EverydaySpy Podcast - CIA 2026 Survival Guide: If You’re Predictable, You’ve Already Lost

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

FREE TEST: Find Your Spy Superpower HERE - https://yt.everydayspy.com/4arMal0 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room. Just steps from the water.

The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. There are certain lessons that you never forget. And I had one of those lessons when I was at CIA and found myself on the receiving end of a foreign interrogation in a hostile country, in a place where I wasn't supposed to be in a name that wasn't even my own.

And the one skill that kept me alive, the one skill that helped me survive that interrogation room is a skill that you are probably giving away every day. I take interrogation very seriously, not just because interrogation is an actual skill that. CIA and military officers have to learn, but because there is so much misunderstanding in the public sphere about what interrogation is, how it works, and what makes it so effective. In 2025, I did a collaboration video with a pretty big YouTuber named Tommy G. He invited one of his favorite podcasters, Julian Dory, along for the ride, and I was able to show them exactly what it's like to go through an advanced interrogation experience as if they were rendered terrorist targets. As part that experience, I also showed them the difference between advanced interrogation techniques

that we use on non-U.S. citizens, as well as advanced interrogation techniques that get used on U.S. citizens. At the end of the day, both men walked away with an incredible new, healthy respect and understanding of how terrifying interrogation can really be. My first experience with interrogation at CIA actually happened when I was still in training. And I was put on a training mission when I was still on the farm where I had to go out and recruit an instructor who was pretending to be a foreign military officer and convince him to start giving his secrets to me so that I could share those secrets back to CIA. Now, he, of course, was a senior military officer. I was a junior CIA officer undercover, so there was a big age difference between the two of us.

But my job was to overcome that age difference. My job was to convince him and show him of my professionalism, my intelligence, my capability, my security, and win him over in such a way that, of course, he would trust me with his secrets, and he would trust me with his life and the lives of his family who he's trying to keep safe. The training mission took several weeks, and as I was reaching the end of the mission, after weeks of work, I made a critical error in the last few minutes of that exercise that would actually go on to save my life later on in my CIA career. When you're trying to convince a person to trust you with their secrets, you have to maintain control at all times without them realizing that you're the one in control. And that was the mistake I made that

day with my instructor. And my instructor decided that he would be the person that decides where we meet, when we meet, and how often we meet. Now, it might sound like a small inconsequential thing, whether one person decides to meet in a restaurant and one person decides to meet in a bar, But when it comes to control, it makes all the difference in the world. And when I gave that control to my instructor, when I let him decide when, where, and how often, it put me at a disadvantage. And it gave all of the advantage to him. Because of that one mistake that I made, when I went back to my training base at the farm, I found myself hooded, handcuffed, and brought into an interrogation room. When you're behind the table and under the light, your whole body rebels against you.

You start to sweat, you start to blink, you start to fidget, your hands get clammy, your feet get hot, you can't sit still. Everything about you wants to escape, and that was exactly how I felt on that day. I'm going to save you all the details of the actual interrogation. If you want to read about that, you can find it in my book, Shadow Cell, which is available everywhere books are sold. But what I want to tell you is how I ended up in that interrogation chair, because the mistake I made when I gave control to my instructor is a fundamental error that you can fix very easily when you understand this, concept. Predictability is a death sentence. Predictability is how I ended up being captured. Predictability is how my instructor knew I would fall for letting him take control. Predictability is how I ended up hooded and handcuffed and in the room in the first place,

because I did what other people expected me to do. In intelligence operations, just like in real life, the moment that you become predictable is the moment that you give up control. It's the moment that you become a target. And that's what happened to him. me. That's how I ended up being captured. When you always use the same password, when you always watch the same streaming service, when you always go to the same restaurants, you are creating a predictable pattern that puts the power in the hands of the person that wants to take control from you. For me, it was as simple as letting somebody else tell me where they wanted to meet, when they wanted to meet, and how often they wanted to meet. And it really is that simple for you,

two. When you let someone else choose the when, when you let them choose the where, when you let them choose the how, you are giving them control and you are making yourself the target. I mean, just think about it for a second. How hard would it be for someone to ambush you on your way to work? Do you always leave at about the same time? Take about the same route, driving the same car, the same time of day, the same days of the week? Maybe when you're out with your friends, you have the same way of hitting on the same kind of girl or the same kind of boy. You make the same jokes. You smile the same way. You have the same pickup lines. Maybe you work from home and you already have your family and you're beyond those things. Well, in that case, do you wake up at the same time each day? Do you have the same morning routine? Do you take care of your kids by taking them to the same school or the same soccer practice or the same swim class every week? Do you find that Friday is the night that you go out for pizza and Saturday is the day that you sleep in? You have the same pattern of predictability that the rest of us have. The first step is being able to that you have this predictability because once you admit that you have it, you can absolutely

change it and take control back again. All you have to do is a basic audit of your life. Just keep track of what you do day to day, week to week for a matter of 21 days. Use your phone, use an actual piece of paper and a pencil, do whatever you want to do, but audit your daily routine. After you see where you do things the same way, the same time, and the same frequency, you can start to make changes. Another way you can introduce some much-needed unpredictability in your life is to never meet in the same place twice when power matters. When you're having a business meeting or meeting someone on a date, always change the location and more importantly, you determine what location you will choose. You can always choose a location you think the other person will like,

but don't let them be the ones that choose the location. You'll find that business peers appreciate the fact that you have a vision and direction that you want to execute, and you'll find that your date appreciates the fact that you have a little bit of novelty and creativity that keeps you from being predictable like all the other boys and girls out there. Remember that when you're predictable, you're not powerful. If anything, you become the prey. Going back to that interrogation room with me, not only was I predictable, but I also gave up a second important tool that was critical to my success,

and that was controlling the frame. You may have heard people talk about framing in the past, framing a conversation, framing a situation, framing a problem. At CIA, when we talk about framing, we're always talking about framing control, who is in control and who is under control. And inside an interrogation room, the whole room is built to put the interrogator in control and the person being interrogated under control. I mean, just think about it.

Inside of an interrogation room, the interrogator controls the temperature, they control the They control the seating. They control the furniture. They control the color of the walls. They control when you sit down and they control when they walk in. They control what questions get asked, what frequency those questions get asked, whether your answer meets the criteria for them to move on to the next question or not. The entire interrogation scenario puts control in the hands of the interrogator. So it's wildly difficult for the person who is being interrogated to reframe the interrogation. The same framing exists. for you in your everyday life. Every conversation you have, every business meeting, every phone call, every Zoom call, every email you send frames control, the person who's in control and the person who's under control. You know what this is like because you have had people bully you. You have had people force you. You have had people push you into doing things, saying things, accepting terms that you didn't

actually like, into signing contracts that weren't in your best interest, into accepting pay that you didn't think was adequate. All of life is about framing control. And if you're anything like me, then you know exactly how uncomfortable it is, how unwanted it is, how unacceptable it is to be on the receiving end of being framed to be under control. Just by having this conversation with me, you are going to be that much more aware anytime you are wrestling to frame control in the future. You're never going to look at an email, a phone call, or a conversation the same way again. And here are just a few tricks that we use at CIA, not only to maintain, but to take control of the frame whenever we want it. One of the simplest tactics that you can use to take control of a frame is simply by rejecting

anyone's initial terms. You can do this with a landscaper. You can do this with a date. You can do this with your boss. Simply put, whatever the initial terms are that they present to you, you can say, no, you can offer an alternative, or you can ask for time to think it over. Those three simple responses put all the control back in your hands and the other person doesn't even know you've taken control. Another simple trick you can use is to be the person who creates the initial terms. So rather than asking somebody for a suggestion, you lead the conversation by telling them what you recommend. Again, you can use it with your landscape or you can use it with your date or you can use it with your boss. Instead of asking for a due date, tell your boss when you think you will be done.

Instead of asking for a price quote, tell the landscaper what your budget actually is. Instead of asking the date, whether or not they want to go out again, simply tell them where you want to go the next time you take them out. With human beings, power is something that's always fluid. It's always in transition. But it's never something that's given away. Instead, it's something you have to seize. And if you seize power with structure, it will leave the other person in the room completely

unable to wrestle the frame back from you. Now, the third and final lesson that I learned in that interrogation room was the most powerful. And it's the one that has gone with me for the rest of my life and helped me to build a successful life, a successful business, and more wealth than I ever thought I could build. And that simple lesson was to never confuse agreement with control. You see, the whole reason that I ended up in that first interrogation room was because I thought I was winning just because my target was saying yes. I asked if he trusted me. and he said yes. I asked him for his secrets and he said yes. I asked if he would tell me more and he said yes again. I was falling victim to believing that because he was saying yes, I was in control.

When in reality, he was saying yes because he was the one in control. Control is defined by the person who sets the tempo, the person who sets the rhythm, the person who sets the direction. And by saying yes, he was doing all of those things. And I was simply. the one asking permission. This is something that people, and especially men, get wrong all the time in everyday life. We believe that by asking for permission first, we are asserting our control, when in fact we are actually giving up our control and letting someone else decide whether the answer is yes, no, or maybe. Now, I'm not saying that you have to be disagreeable, and I'm certainly not advocating that you start violating anyone's personal or professional boundaries.

I'm just saying that our society has conditioned you for consensus. You're looking for approval. You're looking for agreement. And you believe that by seeking consensus, by being the one who asks for a permission or asks for agreement, you must be the one in control because you are the one asking the question. When in reality the control goes to the person who can choose whether or not to give you the consensus that you seek. The reason this third and final lesson was so powerful to me was because it saved my life in the second interrogation that I had in my CIA career.

And in that second interrogation, I wasn't working with CIA trainers. I was dealing with a foreign hostile intelligence service that had arrested me overseas and was asking me questions. Because I understood that predictability was a death sentence and because I understood that you have to control the frame. And because I understood that many people mistake agreement with control, I was able to win in my second interrogation. I was able to actually turn the tables against my interrogators. I was able to put them into a pattern of predictable behavior. I was able to wrestle control of the conversation in the frame, even though I was the person behind the table and under the lights. And most important of all, I was able to feign compliance to them because I was showing them a pattern of agreeable behavior that they believe.

believed put them in control when in reality I was lying to them, misleading them, and misdirecting them just so that I could build enough momentum to have my opportunity for escape. I hope you never find your way into a real interrogation room. They're always too hot or too cold. They always smell bad. You're always scared. You're always tired. And you're always hungry. Worst of all, you never know when it's going to end because you know for sure that you are not the one in control. These three powerful lessons will make you more successful, more powerful, and wealthier than 99% of people out there. So remember, predictability is a death sentence. You can either control the frame or be crushed by the frame and never mistake agreement with control. Use these three

tools, have incredible success, and I can't wait to see you on the other side. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank.