EverydaySpy Podcast - The CIA Damage-Control Framework for When You Mess Up

Episode Date: August 8, 2026

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A week ago, I published a video online about China, Taiwan, and the U.S. that made a lot of people angered. Some people called it irresponsible. Others called it manipulative. I won a few subscribers, I lost a lot more, and the comments exploded. Other creators, channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers, made videos about me. Some tearing me down, others agreeing with me. People picked sides almost immediately. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I realized that the conversation had mutated. It wasn't about China, Taiwan, or the U.S. anymore. It had become about something

much more interesting. When I published my video, I gave YouTube multiple thumbnails and multiple headlines to test. One option framed a possibility. The other option framed an urgency. I didn't choose the winner. The audience did. And watching it unfold reminded me of a lesson CIA taught me years ago. Most people think apologies are about admitting a mistake. They aren't. Apologies are about distracting attention away from an error, about putting focus on forgiveness instead of learning to do better. There is a lesson inside every error, and I made an error no doubt. And the lesson in my error is about understanding how people make up their minds in the first place. Because once emotion enters the equation, analysis usually leaves.

That's true online. That's true in cable news. That's true in social media. And that's especially true in moments of fear and anxiety. My video became something much bigger than a conversation about national security. It became a case study in how quickly people decide what's true, how quickly they choose aside and demand an apology instead of seeing the invaluable lesson in the mistake. That's the conversation I want to have today, because you will make errors and mistakes just like I do. Your experiments will fail and your messages will be misread just like mine were. And when others demand that you apologize, don't. Say this instead. Next time, I'll do better. Here's what I learned from the video I published last week that outraged

tens of thousands of people. The battlefield online isn't about facts. The battle is for your attention and the weapons of war are your emotions. But in this video, I'm going to do it better. If you haven't seen the video yet, you can find it on my channel published on July 31st, 2006. The final title that YouTube picked for the video is called Breaking. China invades Taiwan as Trump ramps up war with Iran. Now, YouTube didn't pick that title out of nowhere. It was one of three different titles and three different thumbnails that I offered YouTube as part of a test. When you create a video for YouTube, very similar to when you write an email or whenever you send somebody a message,

You never really know what they're thinking at the time. So every time I post a video, I give YouTube three different options to display to the audience so that the audience can tell me what they're the most interested in learning. In this video, I gave the audience three options to choose from. One option talking about if China invades Taiwan, a second option talking about China and Taiwan against the landscape of Iran, and then as an experiment I created a third option that treated it as if the event had already happened. I modeled this experiment off of something that happened in 1938, when author Orson Wells

read his book, War of the Worlds, over the radio, and people actually believed that it was a news broadcast documenting a true alien invasion of the planet. With my three different titles and my three different thumbnails loaded to YouTube, I sent it out and let YouTube decide which one was going to perform the best. If you've been following me for some time, then you already know I'm not in my normal studio. I'm actually traveling through Tokyo, Japan with my family. And being in Tokyo puts me 14 hours ahead of my normal time zone. So when I published this video, it was the evening Tokyo time and becoming the morning Eastern time.

And I went to bed. When I woke up just a few hours later, the video had already started to take off, gathering 25,000 views and an incredible string of comments. What I saw in the comments were not the type of comments any creator wants to see, but they were incredibly revealing to me. Some people were calling my video fake news. Others were saying that I was intentionally misleading them. Some were saying that my credibility was ruined.

Words like irresponsible, unacceptable. One person even predicted that I was going to lose 50% of all of my subscribers because of this one video. And without a doubt, I was losing subscribers. But shockingly, I was also gaining subscribers. As if that wasn't interesting enough, the video was also performing above average in almost every other category. More people were watching, more people were clicking, more people were sharing.

The video was being shared on Facebook at a rate of 59%. And YouTube itself was driving search traffic to the video for search terms like China, Taiwan, China invades Taiwan. And of course, my name, Andrew Bustamante. There was a part of me that wanted to take the video down right away because I could see that people were not understanding the lesson I was trying to teach in the video itself. Instead, they were focusing on just the headline and the title that YouTube had picked. And then there was a second part of me that wanted to let the video stand, because it was a fascinating case study, not only into how YouTube frames the information for its viewers, but also into my audience and how my audience was reacting to this interesting, different piece of content. So that's exactly what I did. I let the video stand.

Even while people were demanding an answer and demanding a response and demanding an apology for me in the comments, I didn't say anything. I just let the video sit for seven days to see what would happen next. It took everything in me not to check this video every few minutes for the next seven days. But after seven days was over, here's what I discovered. If you haven't discovered your secrets by superpower, then somebody else might be using theirs against you. CIA teaches us that there are only three types of people in the world. Those who motivate, those who are being controlled by one of the other two. I created a three-minute CIA-style quiz to help you unlock your secret psychological advantage

and identify your hidden blind spot. All you have to do is click on the first link in the description below or scan the QR code on your screen and you'll be taken directly to your private quiz. This test was developed to help you weaponize your natural-born gifts and use them to get ahead of 99% of people in power, wealth, and purpose. It was also designed to make sure that you can protect yourself against those who would use their skills against you. I want you to discover your secrets by superpower and use it for good before somebody else uses their power against you. Of all the people who watched the video,

more than 70% of them stopped watching after the first minute. And it was right around the first minute where I explained that this was a war of the world's scenario, not a real news story. That means tens of thousands of people were watching the video that I put on YouTube and thinking that it was breaking news, not understanding the difference between YouTube and something with journalistic credibility like the newspaper. YouTube is not a platform for news. YouTube is a platform for commentary, for opinions, for best practices, for lessons, for sharing information that's entertaining and enriching. It is not a platform with journalistic intention. It's not a platform designed to share the news. And yet people were watching my video and thinking that it was news.

This is part of a very disturbing trend that's happening all over the world. Right now in the United States, 54% of social media users get their news from social media. What's even worse is that in younger generations, 75% of social media users only get their news from social media. So in a lot of ways, it shouldn't be surprising that the lesson I was trying to teach through this War of the World's experiments was being misunderstood as real headline news. actual news of China invading Taiwan. Equally as interesting to me was understanding who was actually watching my video and YouTube showed me that 80% of the viewers were actually coming from my own audience, meaning that about 80% of the people who had watched the video knew me already and were subscribed

to my channel. Only 20% of the people who watched the video were not my subscribers and could possibly have never met me before. The last and most interesting point to me was the change in comments over time. Where the comments that came out early were very critical about the video and critical about me as an individual, the comments that came out later were much more sophisticated and intellectual. People understood what I was trying to do with the video. People recognized the experiment. People understood the lesson. That showed me that the lesson and the content that I created was valid, that the problem was really in the promise, the very first thing that people saw. The headline and the thumbnail that YouTube controlled.

And you can imagine my surprise when I found out that other content creators were actually using the video I made to create their own original content. Some of them calling me childish names, others of them agreeing with not only my lesson, but also the shocking approach that I used to get the message across. Yeah. And as much as I'm like breaking Bustamonte's balls, I actually, for once, I actually think someone having done it the way he did it was a good thing because it sledgehammers your face of like, hey guys like anyone who actually understands geopolitics this is the real situation here and just imagine what what will we do when i look at the sum total of the events i see a couple of really interesting points so on one hand i saw above average performance of a video and on the other i saw a lot of angry comments i saw that most of my subscribers were intelligent and sophisticated and understood the nuance of the lesson i was trying to teach but then i also saw that tens of thousands of people

who saw the video didn't stay longer than one minute actually just watched and left and never got past the point to discover that it wasn't fake news. It was an experiment. It was an example. It was a demonstration. I built the video and put a 1938 experiment in play. But I didn't realize how active and effective that same 1938 response would be today in 26. I realize I made an error. I realized I made a mistake. I underestimated some people and overestimated others. I trusted in a testing process and didn't account for the fact that the test itself was controlled by an algorithm. And there's a very real possibility that I let the experiment run too long, that I let people believe something was news when in fact it was just an exercise.

So if you're one of the thousands of people out there who want me to apologize, if you're one of the thousands of people who think that I'm irresponsible or I'm disrespectful, or I'm in some way, shape, or form culpable for causing panic and fear around the world. I'm not going to apologize. But I will say this. Next time, I'll do it better. Because I don't want you to think that I'm sorry when I'm not. I don't want to distract you into thinking that you have the responsibility to forgive me when in fact I have the responsibility to become better at my craft, better at teaching, better at recording, better at publishing, better at posting. Mistakes and errors happen all the time. But CIA teaches that there isn't any value in admitting past mistakes. Instead, the value is in recognizing

the lesson that you learned from the mistake, and then using it and applying it to make the future even better. Prevent yourself from making the same mistake twice. Prevent yourself from making future mistakes by learning from past mistakes. But when you use the words, I'm sorry, you're really just using the lazy man's way of bypassing responsibility. Because what are you sorry for? Are you sorry that you hurt someone's feelings? Or are you sorry that they misunderstood your intent? Are you sorry that you made an error? Or are you sorry that they didn't see your wisdom? Are you sorry that you broke the rules? Or are you sorry that you got caught? I'm sorry doesn't actually define responsibility where I'll do better 100% does. So the next time that you recognize that you've

made a mistake and that somebody demands an apology from you, do not give them an apology. Make them a commitment. Next time, I'll do better. If you learn something new for me today, don't keep it to yourself. Hit that subscribe button right now. Leave a comment, share this video with a friend. And if you want to learn more spy skills that help you break barriers to unlock your peak performance, make sure you click on the top link in the description below to uncover your secret spy superpower. I'll see you on the other side.