EverydaySpy Podcast - Why I REJECTED My CIA Training When I Went Through The Farm

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

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When I actually joined CIA and I saw that human beings work the same way, right? And I'll be the first to admit, CIA trained me, and I rejected the training. I was like, this is- You rejected it. Oh, yeah. I was like, this is, this is baloney. Just like you are now, right? You're like, oh, no, there's more to it. It's more nuanced. It's more complicated. What about this? And what about the American dream? And what about all? I totally was in the same boat. And not just me.

Most of the recruits were like, what? No, people can't be that simple. People can't be that stupid. People can't be that predictable. And we go through this training process and we exercise the skills. And even when you go through the training part of the farm and you learn the skills and you exercise the skills against role players and against, you know, senior intelligence officers and you're like, okay, I'm dancing the dance.

But no way is this. real. It's kind of like learning a foreign language. I don't know if you've, have you learned a foreign language? I used to speak Italian really well. So you learn a foreign language and the, and as you learn it, you're thinking to yourself really, right? Like, oh, it's just, it's not this word, it's that word. It's not this word. It's that word. You just, you learn it based off of technicality. But then you go to the country where it's spoken and you realize, oh shit, this isn't a technicality. Like, this is a real skill. It becomes real. It becomes personal. You see, you your own flaws and your own misunderstandings in the language. Because even though you may be getting

straight A's in Italian for three years in school, once you fucking land in Rome, you're like, I don't know how to speak this language. Yeah, they sing it. It's a natural flow. You can't be translating in your head. 100% agree. Yeah. So anybody who's had a language experience knows what that's like. Yes. That is exactly what it's like to go to CIA. You learn the technicalities of human recruitment. you learn the technicalities of motivations and vulnerabilities. You learn the technicalities of getting people to exchange information of value for assets of value. You go through it and you learn the words. And then you actually deploy and it becomes super real.

And you're like, holy shit, this is really how it works. And then when you come back from an operation, you're still in operation mode. So you come back to the United States. You come back to CIA headquarters a lot of times. and you still need to get shit done, so then you start using the same skills that you used in abroad here at home, and they work here too.

And now you can get... Like what kinds of skills? Like when it comes to manipulating a budget and finance person to approving your expense sheet faster than somebody else who turned their expense sheet in earlier than you did.

It's the same process as getting someone to give you secrets overseas. It's all about exchanging value, it's all about building rapport, it's all about developing social capital and leveraging that social capital. It's about understanding what makes people feel excited

and what makes them feel guilty, what makes them feel powerful, and what makes them feel weak, and then like pushing the chips on the board around just enough. It's like the Zen raking garden thing. That's exactly what it's like for every individual. You rake this garden for that person, and then you erase the garden, and you rake this garden for that person, and you erase the garden. It's all the same rake. It's all the same square.

It's all the same sand. It just literally works on every person. But you rejected what CIA was teaching you. When I was in the agency, correct? Yes. Correct. Like, I learned it. I believed it wasn't true.

I tried to fight against it. I tried to make it work my own way. I was not popular at CIA. That's why I love being not popular out of CIA. It's like, no matter where I go, nobody likes me. You look at me like I'm going to be surprised at that. So that's what makes it, that's what makes the whole plan to Monta thing really funny to me. Because there's just as many people inside CIA that hate it every time I appear on podcast.

But my point is I just didn't believe any of it. I had to go through the dance steps to get the grades so that I could be deployed. But then when I was deployed, that's when I was like, well, fuck. They were right. They were right. And that's not the first time. I've always been kind of hardheaded that way, but CIA is why I play the game now for everything else. Because I just grew up.

And I was like, there's a game. I got to play it if I'm going to win. I mean, I'm not a lawyer and I never went to law school. But in speaking to a lot of lawyers, they give you a similar. story about what happens to your brain when you go there, which is they beat into you like insane objectivity on everything to the point of like removing any and all emotions. And to the average person, at least the way it's been explained to me, maybe some lawyers in the comments can help us out here. It's like, you reject that at first because you're like, wait, hold on. There's, there's,

these are humans in the middle of this thing. But the whole point is that they're trying to prepare you for you have a hearing at 9 a.m. Here's what's happening. Here's the technicalities that the law says that you have to take care of for this. Here's the potential outcomes and you have to be ready for both and not feel anything about it. Correct. If you're going to go to war with monsters, you have to be a monster. You have to be a monster. You have to be a monster and you boostamonte. So if you're going to, you can't put a kinder gentler person against an SVR officer. Yes. You can't put a kindler gentler person against a Mossad officer. You can't put a kindler gentle person against an MSS officer. They're going to get eaten up. And then when a U.S.

intelligence officer gets eaten up, the U.S. national security infrastructure gets eaten up, and now Americans are more at danger. So it makes sense. If you're going to recruit somebody knowing psychologically that they're capable of making the shift, all you have to do is force them to make the shift. And then you have a wall, right? And then you have gladiators and arena, if you will, in the world of intelligence, right? But you learned, I'd asked you about this, like, where you got this worldview, and you said, not until CIA. You started to, you started to see the world, I don't want to like dumb this down too much, but in a term of raw dollars and cents. Is that fair to say? Yeah, I mean, the dollars and cents piece came later as I got more

experienced with CIA. At first, I just saw it as a series of inputs and outputs. And your inputs are something as simple as what you say, how you look, how you engage somebody with physical, like body language. Those are all inputs. And you can get predictable. outputs based off of your inputs. And just seeing that, and seeing that regardless of age, race, gender, sex, education level is incredible, right? Like, smiles are universal, frowns are universal, tears are universal, open arms are universal, closed arms are universal. It's just incredible how much we can control the inputs all over the world right now without even being able to technically speak a language. Yeah, it's like, and that's why, like, whenever you talk about this stuff,

people really tune in because you're learning things to go spy on behalf of the United States and get other people to commit treason by, you know, getting them to flip for you. But you're utilizing all the same things that regardless of what we do, we're going to need it in the world because anything, whether it's business or even science, whatever it could be, there is a level of if you cannot have interpersonal human communication and really get through to people, you ain't going anywhere. It doesn't matter how smart you are. Right. All treason. is is a sale. And it's all it is. You're selling people on the exchange of government secrets for something that you have, whether it's Johnny Walker Blue or whether it's cash or whether it's

gold bullion or whether it's fucking porn on a CD. You got someone to flip with Johnny Walker Blue and that's it. Have you had Johnny Walker Blue? It's, I mean, I think so. But that's it. Just like, all right, I just need to buy. All right, fuck it. What do you want? It's pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing what secrets people will tell you for a good bottle of booze. But my point there is just treason is a sale. You give me secrets. I give you something in exchange for secrets that you value, right? What is it when you're pitching your book to a publicist? It's the same fucking thing, right? You're trying to get their support, their network, their press, their everything in exchange for your story. It's just a, it's just a pitch. It's just a sale. Whenever you're

you're trying to get your boss to say yes to your initiative. What is that? It's just a pitch. It's just a sale. You want your bosses to take the risk to spend the time and money from the company to put their own career on the line in exchange for your idea to reach fruition, right? That's all it is. All of life is business exchanges like that. Prior to CIA, I didn't see it that way. Prior to CIA, I still believed in the right thing and the wrong thing, right? Oh, it's the right thing to do this. It's the wrong thing to do that. It's a good idea to sell this. It's a bad idea to sell that, right? Right. Like we all, we're all ideologically driven because when you, when you come up through the school system, ideology is what's pummeled into your brain, right? You've got to stand in line. You've got to listen to your teacher. You've got to do the right thing. You've got to be a good person. You've got to whatever, right? Especially if you also go through some sort of social orientation through a church or social orientation through community or social orientation through your ethnicity. If you belong to some ethnic group that's celebrated in the United States, right? So you're shaped by all these things as a kid.

It's all just ideology. It's not objective pragmatism. And when it comes to field operations, you've got to be wildly objective. Does that turn off, though, when you're not in a field operation? Meaning, like, aren't you... We never really talked about this, but aren't you a religious guy? So I'm a man of faith, for sure.

And I'm a dad. Like, I've got lots of things that I can be ideological about, but you don't be. Yeah, you don't turn off the objective side. Instead, you're, you try to be, what's the word you try to balance the two i want my kids for example i want to encourage my kids artistic endeavors that's something i ideologically want to be able to do i didn't get to do it as a kid i got i was forced into a world of like strict rigid education i want my kids to be artists that they want

to be artists and athletes that they want to be athletes and you know comedians or dancers or whatever the hell they want to be and both of my kids are very artistic but at the same time I understand like they have to make money someday. My parents understood the same thing. So for my parents, they were like, we're going to belittle all of your artistic stuff and we're going to encourage all of your STEM stuff. Right?

That was the, what was the world I grew up in? A lot of people... Is that your stepdad more or your mom? Both. Yeah, that was both for sure. And there's a lot of people out there who know exactly what I'm talking about. They love to paint.

Mom was like, yeah, you're good at painting, but you need to be good at math. You need to be good at reading. You need to be good at writing, right? Oh, I'm glad that you like history. You'll never get a good job in history. I need you to do, like, have you thought about being an accountant or a lawyer instead? Right?

Like, we've been through that before. I don't want to do that for my kids. I want to give them space. But the objective side of me is like, if I'm going to give them space, somebody has to make the fucking money. Which is a big part of why I'm so aggressive with my company, because I want to build the trust fund that can give my kids the space to explore whatever their interests are. That's my personal goal. build the trust fund that supports the kids to do whatever they're going to do. Do you ever worry about that causing like entitlement though?

Maybe it does or maybe it doesn't. Like it's not mine to worry about. What I can do is try to make sure that they don't grow up with an entitled mindset. 13 years old, 12 years old, like my oldest son is now, like he has a hard time thinking about anything other than whatever other 12 year old thinks about, right? When am I going to play next? How do I get out of my chores, whatever else? When they're 18, 19, 20, and they actually can understand that concept, that's when

real hard parenting starts. How do you rectify, though, like, as you say, like being a man of faith, but also being a guy who, I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I'm saying this is just how you kind of reflect it. Like also being a guy who's like, there's not really like good or bad or especially all good or all, it's like, this is just how the world works. And if that guy's got to die because that makes things better, oh, fucking well. So it's actually a great question.

And one of the things I've really loved doing is reading the Bible since CIA. since CIA. Reading the Bible before CIA was a cool experience. Reading the Bible after CIA is a mind-boggling experience. So you weren't reading it during? I had better shit to do. Better shit to do during it. It's like, I gotta go hang this guy.

All right, please continue. So if you think about some of the most famous quotes from the Bible, right, there will be poor always. Right? There will always be poor people. That's as objective as it gets. Why the hell are we trying to save them? What did Jesus say to do with the oil? Put oil on my feet, don't save it for others, right? Because it's, there's always going to be poor people. There will never be enough oil for those poor people, but to soothe my head and soothe my feet right now is worth your oil, right? You go back through all of the Old Testament, and you've got multiple examples of just war, multiple examples of eradicating entire populations just because a prophet, believe that that was what God wanted them to do, right? And it was justified. You've got, even among the tribes of Jews, you have tribes that were better than other tribes, right? Tribes that were more

important, more honorable, given higher esteem than other tribes. So you can see this pragmatism. You can see the hierarchy, even through the Bible, when you look at it through that objective lens. It's teaching us to be objective. I would argue, and I have argued, Jesus, and many of his teachings, the fundamentals of espionage are in Jesus' original teaching. The fundamentals of espionage are from Jesus. That's what I would say. Can you please explain this? So there's a phenomenal story where Jesus is teaching a parable, and he says that the place to sit, when you go to a guest's table, right, you go to a guest's table, the most, the best thing to do is sit at the end of the table, and then wait for the host to a guest's table.

invite you to sit at their right-hand side, right? What's he teaching us there? He's teaching us to act humble, to be rewarded for the humility that you demonstrate to actually elevate yourself to a status, a higher social status. That's a powerful lesson, right? Everybody out there now, the average Joe is out there competing to try to prove that they're worth the seat at the side of the master. That's what they all want to do. That's why Instagram exists. That's why TikTok exists. That's why you see a thousand people, you know, all competing. competing to be on reality TV shows. Because everybody wants to be famous.

They all want to be, hey, I'm worth being at the right-hand side of the master. Right. Jesus is saying, no, put yourself at the end of the table that the master invite you up. Because one of the things he says that's powerful about that, isn't just that you sit at the right-hand of the master,

it's that every fucking other person at the table. That's a direct quote from the Bible, every fucking other person. I was going to let it go. Everybody else at the table watches the master, point you out, and they watch you walk past them. and all of that is additional influence and power, right? Yeah.

It's just, who was Jesus Christ? He was God the Father, he's part of the Holy Trinity, come to earth as a man. If that's not disguise, I don't know what disguise is. You're taking it literally. And then he lived among the people, right, carrying flesh and blood and a death, right? Carrying a life that could be taken away. all of that is a perfect parallel with what it's like to actually live and work undercover. Everybody around you believes you're one thing.

You know you're not. And even though you break cover with some people, right, just like Jesus broke cover and he told the people he was the son of God, even though you tell a few people what your true affiliation is, there's still a shadow of doubt. And they're still like, yeah, are you really? That's why he was denied, right? Paul denied him, Peter denied him? Somebody denied him. Peter.

I think it was Peter, yeah, three times. Yeah, right? So he was denied, even though Peter arguably knew the truth. So it's so powerful, man. And that's just like two quick examples. If you actually wanted to sit down and get geeked out with like a parallel Bible, we can find lots of examples. I never heard someone explain it like that.

That is interesting, though. Because it's also like, you look at history, that's powers cultivated by the guy who talks last two, which is very similar aspect to what you're saying. I was talking with someone about a really big guy that they had dealt with, like a big-time person. Everyone would recognize him recently. And he explained that, you know, this dude, if he sat down to the SAT, you know, he'd get like a 1250. He's smart, but he's not like a genius or something like that.

But he's like, no matter what meeting you go into or what the context is, it doesn't matter if there's three people there or 15 people there. He's the last motherfucker to talk. And it's not just because he's waiting his turn. he's listening and watching every single thing everyone else does and it just puts everyone right in the palm of his hand at the end of it and it's and it goes back to it's like the most insecure person in the room is the one who's trying to be the loudest not like you know make people laugh or whatever but the person who feels like they got to be the center of attention whereas the powerful guy is the one who walks in and says i'll let people i'm comfortable with who i am i'll let people land where they

are on me and it'll probably do well for me i think that's i mean it's a fair way of looking at it i would argue that it's not just about being comfortable in your own skin. Again, that's a subjective thing, right? Being comfortable. It means it's how you feel. Subjective has to do with how you feel, not measurable facts, right? So the person is like, oh, I'm comfortable with who I am, so I'm not going to speak. That's all well and good. If that's what you value, then let me pat you on the head and tell you congratulations. Congratulations, you're confident. You're one of the people that probably bought one of those books about confidence or watch the TEDx talk about confidence. Hooray, you're confident. You're fucking not confident, right? We don't want confidence.

That's something that we've been sold. What we want is competence. We want competence. If we have competence, we don't feel the need to act confident because we fucking know we're good. Right? But when you don't know you're good, then you're looking for confidence. You're like, oh, please give me the confidence because I doubt my competence. Oh, I agree with this.

What I would argue with is that the person who sits in the room and doesn't talk understands that they're getting information superiority of what's going on in the room. Yes, exactly. Even if they don't feel confident, they still objectively are. getting the most information without creating any disruption to the flow of information in the room. So there's two benefits there. You get the most information and you're the least likely to be remembered for being present in the first place. So now you can walk out of that room and everybody else in the room when they remember the meeting will remember all the assholes who were talking and not the

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