EverydaySpy Podcast - I Visited Australia—And RELEARNED What It Means to Be American | Day 9

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

Find your Spy Superpower: https://yt.everydayspy.com/43Jfikk I recently returned from a trip to Australia where I was reminded how the world views America. I flew through airports without TSA or heavy security, and learned how Aussies see the terrorist attacks from 9/11. For anyone with Australia travel in mind, this entry is for you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I just got back from a 10-day trip in Australia, my first time down under. And it was awesome. But there are some really interesting things that I just wasn't expecting that I wanted to share with you. Because for those of you who haven't been to Australia, for those of you thinking about going to Australia, maybe for those of you who have already been and know exactly how shocking these revelations are when I share them again, the place is really pretty amazing. It's shocking to be on a plane from L.A. for 13. hours only to then arrive in a place that's not that different than the United States. Now, I've

traveled all over the world and there are some amazing places in the world that are completely and totally foreign to the United States. If anybody's been to Quebec City, or what's I think they call it Quebec in their own country, but if you go to Quebec City in Canada, it's like going to Europe. It's a completely different world and you can literally get there by driving across the border in New York. It's shocking, right? So I fly across the ocean. I land. And, and in Sydney, I get out of the, out of the airplane on a gorgeous like 10 o'clock in the morning, spring, I guess their fall afternoon. And it really does feel like I just landed in L.A. Like I took off from L.A. only to then land in L.A. 13 hours later. Yes, they talk a little bit funny. Yes,

the airport is nothing like L.A.X. in Sydney. But otherwise, it's totally Western. Wrong side of the road, wrong side of the car. But otherwise, I mean, the faces, the diversity, the the language is the same. It's really not that different at all. So I'm really enjoying my time in Australia for the first few days that I'm there. And then I have this conversation with a security professional, somebody who's in the cybersecurity space, a client of mine down there that just an outstanding client, outstanding business, really awesome person to work with. And the subject turns to the history of 9-11, September 11th, 2001, here in the United States, the day that the Twin Towers were attacked. And in that conversation, my client was the first one.

to tell me that the 9-11 attacks, the September 11th attacks in the United States, are actually very important to Australians. And I never expected that. I never thought that that would be a thing because it happened in the United States. It happened in New York. It didn't happen in Sydney. It happened a whole world away from Australia on the other side of the planet in two different hemispheres, right? East versus West Hemisphere, North versus South Hemisphere. You couldn't be further away than Australia when you compare what happened in New York on September 11th. And yet, the Australian people seem to have a cultural regard, a cultural like importance that they place on the attacks in September in the United States. So I asked my client, I was like, why is it so

important to you? Because let's be honest. Let's be honest, Americans. Many Americans in the United States don't even remember 9-11 right now. There are young professionals who are 22, 23 years old right now who weren't even born on September 11th and who sure as hell don't remember September 11th. and don't really care or have any regard whatsoever for how huge the impact was of September 11th. Yes, I understand everybody knows about September 11th in the United States. It's in the history books. We talk about it every year. So they know that it exists.

But knowing that it exists is completely different than understanding its relevance, its importance. And the impact it had, how it changed America. And there are many, many people who don't remember the impact. Many, many people who don't understand the importance. many people who have no concept of how different the world was starting on September 11th, 2001, for about the next five years afterwards. And that's not their fault. That's just part of the American culture.

We as Americans, we remember very short-term things. We don't have a long-lasting memory. We don't hold on to things. We don't really carry well with tradition. We don't really carry well with legacy. We don't really value a lot of these things by default. it happens as we get older, as we develop our own values, our own systems of beliefs. Then we start to believe and we start to care about legacy and we start to care about tradition.

We start to care about ritual and process. But when we're young, especially, we don't value those things. So why is it that sitting in Australia, there's a whole continent of people who value what happened on September 11th, almost independent of the generation, whether they are over 50 or whether they are under 30? Why is it that that happened? And as I had this conversation with my client, he shared with me that September 11th inside the United States was one version of a tragedy. To all of the American allies outside of the United States, what 9-11 showed is that anybody, anybody was at risk of being attacked.

Anybody could be reached. Anybody could be hurt. When I heard that, it shocked me because it reminded me how powerful, the United States really is. How powerful the United States must be seen by its allies and its adversaries around the world. We as Americans take that power for granted. We sometimes forget how powerful our military really is. We sometimes forget how powerful our currency really is. How powerful our stock market really is. How powerful Silicon Valley really is. How powerful our universities and our education system really is. We forget those things because we live them day in and day out every day.

It just is what it is. And we get wrapped up in headlines and we get wrapped up and worrying about cryptocurrency and AI and Donald Trump. And we completely forget the fact that we are the strongest, most powerful country in the world. And not by a small margin. We forget those things. And sometimes it takes stepping away from our own daily life and going to a foreign place like Australia. and seeing our country through their eyes. And it was such an incredible experience to be reminded of that power, that perspective that comes from sitting in a different seat,

from traveling to a different land, from learning from a different people and seeing and appreciating what we have here in the United States. My first time traveling abroad was in 2001. I took a trip to China. I studied Chinese abroad when I was studying at the Air Force Academy. And it was a big deal in 2001 because the China-Tai-Worthy.

Juan stuff had been hot for most of the 90s and just started to cool down in the late 90s early 2000s and for the first time and it was almost 12 years China was letting the United States military academies send foreign language students into mainland China to study and I was one of those folks that got to go in on that first trip and we lived in Beijing for four weeks and we had we had language immersion with Beijing teachers in a Beijing school in downtown Beijing it was pretty amazing. And it was my first real time outside of the United States. I'd been to Mexico. I'd been to Canada. You know, great countries, but they're not really as foreign as a place like China to the American norm. And being there for four weeks, which isn't a long time in many ways, and some people

might say it's a very long time. But four weeks in China was enough for me to understand. Other countries can't drink the water that comes out of their sink. Other countries don't have toilets that you sit on. other countries don't have laws and regulations around what food gets served at a restaurant and that you actually have to start planning what you eat, what you drink, how you travel, where you go, when you go there, because of a lack of law and order that exists in many countries. So as a 21-year-old kid from an Air Force Academy going to Beijing to study Chinese, it was a huge slap in the face for two reasons. One, it was powerful to see how ill-equipped I was to exist in.

in the capital city of China in 2001. I mean, this wasn't like going to the heart of Central Africa. I was going to a country to a city that was popular, that was populated. That was not necessarily first world, but absolutely developing world in 2001. They had running water. They had electricity. They didn't have rolling blackouts. They had taxi cabs and cars and paved roads.

And it was very, very nice. It was just very Chinese. But when I was there, I was realizing that even in this place that looks and feels, so safe, it actually wasn't safe. Not like in the United States. When you look and feel safe in the United States, largely you are. But that's not the way it is in the rest of the world. And that point of view, that fresh perspective that came for me from living in China helped me to really appreciate the little things here in the United States. The fact that we can drink the water out of pretty much any sink, pretty much anywhere, pretty much any time. And we aren't going to get a

waterborne illness. We will not end up having some kind of worm or some kind of giardia that gets into our system because our pipe utilities, our water utilities, our sanitation utilities are strong. I would argue that there are places in the United States where you could actually drink out of a toilet and you would still be better off in terms of the risk of health than if you drank out of a sink in other parts of the world, right? That's how advanced our utilities are here in the United States. We don't ever really have rolling blackouts here in the U.S. Rolling blackouts are a thing that keep most countries of the world running. There's never enough energy to go to everybody. So they roll through blackouts. I mean, there are even some cities in the United States that do have

scheduled rolling blackouts at low peak hours. And only our energy utilities know about that. But it does happen. We just don't ever experience it or feel it ourselves. So blessed are we with our life here in the United States. Here as an adult is a 44-year-old business owner traveling through Australia and discovering that Australians value our own tragedy on 9-11, arguably as much or more than many Americans, was a shocking thing. Equally as shocking to me, though, was that as I traveled across Australia, their airport security is nothing like ours. So you can see that the country valued our experience. They arguably learned an important lesson from our experience. but they didn't learn the same lesson that we learned from that experience.

Because when I flew from Sydney to Gold Coast, I went through an airport security process that didn't look at my passport and didn't look at my ID. All they cared about was the ticket, the boarding pass itself. So I literally went through a security center that was managed by a third-party security outfit, very similar to the security guards that you see at the mall or at a bank here in the United States. Just normal third-party security that put me through a very simple security process. I walked through an open airport all the way to my flight gate. I just showed a boarding pass and I was on the plane.

No proof of identity required, nothing more than a digital online check-in. And I flew across the country and I flew, well, not across the country in this case, just from Sydney to Gold Coast, which is only a few hours. But, and then I existed in a whole different place with no proof of identity, right? With no requirement for a proof of identity. And I had an excellent experience in the Gold Coast. For those of you who don't know, I was in a place called Surf's First Paradise, just a beautiful, beautiful, beachy city, urban part of Australia.

Had a great time. Did some more training. Had some more clients. Did some more work there. And then I flew back from the Gold Coast to Sydney. And when I flew from Sydney to the Gold Coast, I was sure that somebody had just made a mistake by not checking my ID. But then when I flew from the Gold Coast back to Sydney, again, nobody checked for an ID.

In fact, I even saw families who were not ticketed passengers who were growing through security to see their loved ones off from the gate. So people without a ticket going through security going all the way to the air gate itself to send their loved ones off on a trip. I mean, that is completely different. That is totally foreign to us here in the United States. Remember how I was just talking a few minutes ago about the 23 year old who doesn't even, who wasn't even alive for 9-11. That same 23-year-old only knows the post-9-11 airport security landscape, right, where ticketed passengers are the only people who can even go through security, where you have to show forms of ID before you even enter security, where you have to get scanned for your TSA pre-check or for any

your clear access before you even get to the place where somebody checks your ID. It's a shocking difference between the two. And when I flew back and forth across Australia with no need for an ID or a passport or anything other than a ticket, it was really mind-boggling. It wasn't until I flew back to the United States. coming from Sydney, where I had to show my ID. And even then, the idea I had to show was at the gate. It was still an open airport. People could still go right up to the gate itself and stand right outside of the gate of an aircraft

that was about to fly across the ocean and into the United States. It was really, really shocking to me how different the experience was. Not that it was bad, not that Australians are doing anything wrong, just that it was so very different. So why am I sharing all this? I'm sharing this because even in my, experience, even in my point of view, even with the incredible life that I get to live day-to-day traveling and working all over the world, even I am still reminded how short the American memory is

because I, as an American, forget. I forget how blessed we are, how privileged we are. I forget the incredible power that we have. I had this fantastic friend of mine at CIA who used to say that all you have to do is be on the receiving end of an inbound jet, and then you'll realize how powerful the United States really is. And for all of you out there who live anywhere close to an Air Force base or a Marine Corps base or a Navy base, if you've seen those combat jets come screaming by, if you've seen them on training missions,

if you've seen them landing at the airport, you know how impressive, how loud, how powerful, how terrifying these things are. And the same thing is true for anybody who lives near a weapons testing depot or anybody who lives near where tanks are manufactured removed. If you felt the ground shake, if you've heard American hardware around you, you know to be on the receiving end of that would be terrifying, absolutely terrifying. But we forget. Because when you are the top of the heap, when you are the king of the castle, when you're the strongest, wealthiest country in the world,

it's easy to forget. It's easy to lose that perspective. So I want to say thank you to all of my clients and all of my partners in Australia who took me down there, who showed me a new, fresh way of seeing my own American existence, but also a very fresh way of seeing what our Australian partners are like. And I have had nothing but great experiences working with Australian ASIS, ASIS, and Australian Special Forces in the past. And the same is true now working with Australian businesses and Australian business people. They're an incredible, incredible group of people, very different, but very similar in other ways to us here in America. If you can relate to anything I talked about today. If you know that sound of jets, if you know the rolling rumble of tanks on the

ground, if you know what it's like to visit a foreign land and then become that much more appreciative of your American home, drop a comment, leave a message here so that we can all hear what you have to say. If you liked this message, if you learned something here today, share it with a friend, like it, subscribe to the channel. Leave me a comment below. I would love to hear how anything I'm saying is impacting you and moving you forward in your own successful journey. And I'll see you on the other side. Thank you.