EverydaySpy Podcast - Are ALL Men Created EQUAL? | EverydaySpy Podcast Ep. 3

Episode Date: August 12, 2023

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All human life has value. Yes. That doesn't mean all human lives are of equal value. And I know that that's going to make some people mad. But still, some people are of great value. Some people are not of much value. If the world's coming to an end, I'm not saving myself. Now, we were recently visiting friends, the godparents to our children.

And we've known them for a long time. But something really interesting to me happened because the mother, the lady who's the God bother to our children has always really been kind of fair and equal and liberal and, you know, progressive. And she made this comment where she was like, she was talking about how she wants to make sure her kids understand that all people are equal. But some people are just better. My jaw hit the floor. Because I was like, whoa, what happened? Like, how did you go from being this person where equality was so important to you. And now you're actually saying in your own way that people are not equal. Well, and it's not uncommon to hear that from people as they rise up

the wealth ladder, which they have done very successfully. Because when I was in college, I was the same. But I came from a very, you know, working class family. And so for me, I was like, everybody should be equal. Everybody should have the same things, not just opportunities, but like literally the same things. We should all have the same house, the same amount of food, equality across the board. But then as people rise up the wealth ladder through their own efforts, they start to realize that some people don't work as hard as other people. Not everybody is actually equal in the way that they function. And so why should everybody receive equal resources? I think that's what happens. So do you think there's a correlation between growing wealth and your personal politics?

I do. I think that if you are a person who grows wealth, right, not a person who falls into wealth or marries into wealth. If you are taking action to grow wealth, then your mindset definitely changes as you are putting in the effort and seeing the fruits of your labor. Does it work the other way around for people who are not taking active efforts to grow wealth or even people who are taking active efforts not to work or not to grow wealth. Can you clarify your question? So if somebody is just doing run of the mill, they're never

trying harder to get any better. Or the person who actively tries not to try. Or the person who believes in some of the training or the mental concepts that you're just supposed to be happy with what you have. Or the person who believes that you're supposed to just be happy with what you're given or what you get. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense that for those people, it might not occur to them. If you're not growing, your concepts aren't growing either, right? Your philosophy isn't evolving either. And I think that what people really mean when they say equality is equity. So, and I think there's two things. I think what people really mean when they say equality is twofold. One, they want equity. They think that everybody should have the same opportunity to make the effort to gain wealth,

gain, you know, whatever it is that they want to, right, gain a better life. But I think the other thing that people are really trying to say is that they value all life as equal. And valuing life as, you know, everybody's life as being equal, the value of a human life is not the same as all humans are equal. You know, it's interesting. We were watching a movie recently on, um, on, Netflix, a movie called I Am Mother.

Oh, I love that movie. And you introduced me to that movie. And there's this cool exercise in the middle of the movie that presents an ethical dilemma. And if I'm remembering right, I think the ethical dilemma was there are five people, each with a failing organ, a failing bodily organ. And then a sixth person comes to the hospital. The sixth person has a terminal illness that will cause them to die.

However, that terminal illness, that terminal patient has each of the organs inside their body operating in a healthy fashion for the five other people. So does the doctor let the terminal illness die, does the doctor let the terminal patient die so that they can then harvest the organs and use them in the five other people? Or does the doctor help prolong the life of a person who is terminal, even though the other five people will potentially die without the organ that the terminal patient is carrying. And I love these ethical dilemmas because they really do make us ask some deeper questions. I can almost guarantee you most people would say they'd have an answer right away.

Oh no, the doctor has to help the terminal patient. Or, ooh, it doesn't, you know, the terminal patient is going to die anyways. Just let nature run its course and save the other five lives. The real purpose behind an ethical dilemma is to ask the next question. Right. Right. Who are the five people waiting on organs? Are they criminals?

Yeah. Are they serial abusers? Are they killers? Are they doctors? Are they scientists? Are they engineers? Who is the terminal patient? And when you start asking yourself those questions, then you start wondering,

is there some category of person that's more valuable than another category of person? Right. Right. If you know that one of those patients is going to commit suicide in a year, if you know that one of those patients is a drug addict who they're going to get your organ and then ruin it, right? I mean, it's exactly what you're saying. There's, there's a deeper level that those questions make you, make you think about. It's not just as, it's not simple black and white. You know, all these, all these short pithy headlines that we see nowadays make everything seem like it's

so easy, like you can just make a snap judgment, but there's not. There's, there's always a deeper question you need to be asking and you have to weigh all these options. nothing is black and white. Everything is some shade of gray. Yeah. And what's really interesting to me is we hear so much talk about equality and fairness and how the government and the structure of the state has to enforce or restrict opportunities to give everybody some sort of fair opportunity or fair balance or a fair swing, a fair shot. When people are not the same. People are not the same. Their capabilities are not the same. Their capacity for change and growth is not the same.

Their personal motivation is not the same. If so much can be different between people, why would we expect that the government that manages people would try to counteract mother nature itself? Right. And that's what's interesting about, you know, the big government, little government argument is, you know, in theory, on a more localized level,

a local government knows its population better and can provide opportunities for its local. population better than the big government can. Because you can't really standardize the entire country. We're so different. But a local government is also easier to corrupt. Exactly. Because a local government can be moved by smaller incentives, smaller decisions,

smaller audiences. So what do we want for our children? Do we want our children to believe that all people are equal? Do we want our children to believe that people get more when they work harder and they deserve less when they don't work as hard? What are your thoughts there? I want, so I definitely want our children to believe that all human life has value. Because all human life has value.

Everybody starts out. That's an awesome way of putting it. All human life has value. Yes. That doesn't mean all human lives are of equal value. That's how I'm interpreting that. And I agree with that. And I know that that's going to make some people mad.

But still, some people are of great value. Some people are not of much value. A criminal, a pedophile. they're not of a whole lot of value. There is still some value there. They do still drive the economic environment that we live in, right? They can still contribute to the workforce. They can still do all sorts.

They can still be blood donors, right? There's still value, but they're not anywhere near as valuable as an innovator, a doctor, a surgeon. If you put the question, right, do one of those difficult questions, if you put the question of, you know, the world's going to end, you can save 10 people, suddenly you're putting value in prioritizing certain lives, right? But I definitely want to raise them with, you know, all human life has value. And then give them the critical thinking skills to decide, you know, to help treat people

and help create equity in the world, right? because I don't believe that, you know, I don't believe that, you know, we should step on people to rise up, right? I don't think that's the right lesson. So, but they do have to think critically because not everybody is equal in what they have to offer the world. Okay. So the world is ending.

Mental exercise. Mental exercise. Oh, no. The world is ending. You get to choose 10 people that will survive the end of the world. You have your real family, me, your two children, your two living parents, and your sister. We are all part of the population. So what 10 people do you choose, I'm not saying named people, like, do you choose a doctor,

do you choose a farmer, do you choose a scientist? What 10 people do you choose to carry on the health of the planet after the rest of the world dies. There are so many follow-up questions to this because are 10 people enough to keep the species going, number one. If 10 people aren't enough to keep the species going, then I might as well surround myself with 10 people who I'm going to enjoy the rest of my life with, and then we all die out. So you're assuming you're one of the 10 that you're going to let live. Well, in that scenario, Wow. If 10 people are enough to continue the human population, then I would be much more judicious in my selection.

I'm telling you right now, if the world's coming to an end, I'm not saving myself. Not, no. Go ahead. What's your question? Even if those 10 people are going to live their lives and then kaput. That's it for the human race. No, I don't want to live. Really?

So I was a nuclear missile officer with the Air Force. I actually had a checklist of things to do in the event of a nuclear Holocaust. That's fair. I had to consider what life would look like in an actual end of day's scenario. And I'm telling you right now, end of days means end of me, too, because the day after the end of days is going to be a miserable day. It's true. I'm going to be like that. The whole life after that day is going to be horrible.

I'm going to be like that twilight zone. guy who like the entire world ended and then all he wanted to do is be alone and read books at the library and he steps on his glasses and now he can't read anything and he's all alone that would be me I remember that so speaking of end of days speaking of end of days we recently had news drop that's the U.S. is sending cluster bombs to support Ukraine in their conflict against Russia how does that make you feel it makes me pretty so my initial reaction is what a bunch of dumb asses and it makes me really angry like didn't we learn our lesson in Vietnam nope no we clearly did not we are still spending money and putting forth

efforts on the ground in Vietnam and Laos still to this day trying to clean all that up right but then once I stop being so angry I have to realize that you know you have to put yourself in the shoes of the decision maker and how difficult decision that must have been. I'm not saying I agree with the decision, but when I put myself in Biden's shoes, for example, I'm fairly certain that he is looking at, do I give them cluster bombs because I'm not willing to put my own boots on the ground. I'm not willing to give them much more than what we have already provided. So do I give them this weapon that we all know is horrific and we all know is going to be a big cleanup and it could take out a bunch of civilians and we know all the nasty effects.

Or do I risk Russia taking the territory? That's interesting. Right? I believe that those are the two options, the big options that they're looking at there. So that's a really interesting point. The idea that the Biden administration has to think through multiple layers of impact when they make a decision like whether or not to send cluster bombs. And let's be honest, cluster bombs are nasty. It is, for me, I was disappointed in my administration when I heard that they had approved

the transfer of not just older munitions, but older munitions with an increased rate of failure. Because the problem with a cluster bomb, it's a, it's a despicable weapon, right? It explodes at an altitude and it drops munitions down on other things. It's just a, it's an indiscriminate killer. Yeah. Right. So it's a terrible nasty weapon on its own. Very effective, terrible and nasty weapon.

But the thing that's so horrible about them is when they don't detonate. Yes. When they don't detonate appropriately, you end up having these little grenades, little explosives that sit there, months, weeks, years. And then they're discovered long after the conflict has ended. Children are still losing limbs in Laos and Vietnam. When they come across these brightly colored oil, world munitions and they pick them up or they play with them or they poke them with a stick and they

explode. Yeah. Afghanistan is going through the same problem right now because we use them in the war on Afghanistan, right? Iraq still has the same issue. So we've left these little baby bombs all over the world and that's why we don't use cluster munitions unless they have a very high success rate. I'm talking like 1% of them are allowed to fail.

Then we employ them actively. We're sending to Ukraine ones with a failure rate of more than 100%. 100% what we're willing to accept. Right. But you're right. Biden and his team have to make the decision. What can we do to continue to show support for Ukraine without actually taking away from our ability to defend the homeland?

Right. And now they're at that place where the best thing to do is to send old, flawed munitions to a foreign conflict zone where even when they fail at a higher rate, which we know they will, it's not our problem. whether Ukraine wins or Russia wins, they have to clean up their own mess. They're the ones that are going to have to deal with future children discovering cluster munitions and having their limbs blown off. That's their problem, not our problem.

But the current political narrative gets to advance when the United States says, we're going to continue supporting Ukraine with more weapons. Right. And even if we support them in the cleanup, it's a future problem, right? We don't need to worry about that right now. what we need to worry about right now is, you know, have you read the book Kujo by Stephen King? I remember that book. Right? So the woman's trapped in a car with her toddler with a rabid dog outside.

Well, you need to worry about right now is that rapid dog outside, right? Like, you don't have to think about the future. You just need to worry about how do I get this dog away from my car, you know? So that I'm, I, once I put myself in those shoes, I can understand, unfortunately. why the decision was made. I still don't agree with it. What would you have done differently? Well, without the intel, I'm not entirely certain what all of the options would have been. You know, and it's difficult, and I think that this is difficult for a lot of people that, you know, at some point you have to put faith in your leadership, that they are taking all of the facts and making the best decision they can make with those facts. So I have to make the assumption that, you know, Biden is taking all of the intel, all of the advice from his,

you know, military advisors, and he's making the best decision he can make. Because you have faith in the current administration. I don't have faith in the current administration. Then why would you assume they're making the best decision they can make? I do believe that we have a history of American presidents who make decisions who make decisions. decisions in the best interest of keeping economic and military dominance inside the United States. So I do believe that the Biden administration is doing a pretty fair job of making sure that nobody can economically or militarily dominate the United States right now.

But I do think that the whole future problem thing is starting to become a clear and present problem. Yeah. Because we've kind of let ourselves slip a little too far. Now we're behind the curve in terms of conflict with near peers like China, right? And we've got strained relationships with long-term allies like Saudi Arabia. Even NATO and specific countries inside NATO are verbalizing and vocalizing that they don't like our current administration. They don't like our current direction, right? Germany has called for becoming the largest military in NATO and dropping the United States.

France, I mean, President Macron from France, France has already gone to China. Yeah. And had like the entire NATO alliance reprimand him for going to China and making and promising close religions with China. So, you know, we are, the future problem is becoming the present problem when it comes to what does American dominance look like in the future. And the way I view leadership, the leadership of a country is the way I view parents, right? I'm not saying that they're making the best decision that could be made.

I'm saying they're making the best decision that they can make. It's like when I look back at my parents' decisions and I think, did they make the best decision for us regarding whatever? You know, they made the best decision they could make. Based on their experience, their background, their knowledge base, what they think is right and wrong, their value set, right? So it's the same thing with leadership. And America changes leaders every four to eight years.

So you're having a new parent step in and lead the country every four to eight years, and they're making the best decision that they can make. Whether or not that's, you know, how good that actually is, you know, it's so person dependent. And that's, you know, arguably one of the, like the leg up that a place like China has is that they have the same parent for a long time. So there's lots of consistency, right? So even if they're not not making the best decisions, at least they're consistent in their decision making, right? where America is not like that, right? Democratic countries change leadership fairly often,

and you're doing the best you can with what you have. So it's a really interesting argument then, whether or not the future state will future success depend on democracy and democratic leaders or authoritarian leaders, right? Autocracy and authoritarian leaders. Which one is the superior structure for the immediate, the immediate future, right?

It's interesting because coming out of World War II, democracy kind of reigned in many ways because we had just defeated and oppressed autocracy, right? So it took a few decades before autocrats came back into power and back into favor. But now we're very much in an era where there's democratic powers and then there's authoritarian powers.

But most of the democratic countries that are out there are not really success stories. They're not wealthy, impactful countries. Right? I mean, if you look at the top five wealthiest countries in the world, three of them are actually kingdoms. They actually have monarchs, right? And the two that are left are actual quote unquote democracies, but they're more like republics where you have representatives who reflect the will of the people. They're not actually countries where the people are in control. Right. The next four or five wealthy countries on the top ten list, all of them are a top.

Yeah. It's wild, right? It's wild to think of how much success and wealth has derived from strong, strong men leadership in the last 50 years. And what does that mean for the next 50 years? Yeah. And you know, it's funny. I grew up with my dad telling me, my dad's from Venezuela. And, you know, my dad has this belief that every country has the leadership that they deserve, the leadership that the people of that country are ready for. Right. So democracy isn't necessarily the answer for everybody because every country has its own culture. Every culture wants a different style of leadership. And who's to say that one style is the best for everybody?

Because they all have pros and cons. And democracy is, you know, we're still a big experiment. You know, we're still trying to figure out how to make it work. So where does that land in the very? of all life has value and equality and fairness. Because in an authoritarian regime, an authoritarian country, if that is the superior function or superior form of government that the world will be adopting for the next 50 years, they do not believe all life has equal value. They don't even believe that all life has value, right? I mean, look at China. China actually instituted a one-child

policy to repress their own population growth back in like the 90s. And now they're suffering from it, right? But the point is, not all life has value there. I mean, even here in the United States, we can't seem to decide on Roe versus Wade. Yeah. We go back and forth, right? Does all life have value?

Or is it someone else's choice what life is allowed to live? Right? These are controversial questions that kind of fly in the face of this idea that all life has equal value or all life has value. Or what I totally agree with you, that the more uncomfortable statement here, here is the more accurate statement that all life has value, but not all lives are of equal value. It's definitely a controversial statement. And I'm still ruminating on how I feel about this.

No, you don't ruminate, you avoid. It's already happened. I asked you what 10 people you would take with you at the end of the world. The only person you said was you. And even then, you didn't say it directly. You were like, well, who would I surround myself with? Right? So don't, I understand who you really are, not who your face is on camera. Unless we can propagate the species. And then I would choose somebody else because I don't want to propagate heavily until the end of days come. And then boom, I just, I want to see the cloud.

I want to watch the heat wave. And then I don't, I don't want to remember anything after that. You say it's a hard, honestly, it's a hard thing to look yourself in the mirror. I look myself in the mirror and I tell myself, if I have, if I have, was alive during the American Revolution, I would not have fought for the American side. We've talked about this. Yeah. And it's a humbling thing, right? I'm a parent. I'm a patriot. I've served my country. I served with CIA. And if I was to take who I am right now and drop myself into the shoes of somebody choosing whether or not to fight the red coats, I would have been one of

those guys that was like, I'm not going to fight them. I'm going to protect my kids. I'm going to protect my farm, I'm going to do my thing, and I'm going to let the revolutionaries do their thing. Yeah. And I know that that makes me sound like a coward to some people. 20 years ago, when I had no kids, when I was 23 years old, I would have been all full of piss and vinegar and let's go take on the red coats. Yeah. Because I didn't understand the value of life then.

Yeah. Now I've had 20 years to understand the value of life. And there's so much more to life than just winning and fighting for a cause that somebody else defines. Yeah. I am slightly amazed that human beings keep going to war when we see over and over again how detrimental it is to society, to the world as a whole. I mean, I conceptually understand why countries go to war, but I don't understand how, you know, just why we actually keep doing it. Why do we keep sending our young men and women into battle? just for something that arguably could be diplomatically resolved.

There's an awesome quote in the book, what was it, gods and generals, I think it is. I think the book was called gods and generals, where there's like a diary passage where somebody is reflecting on the fact that war is old men sending young men to fight and die. I just think that that's pretty powerful on its own, right? And then you've also got this idea that without war, economically speaking, you lose out on the opportunity for massive growth, massive innovation, massive domestic product, and that's a proven out time and time again, right? It can't always be a world with no war because war is...

Leads to innovation. War leads to economic benefit, right? That's what's so interesting. What we have seen in the West is we've learned how to turn war into economic benefit. But look across Africa, they haven't figured that out yet. No. There are militias still fighting. There are warlords fighting all the time.

Nobody's growing economically. Yeah, it's a challenging question. And I think, you know, just like we were talking about which form of government is the better one, maybe it's neither. You know, maybe it doesn't exist right now. Maybe somebody needs to innovate a new form of government that combines some of the better aspects of the other ones. Maybe there is no perfect form of government because human beings are fundamentally flawed, right? When I first learned about communism, I was young and I thought, communism sounds awesome. Like everybody has the same stuff.

You're taking care of. Everybody gets education. Everybody gets medicine. What's the problem here? But then you realize that the problem is that the leadership is flawed. The leadership will, there's some level of corruption will happen at some point. And then the whole thing goes to pot. So, you know, it's a human problem.

Well, what's interesting to me is that, you know, we sit here saying how war is so costly and war so detrimental. And we're all seeing how war has negatively impacted so much of our global process since Ukraine and Russia kicked off, right? It reminds me of a quote that I learned when I was at the Air Force Academy. There's this famous quote that every military academy cadet learns. And I was a horrible cadet, so I don't remember the whole quote. But I remember the beginning. And the beginning was that war is a terrible thing. And may have been war is an ugly thing. War is an ugly thing, but not so ugly as the decayed and degraded state of society that believes that nothing is worth war, right? Which is fascinating

to me, not only because I totally massacred that thing, so for any cadets out there, listen, they know how it's supposed to go. Tell us in the comments what the real thing is. Yeah, for real, for real, because I obviously didn't use it, didn't change my life until I use it right now. But the idea that the decayed and degraded moral state of society that says that nothing is worth war is uglier than war itself. Now that I'm older, I don't know that that's necessarily true. I don't think that's true. And I see what we're doing here in the United States, which frankly, what we're doing in the United States is we're letting Ukrainians die fighting an American foe. That's what we're doing. Right. Ukrainians are fighting for a valid reason. But they're fighting

and dying, and they're weakening a foe that we don't have to send any American lives to fight, right? Yeah. That's a win-win when it comes to American national security priorities, right? That's what's happening in Europe. And that's exactly the quote. That's exactly a societal base that believes that it's not worth war. We don't want to send our own people in to go do that.

We learned that in Afghanistan. We saw the nastiness of it in Vietnam. We didn't engage in Syria, right? There's all these examples where we have decided to stay away from war, even though our own generals, our own military academies are teaching us that we should be stepping into war. That's a very interesting quote. There are lots of interesting quotes. What's interesting is that that quote is what gets drilled into the mind of every freshman going through a military academy.

That's what's interesting. That's exactly mind, again, going back to what we learned at CIA, brainwashing is not a matter of finding somebody and changing their mind. Brainwashing is a matter of getting someone to self-select into a system of belief, and then you reinforce that existing system of belief. What is a military academy? You're finding people who are self-selecting, even competing to get into a school that is military. Yeah.

And then when they have been awarded and granted permission and when they are like, when they are celebrated because they're one of the few and the proud that got in, then you're just further cementing and indoctrinating their own biases about being the best and killing and war and death and dominance and, you know, everything else. It's a fascinating thing. It's something that we need. It's something that we need. But not all lives are of equal value. Yeah. Now, we were talking about where the real threat lies, right? And there's also been some really interesting news about developments in the Arctic and in the Arctic Circle specifically, right? What kind of conflict exists up there, territorial disputes that could be going on up there,

where the future of Russian-American Chinese tensions lie, with the Arctic. Have you seen some of those articles? Yeah, I have. They're fascinating. So it reminds me of World War II because the only successful invasion of the United States happened in World War II. And almost nobody knows about it, right? The Japanese successfully invaded Alaska through the Arctic Circle in World War II. I forget what the operation was called. It was less than a year after Pearl Harbor. Yeah. And we actually had a Japanese incursion on American soil. Now, it was successfully repelled. But I think that goes to show.

the strategic importance of the Arctic. Yeah. And here it is, again, coming to Headline News. Yeah, particularly as the, you know, as the ice begins to melt and that area opens up. You know, I mean, I think the big reason it hasn't been on anybody's radar, nobody's really thought about it is because it was kind of impassable before. But it's very close to becoming impassable for many, many things. And if you look at a map of the, of the, of the, the, of the, the, of the, the, the,

Arctic, you know, we have a world map on our wall. So there's this circle of the Arctic and half of the circle is Russia. The rest is made up by Canada, a little bit of the United States, Norway, Greenland, Iceland's up there, you know, Sweden. Anybody with a world Atlas will be able to take a look at what the world looks like when you look down on the North Pole. You look down from the Arctic. It's Russia. It's all Russia. It's all Russia. Everything above 78 degrees latitude, which is considered the Arctic Circle. It's all Russia.

And you're right, global warming, which whatever the reason is driving global warming. We could start our own conspiracy theory about how Russia started global warming. So they could melt the ice and strategically use it to take over the United States. Yes. More workable landmass. There you go. This sounds exactly like a Lex Luthor plan out of a Superman movie. Yes, absolutely.

That's exactly what it sounds like. But no, I mean, it's a very valid point. The reason that people are paying attention to what's happening in the Arctic is because there's stuff under the ice. I don't mean like there's... Holy mammoths. Yeah, and soil that we can use to grow corn. But there are rare earth minerals buried under the ice. Those rare earth minerals are going to power tomorrow's electric vehicles, supercomputers,

all the raw materials that go into our AI chips and send me. semiconductors, that lives underneath the ice. New logistical routes between countries are underneath the ice. New territorial disputes are underneath the ice. Like, there is, as the polar ice caps melt, conflict is going to arise around who gets to use these areas. I mean, just since 2022, they've actually had to change flight paths around U.S. carriers, EU carriers, Russian carriers, Chinese, like, aircraft. airlines have changed their routes because the polar route, which we've all been using and taking advantage of for a long time, the way you get from Chicago to Beijing is over the North Pole,

right? It's over the Arctic Circle. But since the conflict broke out and people have started to put sanctions on Russia, guess who owns a lot of that airspace? Yeah. Russia. So now all of a sudden, the rest of the world can't fly over Russian airspace because it's Russian airspace and they've sanctioned Russia. And if they're going to try to enforce Russian routes or reduce Russian routes, Russia has the right to shut down the Arctic Circle. Could you imagine if Russia had the ability to shut down naval passage as well and merchant marine passage and the ability to actually ship through shipping lanes through the Arctic? How much faster those shipping lanes will be when they're available, but not just that. Who controls them? Are they internationally controlled

and protected or do they belong to a country? I think it's really interesting. And I was surprised to see how far down the list of headlines that existed. Oh, yeah, that is funny. Well, maybe because it's not quite there yet. But I mean, Russia, the other thing about Russia is they've been working on this a long time already. Russia is a lot like China and they think ahead, really far ahead. So they already have, right, because they have one parent who just hangs out all the time. So they have bases there. They have subs there. They are prepared. There are stories of Russian intelligence infiltrating. the Norwegian bases that they have up along the, you know, up along their northern border. And there is an Arctic Council, but it's currently in disarray because nobody wants to deal with Russia. So there's not- Nobody wants to deal with them because they're afraid. Because they're afraid, but without the council working properly, they also can't come together to share information on what Rush is really doing. So there's definitely intelligence activity going on.

There's most likely military activity going on, little things that people see that are strange that maybe if there was shared intelligence, people would be able to piece that puzzle together and get a better picture of what Rush is up to and where they might be going with it. Right. But right now that communication isn't there. Or if it is, it's not privy to us. That's correct. Yeah. So I want to end with a question that recently came in from a fan of everyday spy. And I kind of always want to bring up a few questions from our audience. We call our tribe the spy tribe.

Right. People can find the way into the spy tribe by listening to our podcast, by following us on social media, by buying one of our products, by coming to one of our live events. And we just had an awesome live event that just ended in St. Petersburg. We had a ton of fun. I can't thank you enough because you're the one that plans everything about our live events. All I have to do is go and actually. execute it. So thank you for doing all that. You're very welcome. Thank you for having the brain

that executes it, though, because it's your knowledge that you're imparting on those students. That's true. You're really good at packing the box that has to have all the stuff. Yes. But you would just, you would just give it to the students and go hide in the closet if you had to. I would. I'm the introvert in the back corner of the room. So a question that came up there, I thought was really interesting and I wanted to pass it to you, because the question was, what do you wear at CIA headquarters? What kind of clothes do they wear at CIA headquarters? So I wanted to kick that question to you and see what you have to say.

So I would say, and I am no fashionista, that generally people dress very smartly at the CIA. I would liken it to how people dress at the Department of State or at any. Well, I wouldn't say any other government agency because I don't remember people at NSA dressing this way. But, you know, the women wear high heels and dress suits. The men wear suits and ties for the most part. You know, everybody dresses very professionally, except me. I wear my – I like to be comfortable. So I wore my old lady loafers and sweater because I learned the hard.

way the first week at CIA that high heels for eight hours a day makes you a super bitch. Yeah, it doesn't work. And there's a lot of servers they have to keep cool. So it's always cold. Yes. Yeah, it's funny. I think that's better than my answer. Because my answer was that what you wear depends on your age. When you're like 28 and single, you've got tailored jackets, tailored There's suits, you know, bright colors. The women are smoking and they're like, you know, dresses and they're very tailored. Everything's like because you're constantly on parade. You're on parade to other people.

You're on parade to other partners. You're on parade. Like, it's the Washington, D.C. metropolitan, you know, catwalk. Everybody's judging everybody all the time. That's what it's like in Washington, D.C. Whether you're on K Street, whether you're on Pennsylvania Avenue or whether you're in Langley. And then as you get older, you get married, you have kids. you have a couple of assignments, you go on a couple of missions, you get sick, you gain weight,

whatever it is, right? You start to carry a little bit less. And then by the time you're like in your mid-50s, you know, you got a pot belly going on, you're still wearing the same shirt you were wearing in your 40s. It's a little more, a little stretched out. So the buttons start to stretch. You know what I'm talking about. You know it's real. And that's how you start seeing the people who break out the shoes with the Velcro and they have their scars and they have the, and they don't look like their professional CIA officers anymore. But the thing that gets me the most about CIA is that you have to pack your own lunch. You don't make enough money and you don't have any place to go out to eat because you're on this standalone compound. So everybody carries a lunchbox. It's like going back to grade school again.

Even if they are walking around in a $3,000 Italian suits, which not everybody does, but some people do, they're still carrying their Yeti lunchbox that they got from Target and it's got their sandwiches and their yogurt and there, whatever else that they need. Yeah. Because that's the reality of life at CIA. That is true. Absolutely. Yeah.

It's hilarious. And if you go into the, any place where there's a tech office, they look exactly the way you would expect an IT or an engineer to look like. And that's generally jeans and a polo. That's true. But you don't really see them walking around. And they carry a CIA badge. Yeah.

Which is pretty cool. Yeah. All right, folks, if you have a question that you ever want us to answer here on the podcast, please drop it in the comments. We will be scouring our comments. You're part of the Spy Tribe. If you've got something you want to know, let us know in the comments so we can pull it out. Give us feedback on what we talked about, what current events you want us to talk about, things that you've heard here that you like, things that you want us to expand more upon. And as always, we are super happy to be serving you and have this chance to have a conversation with you.