EverydaySpy Podcast - The Anatomy of a Conspiracy

Episode Date: November 18, 2020

It's never wise to laugh off a conspiracy too quickly. History has given us enough examples of conspiracies proven true that we would be wise to listen before we laugh. But what makes a conspiracy happen in the first place? In this episode, Andrew cuts to the heart of conspiracy too show you where conspiracy theories come from and how they grow. And if you are ready to take a conspiracy challenge, visit EverydaySpy.com/live to test your skills. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My name is Andrew Bustamante, and this is everyday espionage. 45 years ago today, there was a secret report that was delivered to the Select Committee of Intelligence that belonged with the U.S. Senate. That document was actually created as a result of a series of conspiracy theories that the federal government couldn't confirm or, deny, all of which involved CIA and CIA's involvement in foreign leader assassinations around the world. So on November 18, 1975, there was a document, an interim report that was handed over to the Selects Intelligence Committee, and it was titled the alleged assassination plots involving foreign leaders, created by the intelligence agencies of the United States and delivered to the United States Senate. Now, inside this document, which is a significant document that was just released in 2017,

there's a breakdown of CIA involvement in assassination attempts on foreign dignitaries, foreign leaders from around the world. And it basically states what was real, what in fact had U.S. CIA involvement, and which plots did. not, which were just conspiracy theories that were unfounded in fact. But the thing that's really fascinating is, is in the first third of this document, you come to a summary of conclusions. And inside that summary of conclusions, they say the following. The committee investigated alleged United States involvement in assassination plots and confirmed involvement in these five foreign countries. And the five foreign countries listed are, probably not surprising, Cuba,

Congo, which was known as Zaire at the time, the Dominican Republic, Chile, and South Vietnam. Essentially, what this document was confirming to the Senate in 1975 is that, yes, CIA was unilaterally choosing to involve itself in assassination attempts against foreign leaders outside of the Senate's knowledge in the 70s and the 60s. The document was also saying how those plots were being created, how they were being executed, and who was involved in those plots, as well as whether they were successful or not successful. But more importantly, what this document showed is that there was truth to the suspicion. There was truth to the conspiracies that were going on about CIA involvement in foreign assassinations. And when we talk about mastering information,

the last lesson I want to share with you in this season is to tell you. you that conspiracies are not, by definition, false. Something being called a conspiracy doesn't necessarily mean that it's fake or it's unreal or it's unrealistic or it's untrue. A conspiracy is simply an unknown that has yet to be known. It's facts that have yet to be uncovered. Just like we see with this document detailing CIA is involved. and assassinations around the world. Now, why is that important? When you look back on what we have learned this season, we've learned a lot.

We've talked about cognitive biases and logical fallacies. We've looked at the importance of keeping an open mind and understanding your teachability index. We've talked about social media. We've talked about misinformation and disinformation, emotional reasoning. We've even discovered how to dissect a headline and how to go through an article and actually find pieces of verifiable information and non-verifiable information. We've dug into the importance of word specificity, language precision, how to do research,

and we've even talked about how simple it is to confuse fact with fiction when you don't go through a proper process of analysis and synthesis. All of that that we've learned, all of that work shows just how difficult, how challenging mastering information can actually be. And when you have a process, when you have a topic like information mastery, and it is as difficult as we have seen it to be, then it makes sense that over time, someone like the Senate, the U.S. Senate in the 1970s, how they lose track of information. If they're not asking the right questions, if information isn't being shared, if some information is being withheld, if things are called secrets and certain people don't have access to secrets, whenever you limit information, what you do is you increase,

the likelihood of misunderstanding. And in that place between understanding and misunderstanding, that's where conspiracies are born. There's an anatomy to a conspiracy. And the anatomy is important to understand, because if you understand how a conspiracy is born, then essentially you understand as soon as you start to see one in the making. The first step to the birth of a conspiracy is some sort of factual event. Now, it's not lost on me how funny that is, right? Every conspiracy is born first of a factual event. So the idea that the conspiracy, which many of us laugh at, as untrue or fake,

it is actually born out of something very real, something significant, like the shooting in Las Vegas, or like the suspicions that pop up about who's in true control of the government, or even the idea that the earth is flat. These conspiracies are all born from some sort of factual event, some new discovery, some new event. But where they start to go off the rails is in the second step of their process, because from fact, a conspiracy then moves to distrust. So there's this distrust, this factor where people don't trust all the information

that is being provided to them. And this document that we see for the Intelligence Committee in the Senate is a perfect example of why there is distrust, because there are facts that are withheld. There are facts that are unknown. There are facts that are overlooked. And all of those missing pieces lead to distrust. But distrust itself is not actually an objective reality. Disrust is a subjective reality. It's a feeling. From that distrust, the next step in a conspiracy is suspicion. So you go from fact-based event to emotional distrust to suspicion. Now, suspicion is actually a logical, well-reasoned step. It follows our entire process of analysis and synthesis.

Suspicion is a good thing. But when you have suspicion based on an emotion like distrust, you are undermining the logical value, the empirical value of that suspicion. And this is where conspiracy start to fall apart. It's basically logic. That's the that starts with logic. It starts with that factional event. It goes logic, emotion, logic, right? Factual event, logic. Distrust. Emotion, suspicion. Logic. Logic, emotion, logic. That breaks the logic chain and it makes emotion the centerpiece of the conspiracy. And then after that suspicion, then things start just going wild. And it's funny, one of the best pieces that I've read out there, talking about the human psyche and how human beings and the human mind likes to absorb conspiracies, was actually

written by someplace known as the Springer Foundation, which was founded by Jerry Springer. And he goes on to talk about, and Jerry Springer, for those of you who don't know, was a pretty famous 90s-era talk show host, and almost every show he had had some sort of tie to a mainstream conspiracy. But my point is that the foundation found that the reason that the human mind is so drawn to a conspiracy is because the conspiracies usually have some sort of compelling story. That story is what pieces together, all the missing facts that we found in that second stage, the distrust, all those missing facts kind of get filled in into some sort of compelling and interesting story. So it's not actually the conspiracy theorists

love the conspiracy. It's that conspiracy theorists love the story, and the story is filling in the missing pieces to the conspiracy. Conspiracy itself is not by virtue fake. It is not by virtue false. It is not by virtue wrong. A conspiracy is just an idea that has missing facts and then has a story overlaid to fill in the gaps of those missing facts that then essentially becomes a theory. So a Conspiracy theory is really just a theory, but that theory is determined or derived, it is shared, in the form of a story. A story that fills in missing spots of facts with sometimes very wild and outlandish theories, but other times very sound and rational theories. And we have multiple examples throughout our history where conspiracies have been proven true. The conspiracies on the life of Fidel Castro, conspiracies for the U.S. to overthrow.

leaders in places like Congo and the Dominican Republic. We even have examples where the U.S. government has successfully overthrown foreign governments in places like Guatemala. There are lots of examples where a conspiracy is then proven to be true. But there are also lots of examples where conspiracies go unanswered, and some of the ideas are totally way outside of mainstream logic reasoning or any kind of objective analytical focus. I want you to get a taste for what it's like to exercise the information mastery skills that you've developed and use them to work your way through a conspiracy to determine if the conspiracy is factual, correct, or if it's just a fanciful idea. So to give you that opportunity, I have created a new spy mission.

I call it Operation Real Time Conspiracy. This, if you've participated in any Operation Real Time in the past, then you're familiar with how this works. In the CIA, we create these synthetic, these simulated spy missions so that our spy trainees get a chance to exercise all of their skills in a controlled environment and use those skills effectively to demonstrate their knowledge and their talent for intelligence. Operation Real Time is how everyday spy, uses those same types of simulations to exercise the skills that we are teaching you. Operation Real Time Conspiracy is exactly how we will exercise the skills that you have learned in this season of the podcast.

Here's how it works. If you're interested, go to Everydayspy.com forward slash live. Everydayspy.com forward slash L-I-V-E. When you get there, what you'll see is a breakdown of two things. First, the stakes. I am creating this spy man. mission with real stakes. I am so confident that you will be able to exercise your skills, impress yourself, and make the knowledge that you've learned with me permanent, that I am actually

putting more than $4,000 worth of prizes on the line for those who participate and win. That's the first thing that you'll find. That's my stakes, what I'm putting on the table, more than $4,000 worth and proprietary product from Everyday Spy. But in return for that, the stakes that you're going to put on the table are that you're going to choose to operate alone or you're going to choose to operate with one other person on your team. And when you register, what you're going to find is that you have to compete against other people, other individual operators or other teams. And your performance throughout all of Operation Real Time conspiracy will determine whether you walk home with a prize or whether you don't.

Now, why did I want to put stakes into this game? I wanted to put stakes into this game because no knowledge comes without application and investment. If you're not willing to invest your time, your effort, and your energy into processing and then applying skills, then you're never going to make those skills permanent. For those of you who are listening because you just find this interesting, that's fine. I have no problem with anybody who's listening, who learns, through kind of a passive observation. Maybe you want to hear things a few times. Maybe you just want something to distract you on your way to work.

Whatever it is, you're welcome to keep listening to the podcast, but Operation Real Time is not for you. Now, if you're listening to this podcast because you want to learn these skills, you want to master these skills, you want to be the smartest person in your office, you want to be one step ahead of the headlines, you want to understand and apply these skills for information mastery, then Operation RealT, time conspiracy is absolutely for you and you are ready to put your stake in the game and take your prize if you win so that's how we will end season four this real-time simulation of a spy mission known as operation real-time conspiracy the whole operation will kick off at midnight the friday after thanksgiving 2020 if you're hearing this and it's already past thanksgiving then you've kind of missed the boat on this, I'm sorry. But for those of you who are hearing it now,

Thanksgiving is still a few weeks away. This is the perfect chance. Go to Everydayspy.com forward slash live. Register yourself. Pick your teammate now or pick your teammate later. It doesn't matter. You have plenty of time. And all the instructions you need to get started on that mission

are waiting for you on the registration page. That's all I have to say for this. I am super excited to launch this simulation in real time. It'll last 72 hours starting at midnight the Friday after Thanksgiving, and it will go through the weekend. With coronavirus still having most of the movie theater shut down and many restaurants won't let anybody in, and there's not a whole lot to do anyways that weekend with a pandemic still raging. I am excited to give you not only an opportunity to exercise your skills, but also a chance to do something fun and unique with a close friend or a family member,

where you get to take a lifelong skill away from what would otherwise be a relatively low impact and boring holiday weekend. I will see you all at Operation Real Time Conspiracy. Everydayspy.com forward slash live. I am super excited to see how you do over the course of Thanksgiving. I'm going to be just as tired as you are executing over those three days playing opposite you and watching whichever team or whatever individual starts to climb up that leader. board to take first, second, and third place. And for the rest of you, I will see you in season five. After a short, two-week break between Operation Real Time and our next episode, I'll try to

push out a bonus episode or two to kind of let you know where we are and what I'm thinking about for season five. But season four has been an awesome success. It's been an awesome exercise, an awesome experiment teaching you how to master information during a presidential election against an economic crisis and a global pandemic. What an incredible, awesome time to dig into headlines and disinformation, social media, misinformation, and the importance of word specificity, analysis, and synthesis. Let's put it all to the test in Operation Real Time conspiracy, because when you exercise what you learn, that is everyday espionage.

Everyday espionage is dedicated to one thing. everyday people. I know that not everyone will listen, but those who listen will learn. If you learned something new today, click subscribe, review, and share the podcast with a friend. Find me on social media at EverydaySpy or on my website, Everydayspy.com. If you are up for a special challenge, visit Everydayspy.com forward slash operations, and join me for an authentic spy training mission. And above all else, remember that knowledge,

is freedom.