understand terrorism, but we don't understand the difference between Hezbollah, Hamas. We don't understand. I don't. Yeah, we don't understand what the IRGC is in Iran. And what's the relationship between Iran? Like, what's a proxy? Yeah. And then why are there even missiles coming from Yemen? People don't understand it. Yeah. And when people don't understand it, it makes it really easy to forget and favor something else that you do understand. So the United States is kind of making

a calculated decision. And I'm not even necessarily judging this. This is kind of like a decision I have the luxury of not making. I got to look out from my 330 or whatever million constituents. And if it is, you know, 10, 20, hundreds of thousands of people over there dying, those aren't my constituents. I don't have to worry about that if it benefits my. Is that kind of the ugly truth of what you're saying? Yeah, there's two ugly truths. One is I have to feed my constituency. And my constituency doesn't no, doesn't care to a point where it's affecting the economy or my election, my reelection campaign, right? That's part of it. But then the other part of it is, objectively speaking, if you measure what Israel's actions have been, it's all good for us. They have crippled

Hezbollah, crippled Hamas. The Houthis are weak. Iran has been, like, their enrichment program has been damaged significantly, their ability to leverage proxy conflict not just against Israel, but anywhere else in the world has been significantly reduced. I mean, Netanyahu's decisions, his actions, as sad as they are, and as many tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians that you can count, he's essentially taken three major adversaries to the United States, and he's knocked them all back 10 to 15 years. So 10 to 15 years of increased security for 330 million

cost the price of 50,000 Palestinians, and how many Americans are going to take action on that? That's the ugly truth. Could you also say that the conflict has exacerbated a potential hot war between the United States directly and Iran? Thank God you had a good point because he fucking checked me. Jesus Christ, I'm one way away from checking me. It's unbelievable. The corner I'm in.

Okay, go ahead. So I think what yes and no, we were never that close to a hot war with Iran. Iran doesn't really care that much about us. They care much more about what's happening in the Middle East. and we don't really care that much about Iran because Iran doesn't have much sphere of influence that impacts us when Donald Trump flew

stealth bombers into Iran to bomb their nuclear enrichment facility I think he knew very well there was not going to be significant retribution coming back from Iran if anything there would be what happened some sort of response that allows us to test our weapon systems in full view of everybody and look really strong again

did he do real damage with that attack because we've heard mixed things it's mixed things and this is part of what's the biggest challenge in the Trump administration is that even the intelligence, like the DNI, the director of national intelligence and all the agencies that feed up to the DNI, we don't know if they're independent or if they're being directed as to what they can or can't report to the president, right? Because DIA came back and said, hey, our damage analysis is insignificant. And the DNI came out and said, we'd knock them back to the Stone Age. And so it's inconsistent. Are the facts coming

up so we can find them or are the facts being dictated is the truth being dictated down? Which of those entities has the greater chance of being propagandized by a president that wants to get a third term? So the DNI. Because the DNI is the newest of all positions. Didn't exist before

2003. Oh, okay. And the DNI said that we didn't do much damage, correct? Correct. And then the DNI came back later on. I was like, no, no, no, no. We really did. That's Tulsa Gabbard. Okay. Okay, okay. Got it. Okay, here's actually one question I did want to ask you about Israel and the allieship and all the good that it does. If that is true, why is, why do we still hear so much about an APEC presence as a lobby? Why do we still, why does APEC still exist? Why does Israel need APEC to do all of these things? From what I understand as a guy who's not super

political, they have a large influence on the government. But if we're already getting so much out of Israel, why do we need that lobbyist? So I mean, you're, you're definitely out of my depth on this one. Fuck yeah Because when it comes to a lot of the political lobbies and what's involved in them and how they work That's not foreign intelligence Yeah, I can understand that's like domestic

I guess my question As you're talking it all out I'm thinking it in my mind I'm like okay that all makes sense But then why would we need an APEC Or why would Israel need an APEC to have such influence here And you know Bernie Sanders has said like You go against them, they'll get you out of office

Why do they need that if they offer so much value. Yeah, our elected politicians. They need a vacation to, you know, Israel. I mean, you know what? I guess I can understand that to a degree, but if they offer so much good, it feels like they wouldn't need such a strong, like I'm trying to think England is an ally of ours, as far as I know, that we have a great relationship with. There's no English lobby. So this is a great point. So you're actually raising something that is really relevant here because it's both relevant and I know something about it. Israel doesn't trust the United States. Israel actively tries to send Mossad agents to penetrate the United States.

They are actively recruiting spies inside the United States in our nuclear programs and our weapons and military programs and our intelligence programs. Like, Israel is actively trying to spy on the United States. So they don't trust us. They don't trust us to do what we say we're going to do. Why is that? They don't trust us not to spy on them. Because I think they understand American pragmatism better than most Americans understand American pragmatism. right Israel is one of the few countries in the world that's surrounded on almost all sides by enemies

not just like I don't like you enemies but existential threat enemies people who want to wipe off yeah wipe the Jewish state off than that to act like to give Israel credit to act like there haven't been terrorist attacks slash attempted terrorist attacks constantly is a ridiculous thing you say is it is it fair to say they have a militaristic paranoia I would venture away from paranoia because it's demonstrable but when it comes to dealing with the United States as far as intelligence. Yeah, that would seem like paranoia. Like, is there demonstrable evidence

the United States is withholding information from the Israeli government or Assad? So the United States has a full transparency agreement with four other countries. That's what makes what's known as the Five Eyes. So Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, and the United States. Are they called the Five Eyes?

Because CIA, MI6, the I and the Intelligence Agency? I actually don't know. And it's funny when you look at it written out, it's the word I, EY. So I don't really know what it came from. But those are the only five countries that really agree to full transparency. And even then, that full transparency has policy rigor around it. Israel's not part of that.

So they already know that they're not part of an agreement that says we're going to share everything. So then they have to wonder, like, what are you going to share? What aren't you going to share? And when it comes to Israel, the thing they're the most interested about is not what is the United States collecting about Israel. It's what is the United States collecting about a threat to Israel that they're not telling Israel. So what do the United States collect about Hezbollah that they're not telling Israel? What do the United States collect about Iran that they're not telling Israel? And they want to shore up that gap.

And that's why they're so paranoid and they'll still have a lack of trust for us. I mean, they have a lack of trust for Israel, again. And I want to differentiate between Israel and Jews. Not the same thing. Yes, that's a super important thing to do. But Israel, Israel's, it doesn't know who to trust and it arguably doesn't trust anyone. it's a young country it's almost

the relationships that it does have are all pragmatic based on economy and military trading and shared borders or whatever else it doesn't really have anyone who's ideologically aligned with the Jewish state

because Israel does not have a differentiation of church and state they are the Jewish state the government is the religion the religion is the government so that's fundamentally different than here in the United States and so does America trust Israel

No. At the government level, the United States does not trust Israel. Why? Because of all the same reasons. We know they're trying to penetrate us. We know that they manipulate us. We know that they manipulate trade. We know that they have agreements and partnerships and they do all sorts of things with other countries that are beneficial to Israel but not beneficial to the United States. So there's this inherent distrust of these two allies that inherently need each other on opposite sides of the world. Is that a new phenomenon or do you feel like this has precedent in history? It has precedent for sure. And it's the way that most relationships around the world actually do work. There's a famous quote that you learn at the agency that actually comes from the part from statesmanship and diplomacy that says there are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests. Ah, that's good. So you have permanent interests. I think that's a life lesson. But people come and go based on whether or not they agree with your interests or not. Is there any evidence of different governments, globally speaking, that withhold intelligence information of a potential attack for some other interest?

So that's a, it's a yes and no answer, right? Generally speaking, imminent threat to life. Imminent threat to life means very pressing in terms of a timeline, 48 hours, 72 hours, that type of thing. Imminent threat to life, arguably, even complete enemies should advise each other. Right? So if we in the United States find out that some extremist group in, China is going to bomb a public event in Beijing, we'll tell China, right? It's kind of a duty to warn is what we call it. And other countries agree the same thing for us. So there should be that for imminent threats. But for strategic threats, which are long-term threats or tactical threats, it becomes more dicey. And now it becomes, well, if we tell them about this attack that could happen in three months,

are we exposing our source? And if we're exposing our source, Is it worth possibly losing the source to prevent that attack, or is it better to wait until the attack is imminent and then warn them two days or three days in advance? I noticed you said the word should. Have you ever seen it not happen? I've seen it happen a number of times,

especially in even the takedown of Osama bin Laden, right? Pakistan was an ally. We crossed Pakistani borders illegally to take out Osama bin Laden. We didn't warn the Pakistanis that there was going to be a violent attack on their country until right before we cross the border. Now, this is, we're getting a conspiracy territory, okay?

You can punt on this if you want. But there is a theory that Mossad had some forewarning of the September 11th attacks and that they were in some way, maybe knew about it, and then didn't inform the United States. And I've seen it, like, pop up on Twitter. That is the kindest conspiracy theory I've heard. By anything Israeli-adjacent. It's like a Mormon conspiracy theory.

We heard about dancing these rallies over. I'm celebrating that. People call a different thing. But I'm curious, have you heard of this theory and do you think there's any validity to it? I think there's actually probability to it. And I say that because even in the United States, CIA and FBI

both had information about the September 11th attacks before they happened. Now, whether or not Israel nefariously held that information back is a different story. Was it there and they just didn't see it? Was it there and they didn't validate it? Was it there? And they communicated to the United States and said, hey, we're getting some strange

warnings, do you have anything about a pending attack in your country? Right? And the United States, they did, but it was on a cutting room floor and nobody was talking about it. So they may very well come back and then like, nope, you know what it's talking about. Wasn't there a huge lack of communication pre-9-11 between CIA and FBI and other information agencies? And then post, they sort of open that up better. Yeah, so that's exactly getting back to what the DNI is and why the DNI exists. Prior to 9-11, the United States was basically a bunch of intelligence community. members who coordinated when they wanted to and they all spoke different languages right you speak

military you speak intel you speak signals intelligence or the people who listen in on phone calls right well when you write a report you use different terminology when you write a report and when you have an asset you didn't coordinate your asset with him so it might be the same asset for all we know only yours is 24612 and yours is codenamed you know hard nipples whatever falcons yeah but nobody was talking to each other in the same language. So when the 9-11 commission happened, and in 2003, when Senate came in and said, we're changing, when really all of Congress came in and said, we're changing how we do intelligence business, we are appointing a DNI, a director of national intelligence who's going to standardize in uniform and make everything more uniform. Are we

less effective in a sense because of this? I would say we're more effective, we're more effective, but we're also fatter. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. I get it. I get it. I get it.

Yeah, I get it. But we're fatter and we're, um, and we're more expensive. Okay. Right. It used to be that people could run kind of lean, be experimental. You always had, you always had plausible deniability. Now, like how, how does the D&I have plausible deniability? Yeah.

All right, guys. We got to do some tour dates. September 11th. What a great day. through the 13th. Danny a beach improv. September 25th through 27th. I really wish Danny had thought that through giving me September 11th, but it's there. Hey, come to the show. It's going to be explosive. September 25th through 27th, I'm at hilarities in Cleveland. October 5th, I'm in Dubai. I don't know if there's even any tickets left. Go find out. October 16th through 18th,

I'm in East Providence, Rhode Island. October 23rd through 25th, I'm in San Jose, all those dates and more at Akersling.com. We also got a huge announcement coming. And imminent announcement This is coming right now I remember I told y'all I invested in a jive shop Like a year or a year and a half ago They opened a second location

We're expanding We're coming to Manhattan, West Village 20 Christopher Street It's called Fonty's They're still gonna have them a solid jar They've got some banging ass Indian sandwiches We're growing baby all good things

Amazing amazing 20 Christopher Street Fonty's love y'all Let's go Quick announcement By the way So many people have come up to me After the show has been like Hey dude I cannot

Is there anywhere I can just get a photo I don't want to suck your dick Oh, I thought, okay, I could stop making the announcement. I didn't know. I was like, yo, that's shit. I just got making the announcement if you want. No, no, no, it's great. And I think it kind of gets the people going. But there's just, get the people going, I think.

There's so many people that have come up to me and just been like, hey, man, is there any way we can just do a photo and not do the thing? Like, like, do you know, no. Muslim dudes with their girls being like, hey. You got it. That's, if the girl, that's haram. You sucking his dick, hello. I don't think that's true. But Nashville, Tennessee, Denver, Colorado.

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You made a comment in a different podcast where you said that Massad operates today like the CIA operated in the late 50s, 60s. Yeah. So the reference there is that CIA prior to 9-11, CIA in the 60s and 70s, did not suffer significant oversight. They had a small group of people that could take very high-risk operations in order to accomplish whatever priorities the president set in place. That's essentially what the Massad is now. Argo. Argo. Yeah, yeah. That's what that's what Mossad is now. Masad is a small group with almost no oversight that executes in any way that they need to, the direction of their punishment. We keep hearing they're like the most effective, I mean, we meaning idiots like me, the most effective intelligence agency. Is that true and is that why?

Yeah, so tell us about your colleagues. So I want to, I'm going to be particular about language, right? Because effective, effective has different meanings. They know the most, it seems. So I would argue that they don't. Oh, okay. So first of all, Israel and Mossad is very, very focused on just a handful of priorities, basically threats to the homeland. Okay.

Everything outside of that handful of priorities, they don't care about. They're not a global superpower. The United States is a global superpower. We don't have a handful of priorities. We have to know what's happening between two allies in Europe. We have to know what's happening about, you know, rice trade in Southeast Asia. We have to know whether or not there's going to be another coup in Africa. We care about all that shit.

So we have to take our budget and our officers and know everything that's happening. happening in the world. And Mossad just has to focus on threats to the homeland. Right. Here's a question. How did they miss October 7th? Bang. So did they miss October 7th?

One of the places, one of the ways where October 7th is parallel to 9-11 is that in hindsight, what people have collected is that there was reporting, there was information that was communicated up the chain of command that was never acted upon to prevent the attack. But if it's a small group of people, it makes sense in CIA. I keep not, I keep, you have a real thing against the word the, so I just keep saying CIA. I appreciate it. In CIA, it was a scattered budget. Like you said, there's no real oversight.

Masad is a small group. So, to address some conspiracy theories out there, how do they not communicate with each other within a small group that there's an imminent threat potentially to the homeland? So there were three groups that are, that were involved. Three Israeli organizations that were involved in the October 7th incident. Masad, because Massad's charged with collecting foreign intelligence that addresses threats against the homeland. So their job is they were the ones that should have known what Hamas was doing, who the Hamas leaders were, what the supplies were, timing, et cetera, right?

So that would have been Mossad. But the actual border itself was protected by the Israeli military, not by Mossad. So anything about imminent attack, anything about locations, anything about security, defense, the IDF would have had to handle that. So Massad would have had to communicate with the IDF and the IDF would have had to communicate with Mossad. Okay. And then you have internal security, which is handled by a group called Shinbet. Shinbet is basically like the FBI for Israel. Anything that happens inside the country, not on the border, not outside of the border, anything happens inside the country should be Shinbet's purview. Okay. So you've got three

organizations that would have had to all communicate almost seamlessly in a short period of time to prevent oxygen. So you don't think there's any real validity to the idea that Netanyahu maybe allowed this to happen so we could stay in power. I think there's always a possibility but the probability speaks to miscommunication, mishandling and a poor

series of... Which is, yeah, I understand that is the most logical and probable of all solutions. Okay. Wait, one thing. But things going on in Gaza since that's technically part of Israel, wouldn't that be Shnbets responsibility? And this is why, it's a great question, and this is why

things get really mixed up in Israel because you have all these international players, some of which are trying to protect Palestinians, some of which are trying to protect Israel, all of which are trying to find peace. And then you have these areas that are kind of carved out that are supposed to be like safe havens for the Palestinians, but they're not really safe havens because they're still managed by the Israelis. And then Israeli law shouldn't necessarily apply to Palestinians, but it does because they're on land that the world kind of views as Israel, so it gets really fucking complicated, right? Who does have jurisdiction?

Is it the Palestinian Authority? Palestinian Authority is kind of the recognized authority for the Palestinian people, or is it Hamas? Hamas is the group that was voted into power by the Palestinian people over the Palestinian Authority. Woo, fucking. And then the United States, the world sees Hamas as a terrorist organization. Sort of.

Twelve countries in the world see Hamas as a terrorist organization. Really? I thought we all kind of saw Hamas's terrorist. No, that's Western narrative. Why do the others not see it as a terrorist? Even the EU doesn't see them as a terrorist group. Because it's just because they're liberal cucks? Or like, what is that? Like, what is the, I'm serious. Why were they not? Because the definition of terrorism is really loose.

It's defined by each country. And some countries see Hamas' activities as terrorist activities. Some countries see Israel's activities as terrorist countries. In Iran... Two things can be true. In Iran, the United States is a terrorist country. organization. Is the Taliban recognized as, or not recognized as a terrorist organization by many countries?

That's what's funny. The Taliban is seen as a terrorist organization almost universally. Oh, really? Which is why it was so significant when George Bush, President Bush, said, we will not negotiate with terrorists. And then there we were sitting at the table with the Taliban. Right. Interesting.

Was Hamas a terrorist organization before October 7? 5 or 12. Yeah. It was identified. It was identified at the table. terrorist organization in the United States for many, many years, because it uses, it uses extremist activity to cause, to cause injury to civilians with the intent of changing policy. That's essentially the definition, the United States definition of terrorism.

Even if you look up right now, is Hamas a terrorist organization or an insurgency? Because insurgency was another term that we invented in Afghanistan and Iraq. If you look up that term, even on Google, the Google machine, the Google A will be like, This is a very complicated topic. Because depending on your point of view, it is both an insurgency and a terrorist group. One person's terrorist and another person's freedom fighter, basically. Yeah. I have a question that might parlay us into our next topic.

Okay. I have a Mossad question. Oh, we'll do that one. It's like Trump. Well, we started with Israel and now with massad questions. And this is really more from Twitter than me. Why do they like fucking kids so much? You know, I was sitting there, and when you said it's from Twitter,

When you said it's from Twitter, I was like, I'm not saying what's happening. I keep hearing this thing, and you're my, I know nothing. So you are the brain for this podcast. We're never going to pretend to be smart people. I keep reading about. I was going to ask the same question in a different way. Do you want to try a different way? Try your way.

Let's try your way. So there was a recent news story that went viral on Twitter. Why are they all pet? No. There was a recent news story That there was an Israeli national That was in Nevada That was allegedly implicated in a child sex trafficking ring

Or an operation where he was trying to procure other people To have sex with children And then he was arrested, detained in Nevada And then deported and basically ostensibly extradited to Israel And then released by the Israeli government People are looking at this as some sort of unfair deal The United States has with Israel where some of the worst criminals that are attempting to offend our citizens

are then getting released with impunity in their own nation. And this isn't the first time that that has happened. Why does that happen? I can tell you why. You're not going to like the answer, why. But it happens, and it will continue to happen. So we don't know what we stumbled into. We had the Nevada police, we had local police, who stumbled into something that had an international footprint.

So it could have been a coordinated intelligence operation between the United States and Israel, and Nevada stepped into the middle of it, not realizing that both the U.S. federal government and the Israeli government understood what was happening. It could have been a situation where nobody in the United States had any idea what was happening, and Israel was just running a unilateral operation,

but Israel is such a close ally, and the intel sharing that exists makes it so that we have an agreement where if an American citizen is arrested in Israel, they are immediately extradited United States, not held prisoner in Israel. And if an Israeli citizen, as the rest of the United States, they're immediately extradited to Israel so that they're not held liable in the United States. That kind of agreement could exist. There's a number of different reasons why all of this could have played out the way it played out, but I will say that the optics are horrible because they're exactly what your conclusion is. Why would it be that somebody who is putting American children at risk, whatever their nationality is, why would they be allowed to go right back home again?

Yeah. Yeah. Why wouldn't they stand trial here where their criminal actions would have? have had damage, why doesn't that person face, you know, face justice here in the country where they, where they committed the crime? Yeah. And then on a similar note, you have said on record that you think Jeffrey Epstein was most likely Mossad, so why do they like fucking kids so much? Jeez. That's just, I'm just, you know, that's Twitter, not me.

That's text. Twitter does it be. Yeah, okay, that one might have been me. But it was based on that, and then you have, I. Yeah, you said Massad, Jeffrey Epstein was most likely Massad. Yeah, so the Epstein thing is really interesting because I was, I don't spend a lot of time digging into the topics that. I didn't care that much about it until the list disappeared. Now, this is crazy.

Yeah, so it's funny because I was, I actually had a conversation with another intelligent friend of mine where we, we, who had federal background. And we were talking about what could have happened here? Like, how does this play out the way that it plays out? How does somebody who is accused of such heinous crimes, who's already in custody, and then who was part of a campaign promise, how does it still get covered up? How does it still get redacted from public purview? And the theory that we kind of developed, the theory that he introduced to me that I think is the most sound theory, is that there's a good chance that Jeffrey Epstein may have been an FBI source, not a CIA source, not a Mossad source. I mean, he may have been a massad source and a million other sources. But if he was an FBI, what's known as an FBI CI, covert informant, if he was an FBI CI,

he could have been in a position where he was safe from many charges. Instead, he was reporting to FBI the more egregious criminal activity of all the clients that he was supporting, the people whose bank accounts he was moving and building, the people whose abuses he was building, the foreigners who were coming to his parties, like he could have been a pretty incredible source of information not to CIA because CIA doesn't work that way, but he could have worked with FBI and been given

protection. You see how that sounds like you still work for CIA, right? Where you're like, that's FBI. You get how he's like, we wouldn't do such a thing. We would, but we can't. Okay. We can't because the CIA can't work with an American citizen without going through the FBI

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with Epstein and children getting molested and all these horrible things. You're not going to like this answer either, but... No, I don't have to like it. I just want to know what it could be. X isn't going to like it either. Okay. So you protect a CI, you protect a clandestine source of information at all costs because every future CI is watching what happens to today's CI. So as somebody as heinous as Epstein, right, accused of everything he's been accused of.

If he's just one of, say, 30 massive FBI confidential informants who are out there, if we turn him over to the public, if we break our agreement with him, then everybody else is like, well, fuck, I'm not going to work with FBI. I'm not going to rat anybody out. I'm not going to narc ever because even FBI won't cover my back, right? They won't put me in witness protection. They won't keep my secret. If he's a confidential informant, no one else would know that he was working with him.

That's a great point. Except that when the files are released, the files will tell you. When he gets jammed up, got it. Okay. And then think about that. If they try to keep those files hidden, this is what I think, argue, this is what I think is happening to JFK. I think JFK had some sort of connection in there that shows that he was in some way working with or colluding with some element of either our government or foreign government. And we just can't carve that part out because everything.

time you release some files, those files say nothing, and then you hold other files back, and they're like, what's in those files? So you can never get to the core of exoneration. So you don't think it was just Lee Harvey acting alone in the JFK? You think they're... I think we don't, well, oh yeah, so I don't know. I don't even know that the assassination is what's being hidden in the JFK files. It could have been something tangential to the assassination, right? And that's the same thing with Jeffrey Epstein. What we're all looking for is some kind of smoking gun that says he was working for Massad or he was working for CIA.

It all could be tangential. It all could be tangential. And the reason that is classified is a tangential classification, not to protect him in any way. But what can be worse than protecting child? It's like, even if he was helping us out

in so many ways, now we know that there are so many victims. Like, shouldn't we go after the people who were also victimizing? Sorry, to add to that point, Is there not, I'm not even saying this is a joke. Is there not like a carve out in a CI's mind that's like, oh, yeah, that guy fucked kids. So that's why he's out.

No. Because it's so the answer, what's worth it is the future confidential informants that we will get if we never out a confidential informant. That's the benefit. Okay. Not just this year, but next year and two years from now and 10 years from now, right? Because if we ever out a confidential informant, then every confidential is going to think, twice about ever working it is interesting because with this specific crime it is so heinous that i don't think people can see past it but like i think like you know whitey bulger like in boston

becomes a ceo or i c i and he's working as an informant with the fbi and they let him do crime murder people sell drugs these are things we can kind of wrap our mind around and we kind of let it go and they're like oh yeah well they were using him to get to all these guys and they were able to get a hundred of them and they killed you know 10 other people who cares yeah and we kind of Like, alright, whatever. But with this crime, it's so heinous that we can't see through it. But I think in the mind of, you know, intelligence people, CIA, FBI, they're just like, yeah, people are people, numbers or data, who gives a shit?

You guys just did the John Gotti thing. What? You guys all just did, like, the John Gotti thing where they're interviewing John Gotti got caught. And they're like, what do you think about John Gotti getting caught? And they're like, what about the murders? And the people are just like, what murders? Like, they're just like covered. Yeah, and there's a degree.

I think in our mind, maybe it's society, maybe it's human nature. especially of children there is no there's no ability to reconcile that for most of us the reason prisoners fuck them up you kind of him like yeah absolutely and I think part of a job that I don't envy

in someone high up in the agency or FBR whatever these places are it's like you can't afford to do that because I got to worry about 330 million people and I'm not defending what they did I do understand that is a part of their job and that is a tough thing to do so there definitely are

files there's definitely stuff that was collected at his place that he was filming. They probably have proof that other people have fuck some kids. Let's say you don't want to expose that he was intelligence, but couldn't they at least use that information to start investigating some of the people that we know fux and kids? And then just try to, hey, get them on a private investigation. You aren't CIs. And yes, they can.

And yes, they probably are. But when you start an investigation, you don't go public and say, we start this investigation. We're actually looking into so-and-so right now because of what we found... It's taken them a long time. Investigations take a painfully long time to actually research, to build a case, to build a case that you have confidence when it goes to trial, you can build a jury that's not going to have a predisposed bias for the case. Give us a rough idea how long it takes to see justice for any of these people.

I mean, I think we'd be lucky if we saw it in four or five years. I think realistically, cases probably would take between seven and 14 years. and then even No, not the age of the victims. How long does it take to get this trial like these posits? It takes upwards of 14 years to get a prosecution. It can.

Wow. Especially if you're looking for a federal prosecution, it's a long time. There's also the assumption that all the blackmail is sexual blackmail. True. Like, I mean, Sauer kind of pointed out to us

and I think it's like a good distinction. Like some of it obviously is. But some of it is just a dinner that he has with, you know, a former head of state or with a very wealthy investor. and just listening to the conversation. And so it's like, oh, there's blackmail of Bill Gates.

There's blackmail of this person. It may be sexual, but it also could just be a conversation. No, I know that. But the ones that were diddle in some kids and get them the fuck out of it. Right. Why would Trump run on releasing these files if when he was in office and Epstein got locked up and they got all this information and he know this can't get out to the public, why would he run on releasing it? Because he's

dishonest? Point blank. All right. I mean, Trump is dishonest. I think we all understand Trump is a dishonest character. I mean, he told us that on the pod. He said, I am a mostly truthful person. Basically saying, I lie sometimes.

Yeah. When it's strategically relevant, when it's beneficial to marketing, when it advances the cause, when it gets him what he needs in the long run, it's a short-term sacrifice for a long-term gain. So was it just a huge miscalculation he thought people would not care after he gets elected? Like if I know he couldn't Well he did release I think he thought

Oh yeah We're gonna give him some red meat We're gonna put together All these influencers We're gonna give them these files And we're gonna leak all the stuff And they're gonna eat it up And we'll be good

I'll have done my job And then no one ate it And then he was like Ah shit Is that what you think Andrew? You gotta keep in mind That like Donald Trump was there From the beginning of all this

With his first presidency So none of this is new to him It's almost like a boomerang That's coming back to He was back there with Epstein too Yeah I mean He was there for a long time Yeah, but what I'm saying is just when you put yourself into the shoes of the president and you calculate risk, this is his second term.

Yeah. Like he shouldn't have a, he shouldn't have a third term according to what we understand of precedent and our own internal laws, right? So what does he have to lose? What does he have to lose? What does he have to lose? Is that base going to vote liberal next cycle? No. I do think a lot more people.

Yeah. I think a lot of people in the middle are upset. But the middle is not the base. Ah, okay. Right? The base, the base is still intact for the next conservative president, the next conservative candidate. So if anybody, the people you can mess with the most is the base. It's also a good point is Trump doesn't care about the part, right?

Like, he doesn't care about, like, republicanism. I think he cares about, like, him getting elected. Yeah. And so if he pisses off everyone, like, he doesn't care, he's like, I'm out if he's out. If he's out. Yeah. What is the general view of all the agencies? on Trump? Do they think of him as a president? Do they have some dirt on him? Do you think any foreign

intelligence has some dirt on him? I've heard that theory that like of the reason he's so pro, Israel or whatever, is they have something on them. Russia might have something on them. How much do you believe in that? And then what is like the general agency view of him? So it's, I can't speak for obviously all the members of the I see. Donald Trump is definitely a split decision for a lot of people. Even within the CIA and the people that I talk to at CIA, he's still a split decision. There's some people who love the American first pro-America let's get back to like hurrah support the military be strong again give up on this diplomacy bullshit stuff there are plenty of people who love that idea they don't love Donald Trump they love that idea and then you have the other side of people who

just seem to hate Donald Trump okay right we're like oh he he's misogynistic and he's belittling and he's he sounds stupid when he talks and blow and so you've got the people who love what he's doing and you've got the people who kind of hate the man yeah and i've seen that on both sides even within cia itself which is supposed to be an apolitical organization i think the real thing that you can look at to measure how much cia likes or dislikes Donald trump is the incredible lack or the incredible amount of resignations at cia under the first trump presidency and then under the second trump presidency also right people don't want to work for him he is the executive that is a organization that works for the executive branch.

And I think Donald Trump, of all people, is like, if you don't like working for me, get the fuck out, right? Give me space to bring somebody else in. Right. But unlike we've ever seen in history, when the first Trump presidency resulted in a massive exodus of CIA officers. I was unaware of this. Yeah.

Yeah. So CIA had an attrition rate historically of about 1.1.3%, which means that every year, 1.3% of its clandestine cadre would leave its ranks. the majority of that 1.3% would come back in the following Monday as a contractor working for a contracting firm. So they didn't really lose anybody, right, right? Very, very few people left CIA. And then what happened is in 2014, 2014 was when I left CIA.

There were more people willing to leave. There were more people willing to resign. Right. If you like that word better. Yeah. And then in 2016, like, the floodgates opened. We, CIA went from losing, on average, one clandestine officer per month.

Yeah. That's what they were losing prior to Donald Trump, to 30 clandestine officers per month in 2016. Wow. Wow. They had a huge, and these are not, these aren't analysts or finance people or logisticians or fake passport people. These are actual people who collect intelligence. Has it affected the strength of the agency long term?

Absolutely. Now, now that is like universally understood across every agency. officer, I've talked to, current, former, and even still inside. They all think the agency's weak. The agency's weak. The intelligence it collects is weak. The access it has is weak. It's heavily reliant on foreign partners to give the intelligence that it collects. It's struggling. It's struggling. And it's not because of the officers, the men and women at CIA.

It's because of the resources and the structure and the administration and the, and the massive swings left and right that we've seen in the executive. Guys, take me out. I'm available. That's true. That's true. He will fail his weed test. That's our fault. Yeah, so I guess I'm also thinking just a 30x increase in turnover, you're not going to be able to train up people as fast as you're losing them. Correct. So that would have long-term effects. And then I guess to bring it in, to not make it just Trump, when Biden comes in and things seem to go pretty far left, that will be the swing you're talking about. And then Trump comes back in and they go even further right. Correct. And when you're making a career in government service, first of all, you make a career in government service, hoping. that you won't have to deal with

politics. Most of the people that go into health and human services, you know, TSA, you name it, any federal office, they don't really, they're not politically motivated people. They're there because they're looking for a stable, steady job.

They don't seem to want to be there. They don't seem to enjoy much of anything. I don't think being alive is really motivating to them. But in all honesty, like that's the kind of person that gets a federal job. That's the kind of person that lives in a government job Your entire career Randomly checked a lot more

The way I look I might be a TSA As soon as I keep putting it away like this Okay Fuck, I had a question for you Oh, how does this affect America's safety long term? Yes We're not safe long term Wow

What the fuck? Oh yeah, we're in I mean I'm sorry if this is new news to you X would have told you this too. We're fucked. We've got like 10 to 15 years of horrible American existence ahead of us. It's not going to be a fun place to be. We have to fix the shit that we've broken.

How long has this been breaking? It's been breaking since the Obama administration. So Barack Obama came in and he was the first truly populist president who abused the executive power system to hijack policy when his party controlled the Congress. Damn, not. Oh. He was the first one to do it. I don't think he did it maliciously.

I think he was trying to do what he believed was right that the party also told him, Brock, this is the time to do it. Like, you need to do what's right. So I think there was a lot of pressure, and I think he was still a statesman, and I think he was still, you know, a professional politician. But the precedent that he said

was a precedent that made it easier for every following president to abuse it. Oh, gotcha. So the most executive orders ever written up until that period of time, Barack Obama. The most covert action ever executed, like, meaning the president executed killings abroad with nobody's permission. Barack Obama, right? These were the things that were happening during his administration to build hope for the future of America. To what end?

Do you have an idea or can you talk about, like, what they were trying to get done? What were the democratic interests at the time? Well, I mean, politically, there's definitely smarter people to talk about it. But when it came to national security, what Barack Obama was trying to do is he was trying to combat the terrorist threat, the long-lasting terrorist threat, which is a transnational threat that's based in ideology that is really centered on like an abuse of information. So if you can kill enough, like, queen bees, then the hive is useless. So that's what he was trying to do, is he was trying to, like, knock out major. players just like Netanyahu was doing in Israel right he's trying to knock out these major players and then hopefully have all of al-Qaeda kind of collapse in and of itself especially because we had

been in a war for a decade already that was not necessarily a popular war and I understand the idea like on its on his face it makes a lot of sense and that's and then domestically he was trying to build up a policy that was so powerful that the next incumbent president couldn't unravel it right with Obamacare. Right. In the effort to do what was well-intentioned, the result was Donald Trump could come in and be like, hey, guys, I'm going to sign a bunch of executive orders. I'm going to use my right as the executive to control CIA and do whatever I want to do.

I'm going to play brinksmanship over here. I'm going to do things my way now. And it's okay because the president before me did the same thing. And then Biden came in and was like, well, now I'm going to sign as many executive orders as I want to design. And I want to use the CIA for whatever I want to use the CIA. for it. So it's like, how much do you think 9-11 in the search for Osama influenced Obama's desire to just sort of non-congressionally attack and try to

hunt people down? I think the first actually led to the second. So I think he had had so much success eradicating leaders along the way that when Osama bin Laden was identified and the location was known, he was like, let's do this. Like, we're going to piss a bunch of people off, but it's the right thing to do. Yeah. And for America. The Pakistanis. It pissed off the Pakistanis, it pissed off almost every American ally. Maybe my Indian is showing, but if you're harboring the guy, you're our ally, you're harboring the guy who blew, who had the greatest terrorist attack on our soil ever, what fucking right do you have to be mad that we kill this guy?

Why would you say that the Pakistani authorities would change their rights at all, depending on what America thinks? Would change their rights at all? Why would they change their perspective at all based on what America thinks? Well, you were harboring a known terrorist. To America, not that's Pakistan. What do they care? He's not killing Pakistanis.

Yeah, but he also wasn't a Pakistani citizen. He was a Saudi Arabian citizen. So he's not one of yours. Yeah, and if they're one of our allies, wouldn't you be like, hey, are they really one of our allies? Because they're going to ask the same thing. Is America really our ally or is America India's ally? America at the time, I think, was Pakistan's ally. But I'm also basing that on you saying they were allies.

They are. So the Israeli-Pakistan-America thing is completely tits up. Who's friends with who? Like, Pakistan and India are not friends. No. But America somehow allies with both. Hmm. Right?

The United States gives weapons to both. It gives aid to both. It gives training to both. Pakistan actually uses terrorist tactics in its fight against India. Yeah, believe me, I hear a lot about it. But we still support Pakistan. Do we identify them as a terrorist organization? Oh, shit.

See what I'm saying? It's fucked up, man. The way the world actually works, not that. the way that like you see on reading rainbow or whatever the fuck you watch on TV like when you watch your YouTube at night the way you think the world works is not the way it actually works. It works in a far more

carnal practical way. Do you ever watch a movie, a spy movie and be like that's an accurate description? What's the most accurate spy movie slash TV show you've ever seen? The Americans is the most accurate and even then you have to kind of focus it into probably the first four

episodes of the first season. After that, it's all Whizbang. What was I shown at Showtime? Slow Horses is one that I... Oh, Homeland. How is that? On Apple TV.

No. No. Like Homeland is off. Slow horses. Slow horses, the concept is sound. There really are offices. We call it the Office of Broken Toys at CIA. Where you send your alcoholics and you send your burnouts and you send your serial

adulterers and you send your people who discovered that cocaine could help them write better reports. You can't send them back on the street. And you can't send them out in the field and you can't fire them because then you've got this bucket of secrets that's tied up in this person so you give them a job. I can be the top agent in one of those. I'm a slow horse, baby.

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flagrant supplements smarter and make the switch to transparent labs i'm chris hadfield i'm an astronaut an author a citizen of planet earth join me for a six-part journey into the systems that power the world real conversations with real people who are shaping the future of energy no politics no empty talk just solutions focused conversations on the challenge is we must overcome and the possibilities that lie ahead. This is on energy. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. The strategy of going after the Queen B's to try to dismantle an organization, does that work?

So there were mixed success. We have found that one of two things usually happens. If you attack a Queen B either before or the head of an intel of a terrorist cell, if you attack the head of the cell before they're able to create, a succession plan, and or if they are in control of a cell and they don't trust their people, if you kill that person, the cell melts down because they have no leadership, they have no organization, they have no plan. But if you're dealing with somebody who has a succession plan, or if you're dealing with somebody who does kind of have relationships with the people that they

command, you run the risk of killing the person who's actually the most moderate. And then the next person to rise up is worse. Because it's like, I feel like Israel did a great job targeting a lot of the Hamas leaders, but they seem to still be doing the thing over there. I actually don't know because we don't get accurate information. But Israel did a phenomenal job in the way that they targeted their leadership because they hit all the leaders at once, right, or the majority of leaders at once. So now it's like you have no logistics and you have no communications

and you have no military leadership and you have no civilian core connection to the government. like we've killed nine people there's only three left and those three are in hiding what the fuck are you going to do and then succession plans start to kick in but it's not like the succession plans were ever serious

because there was never an imminent threat to the leadership and then they did the same thing with Hezbollah and then they tried to do the same thing with Iran so why is Hamas still such a threat I don't think Hamas is the threat that they claim it is I think now Netanyahu is trying to deliver

a campaign promise essentially where he's like I'm going to rid us of Hamas we also again to reiterate the whole like Israel's like the shitty 401K right Israel's like the shitty 401K we don't like it

but we still have it which means we have Netanyahu Netanyahu's on trial for corruption charges in Israel he knows that as soon as this whole fucking thing ends a civilian trial begins and he knows that half his population doesn't agree with him or more and he knows that there's zero percent of the international community that's going to come

to his side so he has one hope cause as much damage to enough Israeli enemies as possible so that when the civilian courts look at him, they're like, you did some really important stuff for us and for our children for the future. So we're either going to waive the sentencing or less than sentencing or let you live out your days, retired and whatever, or we'll let you go to the United States and live in New York. It is a bold risk. And I don't know that it's a risk. I think it's kind of a selfish risk because I think he's doing a lot more damage internationally for Israel and for Jews internationally.

I think they're facing a lot more scrutiny because of this one guy's actions. And I don't disagree with you, and I think there's plenty of voices out there that would say the same thing. That's when you have to think about the calculus. If you're Netanyahu, what is your calculus? First and foremost, survive, protect yourself.

Yeah, I get it. It's reckless, but I do understand where it comes from. Okay, I'm going to let you choose your own adventure. You're promoting your book, Shadow Cell. Great book. Thank you. Did you actually read? It was being nice.

What was your favorite part? The summer I read on Chatjave to do is incredible. I really like the cover. The cover was killer. No, the summary I read was riveting. I really wish I had read the actual book. And I will. I will.

I will. I will read a lot of books halfway through. When will you read about it? You will be one of those books? What date will you have read it? It's all right. I have to read a Jack Reacher novel, and then I'll read about Real Spice. All right.

So you can talk about the book, but I also know, having done just like promo for a comedy special, you go talk about it. an ad nauseum and you're like all right buddy yeah i'm done with this so we can talk about the book and then i could ask you some some other questions that we have about what's going on in the world as you as our expert or we can talk about this and then get to the book and close with the book what would you prefer oh we also have a lightning round of questions but that'll be quick uh let's let's put off the book let's go with your questions first sick of talking about it i knew it i actually really appreciate that you know how this works yeah because a lot of people don't

understand how it works. Yeah, and you're answering the same questions, and it's like, guys, read the book or read a four-page summary on chat GPT. Or don't read the book, but at least go order the book. Yeah. So that I get points for it. It looks very cool. Oh, here's a question, actually. Before we get into the book,

so my understanding of this book from Chad GPT and Mark is you, basically, this is a CIA mission, you are allowed to talk about it. You could have said every country, every name, everything, but you made a deal with CIA to say, hey, you guys can help me with this book and I can protect these names or I can do this on my own

without your help and it's going to get a lot more publicity and I'm going to get on national bestseller list or whatever. What would you rather do? Close. Okay. That's Mark GPT. It was a little bit inaccurate. So my wife and I were very committed when we were, because this is our operational memoir. This is your life. Yeah, this was our operational memoir. I really wish I had taken it more seriously and read the book. It's all good, man. It's all good. It's all good. From just like a handful, like 12 years ago, right? Not long ago.

And the men and women who operated with us are still in the field. Many of them still doing the same operations. So it was never on the table for her and I. It was never on the table to talk about the people. Okay. So all the characters, quote unquote, characters that you read, they're modeled off the real people, right? There really was a guy named James.

There really was a guy who was named James in the book. There really was a girl who was named Tasha in the book. She really did have a cute child who was named Monty in the book. All right. So everything is real, but we didn't want to give the real people because the country where this took place is for sure going to know that we're talking about them. Okay. Because they have my face, they have my file, they have my records, they have my travel details.

They know me. Yeah. And they know that if I wrote this book, it's about them. And they're going to be pissed. Yeah. Well, what I didn't want to do and what my wife didn't want to do, we didn't want to give them enough information to reverse engineer and find the other people. So we told CIA we're not going to talk about the people.

CIA actually came in and was like, oh, no, you're allowed to talk about the people. You just use the first name of their, the true first name, and their last first initial. And we're like, that's a policy thing. That's a stupid operational rule. So we're not going to touch the people at all. But we are going to talk about where it really took place. And in 2021, when we told them we wanted to do this, they gave us approval. But by 2022, when we finished the manuscript, the whole world had changed, right?

Multiple global events happened in 2022. I'm sure you can wrap your minds around it. And it changed the landscape of geopolitical pressures against the United States. And then they came in and they said that book that you wrote is classified from beginning to end. It'll never see the light of day. And that's when we kind of had this back and forth for many years, trying to find a way to get it published, trying to find a way to get CIA to accept that there wasn't anything in the book that was going to harm national security. It's not going to look good geopolitically.

Yeah, yeah. But it's not going to get anybody killed. Right. And they just kept fighting with us and fighting with us. So then in 2024, my wife really decided to escalate things, and she brought on an attorney, and she said, we think that we have a legal case to sue CIA. And the attorney reviewed and said, yeah, you have a First Amendment right case that you would win if you sued CIA and took them to court. Isn't it nice when your wife is combative with somebody else?

Yes. It's my favorite. It's my favorite. Yeah, I think our wives would get along. Or hate each other violent. Either way, it'd be fun for us, because we'd be out of it. But when they decide to fight someone else, I'm like, oh, this is what, watching, it's watching Picasso paint, watching my wife argue with someone else.

It's like, what a my strogle. And you see that make a misstep? And you're like, ah, you don't know what she just did. No, no. Yeah, but that's from them? Yeah, my wife don't miss step. She catches it, though. No, but if the other person missed us, you're like, ah, you just exposed yourself.

You're fucked. You're fucked. You're fucked. Okay, so I, okay, Mark kind of, he made you look cool. Like, you really played hardball with the idea. Mark's nice. He wants to fuck me. But I gave them a very honest depiction of what we discussed, okay, and then he

butchered it. You want to fuck. I mean, that part is good. Honestly, what did I get wrong, Al, from what Mark told us? I don't know. He wasn't listening to the central unintelligence agency. Jesus, Christ. Okay, so I'm glad we got that out of the way because then my first thought was you would

have made way more money if you didn't work with CIA. Why would you do that? But then you wanted to protect your people. in the field so that makes sense so guys who think he's still an agent that's why he did that because that was i was trying to give you that as well really let you defend yourself i keep i keep racking up points my whole achsh exercise did not work out no dude i'm kind of screwed i thought a c h is how you sent money okay okay you weren't worried about the CIA killing you for your wife going and threatened legal action against him so no um they've killed a lot more for less well

Well, two things. So first, the modern-day CIA has a lot of... I would say they can't kill an American citizen, but I'm sure there's always an exception. I don't feel like... We used to be a country, though. I don't think that working on the book was going to meet that criteria. And then, two, one of the nice things about being a pro-CIA,

very public internet figure is, like, it would make internet headlines if I suddenly disappeared. And people were like, to see, I kill Andrew Bustamante, and then they'd have to answer that at some point. Yeah, no. That makes sense. Yeah, it's almost as public

as making a president disappear and covering that up easily, you know? But I'm sure they would have been... Pre-9-11, that was pre-9-11. It was easier back then. I think he's still in. There's a very nice museum on the first floor that we'll go visit together.

Oh. That's a threat, by the way. I don't you know. I know. I was like, what the fuck is having it right? You're going to go see the first four real quick. Don't worry about it. Yeah, we'll show you out the window, dude.

Okay, so Trump and Putin, I don't know. This is probably coming out in a couple weeks, but Trump and Putin just met yesterday, I believe, right? Friday. Friday. Putin and Zelinsky, or, yes, August 22nd. That's August 22nd.

Oh, that's August 22nd. See, I told you all no shit. Okay, but in terms of Ukraine and Russia, where does this whole thing go? How does this war ultimately end? What's going on with these news? What do you think of the summit, also broadly speaking? like yes it's i mean these are all great questions the uh the outcome of russia ukraine really

hasn't changed that much since like the first time i started talking about it in 2022 russia's going to keep the territory that it took it's not going to give that territory up it also it there's a there's a multitude of reasons why it wants the donbass region from resources to industrial investments that it made when it was the USSR uh to the the blood that that stains the battlefields to the fact that it needs a Russian victory. Like, there's all sorts of reasons why it's not going to give it the Donbuss.

And Putin understands statesmanship more than Zelensky. So Zelensky promised his people not only would he get back all of the original Ukraine, but he would get back

all of the pre-1996 Ukraine. So it was an impossible promise. So no matter how this thing ends, if any piece of land remains in Russian territory, Zelensky loses, according to Putin. So that's all He just wants that, right?

He wants that because he needs to rebuild an economy that's been built on a war machine for the last three years. Then he knows that he needs to have something to kind of offset, we're not going to be fighting a war. So how are we going to float the economy? Oh, it's going to be great if we're building infrastructure and basically resettling this new part of Russia. Oh, okay. So it's not just for like PR or whatever. Oh, no. We need to rebuild this and that's going to pump our economy.

Correct. That's going to hold us up. That's how we got through World War II, too. Our economy blew up in World War II because we've been. were creating weapons of destruction. But then we won. The only reason we didn't go into a massive recession is because now all of a sudden we could go into the lands that we conquered and build them up to. Put them in debt, force them to use our labor. Who do we do that with? Who do we do that with? Yeah. Germany, Japan, Britain, Poland, France. Really? All of them. Is this common knowledge?

Well, I don't know if it's common knowledge. But if you look at history critically, you'll see it's all there. We just never got taught that in school. Yeah, what we got taught is because World War I, we were so hard on Germany, they went into a depression, and that's what allowed Hitler to take power, and some people on X are very upset that he lost.

But then that's, and then we were much nicer at the end of World War II, and we made sure that it would never happen again. So you've heard the saying that history's written by the... The victors. Yeah, okay. We wrote that history. Japan's culture was completely different prior to

the end of World War II. Everything we know about Japanese culture now is from American abuses of the Japanese. The reason they're workaholics, the reason they smoke to stay awake and drink to go to sleep, the reason that they... Sexual repression.

And they shame themselves and they shame their children that they don't get a good enough to. All of that is American... What are the abuses? Like, I'm not even making a joke. Can you give me an example of, like, how you do that?

So when we were rebuilding Japan, we basically indentured Japanese to rebuild their own country at our pace, according to our direction and our demands. Wow. So they didn't get to rebuild the way that they wanted to. They didn't get to rebuild buildings according to their architecture.

They built what we wanted them to build. And a big chunk of what they built was American invested money in buildings, infrastructure, and manufacturing base. But they got baseball. So, they get up to bed. There you go. But they only knew Americans are fat and lazy. They wouldn't work so long.

This podcast goes to Japan. You know what I mean? But then you look at the job. Japanese economy now, and you're like, well, in a way, their rebuilding efforts were successful. Yeah, and that's the argument. Economically. That's the counterargument, for sure. Right? You look at Europe, who are

Europe's two strongest economies? Germany and France. France. And UK pre-Brexit would have been UK, right? We built all three of those countries on forced debt, on loans, on the outsourcing of American manufacturing, and they became the first markets that we spread to when we saw. started creating new products and financial telecommunication products.

A version of this kind of story in like Central America with like Nicaragua and like the United States sort of working with, you know, different leaders, potential dictators and deposing them, setting up our government systems, getting them into debt in some capacity, giving them our funding to then support all those issues. So who is the fastest growing economy in the world? I'm sure you guys know this, even if all you do is follow back. Fast-growing economy in the world. China.

How did China grow so quickly? The same way that we grew after World War II. This is Belt and Road. When we stuck our heads so deep in the Middle East for 20 years that all we were doing was checking under every rock for terrorists, we were the only ones fighting that fight. The whole time that we were doing that, China was pulling from our World War II playbook,

and they were working with despots, they were creating leases and loans with third world countries that knew they couldn't pay them back, exporting Chinese workers, exporting Chinese technology, Chinese telecommunications that was being stolen from the United States and then remade in the Chinese brand. That's how they built their economy in 20 years. We looked away, they were small, we looked back, they were huge.

Right, and that's how they did it. So the world still works the same way. The reason the United States sees China as such a threat has nothing to do with Taiwan, and has nothing to do with Chinese bombing America. It's because China has literally copied our playbook and they've got a 20-year head start in the last 25 years on how to do it.

We created a, we just as another example, the United States became really, really wealthy when we devised telecommunications and financial products because now these are not tangible products, right? This is something where you can service 100,000 people from a single satellite. And you can charge all of them $200 a month, right? Like that's scalable wealth.

That's not building a widget or creating a can of tuna, right? China did the same thing. They were like, oh, look at how America's growing by creating financial and telecommunications. So let's spy on the United States, steal their industrial secrets, create those things here in China, tweak them a little bit, and then sell them cheaper to the same markets to South America, to Africa, to Europe. And then let's also borrow from America this idea. of switching cost. Do you guys all have Apple? Does anybody have something other than Apple?

Apple. Even if you don't like Apple, you'll probably never get off of Apple because it's too difficult to get off of Apple. Well, what do you think Huawei did? It's too difficult to get off of Huawei. So we're going to build this internal switching costs. No one's going to get off of our technology

because to get off of our technology means it hurts. There's a data transfer that's complicated. You're going to lose data for sure. And whatever you're getting on is going to be more expensive. So do you really want to get on an American system or do you want to stay on a Chinese system? Do you want an American electrical vehicle or a Chinese EV? Not even a fucking question.

Do you want an American telecommunication? Do you want an American cell phone or a Chinese cell? I'm not even saying this is a joke. When I saw the Chinese EVs, I was like, we're cooked, we're done. We're number two now. And I don't know if that's remotely intelligent, but that is truly how I felt. So that's, that is China. China is not innovative and they've never claimed to be.

But they steal and they promote and they drive and they play the long game. And that's the problem. That's the problem. and that's why economists continue to predict that China will be at parity or near parity with the United States by 2030. Because you can't fight a war over telecommunications.

You can't fight a war over medical devices. You can't invade that country because they stole your code for building a battery for a car. It doesn't work. Is there any chance we can catch up slash reestablish our lead? There's always, always the opportunity.

There's always a chance. How do you see that happening? I don't know how, or else I would say how, but what I do trust is American innovation, and I do trust American entrepreneurial spirit, and those are things that we have that have gotten us out of worse situations in the past. Okay, so we have been in worse situations.

In the past, let's say, 50 years. The Great Depression was pretty shitting. Let's say 50 years. So 50 years takes us back to 75. Maybe even we could go World War II if we won. I guess Soviet Union maybe was worse than this at some point. And actually, it's a great point, because the only reason we won the Cold War.

because the Soviet Union imploded. We didn't know it was going to implode, but it imploded. And you see that potential with China? I mean, that's also the potential here, too. But yes. So there's always room for something unexpected to happen. But when it comes to what we can do, like inside the United States,

you have so many people who are small business owners. You have so many people who are engineering their own future. You guys are all engineering your own future. Do any of you come from a family wealthier than you? No. Nope. That's fucking crazy It's hard to do that in China.

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So hurry up and buy this now, because it's not going to be available in November. Also, they got a low sugar or sugar-free option. Have your limited edition, Grooney Smith, Apple, Grooons, available only through October and stock up because they will sell out. And you can get a 52% off if you use it called Flagrant. Let's get back to the show. Not to sound like unpatriotic, but why is it such a bad thing if China becomes number one? No, it's a good question. It's not patriotic, but it is a good question. So I see a lot of things, and I'll let you decide whether or not they're good or bad. You have a child? Any of the children?

No. What language is your child going to learn? English. What other languages are she going to learn? Likely Spanish. In China. If China is a superpower by 2030, five years from now, guess what your son is going to have to speak? Likely Mandarin.

You don't get a choice anymore. Your child has to speak more than one language. That is the biggest complaint about Americans is most of us only know one language. What's wrong with us knowing too? So when one country gets wealthy... I'm so tired of these fucking Europeans bragging about speaking all these stupid languages. When one country gets wealthier, the wealth, it's not like, I know the United States prints money, but generally speaking, wealth is limited. So if one country is getting wealthier, what's

happening to the wealthy country? It's getting poor. Yeah. So that's also part of the parody. Potentially, yeah. Right? So now you've got what we experience in our day-to-day life. We don't have to have, not everybody has to have a gun. Not everybody has to have, you know, has to worry about being robbed in a grocery store. Not everybody can own a car. We have all these luxuries that we don't even realize.

Those start to go away as another country steals the wealth earns the wealth that you otherwise would have had. Our roads get worse, their roads get better, our rate of accidents happening on construction sites goes up,

there goes down. That's the kind of thing that comes with wealth. And you have to learn their language too because if it's five or seven years from now when China's approaching parity with the United States in terms of GDP, your comedy skits are going to have to happen in the Chinese too.

I'm not even saying this is a joke again. I think AI will be to the point where we all can understand and speak any language without even learning. And hopefully that's the case? Because who might win the AI race? I don't think it's a might. I think it's a who is winning very clearly right now. So that's just kind of these are the questions that you have to be asking yourself, right?

Do you want to save your money in U.S. dollars or in Runman B? Do you think everybody else in the world wants to be using U.S. dollars or Rundman B? Because as other people move to Runman B, your U.S. dollars actually get worth less in your pocket every day until you switch to Runman B. And now all of a sudden you're an American with a savings account in a Chinese bank. Everything you're saying that could be happening is happening. That's absolutely happening. Roads are getting worse. Americans are getting poor. We cannot afford to live as much. China seems to be doing better.

Wealthy people are sending their wealth abroad. They don't trust the U.S. market to protect their wealth. They're buying houses abroad. Even Bitcoin is a form of that. It might not be a country you're trusting more, but you're not trusting the American dollar as much as you're trusting Bitcoin. And Bitcoin is at an all-time high,

and the dollar is lower than I've seen in a while. So, yeah, all these things that you're saying, and this, I can be very fatalistic and pessimistic, but they seem to be happening, and it does concern me. And I, Andrew always said this, America's not going to be a superpower forever. When China takes over, you're going to miss the American superpower. And I'm not, he's like,

I'm not defending everything they've done by any stretch. I just think a Chinese superpower would be far less sympathetic, far more we need to do things our way than even whatever we think of America, which is a thing that to me is frightening. Now, I'm curious because, like, I think there is a fatalistic view where it's like, oh, China's going to become the monopolar, you know, global power and they're going to destroy America. It seems like the reality would be like, oh, we would just become Spain in the 1700s, or we become France, like in the, you know, late 18th or we become England, you know what I mean? Like, there would be these empires that take over the entire world that are colonial and they're

able to get resources and riches from everywhere. They have these fierce militaries. And then they are no longer imperial. They're no longer the monopolar power. So is it possible that America would just also have that happen in some capacity? Quality of life. People seem happier there in England now than they do theoretically. Yeah, I wouldn't mind a siesta everyone to know.

Yeah. Yeah, so I think the way to answer your question is that I agree that that would be what it looks like in the short term because China moves slowly. Right? So we're reaching parity slowly over the course of 30 or 50 years, which is pretty slow if you think about it. Right? The United States basically rose to superpower nests in like seven years. Yeah. China's doing it taking the 35-year route, right, to get to near parity. After they reach that parity, they're going to tip. It's going to tip because the systems and processes that they're using are going to continue to work, and the systems and processes that we don't have to compete with that will continue to not work. Well, then after the parity switches and after China is in control of government policy,

and China is in control of military spending, and China is in control of whatever else, because we are just trying to do whatever they do just to keep. keep up with them when their intelligence services have utterly penetrated all of ours now all of a sudden you have to worry about the chinese government s oe model the state-owned enterprise model that's why they don't have entrepreneurism because the as soon as somebody has a good idea the government steps in takes it and it says you can still make a bunch of money but it's going to be a government-owned business they're going to start doing that here in the united states too they're going to start finding anybody with a good idea and they're going to come in and be like we can buy you

for like 12x what you're worth and everybody's going to go take that deal and now they're going to control innovation and they're not going to have to steal it from us they're going to have it themselves and then that parody just gets wider and wider right they're going they have the opportunity to unravel the united states because they have spent so much time learning about our flaws and we sit around defending our flaws there's i don't think it has to be fatalistic but when you look at the probability curve that's a fat part part of the curve, that there's going to be this flow, and if we don't find some way to counterbalance it, it's going to get nasty. There's still a counterbalance. We could still go to war. We could still do the thing that doesn't make sense because enough people are afraid of China, right? And that is a very real possibility.

No, that makes sense. Or isolationist legislation the basis is you can't sell your company to China. Like, would that be something that would just prevent that delta? That's what Trump's trying to do with some of his policy now, with the tariffs and with, with you know trying to bring manufacturing back onshore it just it's not going to work because we're not built for it we're not it might be great to say we're not going to do business with these chinese firms that need our chips but then who's going to buy the chips it just doesn't well the tariffs are one thing but to just say like oh if you're trying to sell your company

you cannot sell it to china specifically china's going to go through a cutout that's i mean that's that's what they did what they basically own the panama canal by going through cutouts and having shell companies that are owned by the bahamas that was my first thought I guess there is a way. Why are we the only superpower that is worried about China? We're the superpower. Well, why, why doesn't Russia care that, like, China is just, like, blowing by them? Because the whole world hates us. Yeah, they have a line. Everybody in the world hates the United States.

Okay. Even the people who claim to love us hate us, right? Because, but we're convenient. We're a convenient benefactor. We're a convenient market for selling, selling goods. We're a convenient source of protection so that you don't have to spend money on your military because the United States is spending. money on their military. Like, we're a convenient solution to a lot of countries. But they don't like our audiology. They don't like that we're all fat.

They don't like... I mean, just a headshot. I don't know, though. I know. That's like what they did in JFK, but I'm really... They're good, man. They're good, bro. I mean, bang. Wait, but I doubt...

Yeah. I doubt Putin would be okay with Russians having to speak Chinese in 10 years. He would be okay. with America getting destroyed. Right. The enemy and my enemy is my friend. It's like how America's cool with Stalin.

You know what I mean? We're like, yeah, the Stalin were boys because we both hate Hitler. And then after that, it's like we'll figure that at later. We're cool with Israel because Israel hates Iran. God. Right? That's the, and that's the, there are no permanent friends or enemies,

only permanent interests. So that's the ebb and flow, almost like, like anybody who's ever held a bowl of water, right? It just moves back and forth. That's when the United States is in power, we've got the big, the big arc of water on our side, but then eventually it's going to go to the other side. And then they will hate China in 20 years or 30 years or whatever. But right now, they hate America

and anybody that can take us out as a threat. So you said, and sorry to bring us back, you said with Russia, they are taking areas so then they can like kind of bump up their economy and like build this area up. So is that your theory or this is just understood? No, that's, so I would say that's among intelligence watchers. Okay. Like we, we have been watching how this is playing out. We see where it's going. There was a period where the intelligence attitude was that Russia was going to continue across the southern coast, go into Moldova, do the same kind of activity in Transnistria, and then build like a wall along the Black Sea. Well, then the United States and Europe got really involved in the counterattack, and Russia had to refocus its moves.

So intelligence is tough because, you know, people think intelligence is when you know the facts. That's not what intelligence is. Intelligence is specifically about answering the thing you don't And you answer it with probabilities. If you knew, it would be a fact. It wouldn't be Intel. Got it. Right? So nobody knows exactly how it's going to happen or what's going to happen next or how it's

going to play out. We're all guessing at probabilities based off of the indicators that we see in the situation. So it's like if we allow or not allow, but if they end up keeping the land that they have right now, isn't that just like telling them, hey, this is okay? You can just keep doing this. Correct. So shouldn't we not? Like, shouldn't Trump not let them keep it?

If Trump cares about whether or not Russia feels like they can take former Soviet Union satellite states in Europe. Right? Arguably what, and Trump has it right on NATO here, because he is correct. It doesn't threaten us. It threatens Europe. Okay. And if Europe wants to protect itself against Russia, all it has to do is buy more weapons from us and buy more training from us. and we've been giving you weapons and giving you training

and we've even been putting our troops in Europe to help you without charging you and as a result of that, NATO has been able to not spend more than three or four percent of their national GDP of each country's GDP on the military for many, many years, even though they agreed to spend five or six percent on GDP. Right? So now Trump's coming in, he's like,

you guys, if you want to be safe against Russia, fucking spend more money. Yeah, I think Poland will still be there. Poland's like the only exception. Yeah, because Poland has a real axe to grind with Russia. Right. And also like a geographical sort of disadvantage, it seems like. Yeah, proximity, exactly. So that's really what's happening down there. And if the Ukraine territory thing is resolved, it also kind of undermines Zelensky's hopes of remaining there as a leader.

Because he couldn't fulfill the promise. Maybe he's going to get credit for bringing peace, but for sure he's going to be a target of Russian services that are now that much closer to Kiev all the time. which gives Russia the opportunity to make a whole propaganda issue out of Zelensky. It is a really discouraging thing when you think about how many people are just throwing thousands of lives at them staying in power

or whatever selfish interest they have. It's like a really fucking crazy thing. It is just kind of the case, though. Like, this is just humans. Yeah. Unfortunately. I guess you just think... It's still fucked up.

No, it is, but like... You think you're so far past, Game of Thrones is obviously fictitious time and place but we understood that kind of thing to be in hundreds of years in the past it is today and it's never going to stop probably to your point until the robots take over but it's just a crazy thing yeah it's still funny it's still funny there's one thing i've learned hanging out with comedians no it you know it's like you guys find the humor in all of it we tried to and ex helps um here's a here's a question i have why don't we just fuck china right now but we got it

I've had this thought before. It's a very good question. If they're coming up so hard, but their military is not our military, let's go fuck them up. Sleeper cells all over America. Maybe. He believes this,

and there could be validity to it. We laughed at it at first, but he believes every Chinatown is a sleeper cell in America. The thing is, most, so sleeper cells, we have found in the intelligence community that sleeper cells are largely ineffective

because when you take somebody out of a shithole place and you put them in the United States, Have you been to Chinatown? You've excluded. Kind of a shithole place. But like America gets in your veins, right? Clean water out of your faucet gets in your veins.

And, you know, constant access to like cheap kid cats gets in your veins. Like, you get used to this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is not what it's like anywhere else. Believe me, I know about the kid cats, dude. But yeah. So to me, this seems like so many wars are just propaganda. Why wouldn't there be, I'm not advocating for, but I am curious why it hasn't happened.

A propaganda war against China. It seems like all politicians don't speak that unfavorably about China. Biden was, you know, I think spoke of them as an ally. Trump a little bit harsh with them and not really. Why wouldn't there be a propaganda war against his rising power that is an imminent threat? Let's just act now. It's a complicated issue because one of the things that's always been neat about conflict in the past is that the aggressor was not our we were not engaged in any kind of economic significance we buy everything

yeah china chinese and united states markets are like terribly entwined and they need us they need us we need them what they need from us is for us to keep spending money what we need for them is for them to keep producing if we rip that apart both countries are going to be in like a like a leaky bucket we're not going to have a market that where demand is getting met. And then they're not going to have an audience to sell their stuff to. And that's, when that happens, it's kind of going to necessitate conflict. Maybe not with each other, but with countries nearby. There's also something to say that I've seen like different pro-Chinese like Reddit accounts or even like subreddits or Twitter pages that would suggest that we are being fed anti-Chinese propaganda. Which again,

I don't know if this is the case. Like, I'm just seeing stuff, but it'll be like... Just tell us what your mom is saying. Come on. My mom actually doesn't touch this one. But like, the idea of like social credit scores, I've heard people be like, that's not real. And then people hear, like, it is real. And then people over there, like, it's not really real.

Like sweatshops, things like that. Like all the negative things we hear about China, there will be people online that are like, that is just not really. If China Town is a shithole. Just think about what China must be. Oh, my God. I have yet to see anything anti-Chinese that isn't true. I have yet to see it.

Maybe it's out there. Have you been to China? I've been to China. Let's get some propaganda. Let's get some racist pictures. I just be like, what are you thinking of this? Please, find something. Find a Chinese person eating a little white baby or something.

I can at least say that that's not true. I'm with this. Yeah. Can you find some of the pro-China stuff, if possible? Mark, maybe you can help them out, but I want to see what they're saying. Mark GPT. If you go to the Sino-Subes, suburb, S-I-N-O.

I don't know what to make. I look at it and I'm like... Sino, is the Chinese writing? Sino. Sino is the term that you use when you talk about. They pronounce a Sino. It's a linguistic barrier. What is Sino?

Sino is the term that means Chinese whenever you're connecting like a Chinese element with another foreign element. It becomes Sino-Tai relations. Okay, okay, okay. instead of U.S.-China relations or Thai-China relations. So those posts like memes and different things. I don't know who these people are, where this is coming from,

but it'll just be interesting where it's like, you know, this guy being like, you know, we can protest from the police murders. We're allowed to protest, and China's like, your police murder you? You're a police murder you? And you're like, oh. That doesn't happen in China. I have a hard time believing that. That happens all over Western China. Of course, I assume that these governments do bad things. Wasn't that what Tiananmen Square was?

Yeah, that's what Tiananmen's right. Never happens. Right over the fucking tank, bro. What are we talking about? But again, this is just, this exists, and I find it interesting. I don't know what it means. Yeah, I think these are just crazy people, man. I'm also looking at the handles. The handles are interesting handles. I haven't found a lot of people on a subreddit that I don't think are crazy.

The question is, are these people? Those handles are they bots. So this is another thing you talk about a lot. A lot of this is probably bots and propaganda and just like disruption. I wonder where it's coming from. Oh, that was another one. Like, their time of the Uyghur genocide. go through this whole suburb, they'll be like, oh, there was no

Uyghur genocide. Uyghurs are very real. Well, that's what I assume. I've met a Uyghur. He wants, he's DMD us, he's a fan of the pod, in my shows, and he's like, it's fucked, it's horrible it's happening there. Right. So you hear these things, but then

there's people saying that's actually completely not true, so you're like, all right, well, what is actually happened? So now, let's fast forward to what happens when we have parody. Right now we don't even have parity. And Mark's confused by what's real and what's not real. Yeah, you're a sucker, bro. No, no, no. I don't think he's an example of who's confused.

I think he's representing a subset of the population that is genuinely confused. As we continue to reach parity, that is going to just go even further and have even more reach. You're going to buy one electric car and be like, dude, these Chinese girls are sick, bro. They can buy me right now. They didn't do nothing wrong. They can buy me right now. Their electric vehicles are better. They're also a horrible government, and we should fuck them up right now while we have a chance.

So I think that's... Ah, gosh, sink, guys. Ah, gosh. Vote Akash. What's up? The challenge here is you can almost see if you look at the world

like a game board game, you can actually start to feel why China hasn't taken Taiwan. Because if China takes Taiwan and the U.S. gets involved, all of a sudden we are so close to a war between the United States and China.

And Xi Jinping must know that where he's dominant is only in China. This guy's good, huh? Right? I wish we had a leader like this guy. He seems like he gets it. Did you see his aura in the propaganda photo? What?

In terms of playing chess? This guy's good. My gosh, he's a dictator. He's like, bro, this guy's fine. Yeah, did I? No, no. No, no. Do nothing.

Win. That's awesome. I'm just saying he's a geopolitical maneuverer. Sure. He knows what he's doing in that sense. He's very good. We have someone who isn't maneuvering quite as deftly, is all I'm saying. So is that the biggest threat to the U.S.?

Because I want to ask him, what's the biggest threat? Without a doubt, it's China. When it comes to all things, American, all things, everyday life, it's China. China, our economy crashes without them. They're the biggest military threat. They're penetrating us across intelligence services, military services. they steal our industrial secrets, they copy our stuff, they actively plot with our allies and with our enemies against us.

Like they are, and that's not my opinion. That's like documented in the DNI's annual report of geopolitical threats. Is there something to be said for America's geographic location? I mean, we have water on both sides. We have generally hospitable neighbors. China doesn't seem to have like that many bases set up, you know, militaristically near us. Like obviously there's intelligence operations.

And not to say that China doesn't have their own slew of issues as far as, like, population, innovation, natural resources, et cetera. Like, in our defense, we have certain things that are moving for us where even if all things stay equal, we still have advantages. Oh, yeah, I'm not saying we don't have advantages. We do absolutely have advantages. And one of the big advantages is the fact that we are a country that's unified from coast to coast. And that our northern and southern allies are so heavily entrenched with our everything. everything that they're not going to turn against us, right? So that's a huge benefit for us. China doesn't have that. It's got neighbors that'll turn it in an instant. It's got a postline.

China is tense. I think that's a massive opportunity for America. I'm not just saying that as an Indian. And I think that might be why they are close with India and Pakistan maybe, theoretically, is like these both could be useful against China. So why don't we just be cool with both of them? With Trump going like all like wild with tariffs, does that fuck up our relationship with our neighbors? up in South and everywhere else? I mean, it causes a lot of issues for sure. You've got to keep in mind that the tariffs are not being used for what we think they're being used for, or unless maybe it's common knowledge what they're actually being used

for. Ooh, what are they being used for? The tariffs are not there so that we can start making 200% more dollars from trade with China or 75% more dollars from trade with the EU. That's not what they're there for. They're a negotiating tool. They are an artificial pressure to get countries to keep. cave to our other policies in exchange for us reducing tariffs, right?

There's no friction between us, so I'm just going to put friction between us, and then I'm going to tell you, if you agree with me that, you know, tennis is for gay people, then I'm going to end this friction between us. That hurts. But that means to have agreement because he loves tennis. I'm gay. But that's all the tariffs are. The tariffs were walls that were put up so that we could have a debate where otherwise there

was no debate. And then we get to use this artificial tool and reduce the debate, increase the required collaboration. It basically gave Trump a negotiating tool that wasn't previously there. It's a common tool in business. Anytime you increase your price, right, if a coffee shop increases its prices or a restaurant increases its prices, that's all arbitrary. It can choose when it does that. It will lose some customers. It will keep other customers, but it also has, every new customer doesn't know that it was ever changed. And as a result of that, We are, in fact, making 100% more money from our trade with Europe. Because previously, the tariff was 7%.

Now it's 15%. So we got Europe to cave on our demands internationally, and they're still paying us more money. So this is a good thing Trump did. And I'm not happy with a lot of things he's done, but you've got to give him credit. That seems like a good thing. Right. I mean, Trump does deserve quite a lot of credit for the things that he does right. And he does a number of things right.

The problem is we don't know how the long... great because we're getting a lot of heat for me. But I can also see it as a naked. Yeah, like it's like Mexico and be like, yo, you're going to really strong arms like that. Hey, China, what's up? Yeah. We're their neighbors. We can let you in. We can give you information. Like, that's, I put that as at harm. And I don't think that's worth it to make a little bit more money. So then, and now you, now you have to start really seeing the problem with our process of leadership. because any president that comes into the power in the United States is only thinking four years. Yeah.

You can make a change, make a wave, and have it benefit the economy in four years. And then it's the next guy's problem. So by the time Mexico creates a backdoor agreement with China and starts to have that conversation where, hey, we'll let you in and if you'll just help us trade, that doesn't happen for maybe eight or 12 years. So then by the time three presidents have passed, it's that president's problem. him to deal with the mistake that this president made. For short-term gain. When you have a Xi Jinping, he's been in power, I think, 16 years now. Yeah.

When you have Netanyahu, Netanyahu's only been out of power, I think, six years in the last 12 or 16. Yeah. Right. I wonder if the nature of geopolitics is just sped up too much. Like, I wonder if four years... Yeah, like four years in the late 1700s is a long time. Because things go so slow. Yeah.

Whereas four years now, it's like, oh, that's nothing. It's a blink. And so maybe you get eight years, but even then you've got to try for it. I always thought the idea that you can just keep running for re-election, you're just going to win to win re-election, not actually fix anything. You should just get one term, six, eight years, eight years, whatever it is, and then you're done, and that's what it is. That's close to what our forefathers wanted. Our forefathers wanted so that there were no professional politicians. You had to be successful in business, and then people would see your success in business, and they would say, I want you to lead us.

and then you would take you would become a public servant give up your salary and your business get paid some meager wage to serve the people to bring all of your skill set and knowledge from the business marketplace into the economy of the country build it up for eight years and then you would return back so if you really want to make america great again get the fuck out of office all of you that's i mean that is the message for congress without a doubt congress senate and all that yeah because if we can if we could fix congress the president would have no place to hide. But right now we have an entrenched Congress of a bunch of old fucks or backstabbing fucks who just want to be congresspeople for as long as possible. So they give

all their responsibility to the executive so that when something goes wrong, they can be like, oh, it's the president's fault. But now the president ends up having all the powers of the executive office and the legislature. That's not how we were built to work. So you, you know, you seem a little down on America and I don't blame you. I love my country. No, I'm not even the same. that you are you still thinking about moving oh yeah yeah we have a plan we have a plan we'll be out in uh spring of 27 2007 so i can't ask you where it's going because you're going to change your appearance and all this stuff and i mean i'm not going to change it that radical well change it radically

but i'm not going to like get a nose job or anything oh but we won't be able to identify if i saw you walk and would i be like there's andy or would i not know probably not are you changing your ethnicity i'm going to self-identify as Caucasians dude you're doing full white face that'd be sick Doug, I'm looking at you right now. If you buzz this down, you look like you could be in, what's that Liam Neeson movie, Taken? He could be one of the bad guys in Taken. Oh, he buzz this down.

You look Albanian or Eastern European or something. It's been nice. Mark is so happy of cutting his hair. Oh, yeah. Because he's my hair. I know. He wants the best hair in the industry and you got it right now. So he's so happy.

Mark's got better than you. He's going to ask it for. Ask it for it. Oh, do you want to lock? I'll send you a lot. You're going to donate it. I'm going to just get it. Yours is way better because I can tell even from here it's clean this.

You could see the oil and grease coming out. He is ethnic, bro, for white, for a full-blooded white. Mine is solid, okay? You got great hair for white, that's true. He's donated his hair for cancer victims. What are you doing with your hair? I'm not going to donate my hair to cancer victims. That would be dumb.

Why? Because it's a hard look to pull off, first off, okay? Like, my hair. Like, it's not, like, it's hard. I'm not barely pulling it off. You know what I mean? I think the last thing a kid with cancer wants is to have my... So you're saying a little girl with cancer would rather be bald than have your hair?

Yeah, 100%. They give her my hair and they'd be like, ew, this smell. I'm okay. You know what I'm like, I'll stick with the cancer. They might. So before you donate your hair, they have a very rigorous process for how you have to wash it.

So you would be giving them clean hair. Okay, all right. And then after you give them your clean hair, they will do whatever they need to do turn it into a wig. What if it's dreaded? It doesn't become like this.

If my hair is dreaded, can they take it then? That's a good question. There's got to be somebody somewhere who takes somebody to a kid. It's like, you know, big up. Everything I'm iris.

Everything I'm iris. That'd be crazy, dude. Okay. Okay, we got, well, I still have a lightning room, but before that. Before you do that, I know you're not going to say we're going to go. Oh, that's what I want to know, but I didn't. If you're going to go somewhere, if you were advising someone else to leave. Give us a couple countries.

You go to India? Yeah. Where would you tell them to go? I've got a number of, there are a number of countries that are on our list. Yeah. And I'm scoping all of them out actively. You haven't chosen one yet. No.

So we've, we're pretty close to choosing one. He's chosen 100%. Give us a list. Yeah. Of Spain. So... Portugal. Spain, Portugal.

Where else? Oh. France? You're right. Most of the time you talk, you're right. That's just the places I would go. Al's just been there and he's like, I like it here. I was just thinking of famous actresses.

That's all he's right. So Costa Rica. Oh. Costa Rica. New Zealand. Aruba. You want to go to Aruba? I mean, it's a nice place.

But I was like Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela. I don't know if it's going to survive. Hey, I'm giving up my spots, man. Okay, Costa Rica, Spain, Portugal. Yep, so Georgia in the Caucasus, Armenia, Croatia. You said New Zealand, yeah. Yep, these are all very nice areas. Okay.

That's... It's describing one country. That's essentially... That's our short list. That's our short list. And, I mean, for the last year and for the next year and a half, we continue to kind of go scope out each of these countries, travel with our kids, see them firsthand and decide if what are your parameters what are you looking for so keep in mind

that when you're an american and you leave the united states you're still an american wherever you which means your money is still an american banks is still u.s dollars you are still carrying an american passport when wherever you live anybody who meets you there looks at you as american so one of our biggest parameters is it has to be a place that's pro-american ah okay okay okay it has to be pro-american and if it's pro-american then it's very unlikely that it's going to switch allegiances anytime quickly. Right? So now if you're like,

if we're in Paraguay, Paraguay may become pro-China and fuck the United States in two years. So we don't want to run that risk, right? Mexico is going to be pretty pro-American for a long time. Maybe. Well, Georgia's a little tricky for that reason, right? Well, George's hates Russia.

Yeah, of course, but you get a little rolling occupation going on. If there's a rolling occupation. And Armenia is the same way. And so is Azerbaijan. But so one of the big things is it has to be American. The second thing is we want a place that has a stable economy and a stable government on its own. That's actually quite difficult in Europe right now, because in the last two years, you've had all three of the major European governments liquidate their parliament.

France dissolved its parliament, had a whole re-vote. Germany dissolved its parliament, had a whole re-vote. This is Star Wars-style shit, where the prime minister voted no confidence, and then boom, everybody was gone, and everybody had to get it. re-elected in what we should do here yeah no that's true that it sounded horrible and then it sounded awesome actually once you said it um new zealand seems like a great choice new zealand's a great place it's so far

from everything it's expensive and it's very westernized but i mean no one's going to mess with new zealand for a long time China's going to fuck with australia and australia kind of becomes the the box around the egg for new zealand yeah ah okay is there an issue

being former CIA going to a different country and trying to get a visa or be permanent resident. When people know, when people, when you're an internet fucking, when you're the CIA guy with the hair, there's a problem. Because everywhere you go, people are like, oh, I saw you on TikTok. Aren't you CIA? You don't put CIA in your fucking visa requirements, right? You don't, you don't put your work history in your visa requirements. You just put your last three years worth of paychecks or whatever. So that's a big part of why, like, I don't, I don't want to be the internet's favorite. That's actually your best argument for how you're not CIA is you're going to have

to give them wherever country you go to, your paychecks for the last three years. And if any of them were CIA, you would be known as CIA in your next country. I mean, when you're undercover a CIA, you don't get paid by Sarah. That's okay. Fuck, idiot. You're right. I have no account of point.

I'm a fat idiot. I'm just a fat idiot. I'm just a fat fucking idiot. How hard is it to get fake passports? Because like, I've seen had a bunch of them. Or I don't know if they were fake, but he had multiple passwords. Yes, it's shockingly easy, actually, to get fake documentation. It's harder to get really good backstopped fake documentation. But even ones that

scan? Oh, yeah. Oh, really? Because I mean, what happens is there's no international database for everybody. So what's really happening in the machine when you go to the UK, I love going to the UK because it's so easy to go into the UK and it's somehow so hard to come back to the United States. You go through the whole double thing where you scan your passport, you scan your airplane ticket, you stand in that little the glass door front and back and a second scan. All it's doing is making sure

that your documentation matches what you reported your documentation would say. Oh, it doesn't make sure your document your passport is authentic. It just makes sure your picture matches what you just scanned. Oh, get the fuck out.

And then whatever the authentication code is inside the chip inside your passport, that's what it's checking against because that's the current method of showing that it's a valid passport. So all of that could be fraudulent. and you can still walk through as long as it matches itself the chip could be real and then the passport's fake or like any version of this correct so they steal a passport make a fake one

put the new chip in it's really just a matter of putting a new picture on an old passport right you could be you could be Dennis Dennis the Menace for all we care right as long as as as long as the passport chip and the passport barcode match door one door two So how come I got like denied from global entry twice because I like got locked up in Sweden? Why are they talking to America if? Because that's something different. You're going for global access, which is it's a shortcut way through security. So you have to put in an application on day one and then you wait a period of time before you come in for an interview.

That's, they're doing a background check on you with all. Has it ever been a problem? Yeah. The EU thing is 10 seconds. Yeah. yeah this is very interesting it's not that it's not that different than when you give your driver's license to a to a officer a yeah an officer of the law or even a what's it called a bouncer they just look at it and they kind of look for that little shiny part yeah it looks like

it's real that's pretty much all the picture okay you're good that's a great yeah that's a great metaphor actually um okay so shadow cell awesome book so good fucking riveting what is the coolest if you had to sell it to people in 30 seconds and not that I'm putting you in it

we're not ending anytime soon but I want to make sure we get this out how would you tell people about this? What's the thing? Why should everyone buy it? I actually learned this from Mark GPT three years ago

everything in that book was classified three years ago three years ago I have an email from CIA saying everything in this book is classified and now it's not now it's publicly available in the bookshelf.

It's a classified document. It's literally a classified document. According to CIA, according to an email from three years ago, that's what it was. So this is the most contemporary, most modern, most accurate spy novel ever written. That's awesome. Everything, everybody else is written. They wrote 25 years after it happened, 30 years after it happened. This isn't the Cold War. This isn't the war on terror. Yeah, it's a great. This is the largest adversaries in the world to the United States right now and how espionage is carried out and how the war that we all know is happening, but we can't see on the TV screen, it's because it's happening

in the spy world. That's awesome. And so was it just the fact that you threatened to sue is why they change your mind on letting you release it? Because we would have won. Yeah, because we would have won. And that's the only thing. Yeah, that's the only thing. Because there's two things that there's two reasons

that the CIA's publication review board, there's two reasons that it forces all authors to go through. First is to make sure that classified documents don't get revealed to the public. The second is to make sure that If something is going to be shared with the public, that CIA is able to maneuver in a way that protects itself or dampens the public interest in the document. So just basically make them look good.

So if we sued on First Amendment rights and then they lost the lawsuit, that's very public news and that makes them look very, very bad. So they already knew they weren't going to win that. So the next best thing to dampen the impact of the document is to just let it go live. Okay. And why are you allowed to talk about the work that you did? So the big reason is because of the First Amendment, right, that we have as American citizens. In this book, it's a story of how my wife and I were called in to carry out a new type of operation. We're called in to build a new type of operation because our largest adversaries were becoming more capable than we ever thought possible, like we were talking about. We were focused on a war on terror for 20 years.

All of our adversaries were developing new technologies, new capabilities, because they weren't. weren't spending any money on a global war on terror right north korea advanced they became nuclear capable iran advanced russia advanced china advanced turkey advanced everybody advanced but we were fighting this war so as a result of that the modus operandi that the united states cia traditionally used wasn't working anymore so they needed a new way of doing operations so they called my wife and i in and they were like hey you two are very different my wife is super capable it sounds like your wife is as well. Very capable, very smart, very hardworking. I'm a total shit show. But together, we usually have some pretty decent ideas. So they put us out in the field to build

new operations. What they didn't tell us is that there was a mole at CIA, a mole that has never been publicly acknowledged until the release of this book. Wow. And that mole, they couldn't find. So they needed to bait the mole so that the mole would make a mistake. Wow. So you were bait. So they used us and possibly other people Possibly other people as bait as well To get the mole to make a mistake You're not bitter about this? You're still pro-CIA Because if I was director of CIA

You have done the same thing That's what you sign up for That's what you swear to when you raise your hand Right? All enemies foreign and domestic Wow But that's why the book can be released Otherwise it would still be considered a classified document But I don't get why they would put their agents in harm

to find the mole. Like, why? So when you think like the government, first of all, you always have a backlog of new agents coming in. Okay. Right?

So you always have, let's just say, it's 200 people that are going to come in every new year. And then you always have people who are leaving because they're retiring.

So losing one or two to prevent a mole from spoiling the intelligence. Ah, fuck. Remember the trolley problem that we played? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Isn't the problem. And I think CIA

also diversified its investment because I think we were just one couple, one pair of operators that were sent out. They could have sent out five others, not knowing which of the five would actually get the mole's attention. We don't know that part. That's just what we started theorizing after we found out that we were bait two. So it makes sense. This is a very standard, this is exactly how firing squads used to work, right? They would put seven people in a line, and they put one prisoner on the pole, and you never knew whether you were carrying the weapon, the actual bullet, or whether you were carrying an empty charge so that when you shot at the villain

and shot at the criminal and they died, you didn't carry the guilt of killing them. Oh, got it. How long were you CIA before they put you on this particular mission? I was a second tour officer. So we count our time at CIA in terms of tours. A first tour officer is a brand new officer. They've really just finished training,

and they're on their first operational tour. They're independent enough, but they're still getting guidance from senior leaders. Second tour officers are kind of like second gear, in a car. It's where you make the most progress the fastest. So you're still young enough that you probably don't have kids. You may not be married. And you're hungry to go make a change and you're still super ideologically radicalized. So it's really easy to send a second tour officer out there to do something stupid or something dangerous or something high impact. Your third tour is

usually where if you were successful in your second tour, they start bringing you back to train you and advance you because you might be future leadership. If you were a shit show in your second tour, then you're now you're just cleaning up like all the nastiest operations around the world for the rest of your career right oh you fucked up so now you're the one that has to talk to child to pedophiles terrorists drug dealers like you don't get a second chance right yeah my wife and i were in our second tour when we were both pulled in for this operation now is pulling both of you in a malicious act in it of itself i don't think so because my wife uh the the book will detail the difference between us operationally my wife was what's known as a targeter and i was a operations officer. So a targeter's job is to find human intelligence targets, study them, research them, build profiles, dossiers, and then communicate that to an operational counterpart. I was basically a mission planner. So my job was to take dossiers from her as well as intelligence tools from across the network and build new cases. And then you would have case officers and technical officers and analysts and interpreters who would kind of make the operations all happen. So that was

putting the two of us together was an efficiency operationally. It was two different skill sets. We were actually under cover. We were actually married and clandestine. So our covers matched, our backgrounds matched. We really did actually have sex. We didn't have to pretend it. So it made the cover story really, really strong.

She's probably still pretending it. I'm trying to have some real sex. She's faking it this whole time. That's interesting. What's it like being hunted? it's uh it is we it's scary but it's um if you talk to military people you'll hear them say that at some point training kicks in like if you jump i've heard that yeah if you jump from an airplane like it's scary but then eventually like you pull a parachute yeah it's the same way whenever

you realize that you are actively being surveilled you in the book details uh when i was identified and surveilled in a hostile country you feel good and then you see like, oh, there might be somebody behind me. And then there might actually be somebody behind me. And then you're like, holy shit, there are people behind me. And then you're like, well, like, what did I do wrong? Because in undercover- Do they all just look alike? Because if you say, yes, I know what country you were in. Pakistan. So I'm still, I'm sorry, still a little, I know this is your First Amendment right. You're

allowed to say whatever you want. But the mission is still classified. so even though you're not like giving up names and you're not like saying where this took place like you're still talking about a classified mission a classified mission like is this public record can i look somewhere up and find this mission no i mean here is where you can find it yeah so outside of there so it's like why are you allowed to talk about classified missions just because you're no longer so yeah yeah so it's because i saw that i saw that because um missions are classified based off of what content is shared. Specifically, what makes something classified

in the human intelligence world is called sources and methods. The sources of intelligence and the methodology used to collect the intelligence. That's what makes it classified. Everything else is not classified, right? I drank a Diet Coke on my mission, not classified. I went up three flights of stairs

and I met with the Target's mom. That's not classified. What's classified is what intelligence the target gave you and who the target is and exactly how they changed. transfer the information to you. That's what's classified. So when we created the book, what we were able to do is we were able to obfuscate those details, but still tell the whole story. You don't think there's any way they can backtrack it to your agents or anything like that.

Yeah, that was the one thing that my wife and I were absolutely hell bent on, is this cannot be reverse-engineerable. Right. So as an example, we have a case that we detail in there about how we approached a hostile foreign target who was the CEO of a military industrial complex company supporting the adversary. That is a real person. That's a real case that actually happened. But you don't know whether that's, is that military industrial complex, does he make tanks?

Does he make satellites? Does he make gunpowder? You don't know. So that means the adversary doesn't know either. All the adversary knows is that at this unnamed time and this unnamed city, a CEO associated with the military started giving secrets to the CIA. Good luck finding that out. Even better, one of the tools that we have at CIA that we learned from KGB.

We love it when our adversaries spend time and money trying to reverse engineer something that we already know. If it's a country like, I'm not saying it is China, but if it was a country like China, isn't there for that they could just kill everyone that's a CEO at any military? Like, from what I hear about China, that's not something they wouldn't do. and then you still compromise your source. Now, I'm assuming these are conversations you have with your wife, like... The guy was just talking about how great of the leader they are.

Just kill all the CEO. Yeah, I just couldn't. We need a guy like that here. The United States might benefit if China does kill all their CEOs because of the release of our book. So I'll keep that in mind because I'll take credit for that.

Yeah, okay. But no, my point is, yes, there are, when you are a foreign asset, you put yourself at risk. just like Jeffrey Epstein. If he was an asset to the FBI, he put himself at risk. And who was the gangster that you were talking about?

Why you bolgers? You put yourself at risk as soon as you become an informant against what you believe in. You put yourself at risk. That's not who we're concerned about. What we're concerned with is American citizens. And not all deaths are equal,

unfortunately, in my point of view. And a foreign death does not equal an American death. Right. Okay. Random question. How does the CIA deal with stolen valor? like is there a way that someone not me exactly but maybe me could just write a book and be like hey

i was in the cia and here's some crazy shit that happened so they don't they don't really deal with it which is which is a huge kind of point in the ach for why i'm not cia unless you've submitted a verification request unless you've submitted an employment verification to cia you have no way of verifying that i'm actually cia one newspaper once actually tried to verify my employment record and they waited so long for CIA to respond and CIA never actually responded. So then they published the news story anyways and inside the news story they actually say document out loud. We tried to verify his employment and we could not verify it. So there are people out there who don't think I'm real at all. They just think that I'm making all this stuff up all the time that

I'm just a giant con man. Hmm. Oh shit. But CIA. Alex is all so like turns out you're not CIA. Yeah. You're fucking liar. I am. So Stolen Valors They love it. They don't love it. It's a benefit to them because it's a distraction from the real officers that are out there. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They don't care about, yeah. Correct. Spooks, we see each other. We know when you're real, we know when you're not. We know when you say that you were CIA, but you were really military secunded to CIA for one operation. Oh. We know when you say you were CIA, but you were actually a contractor working on a contract with CIA. How do you know? Because we know what terminology we use. We know the training. We know the internal vernacular. We also know. how the system works one or two questions between two actual CIA officers will yield a lot of

whether or not you understand what the other person's talking about or not okay how many do are you are you allowed to say how many tours you did uh i was a five tour officer before i left yeah wow so you i mean they had big plans for you yeah and that was one of the things that made it hard to leave one of the things that made it hard to leave was this was our second tour and after this tour and the success of this tour which you can which you'll read about in the book yeah after the success of this tour I was brought back to essentially teach how we did this worldwide to all the other CIA officers. And then I started teaching. And then in that process, I got escalated to take on covert operations.

And then in covert operations, that was really when my career started to match my wife's career. She was rock star the whole time. When our career started to match, they pulled us apart. Because you can't have two people kind of on the same trajectory. It's just like in a company, like there's an epitism mission, whatever else. They pulled us apart and then in our fifth tour we had our child. And when we had our child, we were like, what the fuck? Like, your career is great. My career is great. Neither of us gets to be with our kid. Like, what are we doing here? And you said an interesting thing to me recently where you said

like CIA officers will typically do like under 10 years or like over 20 years. Can you explain why that discrepancy exists? So CIA is still a government agency. It's still an organization like the military or Department of Homeland Security or IRS. So you don't make a lot of money. You come on board. You're making $45,000 a year. And then by the time you retire, maybe you're making $120,000 a year. I was looking on Chad. JBTBT. There's like a high ranking CIA officer, even like super high, like super advanced. You might make like 200, 250,000 years. And that's super high. Yeah. And these are like some of the, like these are very smart people that are working here. There might be a ton of options. They have been easier to buy you guys for the enemy. to buy you guys at 100% makes it that's one of the biggest vulnerabilities of a CIA officer this

the mole that we hunted it or the mole that was hunting us in this book was one of those CIA officers who was a very successful high-ranking multi-tour officer who had no money i mean Robert hanson like infamously like ultra shames he's in life in prison for like it was like five mil or six mill or something like that's kind of crazy yeah i mean that's a hundred times when i'm making or whatever i'll do it yeah yeah yeah um Okay. One second. Do you don't think the book maybe discourages future aspiring CIA agents from joining?

I think this book is going to encourage future CIA agents because if you are a good fit for the CIA, you're going to understand why they did what they did. If you're a bad fit to work for CIA, you're going to look at this and be outraged in some way, shape, or form. CIA already is, they're going to filter out the people who understand that mission comes first. And all this book is is an example of mission comes first. Okay. When Mission didn't come first, we resigned and we left because we wanted to be parents first, and we wanted to be a married couple first, and we wanted to start a business.

Yeah, and I don't think anybody who wants to be in CIA would be like, oh, their life was in danger. I'm not in anymore. I think they know your life is in danger. So, you know what I mean? To answer, to get back to Mark's question just real quick, you'll find that there's a lot of federal workers in general who stay in less than 10 years or go all the way to retirement, which is over 20 years. Because up until that 10-year point, you haven't invested half of your time into one career. So you can try it on for three or four years. Does it work?

Do you like it? You're still young enough to change everything. You're still young. You're probably not married. You probably don't have kids. You probably don't even have a house. At less than 10 years, it's easy to reset your life. Yeah.

But at 12 years, well, shit, I might as well just stick out another eight and get the pension. And then at 20 years, they offer you some sweet deal to keep you in for another two or three years. And you're like, I'll just three more years. Yeah. Right. I have one of my favorite people in the world, and if he's watching, you're one of my favorite people in the world, is my cousin-in-law. He's the man who married my cousin.

He was a Naval Academy graduate. He was a competitive cyclist. He was always super fit, like, super focused, super hardworking, super successful guy. But he became an officer in the Navy. And they assigned him to submarines. And now he's 19 years, almost. at retirement and he carries way too much weight. His weight is such a

problem. It's a health issue. It's a health issue. I get it. It's an erectile issue. No, no. One of the few things I got going for me. You'd be great for a submarine, dude. That'd be fucking awesome. Got a hard dick that no one wants to fuck.

You help sink to submarine. Hard dick I can't see anymore. Is it hard for you to leave with your, what's it called um wife alick's wife i know you don't know about those wife like clearances so wasn't trump trying to do away with that so so i left before trump took office um and you're correct and i agree with donald trump in this as well when i left cia in 2014 i kept my ts scei my

top secret special compartmental information i kept my ts scii for another two years because policy was that your security clearance times out so after two years so after two years it drops by half. So after the third year, it drops all the way. So I was a top secret clearance for two years, even though I wasn't in government. And then I was still a secret clearance for another year after that with no reason to have a secret clearance. There's no, there is no reason for that. That's not helping national security to let people have that level of clearance. I could have left CIA on Monday and been hired into Northrop Grumman on Wednesday and assigned to a super sensitive case with NASA on Thursday because of my clearance carrying. over. And that's maybe that doesn't sound crazy. A year and a half after I left CIA, I could have been hired by Northrop Bremen and walked into a NASA operation where I immediately had TSSC clearance. What was I doing in that year and a half? Who was I talking to? What friends was I making? Okay. Okay. It's a massive security. Okay. So Donald Trump, when he came into office, he was like, we're getting rid of these carryover clearances. If you're not actively in national

security, your clearance is gone. Which CIA probably hated that, or at least the officers there because they're like, I'm able to make a crazy bag when I leave because I'm able to use my clearance to get a private security contract or, you know, an arms contract somewhere else. Correct. And that's a big part of our retirement plan. When you are a FBI officer, a CIA officer, an NSA officer, you understand that most likely, like there's a pyramid of growth. You are most likely going to end up somewhere in the bottom of the top third, because that's where there's the most space. And you're going to make $120,000 a year, $140,000 a year to live in Washington, D.C., one of the most, one of the most expensive, whatever zip codes in the region. When you retire, you're only going to take 60%. of what you're earning. You don't retire at your actual salary. So then how do you maintain your lifestyle? And how do you pay for the kids that are in college? And how do you pay for your health issues

that you guaranteed you have because you fucked up your body in service? They're like, I'm going to go work for khaki. I'm going to go work for Mantec and make $260,000 a year. Easy duty. And all I'm doing is connecting dots and making sure that Mantec gets the most current tech contract in CIA and Kaki gets the most.

most recent satellite contract like that's that's their job and that's a fucked up job right now can you go back to being an agent or continue being an agent technically yes i could go back to being an officer we call ourselves officers at cia so we could go back to being an officer it would take some it'd take a polygraph it would take a security check it would take some an invitation of some sort so it could happen it most likely will not happen because cia really doesn't want officers to have this of public footprint. That's what they really don't know how to handle an officer with this kind of public footprint.

Throwing us off the set then. Okay, you ready? Yes or no questions. This is lightning round? Lightning round. Okay. Is Did he a Fed? No. Do aliens exist? Yes. Is U.S. still the number one superpower? Yes. Is democracy at risk? Yes.

Is Trump on the Epstein list? Ooh. Yes. For fucking kids? I don't know. But he's got to be on the list somewhere. Oh, you scratch his nose. I don't, I don't know. Right nostril.

Right nostril. If I had to guess. If I had to guess, I would say no. He's not going to be on there for kids. Well, that clip won't go viral. Oh, are there Russian assets in the U.S. government? Yes. Is there any truth?

Is that actually a hard question? Do people think there might not be? In the government? Yeah, I would hope to know. Oh, fuck that, guys. So here's a rule of thumb. Here's the rule of thumb from CIA. Here's the rule of thumb from CIA.

every government agency is penetrated by five foreign spies and rule of thumb so don't ever trust that any of them are safe well assume that every single one of them has been penetrated by at least five and then hunt for those five and you may find the 10 or 15 others that you never thought of but that's what motivates us to keep the hunt going that's why we all every organization has an internal counterintelligence group that hunts spies in its own organization because they're there and they're they're if they're professional you'll never know they're there unless you actively try to hunt them down aOC definitely you just heard penetrated by five exactly like a funny blue video you're like oh that sounds awesome oh that sounds so cool oh that's so funny oh Eddie busomente thank you so much

That's awesome. Thank you, man. Thanks for having you guys. Thank you so much, man. Bye.