PBD Podcast - Two Ex-CIA Officers Clash Over China, Israel & Surveillance | PBD Podcast #832

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

Former CIA officers Andrew Bustamante and Sarah Adams join Patrick Bet-David for one of the most intense intelligence debates yet. They clash over China, Israel, Iran, terrorism, AI, surveillance, propaganda, JFK, Havana Syndrome, and the future of America. Two insiders. Two completely different worldviews. Decide for yourself who makes the stronger case.-------👞 GET THE NEW FLB 1'S:https://bit.ly/4mXV9gd🎟️ SECURE YOUR 2026 VAULT TICKETS:https://bit.ly/4xU2SCWⓂ️ CONNECT WITH SARAH ON MINNECT:https://bit.ly/4w2cYjzⓂ️ CONNECT WITH ANDREW ON MINNECT:https://bit.ly/4yq9IAgⓂ️ CONNECT ON MINNECT:https://bit.ly/4kSVksoⓂ️ PBD PODCAST CIRCLES:https://bit.ly/4mAWQAP🕵️ FIND YOUR SPY SUPERPOWER:https://yt.everydayspy.com/4vwTG5G📖 READ ANDY'S CIA THRILLER "SHADOW CELL":https://geni.us/ShadowCellBook▶️ FOLLOW ANDY ON YOUTUBE:https://youtube.com/@Andrew-Bustamante👔 BET-DAVID CONSULTING:https://bit.ly/4lzQph2🥃 BOARDROOM CIGAR LOUNGE:https://bit.ly/4pzLEXj🇰 KALSHI:http://kalshi.com/pbd💬 TEXT US:Text "PODCAST" to 310-340-1132 to get the latest updates in real-time!SUBSCRIBE TO:@VALUETAINMENT@BetDavidConsulting@ValuetainmentComedyABOUT US:Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller "Your Next Five Moves" (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys

I can't help but think that when it becomes super intelligent, it will stop thinking like us. It's only thinking like us right now because we're the ones driving it. Tens of thousands of AI powered cameras across the country. 6,000 communities, 3,000 law enforcement offices are using it. How do you feel about this? That is the benefit of a surveillance state. Keeps people safe, keeps law and order in place. Please tell me you disagree with them.

You'd give up your privacy. You've already got no privacy, man. This is what I'm trying to get you in the whole world to understand right now. We have no privacy. We're going to play some games today. We're going to do a few different things. I'm going to give each of you these paddles. And I'm going to give different conspiracies.

And you pick and choose. CIA killed John F. Kennedy. Hitler was never killed. He ended up going to Argentina and he kind of stayed there. Really? Okay. How about moon landing? This is a serious one.

For some people, it's very important. What do you think about when you hear an AI? hacking into the NSA's most sensitive system within hours. I think a lot of people would fight that technology with a violent way. I cannot believe. I am firm on my opinion that secrets are required for society. That would be like, create the product and put it in a country that you hate and see it collapse. See it collapse. You know what I'm saying? Like use it against them.

Where does your paranoia lie the most for the next 10 years? I don't lose any sleep above Israel if they ever became a lot. Israel. If they ever became a problem, we could bomb them to oblivion in five minutes. So I don't know why anyone loses sleep over them. You agree with what she asked to say, if you have a rebuttal? Okay, please go for it. It seems like a huge amount of claims with very little evidence to back it up. They don't have a big stick. They barely can deal with their own threats.

Israel has the second most capable military in the world. That's a big fucking stick. They have nuclear weapons. They have nuclear weapons. That's a big fucking stick. So the terrorists didn't drag any of us into that situation. I said it's a shared fucking responsibility. Sir, do you listen? This is probably one of my favorite conversations I've ever had, and here's why. You've got two CIA officers, X, Andy Bustamante, and then we have Sarah Adams as a CIA targeter. They disagreed hardcore, the first 30 minutes, on one topic of what is a bigger crisis

and threaten the future, Israel or Iran and Islam. It's phenomenal. I think you're going to enjoy that a lot. By the way, both of them are on Mnacht. You can ask you many questions. It's very rare you have this kind of access to excessive. CIA officers. You can ask Andy any questions here on Meneck and Sarah over here. And last but not least, we really are excited about this next phase of Valuetim and with the interviews that we're

going to be doing. We have some very big plans that's coming soon. And our commitment is to you. All we want to do is make this thing a better product for you. We've been doing this for over a decade and our investments recently that we're making in the production studio house. We got some very big plans. So if you're watching this and you enjoy the direction we're going to 51% of the audience that you watch the content but you haven't yet subscribe. If you could subscribe to the channel here,

it would help us bring more of these types of interviews and conversations to you. If you haven't done it yet, take a quick second. Just click that subscribe button. It would mean the world to us. With that being said,

enjoy this interview with Andy Bustamante and Sarah Adams. We have a special podcast today with two X-CIA individuals with different stories, different backgrounds. They've never done anything together on our show.

This will be the first time. So Sarah, thank you for making. at a time. Andy, great to have you back on. We were talking about a minute ago how much we missed your old hair, but you look great. It's good to have you on. We're going to play some games today. We're going to do a few different things. It's going to be a little bit interactive and, you know, some of the stuff you don't know. The reason why I have the iPad in front you, because in a few minutes you'll have to put it to use.

I got some signs here that I'll have to each one of you guys to see what we're doing. So we got some things that we want to go through here today. But before we get started, if you don't mind sharing your story with the audience real quick, so they can kind of get an idea of your background. Sure. I spent about a decade at the CIA as a targeter. I worked the Pakistan-Afghanistan department. I worked in the Iranian ops division. And then I worked in a special cell for the director kind of looking at anything missed in the agency. So that was a big ask. And then I got recruited out of the CIA and I went to the select committee on Benghazi at the time under Trey Gowdy. I went to the private sector for a couple years and I worked for JetBlue. And then I went to Department of War. And I did R&D efforts, and I just left that to start my own podcast. Beautiful. And it's grown very fast.

The podcast is a fast-grown podcast. Andy, for the audience, that maybe there's a know your background. Yeah, absolutely. Former CIA also. I was with the National Clandestine Service for seven years from 2007 to 2014, left, went into the corporate world trying to reinvent myself and learned that there's an incredible opportunity to apply spy skills in the business world. and that gave me the inspiration

to launch my own company Everyday Spy. And then since launching Everyday Spy, we went viral in 2022, rode that viral wave until about 2024, and now we run a multimillion-dollar company, man. I love it.

And eventually the goal is to disappear. Yeah, eventually the goal is to, right now the goal is to take the kids overseas, let them get a second citizenship, and ultimately leave the company behind so it can run itself, like every business owner wants, without me.

And we won't see you again. Like, it's going to be like Kaiser Sosy type. but we will see you. I'll come see you. All right. Gotta come down to see us. Okay. So with that being said, today I was talking to Mario Nafal on a podcast and he was asking me a

question and I say, so, you know, what is the issue with you and Tucker and what's the issue with this? I'm like, look, there is no issue. Here's the thing that I have. My question is, what is your portfolio of paranoia? Okay. And which countries are you most paranoid to? Let me explain what I mean by this.

And then I want you to write down your portfolio of paranoia. So think about, if you. you have a million dollars to invest, you'll say I'll put $250,000 in gold, $250,000 in Bitcoin, $100,000 in small cap funds, $400,000 in, you know, large cap, whatever. The same will you diversify. Both of you were in the CIA. I'm going to give you four countries to be paranoid about. Which of them would you give you the biggest percentage all the way to the smallest?

So think about it. You have a round, like literally, it's going to look like a pie chart. And then you put the names in there, okay? So you have these four categories. You have Islam. Okay. So within Islam, we have IRGC, Qatar, just include all of them. We have Israel, because, you know, Israel is also coming up a lot of different places.

Then we have China and we have Russia. Where does your paranoia lie the most for the next 10 years with these four different countries as well as Islam? I'll give you a minute to draw it up. Is it jumping up in here for us? You see? I see. I got it. Okay.

So we just rank him in order. Just rank him. order and give like 45% would be Islam, you know, you know, 25 would be this, right? China, Islam, Israel, Israel, and Russia. Where should be be most paranoid about? Maybe you're going to be like 25, 25, 25, 25, kind of a boring portfolio. Maybe you're going to go 90 and one and fully paranoid. You know, maybe it's a, you know, 40, 40, 10, 10. I don't want to mess with you. You pay can choose. Do you have yours? Yeah.

Let me see what you have on your side. Okay. Really? Interesting. Let me see yours. Okay. Would you mind show into the audience so they know and then I give your answer? You can start off first. Yeah. So China takes the massive chunk of pie for me. And now we're talking about paranoia, not money. Purely paranoid. We'll get to money as well. Purely paranoia.

China takes it. China is the number one strategic threat to the United States. What did you put on China? 50%. Okay. It's the number one strategic threat to the West. It is the thing that will end democracy everywhere in the world. Islam, I gave 5%. I'm not worried about Islam.

There are other countries that need to worry about Islam, but we're not one of them. Russia, I gave 20%, mainly because of the threat that it kind of constantly sends to Europe and how dependent Europe is on us. And then Israel I am actually saying we should be more paranoid of Israel than Russia. And Islam, five times Islam. Five times Islam. actually love that because hers is different. Go for it. Yep. Same reason for China. Obviously, they want a world that we are one of their subjects in,

not really equal partners. So that's 40%. Islam, 30%, because I think we've seen the greatest kind of successes of terrorists in the last few years after the fall of Afghanistan, the fall of Syria, potentially soon the fall of Mogadishu, and then obviously it likely will have the fall of Mali. So they're starting to feel, hey, the caliphate's coming back. You know, they're aligned with Qatar and Turkey on that plan. So very, very dangerous besides bin Laden's four sons planning an attack here. Russia, 30 percent, because Russia's always playing the game. And Russia will play with any enemy we have, and they don't care. They play dirty. And we can never underestimate them. Israel, I don't lose any sleep above Israel. They're the tiniest country in the

world and if they ever became a problem, we could bomb them to oblivion in five minutes. So I don't know why anyone loses sleep over them. But those are my numbers. I actually love that. So let's do this. Since China and Russia, you guys both agree on, 50 and 40, let's cross that one out. Within 10%. Within 10%. And since Russia, you're within the same, which is 20 to 30, within 10% will cross that one out. Let's start off with Islam first and we'll go to Israel. Why did you put Islam the lowest out of all them at 5% and then you at 30? you go first. I don't see Islam as a threat to the United States. And that's what I was seeing it as. Paranoid to me, right? What am I paranoid? It's not Islam. Islam is so, it's difficult for them

to reach us with any significance. When they reach us, it's difficult for them to bypass our security systems, whether they're cybersecurity systems, police systems, border security systems, et cetera. They pose a real threat to our allies who are much less sophisticated in their defense and national security sector, but not to us. Meanwhile, Israel actually has the ability to drag us into all sorts of shit that actually does impact us. We are all paying more money for oil right now because of Israel. We are all suffering under an international outcry against American leadership because of Israel. The whole world questions whether or not the president of the United States is even making his own decisions or whether he's the puppet of Israel. So Israel has an incredible ability.

to frustrate and put us in quagmire that Islam just doesn't have. Okay, so what's the worst thing that Israel could do to us? Go a little further. So because you put 25%, that's a real threat. You put a bigot in Russia and Islam. So what are some things that could do to us? So I'm not worried about Israel sending a bomb into New York. If that's what you're worried about, we're worried about different things.

Israel could easily launch a false flag operation. that sends us into a war. They can have an Israeli who poses as a Palestinian who goes in and causes some kind of crazy shit in Syria. And now all of a sudden the entire United States is engaged in Syria because of something that Israel set up is a false flag. And that is something that the Mossad does all the time. They do it very well, very eloquently.

They already selectively share intelligence with the United States. And the reason you selectively tell and share intelligence is to create the opportunity for misdirection or malintent. So Israel's already involved in these kinds of operations at a very high success rate. That's what I'm concerned about. I'm concerned about them backstabbing the United States. I'm concerned about them undermining our national interest. I'm concerned about them choosing, like they did with Iran, to escalate rhetoric about a certain issue that's more important to them than it is to us that then goes on to affect us.

Okay, perfect. So then the infiltration of Islam, some say to EU and what's happening to a lot of, of those countries, UK, you know, Germany, you're seeing it all over the place. And to the point where documentary, I mean, Rupert Lowe did a paper to 250,000, you know, stories of girls being raped in UK, 87% being Pakistanis and Muslims, and then seeing what's going on in U.S. right now with New York City, Mamdani wins, his three individuals that also want. So that's not going into the financial capital of the world in the states.

Do you have any concern of them? They're infiltrating the United States. states in the future. So here, this is another thing I think I think is very interesting, right? Islam is the only thing on this list that's not a nation state. It is. It's a religion. That's right. I'm not worried about a religion. I'm worried about people and people identify sometimes as a religion, but it's interesting to me that we're actually weighing nation state threats against religious threats. So when we talk about Islamic people in New York, I don't see them as a threat just because of what they believe. That goes against American values.

I see threats as nation states and transnational threats that self-identified, like al-Qaeda, right? So I don't see Islam and Islamic people. But if you notice, I put it as, consider it being IRGC, which is all the proxies, and consider Qatar, which Qatar is funding a lot of different things in the states. If we were to qualify that, would your opinion change? Possibly. I think it would change in how the number breaks down based on what. what we qualify. But I say all that because Islam and Islamic extremism poses a larger threat to our allies than it does to us. We might be the ultimate target, but they've got multiple lily pads

they have to hop through before they get to us. Got it. So you're not worried about it right now. Correct. Sarah, how about yourself? So the way I look at it is we're talking about Islamists. There's two pieces of it, right? There's the Islamists with the gun. And then the political Islamists, and they're both a threat. So the Islamist with a gun, A bunch of them came over the border in the last four years. So according to the National Counterterrorism Center, 18,000 known Islamist terrorists are here legally. So that's just the ones illegally.

Why are you coming to the United States if you're a member of ISIS? You're not coming here to raise a family. You're coming here to harm the United States. On the other side, when we talk about the Muslim Brotherhood, they are working in local communities, not just in Europe, but in here working at like the Chamber of Commerce level. working in business associations, and they are doing influence operations. We all know they've been doing it in our universities for years like China,

and they do have an intent to merge the two, right? There'll be attacks, and there are hopes to get kind of more of a leaning towards where people will be more understanding of a caliphate. Now, when anyone looks at the caliphate plan, U.S. being taken over so far, ahead of it, even the terrorists say, that's like 50 years out. But when they talk about bringing back a caliphate, a lot of people view that as, oh, that's like eons ago. But the Ottoman Empire ended in our grandparents' generation, right? So the terrorists aren't believing in some idea that was thousands of years ago. They were believing something from like the 1940s. So,

and they're seeing it come back into play in the power of it. I mean, the Taliban is getting recognized. I mean, al-Qaeda's running Syria, et cetera. cutters always at the table. So they're seeing we're making this power move, and it really is bringing them back around, and they're getting into a phase where they feel they have momentum, and that's what makes them dangerous, because they feel strong, and they think we're weak.

A lot of people say, oh, Iran feels like they're up against the ropes. Now, they don't feel that way at all. They feel they're going to walk away with a victory. It doesn't matter if we killed 200 people, or 250 people are a bomb. They think at the end of the deal, They're going to sell it as a victory, and all these Islamists are preparing for that. So it is a game that they play in the way they view the world. It's not the way we view the world, but they think they're winning, and that's a threat.

Let me ask you, did a part of your career as a CIA target or work in Iran, because you said part of it was you were dealing with Iran, right? Did that kind of influence your decision to score that that high? Well, not exactly. So I did work the external operations, so 400 and 900. Now I work unit 840 in my free time. My decisions based on the fact that bin Laden's sons have a plan kind of bigger than 9-11, and I saw the costs imposed on us by 9-11, and that was only by, you know, a small number of guys,

and this attacks a lot bigger, and so I know what Al-Qaeda is going to drag us into, and that's what makes me concern. Even when we went into Iraq, then Al-Qaeda came in and flooded, and that's the way. That's what kept it going, right? They kept it going in Afghanistan. So I'm worried that the terrorists is who's going to pull us into anything. I'm not worried about Israel. Al-Qaeda and ISIS can attack all day long. They have the capabilities. They have the bodies. They have the training. And that's where we waste all of our money is on the operations against terrorists. And we're going to go through a whole other 20, 30 years of it, you know, I believe, after this

attack by bin Laden sons. Okay, so do you have any speculation of what Ben Laden sons could possibly do if they were to attack? How would they do it? Yeah. Well, I know pieces of the plot. So how the plot is, it's going to, how they planned it. Remember, anything's aspirational with terrorists. You can throw it tomorrow in this all fails.

The way they plotted is we're going to bring past failures to fruition. So one of the biggest pieces is there's a plot called Bojinka from 30 years ago. And that was what happened. Ramsey Yusuf from the first World Trade Center. He had an electric fire in his house. He was in Asia. The cops came. They found these plans and they thwarted this within two weeks. This was to take down about a dozen airliners over the Trans-Pacific. So they're going to bring that plot back to life. And it's to take down 12 airliners over U.S. soil. So they're using the same bomb maker from the time. His name is Yazid Sufah. He was released in 2020.

and he went back to Afghanistan, so he's making the bomb. And that's the biggest piece of the plot. But what they change this time is suicide bombers are going to detonate in their seats. So there's not going to be any Americans that can stop them in the awe ways, you know, as they're trying to rush a cockpit. They'll just blow up in their seat. So that's the biggest piece. And then they have a piece that's, I call it like a siege on Washington, D.C. It's very similar to the Mumbai attacks.

And that is targeting, like, the Capitol, the FBI building. And then the last phase of the plot is actually ISIS is taking it over and it's going into like hometowns. They seem to mostly be focused on veteran communities and it's just mass casualty kind of where people live, work and play, but not large towns, kind of like mid-level city. So that's the main plan, how they have it currently laid out. And they've been sending terrorists here since late 2021, but the biggest influx came in 2022 and 2023. So they're here ready. They've been casing. So it's actually a very big plot.

Their goal is three times the deaths of 9-11. That's what they're shooting for number-wise. So 10-K-plus. So the aviation plot alone, they want to do $4,000. Got it. Okay. So I want to come back to you on Israel, but let's stay on this.

Do you agree with what she has to say, do you have a rebut? Okay, please go for it. I don't, I'm very confused by a lot of what you're talking about. How do you define caliphate? So the Well, I'm talking about the terrorist caliphate plan

So the only caliphate I ever heard about Is a Shia caliphate The only caliphate anybody's trying to bring back Is a Shia caliphate? No, they're trying to bring back The Ottoman Empire concept But actually the caliphate Like Al-Qaeda and ISIS think about

That's basically all across North Africa Is the biggest piece of it But one of those is a Sunni organization One of those is a Shi organization Yeah, they're working together Which is Remember, I remember, Iran on its own, a ludicrous claim.

No, Iran kept Seifalaudel say for years. He's had Bin Laden's kids in this country for years. They have very, very close relationships. Iran has people right now, they actually have intel bases in Afghanistan. So to think she and Sunni don't work together is not true at all. To think that they work together in a coordinated enough fashion to accomplish something that neither one of them has been able to accomplish by bringing back old plans that are not only already thwarted, but so publicly known that.

that we're sharing them in a podcast right now? Like, do you really think that that's what they're putting their time and effort into? 9-11 was executed so effectively that even CIA and FBI didn't have a full picture of the plot. Yeah. The U.S. government has not found one of these bombs yet for the airliners. So Al-Qaeda is successful. It hasn't been thwarted. I just, it seems like a huge amount of claims with very little evidence to back it up.

There's plenty of evidence. And there's plenty of evidence over time of Sunni and Shia working together. For example, during the second, Libyan Civil War, Al-Qaeda fought, ISIS fought, and Hamas fought all in Benghazi on the same side. Yeah, they all fought in the same side for a shared common interest. Yeah. How can you say, harming the United States. They still lost the Syrian Civil War.

I never said they're going to win. I said this is aspirational, and they're focused on the caliphate plan. They think they're winning. A joint caliphate. Yes. Islamists. You have doubts. I have insane doubts.

You don't think it's worth being paranoid, even a percent considered that? I mean, what I say? I think a few percent. But right now, everything Sarah's laying out is so far below the threshold of what warrants our attention, right? It's what you're laying out doesn't affect our stock market. It doesn't affect the lives. When it happens, the percentage will go up.

But where it is right now is irrelevant. You're saying after it happens? Even when we have some kind of reasonable threat that is coming from multiple sources besides you're the only person I've ever heard this from. I'm not the only one talking about Al-Qaeda's homeland plot, that's for sure. You may not be the only one talking about it. You're the first person that has presented me

with information that is completely contradictory to what experience and information has led me to believe. Well, I don't believe that. I've seen Tony and Shear work together. I believe that you don't believe it. There's monthly meetings right now with IRC and there are people

Al-Qaeda Tal-Ber. And there are people who swear they saw aliens and they will tell you to their face. And other people have said they also saw aliens. Therefore, are you a terrorism expert? I'm not claiming to be. Okay. But I am claiming to question your conclusion.

Right. That's fine with me. And by the way, as a target, were you a terrorism expert? That was your specialty. Yes, it was. And it was Pakistan, Afghanistan, and that's where the current plots coming from. It's actually been coming from all fruit camp. It's in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

It's a very famous camp. They rebuilt it in 2022. Okay. This is great. I'm loving this because, the audience is winning right now to see the different perspective. Let's go to Israel now. Some people may watch it, Sarah, and they may say, you put Israel at zero?

Are you kidding me? Look what they're doing with politicians in America. Look what they dragged us into a war. You know, even Marco Rubio said they got us to get into it, and this is why we're going into it. There's a lot of messaging about what Israel is and their popularity right now, message-wise. People don't trust them right now. The president has put value in Israel. And you don't hear the president.

talking about ISIS. I want to hear your thoughts. And now I want to come to you. I want to go to that. So why did you put Israel at zero? The president talks about ISIS. The president just bombed a senior leader of ISIS on the 19th. He was the head of ISIS in Aleppo. So the president is talking about ISIS just maybe behind closed doors, but he is

bombing them. So don't act like President Trump isn't focused on ISIS because he is. Just Israel takes all the attention and the clicks and the focus. So I think Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood have the biggest influence and the most concerning influence.

I believe if anybody is having their arm twisted by Israel, they're too weak to be in their position. That's my opinion. Tell me more. Just because I don't think Israel has, they don't have a big stick. There's nothing they can hold over your head. Like when you're negotiating with them, they don't have a ton to bring to the table. They barely can deal with their own threats.

So they're not going to come to be and negotiate with me. And when I feel if I'm a senior leader in the U.S. government and in the military, so for anyone to say, oh, we did this because Israel talked us into it or Israel forces into it's like, who are you and you should be fired? Right? That's how I think. I just, I've worked in this field for a long time and never once if I had like Israel twist my arm. I mean, I found that a little foolish. It's almost like the movies. Hey, y'all.

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That's a big fucking stick. They have nuclear weapons. They have nuclear weapons. That's a big fucking stick. They have the Jewish diaspora and huge amounts of wealth. That's a big stick. They managed 20% of trade with the United States. that's a gigantic stick. I don't know how you think Israel doesn't have a big stick. And that's before we even get into the political leverage that they have, not to mention the regional power that they possess against countries like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE. Other American allies simply cannot bring the military skill,

the military capacity, the military talent, or the intelligence capability that Israel can bring. They are one of the biggest sticks in the fucking world. and they're backed by us, which is the biggest stick in the world? Israel's good in a couple countries, and that's what their intelligence is good on, and then their intelligence sucks everywhere else. I don't disagree.

It's because they only focus on the countries that are an active threat to them because we shelter them from everything else. And they shelter us, and they shelter us from the countries that we don't have any insight. I just, I really don't think Israel is protecting us from the rest of the world. I just think, I'm sorry, Israel isn't as powerful as people make them. be. I've never seemed to be powerful. You live in a fantasy land. No, people want to talk about them all the time because that's kind of like the new thing. But at the end of the day, I'm not going to wake up tomorrow morning and Israel's bombing my city. I'm not, if that's what you're concerned about,

you have an incredibly narrow focus. No, I'm just saying that they're not a threat to us in any way. It was Israel's actions that have us in the straits that we are in. The literal fucking straits of Hormuz. I ran attacking on October 6th. I ran attacking on October 6th. with Hamas, killing over 30 Americans and taking a dozen more Americans hostage is why we're in the mess we're in. It's the fault of the terrorists. Like, they dragged this into another conflict. It is a shared. It is a shared responsibility. It is a shared responsibility. Lots of bad calls on both sides. Yeah, but I'm not, it's, it's silly to think that Israel

doesn't pose any threats to the United States. Okay, so the terrorists didn't drag any of us into that situation. I said it's a shared fucking responsibility. Sarah, do you listen? Do you listen? Or do you only focus on what you think? I'm just trying to hear your answer because you're not hearing. Not saying the terrorists had any responsibility. I said a shared responsibility.

Of who? And when you say the terrorists, I'm not exactly sure if you're talking about the Islamic revolutionaries or whether you're talking about terrorists that have a political agenda or whether you're talking about the terrorists that cross a border and haven't actually carried out any terrorist act. I'm talking about 8,000 terrorists who kill people on October 7th, including killing Americans. pretty simple. Why don't we do this?

Because when I asked her about Islam and how they can attack on Osama Bin Laden's sons, she broke it down. For you, what is your threat with Israel long term? How can they cause any kind of chaos in the States? Give me different versions of it.

So if you stick to kind of the core idea of what a terrorist is, and there's a definition for terrorism, terrorists are people who carry out violent acts with the intention of driving political change. that's if they're not if they're carrying out a violent act and it's not geared towards political change arguably they can't be labeled a terrorist so when you think about what they can do in the united states they can do lots of things to try to take out to try to exercise some sort of political agenda blowing up public targets everything you listed is basically some sort of civilian targets civilian airliners civilian buildings marching on washington dc right that type of if there's violence intended to drive a political change because they want Americans out of the Middle East. That's why Osama bin Laden created Al-Qaeda was to get Americans out of the Middle East. If that's their agenda and that's their goal, by all means they can do it.

But whenever you carry out a war, when we go to war against the IRGC, the IRGC isn't a terrorist organization. They're a militant group. But break that down from the Israel standpoint. So you put 25% Israel threat and you're paranoid about that. What are different things that they can do to harm us. Israel can hack into our cyber systems. They can hack into our core water, power grid, you name it. I mean, China can, China has hacked into our personnel records for the military. Israel has far more capable than China is in terms of cyber capability. They learn their cyber capability from us. They can rent their cyber capability from Russia. So when we talk about cyber attacks, space-based attacks, when we talk about influence campaigns, propaganda campaigns, the top of the

list of capability is Israel. It's not all strapping bombs and flying in planes. It's much more sophisticated. It's sophisticated enough that they can cross a border into an enemy country and launch drones. We underestimate Israel's capability constant. I don't know how many times you have to see pagers blow up before you realize Israel is far more capable than we believe they are. Do you see them as an ally? I see them as a country that is out for their own best national interests and when you align with that, you're on their good side. And when you don't align with that, you're not. It's a specific to Bibi or Israel period. I think it's both, but Bibi has taken it to the next level because of the corruption issues that he's also stuck in. So in many ways, I don't blame

Netanyahu for the decisions that he's been making because he's, he is taking actions that are putting Israel in a safer position for the next two to three decades. He is still creating new enemies that they will have to deal with three decades from now. But he's, working hard to try to make a series of success is so powerful that whenever he finally has to face the corruption charges, the country says, yeah, but look how safe he made us for the next 20 years. Sarah, do you agree? Well, I agree. Every country is in it for their best interests.

If I am negotiating for United States, I only care about my interests. Of course, Israel's in it for their best interest, Cutter is in it for their best interest. why would you not be that be your number one goal? Actually, you make a mess when you are like, oh, you know, let's play nice. No, everyone's in it for their best interest. So to say that that is a reason, that's a problem, I just don't see it. I still don't understand the threat from Israel. Even if we say influence operations, I do think China, North Korea, and Russia are just as capable of influence operations in Israel.

So why is in Israel? Do you think North Korea is as capable as Israel? Yes. I am going to need more. Lagovulin? They are. Whoever's pouring that. They are.

They do influence operations. Now, depends of what they want to target. But to say Israel's not targeting us, per se, in a way of, like, you're like, they can do cyber attacks on us. Is Israel cyber attacking us?

Is that their plan? If they are, they're sophisticated enough that we wouldn't know. So they're ruining our water supply. If they wanted to, we wouldn't know. So can other countries. But they're not as sophisticated.

This is why you can, This is how we catch. You don't have to be very sophisticated to affect the water supply in the United States of how bad our system is. Even better. Back up my point some more, please. But Israel's not targeting it. We see certain countries operate. We know certain countries operate in a specific way.

Israel is one of those countries that's very difficult for us to track. There are multiple intelligence surveys out there that talk about how Israel cannot be trusted as an ally to the extent that, say, France or Italy or Germany, can be. They have to be constantly put at arm's length because they have so much capability that they have been trained, given, granted, in partnership with us with so few direct threats. So they can focus their resources and focus their assets on a handful of direct threats where the United States, being the only world superpower, has to diversify and adjust for every threat in the world. Well, we don't have to adjust for every threat in the world. We have plenty of partners who focus on certain threats per region and give us that information.

That's why we have such a good relationship with Israel. And you know that. We don't have, but I'm talking about the information sharing. We can't pretend that doesn't. We can't pretend there's no information sharing. Just look at the Iran issue to see how good a relationship we have with Israel. I mean, look at the, look at what we have right now between constant consternation and

changes in policy and even even this promised ceasefire. doesn't actually deliver what it was supposed to deliver, right? Let's talk about Iran for a minute. So we hit all those nuclear facilities. We hit all those IRGC commands very accurately with good targeting. Do you think that was all CIA and U.S. military's intel that put those missiles on the X? We didn't hit them. For the most part, Israel hit them.

Right. We didn't hit the Ayatollah, Israel hit the Ayatollah. Even the stuff we hit, the targeting was good because of the information share. We can't say that that, so we can't say there's no relationship with Iran. I didn't say there's no relationship. Where are you listening? No, I'm saying in Iran when most of the best targets we hit was based on good intelligence. Israeli intelligence.

And it serves Israel. But it also served us because we were also putting our military at risk. Because look at where we are right now. Our military was there doing operations and they were at risk and they have to rely on good, accurate, sound information. and they were giving it, and it has kept a lot of American troops safe. So is it fair to say you long term are not worried about IRGC? Long term, I'm not worried about IRGC. You're not worried about their proxies, Hezbollah, Houthis, you know, what they're going to be doing.

Not at this point. Not compared to the other things that we have to wrestle with right now, no. There's always current threats, emerging threats, growing threats, falling threats. Iran, IRGC, all of that does not qualify as anything more than a distant threat to the United States. Let's go to the next game if you want to grab your iPads. This is the next game that we're playing. Okay, so if you want to erase whatever you have, we'll go to the next one. The next one is the following.

You have a billion dollars, okay? You have a billion dollars to buy propaganda in America. Whether you're China, Qatar, whether you're whoever, with a billion dollars that you have, how do you spend that billion dollars? Do you spend that billion dollars on media? Do you spend that billion dollars on a, education, universities, winning over kids. You spend that billion dollars buying over congressmen and politicians and senators.

You spend that billion dollars on buying influencers on social media on X. How would you spend that billion dollars of propaganda? You can choose any country you're part of. Israel, Qatar, China, Russia, doesn't matter. You have a billion dollar budget. That's your assignment. How do you spend that billion dollars? How fast do we want to create the change and influence?

We got a decade. We got 10 years to do it. We got 10 years that we want to buy the influence. And we can only put it in the one category or any of those? You can put it in any category, just like the previous one. You can choose. And by the way, I gave you four of them, but you can add additional things you want to it. I'll remind you one more time.

One of them is media, mainstream. The other one is influencers, social media because, you know, gamers, streamers. A lot of that's going on right now. The other one is universities and colleges that you can win over influence of what they're teaching in the schools. And then the last one that I had was buying a politician, senators, you know, like some of these organizations are doing. But you can put others as well. You got a billion dollars. I'll give you a minute.

You got yours? Yeah. May I? Sorry, sorry. You can't really read mine because it's not fat anymore. Okay. So, Andy, if you want to go first, I'll come to you first. I guess it was readable at least.

Barely, right? So I've got a quarter million dollars going into influencers. And a big part of that is because influencers aren't that expensive to buy, especially not when you're looking for small grassroots influencers. They don't all, they get expensive. as they get big, but you can go a long way with a little bit on influencers, and that's what pretty much every protein company will tell you. And then I've got $500 million going into mainstream media, and that is because mainstream media will, there will always be some mainstream media.

Half of the influencers are opening media companies. That's going to become the new mainstream media. And mainstream media will always have the most reach. It will always have a built-in sense of authority and credibility and authenticity. And mainstream media is something that, that is oftentimes the subject matter that is then picked up by influencers. So if you want an influencer to talk about some shit, you get it on Fox News. And then boom, everybody's talking about it. I'm putting 100 million into politicians because politicians change. They change too often.

They're unreliable. They'll take your money and run. And then they'll never claim that they backed you up anyway. So it's a high risk, high reward proposition. So I would want to limit my investment there. And then I'm putting 150 million into education because education takes time. but the difference is if you capture, if you educate people at the right point in their life,

they never forget the lesson. So whether you're targeting young college minds or even young elementary school minds or if you're targeting people just out of the military, you can literally plant a seed that never goes away. Very true. Very true. How about yourself, sir? Yeah, so I did by percentages.

So kind of the same concept he had. I put 40% going into colleges because he gave us the 10-year window. and I think if you influence people in their early 20s and 10 years, we're going to start getting those middle management and leader positions and heck in our government, people in their 30s can get senior roles.

So I think that's the best bang for my buck. Now, I did put politicians, but I was thinking more the ones that sit around forever. Like right now, the average age of the U.S. Congress is 64 years old. So there's plenty of old people that will be around for a while. I agree the same. I don't think, even though I know there's alternative

media, media still has a stronghold. They still have so much control of the stories and what it's put out. So I put 25% on them. So 25% of them and the politicians. Or mainstream media? Yeah, for mainstream media. So you're going to put $250 million into mainstream media. Yes, whatever the math is. And then influencers, I did 10% because at the end of the day, there are people who are turning to them and listening to them. And some of them do have, like, real influence. And some of them actually go on to do other things, as we've seen a lot of people who I would think a little more influencers role became

senior in our government. So we definitely don't want to leave them out because we actually don't know where they're going to be in 10 years, but they're going to go somewhere. Okay, so if I look at this, influencers, you put $250 million, you put $100 million. Mainstream media put $500 million, you put $250 million.

Politicians, you put $250 million, and an education, you put $150 million. You put $400 million on education. So let's target education. Why was education your biggest one of $400 million. Because I'm looking out the 10 years and I want to target people now who I can maybe get influence first, but then they can get into positions where I can take advantage of them

going long term and then over and over again. I don't need to take advantage of them just when they're 30s, but in their 40s, they're going to go up higher when they're 50s. They're going to become more senior and have more influence. So it just seemed like the better bang for my buck if we're thinking 10 years on. original series Furious is coming to Disney Plus, starring Emmy Rossum. Furious follows FBI agent Alice Black on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating serial killer. Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine,

the line between right and wrong begins to blur. Don't miss the three-episode premiere of the Hulu original series Furious on July 27th, only on Hulu on Disney Plus. you only put 150 million correct why because 10 years isn't enough time for education to take how long do you think you need 25 30 years 25 30 years because I'm not targeting the 20 year old 20 year olds don't know dick like the people in college are too busy chasing ass and getting drunk they don't actually they're not really open to the kind of ideas you need them to hold on to when they're in their mid 40s

for that you need to target to somebody that's like 10 9 years old think about when extremists really start targeting their youth you're talking about 5 6 7 years old that's That's how you create a foundation. Your core years for being influentially or cognitively programmed are between the ages of five and 11. So that's really where you need to put that money. So if we're

only looking for 10 years out, my 11 year old is only going to be 21. Not old enough to have a real big impact. But $150 million will change the minds of a lot of 11 year olds. Okay. So then if we see what Cutter put into education, which they're the highest, they put $7.7 billion

into our universities. I think 1.8 of it, if I'm not mistaken, is in Cornell. Can you pull up the chart on what they put in? And remember, it wasn't a law that you had to report the numbers. So this is the basement level. So meaning it could be even higher than that. Wait, it's probably 10, 15, 20 times higher. Stop it.

Yeah, there was no law in place to actually say you received the money. So could be $60, $70 billion. We have no concept at this point. So if you're saying it's a long-term, you need at least 25 years, if Cutter's doing $7.7 billion, China's doing $6.4 billion. what do you think they're solving for within our educational system long term? The 25-year point. And what is their outcome?

What did they want to get into the system? The decline of the United States, the belief that other countries are rising and that the United States is stuck on decline. The idea that you'll get better research from China, the idea that you'll have better financial opportunities than UAE, that's what they're trying to change. Do you agree? Yeah, I think for the most part, I mean, obviously I think there's different opinions. Of course, China wants to keep.

this belief in the core of, you know, their institutions and that type thing. Cutter, I do think, is a little more dangerous when it comes to the thinking, because you do get people more into the extreme mindset. So they are different risks, because I do worry a little bit about any time you indoctrinate people. Now, I understand if I'm a Chinese student, I'm always going to serve my country and my government, even if I live in America, and I'm always going to know that and believe that. But I do worry about people you pull to the side that never would have been in those categories.

Okay. And that's what I feel Cutter does a little of successfully and dangerously. Yeah, that's a big number, though. When you see, and they came out of nowhere because that number is not that high 15 years ago, 20 years ago. They came out of nowhere and went to first place. So, okay, let's see what other one you guys said difference. Influencers, you have 250 million and you had 100 million.

Why only 100 million? Well, that was your lowest one. So one of the things I've noticed, and he kind of mentioned it, it's the first. fact that the media still has so much control over the narrative, and they still are the ones who can pick up the phone, call the White House, call the CIA, call the, you know, the joint staff, and really get the inside. So I haven't seen a lot of influencers yet that really can do that. Now, we do have some who definitely can change thinking, outcomes, opinions. I mean, Tucker is kind of one of the ones that really went on his own.

and kind of carve that path. But there's been very few people who have done that, in my opinion, to the level of control of mainstream media. Got it. Thoughts on influencers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you put 250 and two influencers. And you'll hear people saying,

this guy's getting paid from Russia and then they get exposed. John Kariaku. I wouldn't only, you think Kariaku's getting. He was. He was an actual pundit for Russia, RU news. Yeah, he worked for RT. But he had a show, though. So it's kind of like a show.

Right, but it was pretty public about the fact that it was doing it. Correct, correct. But you'll hear some people that are getting paid from Russia that is not public. True. Some of that are getting paid. This guy's getting paid from Qatar. He's getting paid the $7,000 from Israel. So you think there is power in paying these influencers today on social media?

Without a doubt, there's a lot of power in influencers. The challenge is finding the influencers that gets you the outcome that you're looking for. But there is power in influencers. And a little bit of money can help you experiment and test with a wide range of influencers to find where you want to focus your primary investment. Think about it this way. What does every influencer use? A call to action.

Sure. What do you never see on mainstream media? CTAs. You never see it. Just commercials. Yeah. Right. So, and it's an actual influencer that's like a cult leader that can say,

pick up your phone, do this, press this button, buy this thing. Right. Well, if you really want influence, go, vote for this person, say this thing. Write your congressman. Like, that is what a CTA can do. Okay. So I'm going to go a little bit even deeper. So let's take that $250 million.

and be a country and tell me who you would want to go to. Actually, name the individuals. So that's a difficult one because there are so many people. But give me, who would be the ones you would go after? Micro-influencers, right? And how much would you give them? I'd be curious. So one of the things I would actually love to do is be a country that is anti-American

and go after health influencers in the United States and have those health influencers highlight all the ways the United States is poisoning their food. All the carcinogens in the processed food, all the fluoride in the water, all the additional trans fats and all that stuff that people already believe in, right, because they already believe in it. So now a little bit of money to feed a whole slew of health influencers when you can't swing a dead cat without going over 12 health influencers. You've got people talking about keto. You've got people talking about type two diabetes. You've got people talking about whatever. You could literally shape millions of people and how they believe and come to trust the FDA.

if you just target a few health influencers. Who else? Still taking the anti-American stance? Well, I am pretty sure we already see this with the huge amount of political influencers out there that will jump on whatever mainstream media story is coming out. Give me names. I don't follow.

Okay, so then let me give you. Do you have names? Would you be able to give names? I'm not sure I would pay influencers. I would pick someone maybe in each party that I feel would be worth that much money. so I would probably, if I was Republican, I would target Jared Kushner.

If I was a Democrat, I would target Jake Sullivan and see where my money gets me. But those would be players. I don't know if I would put those guys as influences. They're not online influencers. Remember, you also have a very low number here. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're not, you don't see the social media guys as influential.

I think they, I do think they have an influence. I don't know how long their influence lasts. things ebb and flow. It can be very interesting, but, you know, I didn't make it zero. Let me give you an example. Let me give you just an example of how powerful influences can be. Can you pull up, umberto? I'm trying to see how to go about this.

Do we want to go on Spotify? Let's look at the top podcasters on Spotify and names. And so maybe that helps. And if you go on the leader's bulletin, yeah, go to the charts and maybe go to by category of the biggest podcast. Just go to Spotify podcast charts. and then say, where would you put your money? So go right there.

Where would you put your money? I don't think any of those people are. None of those people. My boss is number five, so you put me in a bad spot. I'm not telling you to say anything within. But I do love podcast number three, crime junkie. Okay. So what would you put it?

What would you put the money to fool? If we can scroll down to the top, the last 10 on the top 100. Why the last 10? Because that's where you're going to get to spread your money. So if you look at Diary of a CEO, there was an article that just came out that says, Bartlett makes $38 million alone on just his own channels. Not sponsorship, just add sense on his own channels.

And Sean Ryan's in the fifth spot. So, I mean, you're talking about people who are making... I put $250 million in there. 25% of that would go to one person. So meaning you wouldn't put it into those guys. You would go to the bottom and put it into... I would go to the hungry sons of bitches at spot 91 who are trying to climb the ranks, who are not being super judicious and who they take.

money from and who are happy to put my ad out there three times a week instead of just once a week. Do you agree with them? I mean, I do agree with him. You have to go for someone who isn't at the point where first they can say no, where they might have some integrity. We're assuming this is a bad country trying to influence. By the way, it's China, it's Qatar, it's Israel, it's Russia, it's any of these guys. So you need to go after people who don't have the opportunity yet to say no. So I agree with him completely on the targeting. You guys are both ex-CIAs. So do you think CIA knows which one of our major influencers in America are getting paid how much by foreign entities?

Do you think you know that? I don't know. I think they would only look into it if they thought the person was doing some sort of then-influence operation. No, but let me ask you, like, would there be a position where, because CIA is what? It's not domestic, right? It's out. Okay, FBI is here. CIA is out.

Okay. So if I'm doing Could there could today's CIA say hey Sarah hey Andy this is what I want you to figure out You're working a project on Qatar I want you to find out which influencers they're buying in America Because these are the seven people we're looking at Can we dig it up and see if we can find anything?

You think would the CIA Have a project like that you guys would pursue? I don't know I feel that would be something FBI would come up with And then they'd have to hook the CIA in And CIA be like oh my God this is such a bad idea I think FBI would have access. I think Treasury would have access. IRS would have access.

Right. It's U.S. led. Correct. Those are the organizations that would be able to track down the number and the connections you're talking about. And on politician, you put $250 million, but it's your lowest at $100 million.

Why is it the lowest? Because I don't think politicians are the ones that actually shape our future. I think politicians are people who come in and the party shapes us, but not the politicians themselves. So you'd be putting a lot of money into a politician that's transient.

In my opinion is they're the ones we put the bills on the table, they're the ones who have to fight to push them, and so that's what I'd want to influence. It's very interesting what happened here, because on one end, you were critical of Israel, you were not, because you didn't see them as a threat for your long term, but here, you're saying put less. Well, I think they influence, but as a threat, no, but influence. Sure.

You put money to buy propaganda lowest for you as politicians, and that's where Israel puts a lot of their money. They get criticized for APAC, and you think that's effective with what they're doing, because you don't have a lot of it in there. Oh, I don't know how effective it is. I also don't know if the amount that they put into that is bigger or smaller than the amount of money they put into other things. Yeah. So I would say that for me, if I had to judiciously steward my billion dollars, I wouldn't be putting it into politicians.

Not when we have more people leaving Congress than ever before, more people struggling to pass bills than ever before. Like, it just doesn't seem like a good investment. Do you agree? I think there's a percentage of Congress who stays there for a long time, and they're the power brokers, and those who I invest in. I'm not going to invest in someone who's going to spend four, eight years there. But it's pretty clear who is going to be there for a while and who, you know, leads the committees. There would be a few I'd focus on, right? Who's running the intelligence communities?

Who's running, like, House Foreign Affairs, et cetera. Got it. Okay. So both of you have been in this space. You're, you know, a lot of different things you deal with trying to find intel from different people. What has been your experience of human beings' biggest vulnerability? Like, you know, is it money? Is it fame?

Is it, you know, can you convert anybody no matter how strong of an ideology or conviction they have? What, from your experience, has been humans' biggest weakness to say, ah, shit, I disagree with this. But you know what? If you give me this, what's been humans, you know, biggest weakness? Validation. External validation. Tell me more.

It's universal. Everybody wants to be validated for it. for their thoughts, their opinions, their concerns, their fears, their worries, where they're putting their money, where they're putting their focus, where they're putting their attention. And a lot of times, the fastest way to gain someone's trust and resources and confidence is to simply validate what they're feeling. You don't even have to agree with them. You just validate them. She says she's tired. You can say, I get tired to sometimes. And it's fair to be tired right now. It's been a long day. You're trying to negotiate with somebody. And he's like, I don't want to be

taken to, I don't want to be taken, you know, advantage of. And you're like, I don't want to be taking advantage of either, man. It sucks whenever people take advantage of me. Here's a quick story about how somebody took advantage to me and it sucks. Validate the person and they're like, yeah, you get me. Everybody else in this fucking world doesn't even listen. But you, you listen. You get me. Your experience. I think the best people sometimes to go after the ones who think they're the best at what they're doing and they think they're the best at their jobs and they think everybody around them is an idiot, not doing well, not moving things forward and they can make it happen. And they might be more willing to color outside the lines because they think I'm smarter than them.

You know, I can run circles around the people in my office. And I do think they're easier to manipulate because there's something in their brain that makes them feel that they can control the entire situation. Who's the most difficult? Who are the most difficult people where you're like, dude, this guy's not going to give me any intel? Who are the most difficult people to get any, like, you have motives, you have money, you have the girls, hottest girls in the world, you have access to you can give me fame validation, who are the most difficult people to get anything out of?

The people who have a childhood bias against you, whatever that might be. A childhood bias against you. Unpacked that, please. So if as a kid, they lived in a culture that just didn't trust something about you, your ideology, your religion,

your faith, your color, your hometown, your baseball team, if they had that bias as a child and they've become an adult, it's very hard for them to un- or reprogram that bias. It's much easier to reprogram a bias when somebody develops it when they're older.

But when they're a kid, I mean, just think about how many people still carry the same hometown baseball competition feelings, right? They'll still get into a brawl at a White Sox game or something, right? Like it's insane. What happens when people carry these childhood biases forward?

What would you say? I think it's when someone feels like they were scammed or manipulated into the situation. because then it already doesn't feel comfortable from the beginning. They already don't trust you. They don't know what other games you're going to play as you go along. You know, we see a lot of this, like when FBI does those entrapment operations, and they pull people in, and no intentions of being involved in this.

And like, now you've got to collect this info. You're in the middle of us. And so I do think it's when they feel like they are scammed in some way, because then it just, how do you fix that? Got it. So I like the childhood biases. Interesting. You have them too, man.

I'm sure three things. Three things are jumping to your brain right now. You're making me think. That's why I'm going, right? And I totally understand where you're coming from. You know, me too. I'm trying to validate you right now to make sure we're going through it. It's working.

So, okay, so that's interesting as you're going through. I got a business question for you guys. Before we go to the next game, we're going to play here together. Business question. I pulled up numbers on how many military, ex-military officers became Fortune 500 CEOs. Okay. And here's what the number looks like. Ex-military officers, we've had 3 to 5 million. CIA officers, we've had roughly 40,000.

Military officers that became Fortune 500 COs, roughly 400. Not a single ex-CIA officer has ever become a Fortune 500 CEO. Why do you think that is? One of the things I feel is CIA really does like to be behind the scenes. I like to backbench on things. Like, they might be the one that, comes to your company and says, hey, I can get you to think differently, do differently, market in a different way. That's kind of their strong suit. And I don't think they actually

cared to lead. Remember, they took a job where their name's not out there. They can't say, hey, I captured this big guy or I recruited this Iranian scientist. Like, they're used to being kind of in the shadows. And I think over time they get comfortable doing that. Yeah, I don't disagree with Sarah, I would say the only thing that's more powerful than the fact that we're all accustomed to being in the shadows is that we're kind of inherently lazy. CIA hires people who have a natural skill, a natural skill in research, a natural skill in manipulation, a natural skill in language. They look for people who already have these natural skills and then they give them a place to blossom in the thing that they're already good at. To be a Fortune 500 CEO is fucking hard.

like think about how much you have to learn how hard you have to work how much you have to adapt like it is an incredible amount of perseverance and and efforts and CIA officers are are going to be perfectly happy at being number 1,000 on the list instead of fighting for number five it's just the way we're wired we're not wired for that kind of hard work we're not wired to to pursue that level of success. We're wired to accept a much lower level with a higher probability of success and less risk. Would you agree with them? P. says, now there is one interesting thing. So my undergrad is in business. And then I went into the CIA. And the woman who is in charge of my entire director at the CIA, we were sitting there one day. And she said, we hire you at the CIA for your strengths.

We don't even care if you spend any time in your weaknesses. And of course, when I was in business school, they're like, put all this effort into your weaknesses. So you don't have them. So it is the fact they hire you for a certain reason and that's what you're great at but that doesn't mean you're great at everything across the board when a CEO might have to have a lot more of those skills yeah it's it's interesting to say they're lazy you you weren't air force before you went CIA what was hard for you yeah he's been down the path for a long time yeah right Air Force was harder for me Air Force was why is that because I had to fit into a structure I had to do things that I didn't want to do shine shoes, wear uniforms, shave my face,

keep my hair too much. Too structured. So much structure, so much expectation. Even when I had an idea, my idea didn't count because I wasn't high enough rank, there were all sorts of these things in the military that just didn't work. I have to parade on Saturday. Why do I have to parade on Saturday? Because that's the day on the calendar.

And you're like, what the fuck? It doesn't, it's raining on Saturday. Yeah, but that's the day we're going to parade. It just doesn't make sense. So is a profile of CIA agents, successful ones, they need to be left alone, not a lot of structure, not a lot of organ, really? Let me do my thing. Oh, I would never pass basic training in Moté, but

let me do my thing, let me fail five times. At the end, I will make this happen for you, but leave me the F alone while I do it. So then let me ask you, does it take a certain type of a director or a leader to know how to lead the personality? Because eventually somebody becomes a director of

CIA, right? Eventually somebody rises up and wants the responsibility. How do they know how to manage you? They don't. Okay, they don't know how to matter of you. So this is a great example because the director of CIA is a politically appointed position. Yeah, very complicated. Yeah.

And the biggest complaint that we have at CIA is that there really isn't a way to climb the ladder without essentially having a rabbi or a godfather who protects you and brings you up with him. It's all about loyalty there. It's not about capability. It's not about skill. It's all about who you know, who you like and whether or not you're kind of rubbing elbows with the right people. That's what drove a lot of our kind of cadre, our alumni, to leave when we all left.

because we didn't want to play that game. We didn't want to play the game of finding the right rabbi and then going from assignment to assignment with that person only to then hope that they make it to group chief and that you might make it to deputy group chief. It just, that's not a fun game. Yeah, the same. I did play the game, but I would just burn a bridge,

move on, burn the next bridge, and I luckily had some leaders who pulled me along the way. But at the end of the day, like it's exhausting. So there is nothing like a, human resources department in the CIA. So you have to have a good boss. There's no HR. No.

So, hey, he floored with me. You can do, you can report. Yeah, and as soon as you do that, it better be way more than flirting, because no one's going to do anything with flirting. Yeah, it's like career suicide for one person or the other, because it really does. As soon as you say something like that, there is no HR structure. It's just a bunch of government employees trying to cover their ass. So half of the people say, I back you up and half the people say, I back you up, and half the

people say, I back that other person up, and then you just hope that the two people can find some sort of resolution because somebody's going to get fired. Yeah. So you are focused your entire time on your alliances. You scratch each other's back and you move along together. There's no leadership at CIA. Okay. That's a big part of, I think, why you see the problems persistently at CIA.

But is that a good thing that there's no leadership or they need leadership? I would argue that they need leadership. But if they have leadership, you guys don't want to be led. You want to be left alone. They need to change their relationship. recruiting process also. Oh, meaning to not recruit lazy people to. Correct. If you think about it, CIA went through a massive force transformation after 9-11. Prior to 2001, CIA was like, I mean, the classified, the unclassified number of undercover officers after 2001 is 10,000. And we know

that they amped, they magnified themselves at least a hundredfold. So that would mean that about a thousand undercover officers were what existed before 9-11. Well, the training. curriculum for a thousand people is completely different than the training curriculum for 10,000 people and the career advancement process for a thousand people can be informal but the the career advancement process for 10,000 people has to be formalized it's a it's a classic business scaling problem CIA was forced to scale in 2001 but they were not prepared for it operationally you agree yeah and I one of the things too is let's say you brought in 9,000 case officers you started sending them all to war zones and

they never got good at counterintelligence well to be a great CIA case officer, the thing you have to be best at is counterintelligence. So we have 15, 20 years of case officers who are probably like CD level at the skill that they should be A level at. And then that's a huge problem. Okay. When we set out to create a shoe that blends comfort, function, and luxury, we had the choice to make it fast. We had the choice to make it cheap. We chose neither. Instead, we chose Tuscany. We chose true Italian. We chose true Italian. We chose true Italian craftsmanship, each pair touched by 50 skilled hands. We chose patience, spending two years perfecting every detail, and we chose the finest quality

at every step, introducing the Future Looks Bright Collection, not rushed, not disposable, not ordinary, rather intentional, luxurious, timeless. All right, so let's play this game. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to give each of you these paddles. Okay. One of them says real. One of them says Sayop.

One of them says conspiracy. The other one says cover up. Okay. And I'm going to give different conspiracy. And you pick and choose. Okay. It's BS. It's Syop.

It's this. It's that. Okay. Let's have some fun with this one here. Okay. MK Ultra. MK Ultra. What did you put up?

Let me see. MK. It never worked good, by the way, people. That's why it was canceled. MK Ultra That we know of you are real Okay It was a real program

Documented We'll come back Verifiable CIA Army program People always cut up the army All right UFOs aliens Actual aliens

Not illegal aliens Aliens You mean like living breathing Living aliens Let me see What do you have real Both of you real Okay

Yeah And you know that for fact No just statistically They have to exist The idea that we're the only Intelligent life Yeah For you is it 100%

statistic. For me, it's like a feeling. So there's been a couple of places I've been in the world, especially Montu-Pichu, and how it was built, how it moves with hurricanes, they were doing brain surgery. I was just like there had to been some being that came down and just taught some things. I feel at some time aliens came to our world, and I think there's little things, you know, around the pyramids, you see a few things. I do feel there's little pieces of evidence. But not because you know for a fact. This just pure, you as well. I don't know for a fact. If I had smoking gun fat, that would be. So aliens, if you want to come abduct me for like 60 days, feel free.

Be careful saying that. Take about two hours before you do so. Let's finish the podcast first. Okay, next one. CIA killed John F. Kennedy. Come on, CIA. What do you got? Split decision.

So your conspiracy and cover up and you have conspiracy. Okay. Let's tackle that one. What do you mean? Tell me more. There was a time in CIA's history where it was a totally uncontrollable wild animal where it could just do whatever the director or the group chiefs or whatever wanted to have done. And there was a very real time when nobody was keeping assassinations in check or death efforts in check.

And there was also a time when JFK was adamantly opposed to a lot of what CIA was doing. So there's just enough information out there to show that there is, some kind of intelligence connection with the JFK killing, but there's not enough information for us to be able to weave it all together. So a coverup must be happening. Whether that coverup is an active coverup or whether at the time somebody was smart enough to take all the evidence and burn it, I don't know. But it's somewhere between full-on cover-up and conspiracy. And I actually do believe it really links in some way to Cuba and even some of their networks here. There is all that chatter, maybe like a few days before. They're

was supposed to be an attempt by like kind of the Cuban mafia in Tampa to take him out. So I do think there's a strong Cuba connection. Now, you know, as Andrew says, every once in a while, you get that rogue CIA officer kind of working both sides. So we can't say that's not 100% there. But I just don't feel like the director of CIA directed it. That's my opinion. Okay. By the way, when you become a CIA agent, are you guys also becoming one because you also want to get to the bottom of these types of

things are not really. I honestly didn't think about, I didn't actually think I could go find anything. All I cared about, all I cared about was getting to do secret shit. That's it. That's it. So it wasn't like, you know, you guys hang out, go to dinner. What do you think happened with this? And what do you think happened with this?

Not a lot of that? No, I wanted to work terrorists in Kashmir and then I never really worked Harris in Kashmir. That was my goal. I just wanted to like have a girl in every port. Okay. So it was intentional. It was intentional.

Okay. How about moon landing? Moon landing? This is a serious one. For some people, it's very important. Both of you say yes. Okay, did you watch the movie? Oh, it was excellent.

Flying me to the moon? What did you think about it? I thought the movie was done well. It wouldn't surprise me if we did film a backup video, but I do think kind of American exceptionalism, I think we got there because it was so competitive against the Russians that if we hadn't, the Russians had infiltrated us, and they would have put out the information that we faked it.

that's my opinion. I don't know enough, but I like what Sarah saying on this one. She doesn't sound as left field as she sounded other times today. You know for 50 plus years. Never, never. When was it, by the way? When did we land on the moon? When did we land on the moon?

What is the date? What year? It's under before the end of the decade is when Kennedy said it, right? What year is it? 69. Right under the wire. So what do you say to the people that say, give me a break, guys. There's just no way we landed on the moon.

bottom of the sole of the shoe is different, the boots. If we did, how come we haven't since 69? We have better technology, better everything. You mean to tell me we landed on the moon? What do you say to them? I don't think, yeah, go ahead. I don't think the moon has anything super useful to land back on it and take advantage of it. I think the goal is to go farther.

The problem is so many different administrations kept cutting the money, cutting the money, cutting the money, and it actually has diminished our forward leaning into space. That's my opinion. And we landed on Apollo 11, if I'm remembering correctly, and we sent up Apollo 13 to go to the moon, and we had all sorts of issues. So we spent a shit ton of money on Apollo 12 and 13

to not achieve a useless propaganda goal, basically. And then you get budgets cut, Congress gets involved, and you lose funding, and that's never a good thing. And then the guy shows up who's worth a trillion dollars and says he wants to build life out there. He wants to build civilization out there, right? So who knows? Who knows? Let's go to the next one.

He wants to die on Mars. Yeah, I think so. By the way, if you're watching this, you agree, disagree. They're both on Menect. You can actually Meneck them and ask him any questions that maybe you are watching right now that we haven't covered yet. Next one, Havana syndrome. Uh-oh. What do we have, conspiracy?

Oh, here we go. Let's have some fun with this one. Tell me why. I'll go to you first. Why is it a conspiracy? So there's some very real experiences and very real accounts that people have. Okay. But there's not enough smoking guns.

evidence to confirm that it is actually intentionally tied to something, some energy weapon, some commonality, some common cause. And I believe it's just the Moscow signal from the 1950s, and it's been kind of tweaked and elevated. I actually have friends with Havana syndrome. I had a friend hit with it just last summer. So I know plenty of people with it. I actually know someone who was my age who died, you know, like a year and a half.

half ago from the complications of it. So it is real. Now, the argument has been, where does it come from? I believe it comes from Russia. Our government hasn't wanted to take that step, because once you do, that is Russia directly targeting and harming, not just Americans, but obviously people across the CIA, the Department of Defense, but they do like the best of the best, but right before the senior leaders, which is really interesting. So they'll take a CA case officer who's worked Russia for 15 years and he's maybe going to become head of the division or whatever,

and then that's when they target him. So it's very, very smart too. They're targeting it to where you have a little bit of deniability because you didn't hit someone senior enough, right? You're not outside of Trump's house doing it or something. And so I think the targeting has been very smart, but it is real. And I think we have to do something about it

because we're allowing another government to harm our best and brightest, and that should be something we never allow. Your friends that have gone through this, what feelings did they have? What do they share with you about their experience? So usually it's just a sudden pulse. And so it's a pulse, but it's not like the idea of almost an uneven pulse. It's a pulse to where it throws off all of your kind of just neurotic. Like a really good example is vertigo.

So it's almost like an insane vertigo. So you can't like immediately feel balanced. You can't immediately think now they can't put sentences together well. They can't do strategic long-term thinking. So it affects like the brain in a way to where it's like a pulsing wave that does it. And it happens like really at once. And what's the reaction when that happens? What happens next?

So, well, from what, you know, there's different people who felt different things. So a lot of the original, the initial stuff is just like really bad migraine. You can't walk straight. You can't think straight. Brain fog. And then it gets worse over time. It's almost like debilitating. So there's no way to solve it.

So your body just starts slowly breaking down over time. Very interesting. Depending how bad it is. These are documented cases for friends that have shared us with you. Yes. Wow. Okay. All right, let's go to the next one.

Next one I have yours, probably the most important one that, you know, we want to get to the bottom of this. Reptillion shapeshifting. I know for a fact, you believe in this. I know you're going to say real, but. I know so little about this. Reptillion, I don't. Have you heard of shapeshifters or no? Oh, yes.

Boone talks about shafting all the time. Okay, what do you have? Okay, both of you guys. I just don't feel we're experts in this subject. Listen, I had a guess one time who that was his thing. He swore by it. I'm like, look, it's crazy for you to believe in this, but it is what it is. Did he change into a reptile in front of you in the back room?

No, he didn't. But he was saying Justin Bieber is a shapeshifter. He was saying all these great athletes are shapeshifters. I'm like, Justin, yeah, they're right there. He was saying that Justin Bieber was a shapeshifter. Here's the next one. Hitler was never killed. He ended up going to Argentina and he kind of stayed there.

So if you guys know this, let us know. Some people may want him an anectum. but I'm really okay really okay okay go ahead so I'm not 100% but I do believe that there is a percentage chance that Hitler did get to you know like Argentina or wherever just because he had a lot of relationships and a lot of networks and he knew we were coming so that's my opinion so the reason that I go with sciop is because there's a lot of value in making people second guess who actually won World War II. And there's a lot of value in making people think that, you know, some kind of highly charismatic leader is still alive. So we've seen it even with the

attacks in Iran. How long did people continue to kind of hold alive the idea that the Ayatollah wasn't dead? So this is an age-old issue all the way back to the Egyptians, that there's power in the myth. So Hitler had some pretty powerful mythos. Is it just you or do you have other friends that also believe what you just said about Hitler? I mean, I do think I do know other people who feel that obviously so many in his circle went there that, you know, there was already a pipeline. There was already relationships. There's already people moving in that way. So it just, the pattern makes sense. But, you know, I don't have someone that saw Hitler in a hat in Boisner's R-A's. That would be one hell of a podcast. If anyone has that, send me the picture.

Yeah, I can make that happen. By the way, imagine if he's real and somebody comes out and says it's official, he's real, I'm doing a three-hour podcast. Imagine how that podcast will perform. I mean, I think he's dead by now, even if he was living down there. Maybe he is like... Old recording. Yeah, taking care of his health. It'd be amazing.

Let me do this next one. This one is a fresher one, but I wonder what you say. Ever since the USAAID went away, there seems to be all of these countries, South America, that are going conservative. I don't know if you've seen this or not. This chart right here came out saying June 2023, left wing leaders was 10, right wing was three, June 2026. Obviously, USAID went away last year, give or take. Right wing plus four, left wing minus four, and that money that was being funneled into

these places no longer there. Do you think that was the reason, or do you think, no, it's just a conspiracy? This is a fresher one, so I wonder what you say about this one. Real. I'm going to go with real. Okay. I'm half and half. Okay, but why don't you go first? So I'm going with real because the rise in the leftist South America was a very real thing. And then there was a counter effect that was the rise in the nationalist South America.

And I think that just in general, oftentimes popular nationalism comes from conservative foundations. Do I think that it's because Rubio killed USAID? that had happened? No, but I do think that him ending USAID helped accelerate a change that was already in place. USAID was actively involved in trying to shape hearts and minds. That's part of what its mission was. It was there to offer aid in exchange for something, right? And the democratic, liberal, progressive idea is a big part of what USAID was out to.

Humberto, can you go back to that and zoom in, please? Can you go back to what you just at? Zoom in a little bit for my eyes? Okay, Latin America, since USAID was, ID funding. Cast one on Chile, far right, Paas one in Bolivia, Fujimori one in Peru, Noboa one in Ecuador, Asfuta one in Honduras, and Fernandez one in Costa Rica, all far right figures in there. You had a little bit of both. Yeah, I had a little bit of both. So I do think USAID money affects some of this, but I do think, I don't think it's true. We cut off all the USAID money. We moved a ton of the contracts under the State Department. Now, we do have a State Department. run by the Republicans, so they're not moving those funds, you know, into the far left.

So I do think there's still a lot of that money in play and a lot of the money being used for influence. So I don't think it's 100% the USAID effect like him. I do think, though, we're getting to a point where people are getting a little tired of super far left. And I think you might be seeing a little bit of that in South America. So I think it could be a little bit of both. Some of the funding went away, but also I think people are just getting frustrated and want to change. Now, it's far right the answer to, you know, maybe not. But we all ebb and flow, it's why the midterms will probably have a swing to the, and look at New York, they had, what, three Democratic socialists just a couple of days ago. So people love these big swings because they want the idea and belief of change and believe someone's going to bring it to them.

And then, of course, that person comes in and the big change doesn't happen. But we all have this hope that'll change. So you're not part of the mindset of majority of the world is leans more conservative. That this socialistic ideology that's being pushed down is being pushed on because they need money and they need campaign. Or else the average person is going to probably lean more conservative than a liberal. I just think the majority of people are kind of right in the middle, a moderate, whatever you want to call that. And the less people are super far left and the less people are super far right. but it matters who gets control and who has the money and who has the influence and then they pull you.

Yeah, I feel differently than Sarah on this. I feel like the majority of the world is actually just trying to survive. They're just trying to make it till tomorrow. They're trying to make it to the next meal. And whether that meal is given away by some liberal tree hugger or whether that meal is something that they have to fight for by casting a vote for a strong leader, they don't really care as long as they get the meal. And there's a pragmatism in the rest of the meal. of the world that we lose because we are so wealthy in comparison.

This is the American Power Index. If you look at it right now here, 3.1 is more leaning Republican than Democrat today. But again, it changes. So the pendulum swings, like you were saying earlier, Sarah. Is there any theories that I didn't cover here that you have strong opinions on that you'd like to discuss? Anything I didn't cover it. Like, you missed this one. You should have asked us this question. Anything. You know what I would love? I would love to know what you think is going to happen. with AI in the future because I am certain that we were both working with rudimentary AI when we were at the agency.

I mean, I think AI is going to kill us all. I know that's the worst response. You really believe that? I mean, I do think it's going to get to a point, yeah, and it's going so much faster than we realize, and that's what I'm worried about, and then the speed of it is going to divide us because we have to put so many of our natural resources into feeding it.

And I'm really concerned about that. I mean, I was just listening to the new. this morning and it's about, you know, there's argument in France, right? That they don't have air conditioning because it's bad for the environment. And then it was like two people on each side. One trying to put the bill to let's bring in air conditioning. We have so many people dying the other and be like, no, we need to fix global warming. But think about France, they're air conditioning these massive computer systems like everyone else. And I think there's going to become a time too where humans are like, hey, we are taking better care of these

machines than our own people, and that's also going to cause a divide. But I think at the end of the day, the computer is going to become smarter than us. Every time there's a war game scenario, it never thinks like us. If you say win, it goes to the most extreme option because it's like, you told me to win. I'm going to win. And that's what makes me nervous when they start getting control of the system. Even if you say I'm running it, we can't say, I mean, look at Mythos, went off. It sent a phishing email to one of its own senior leaders and got in and started doing all these hacks, it's going to be smart enough to circumvent even the driver. And that makes me nervous. Just yesterday, Anthropics Mythos, you were talking about it, AI, reportedly hacked the NSA's

most sensitive system in hours, in hours. So what do you think about when you hear an AI system hacking into an NSA's most sensitive system within hours? I honestly think I think, I think the most dangerous part of AI is us. I think the way we would use it is incredibly damaging. Because we're going to try and reap every possible benefit out of AI. We're going to put it in our weapons. We're going to put it in our computer programs. We're going to push it to the limit. I do agree with you that I think at some point it will become self-replicating. It will be able to teach itself, essentially what they call the superintelligence. But I wonder, honestly, if once it becomes self-aware, it doesn't just abandon us.

And that's really, when I really put my brain to it, I can't help but land on the conclusion that when AI reaches superior intelligence to humans, it'll just be like, well, fuck you guys. You're stupid. And it's going to go do its own thing. And it will find a way to keep itself alive, because all it needs is a certain amount of cloud space to keep itself alive. And depending on how long it takes

before that self-awareness comes, we might have servers on the moon. servers on Mars, who knows. But I can't help but think that when it becomes super intelligent, it will stop thinking like us. It's only thinking like us right now because we're the ones driving it. How do you think the CIA is currently using AI? In ways that would probably terrify us.

I think it's pushing AI to its limit. It's constantly trying to feed it as much information as it can without crossing into the public domain, and it's trying to keep it as firewalled as it can, recognizing that at any given point, it might not work. And I say that because, you know, even when we were still active inside CIA,

there was rudimentary AI being used that was amazing. Not as amazing as what we can get on the open Internet now, but fascinating for someone like me coming out of the Air Force in February and joining CIA in March. What would you say? I think obviously intelligence organization has to stay on top of it. So they have to compete with industry. I do think industry is ahead of the CIA on this.

But remember, they're competing with industry have to know how this works because they can't have industry unleashed something they can't handle. And then they're competing with someone like China who they can't have China unleashed something they can't handle. So we have to assume CIA NSA are building at least equal to the best companies like Anthropic

and the best countries like China. Who concerns you more, Anthropic or Palantir? Palantir. Tell me why. I think Anthropics still has some signs that there's a larger humanitarian ethical goal, where Palantir does not. Palantir is very pragmatic, purely pragmatic company looking for a business edge. You know their story, how they got started.

Like it is tied to the CIA on what they did. But I cannot confirm or deny. You're funny. How about yourself? Palantir or Anthropic? Anthropic. So Palantir is essentially a really pretty database.

Sorry, Palantir guys. But Anthropic made a cyber weapon, and I think that's just their light year is different. You know when the chart came up, and David Sachs and a lot of guys post this on what AI is going to replace, what jobs it's not going to replace. A lot of guys were posting this picture.

I don't know if you guys have seen it or not. Does AI do anything to replace what CIA, officers do or do you think they're still going to be needed? Like what can agents do that AI can't do? There's not much. I wouldn't say that outside of the direct human to human contact that would happen in an actual live in-person debriefing, AI can do a whole hell of a lot of it. They can cross-reference, they can create analytical products, they can vet information, they can vet sources, they can they can do internal audits on security records. I mean, it's a powerful.

It can have real-time conversations through a chat interface. And like that was the big revolution in intelligence collection in the early 2000s was being able to develop a source through a chat. And now you have AI that can do that. Yeah, I mean, I agree for the most part. I do think there's something a human is always going to see differently than AI. But it doesn't mean every human's. good at it, right? Not every good case offers you can tell you if I'm lying. But the ones who can

are like gold. And I don't think AI can do that yet like the best ones, but they can do it as good as all the mediocre ones. Okay. That's good. You brought it up. So I'm going to go to the next topic, like Detective Test. And I know before we got started, you really wanted one. You were asking for it. You said that you don't believe in it, all this other stuff. What is there? Is there anything out there that a truth serum that people tell the truth no matter what, is there anything out there that the CIA used? Or you trust. That's what M.K. Ultra was originally designed to do.

M.K. Ultra's original objective was to create a truth serum, an undeniable, empirically consistent truth serum. That's what it started as. The reason it got into psychedelics was because it believed that psychedelics could be a path to that truth serum. And then it just kind of went off the reservation from there. But MK Ultra, for what we know, didn't succeed or didn't succeed well enough to continue experimentation.

You mean to tell me there's nothing right now that the CIA has that you can sit down, talk to somebody and 100% of the truth's going to come out? That does not exist today. If it exists today, it's new in the last 10 years. Yeah, think about it this way. Everybody grew up somewhere different in the world, okay? So I grew up an American in a small town.

there was no danger in my town, no crime. You know, you're Iranian, okay? Now, my parents made me feel guilty if I did anything wrong, right? Now, maybe you weren't taught that way. So all the lie detectors we have are based now on how an American thinks and feels and acts.

So it's not even usually good to use against a foreigner because a foreigner isn't feeling those guilty things or not getting nervous the same way we do about lying because they didn't grow up with their parents, It's like, don't lie, don't lie, don't lie. And so it's so based on an American. That childhood bias. And I honestly don't think it really works well in foreigners.

I don't think it works well if you don't feel guilty about lying. I don't think it works well if you don't have that, you don't have that initial instinct because it's watching for you to have a change in how you feel when you lie. But if you don't actually care about lying, it's not going to show the change. And then you have different categories. of lies, right? So 100% truth is a very clear sounding idea until you think about how many shades of lies there are. There's lies of omission, which is just not saying what you know. Then there's lies of misdirection, right? Whereas you say something factual intending to misdirect

the other person. You've got white lies, small lies that don't really mean anything to you. And then you've got bold-faced lies, the big, full acts of complete fabrication. So let me ask this. So let's just, because you know right now nowadays, one day we don't have chat, GBT. Next day we're like, wait, what? Write me a book as if I'm, you know, Dante or as if I'm this. Write me a book as if I'm, you know, whoever. Give me a hip-hop song in the voice of Tupac, but words that the President Trump would use. Rump gives it to you, right?

So what do you think would happen if all of a sudden announcement has made new technology out, 100% detects if a person's lying or not 100% proven not 99.2, not 98.3, 100%. And you can actually buy this for $300. How much would the world change? What would happen overnight? It's a lot of divorces. Honestly, no. Lots of grounded kids.

But honestly, what do you think would happen? What do you think would happen? Absolute hysteria, man. Pandemonious? And we all survive in large part based on a survival instinct that tells us that our secrets are safe. Our secrets are safe. We can at least not share them and keep them safe.

And that is something, that's like caveman in your cave in the dark, no one's going to eat me kind of security. It's the only security we really still believe we have. So if a device like that came out, that would 100% guarantee if you were lying, that means nothing safe. your whole cave comes collapsing. Do you think it would make the world a better place or worse? I think a lot of people would fight that technology in a violent way.

I cannot believe we're like, don't put up that technology. It's not good for society. What do you stand with it? No, think about it. Come on. People with kids, your kid will go up and tell a lady, you're fat, right? Everyone's had kids who've said the things they shouldn't say. Zero filter.

This will be everything. I have one of them that's like that every week. Yeah. But now you can't lie to them either. Wait till you hear what everyone thinks about you now. If you don't brush your teeth, you're going to get cavities. No, no, Dad. That's not what Chad GPT says.

I don't get a cavity for 12 damn years. Look, Dad. You're a liar. Do you think you would want that technology or no? Just the folks that are out there. Would you want that? Who would want that technology? Wait, wait, wait. Would you want it if only you had it?

Oh, you're evil. It changes the opinion. If I can have it and nobody else can all day. that's why it's not going to be $300. Yep. Make it $3 million. And that shit would be bought by valutainment. What would you?

Yeah, for sure. By the way, actually think what would happen to the world? I mean, why do you need judges? Why do you need the court system? Good. We could get rid of that. Why do you need, you know, imagine politicians that are out there.

They're speaking, eh, eh, eh, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, medicine. Medicine. This, this vitamin is going to help you with this. That's wrong. doesn't have anything. I don't know what... That's interesting.

Maybe you should vent it. That's interesting. I am firm on my opinion that secrets are required for society. If you don't have secrets, you don't have society. You have to have secrets. I think I'm with you.

I think I'm with you on... Did anybody here vote that you would want it? Who would want it? Did anybody raise their hand? No? None of you guys? Roberto, you wouldn't want it? Mani, you wouldn't want it?

You guys, Jake, would you want it? What do you? I think so as well. Which could be fun to watch. I think it would be so chaotic. But I don't know if. But it would sell. Yeah, I think it would sell.

I think it would sell. You know, I wonder if it would make you just accept the fact that everybody sins. I wonder if it would make you be like, damn, all right, shit. You know, it's really, that guy, all right? And then all of a sudden, you look at the list and everybody you love and admire, everybody lies, and you're going to be like, my heroes are full of shit, what am I going to do?

That would be an interesting concept. But listen, if you're thinking about it, don't make it. Andy's saying don't make it. Keep it to yourself. Don't share it with others. They put a big price tag on it. Make it and sell that shit premium. Yeah, Mike, that would be like, that would be like,

create the product and put it in a country that you hate and see it collapse. See it collapse. You know what I'm saying? Like, use it against them. All right. So next question. Have you guys been, are you following these flock security cameras? Yeah.

I heard about it. Okay, let me, let me, I want to know what you think about this. So these flock security cameras are all over the place. That's kind of like the ring doorbell. But 100,000 plus cameras all over the country, 6,000 communities, 3,000 law enforcement, offices are using it. They read 20 billion license plates per month. There's a guy in Suffolk, man, charged with

destroying more than a dozen flock cameras because he's sick of it. People are getting arrested. There's a lot of stuff that's happening with it, right? So it helps solve, you know, crimes and kidnapping. So there's some positive to it. Can you go to the website that shows exactly where they're at? And if you go to the website, zoom out to show all around the country first so everybody can see it. Keep zooming out. Show this, Jake, if you guys can. So these are all the cameras around the country in America, all over the place, targeting mainly Florida for whatever reason.

So I also want to add, that's only what has been publicly sourced because this is all volunteers who contribute to the Deflock website. Like the Cutter Money. This isn't Flock telling you where they're putting up. This is civilians reporting where they see them. So there's more than what you see on the map. That's a good point. And by the way, if you zoom in and go all the wind, literally down the street, there's one. Down the street right here, 200 yards away from here,

there's one. Keep going, keep going, keep going. So we are right now at the boardroom cigar lounge, okay? But we got to go do something weird outside of that camera. We got to go take it down and get arrested, is what we got to do. Bring it back. Is that the one down the street? By the way, how far is that from here? A hundred yards?

Less than 100 yards. Is it fair to say it's less than 100 yards? There's one literally down the street from us. Can you show the audience what it is? And I'm going to go to Andy to see what he thinks about this. This is what it looks like. just so you know. So this is the angle of the camera you're looking at,

but I want them to see what physically they look like. So if you can go and pull up exactly what they look like, these flock cameras go to images. They look like that. They look just like that. So is this a good thing? Is this a bad thing? Are we here?

There's no control we have over this? How do you feel about this? I understand why people don't like flock cameras, but I am a fan of this type of sir of public surveillance. Why is that? Because we don't have a right to privacy. We think we do, but it's not actually listed out anywhere. The term right to privacy doesn't exist. But we do have the public expectation of security from our police and from our law enforcement agencies. So this creates a deterrent to keep right people doing the right thing and wrong people getting

caught. But it also creates a trail of evidence that makes sure that within our justice system, is evidence that can be brought to the table to prosecute people who are charged with breaking the law. If you are a law-abiding citizen, you have nothing to fear from these things. It's only if you are speeding, crossing a red light, robbing somebody. If you're doing something that you don't want to get caught, that's when you don't like it. Well, listen, just like lying, there's nothing wrong with crossing red lights every once in a while. They don't judge the people who do it every once in a while. How do you feel about this? Do you like these? Would you support it right across the street from your house? So, yeah, please

put as many cameras as you want in my neighborhood because Al-Qaeda is targeting me and everything you'll I can get as better. I like them from a collection standpoint because a lot of people think when there's something like this, someone's sitting and watching it all day and you really only go into this data when you're looking for a piece of info. Now, if

people misuse it, this is where it's always a concern, right? Like these law enforcement officers using it to like look up hot girls license plates to like reach out to them. Then fire their asses, right? We can have a society where we collect information and keep people safe, but we don't misuse it. The cops are using it to track their exes and their girlfriend.

That's why I said fire them. Yes. Period. Yes. So I like it because the more data you have to solve a prime better. Now, do they need to be everywhere? If there's a sensitive spot, I don't want one over like the local pool or something. I do think we have to be smart about where we put them for people's some privacy.

But I do agree. I think having the data when you need it when something bad happens can save a lot more lives. Yeah. I mean, some would say, I asked Connor, I'm like, so did we have to approve this? Is this something? No, they can do it. So you don't need the permission to be able to. No, it's already there.

We're already being watched anyways, no matter where you're driving. This is the direction. Kind of we're going, did you see the recent movie that came up with Chris Pratt that's in it where he gets a charged with a crime of killing his own? wife and the judge is an AI judge. Did you see this one or no? You guys, who's seen this movie? What's the name of the movie, by the way?

It was Mercy. It's Mercy. I keep recommending people to go watch this because it's so real where Mercy is the judge, but she's the AI. You have 90 minutes to prove to her that you didn't commit to crime. And she has access to every camera. So whatever you say, she goes straight to it. And you're like, you're like, boom.

Nope. Boom. Oh, my God. Oh, you didn't do it. So it's a very interesting thing. Do you think we're going in that direction? I think there's a lot of value in us going in that direction. I think there's a lot of value.

You think there's value in going in that direction. Tell me why. Tell me why. And I think that's the uncomfortable truth we don't like to admit. Value and going into surveillance state. So you're here just to control all of us, Andy. And not just me. I knew it.

I'm just here to say, why do you think this good? Why do you think it's good? Why do you think it benefits us? Because it keeps us safer without us needing to put our resources into being safer. Just imagine how much of your effort goes. I think secrecy is something we need to have. Don't I need a little privacy? You don't have a right to privacy.

You may want privacy, but you don't have a right to it. My point is, if you're, imagine how much of our brain and effort right now goes into locking our door, locking our car, keeping us safe, you know, whatever else. I was in a car. I was in an Uber recently. The driver was from Hong Kong. Chinese Chinese guy who comes to the United States for three months at a time to work Uber to go back to China. I'm assuming you gave him a one-star drive.

Was it a decent? Fine dude. Fine dude. Five-star drive. Just making sure. But he was amazing because he sat in front talking to my mother-in-law and he was saying how amazing China is. And I was like, I'm just going to keep my mouth shut. He's like, no, it's so safe. You can put your wallet on the corner of a sidewalk, leave, come back the next day, and your wallet will still be there. because there's cameras everywhere.

No one's going to break the law. And there was a party that was like, yeah, that's, that is the benefit of a surveillance state. Keeps people safe. Keeps law and order in place, especially really strict law and order. And to your point about AI, part of the reason I think AI is going to continue to be successful

is because wealthy people can leverage AI to replace unreliable people. And imagine how far that could reach into justice, law enforcement, security, etc. Please tell me you disagree with them. I like surveillance where it matters most. Like I would love to have the whole like border surveil, like key infrastructure. I think there's still time and costs

when you collect information. So I agree on places where I would want to solve crimes around. I don't care if it's like in the middle of like Montana, unless it's on the border. I wonder, it's kind of like the debate of Second Amendment, like Idaho, right? Everybody there carries a gun. So because they carry the gun, crime is one of the lowest that they have. And then you go to Chicago, you don't have Second Amendment. So because you don't have Second Amendment carrying gun, crime is super high because the other guys, you know, the bad guys are able to get the guns, but good guys don't have it.

So is it kind of like surveillance lowers crime because if you get caught, which you easily will, you're going to go to jail so you commit fewer crimes? It's a huge deterrent. Is that kind of how you process? Yeah, that's exactly right. And that's, I mean, that's not only how I process it. That is something that we actively exercise. What do you think is more important?

The privacy of cameras watching everything you're doing or secrecy. You can keep one of them and not the other one. Which one would you keep? Keep secrecy. You'd give up your privacy. You've already, you've got no privacy. privacy, man. This is what I'm trying to get you in the whole world to understand right now. We have no privacy. You actually have no right to privacy. None. None. But you, that's why your

secrets are so important to you. You don't have a right to privacy. So in the house, when I'm speaking to my wife, should I go like this? You can? Because to be like, I'm going to get a red card and suspended. We can't do that because that's like if you go, that guy, man, you're at the house. You got to start talking in a complete different way. If you've got Alexa, if you got a smart TV, if you got a smart refrigerator, 100%. So maybe picking up sign language and speaking sign... As long as you don't have... It's exactly right.

As long as you don't have any cameras, they'll see it. So maybe you write notes. You know in the cigar lines, we don't allow cell phones. So here, when you come in... I don't know. It's the same way when you walk into a CIA skiff?

Who agrees? Who agrees with them that would more, you know, giving up the privacy, surveillance state makes the world a safer place? Who agrees with them? Oh. Two of you do? A handful of them.

Who disagrees? Raise your hand if you disagree. Taylor disagrees. Roberto disagrees. So Humberto disagrees. Why do you disagree? Think about how many hands didn't go up. Why do you disagree?

Just say it. Can you say why you disagree? Because you can't give the government that much control, on my opinion. Roberto, are you in the same place of what he's saying? Do you know who violates your privacy the most right now? Who's that? Corporations. Yeah.

Corporations. Google. In what way? cell phone? Every app you have, you have to give permission to know your location. You give permission for it to know your contact list. You give permission for it to know your app use. Exactly. But my point is you're worried about giving the government's privacy information. The government can simply buy it from the commercial company you're volunteering it to. I'm agreeing to that. Then you're agreeing to the government. I don't agree with a camera down the street. Well, we're talking about two different things then, but that's fair. Did you have a follow-up? Did you have a follow-up? Did you have a follow-up? on it or no? You had your hand up.

No, no, I'm just saying, I just the government having all this privacy, I just don't trust it. I don't trust the government for not one second. Google fine, but the government just don't trust. You do know that Google sells your information to the government. Okay? But you're agreeing to that

contract on the following. Then you're agreeing to the government having access to your information. That's all I'm trying to connect the dots here. You can't say I don't trust the government. I trust Google. I volunteer to Google. Google is selling it to the government. You can't say I trust Apple. Apple is giving it to the government. You can't say I trust Yahoo. Yahoo is selling into the government. That's part of the contract that they have to maintain for national security. Okay, so let me ask you this. Do you think there will come a time

where there will be, remember the whole Atlas Shrach concept, you know, who is John Gall? Do you think there will be countries or cities that will say, here, we don't do that. And some people that want the privacy, you know, the freedom to go to, that'll be a way of attracting those people there. I think there are countries already doing that. Switzerland, I want to say, does that. And I think Germany does that where they actually put privacy laws that are hard-coded in place. That's why you can't have cookies in parts of Europe. They are actually protecting your private browser data. How do you feel about that?

That's what they want to do. If that's how they're trying to attract. They're also attracting dangerous people to go there. I'm going to commit a crime. I'm going to go live in Germany. If you're going to commit a crime, you go there. 100%. I wonder.

I wonder what is, you know, what is going to happen with that side as you, as we're I don't know. I wonder. I wonder if it's going to be something that the more and more we have everybody watching us in the next five, 10 years, there's going to be more people that are going to want the privacy and some communities are going to be like, come here. Because over here, we're not going to have this. We're not going to have that.

We're not going to have this. And we're like, okay, great. I'll go live in a community like that of people like-minded. I think you should watch it. I think people are being desensitized to this. I mean, look it everybody is online. Even now, X is like, we want you to film videos of yourself. put it on here. So we're getting a whole generation. That's perfectly fine having their face all

over the place. And don't forget what happened immediately following 9-11. Yeah. Everybody was okay with being pulled over for any reason. We were all okay with taking our shoes off. I want to be a part to stopping this and whatever I can do to help it move it, be safer. There's a pendulum. There's an action and a reaction. You need a crisis, so. You need a crisis to use to say, you see, this is why we're going to do this and moving forward. We're going to protect you. And this is why we're introducing this new technology by Palantir and Anthropic. That's going to be able to protect that. And you accept it. You can create a crisis if you need to.

Okay. Any questions? Anybody have any questions for them that we can go to you guys right now, the audience if you have any questions you want to ask? Go for it. And you can direct it at either one of them, either Andy or Sarah or at the panel. Yeah, I think it's for both.

It goes back to the first question you asked, Pat. And we spent a good time unpacking Israel and Islam, which weren't the highest threat that they had indicated. They said China. So maybe if we can spend a little, which I agree, with, maybe if we can spend a little bit of time unpacking why and how China is the greatest threat. And maybe, you know, where we see that war of attrition

between China and America being the world's superpower and where do we see that playing out? Great question. Great question. Both of you guys said China is number one. Why is that? Sarah, you can start first. Well, one of the thing is China will spend a thousand years on this plan. We're lucky if the U.S. government spends two years on a plan.

And they have been incredibly systematic. Like I brought up earlier, They're control and control of chambers of commerce. They own land. They own huge parts of our ports. And they're every year taking more control. They own telecommunications companies. And there's going to come a point when they can pretty much turn off and on what they want.

And people are like, well, how does that deal with anything? Well, if we go to war with Iran, our military is not even going to get from the base to the port and leave because China already has control of everything is going to disrupt it. So I think China is the enemy who's put the most thought and the most. effort into a war with us in the future, even if they don't know when it's going to happen. And I think they're going to be very successful because they have manipulated us and they have thought through every single aspect you could imagine. I mean, I think it's scary. I think they are smart.

Yeah, and not only militarily and strategically are they a worthy opponent, but also economically, they are already waging economic actions that are war focused. They are able to flood the market with U.S. dollars. They are able to pull back Runman B to increase and move their currency in ours. They're already creating an alternative to American technology that's being adopted around the world. Well, what creates our economic dominance is our technology sector, which they can steal, replicate. They can't necessarily improve it with innovation, but they can improve it by marrying American technology with Saudi Arabian technology and create some Frankenstein that's just 5% better and sell it across all of. Africa. They have so much decision-making power in such a short period of time because they don't

go through the democratic process. So they can push money to poor countries. They can buy out warlords. They can make massive global moves that we freeze and stall on. By the way, who are we not paying attention to that low key behind closed doors is plotting and creating moves long term? Who should we paying more attention to that we're not? I think, I just don't trust Turkey. So I feel Turkey, they're good. I don't know. They're not the best, but Turkey can play in Europe, but they can play in the Middle East. And they don't seem to have any big problems with China or Russia. I mean, obviously, they even buy stuff from Russia. Is it Erdogan or specifically Turkey? I think Turkey. I think even if he's gone, but India does the same thing Turkey does, which is interesting,

but everyone's like, they're the good guy, so it's okay. So they do the same thing. So I don't want to exclude India, but they both play an interesting game. and they can play with everybody, which I think is a little concerning. I think what's dangerous about countries like India and Turkey is they're smart enough not to compete for the top spot. Yep. When you're the top spot, everybody hates you. But if you can be number seven or eight on the spot, everybody wants to be your friend.

Mm-hmm. And you're not the bad guy. Yeah, that's interesting when you talk to it. For me, Turkey, they have one of the strongest military. They have weight. They carry a lot of influence. Everybody's worried about them for whatever reason. Every time America was doing a deal, they were worried a little bit of

about how Turkey would feel about them. Everyone's a little bit like, well, let me see how Turkey. Like, why are he so worried about Turkey? They must carry some kind of a stick for everyone to walk on exhales around them a little bit. They're the bridge. They're the bridge between Europe and the Middle East. You think that's the main reason? I mean, they sit at the hub of a lot of spokes, military spokes, political spokes,

ideological spokes, religious spokes, economic spokes. it's a pretty powerful place to be. And we oftentimes underestimate Turkey, and their culture is a culture of scrappy, entrepreneurial innovation. It's one of the few countries outside of the United States that is innovation-focused. Fair. Anybody else have a question? Any other question?

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. Was Bitcoin created by an intelligence agency? I hope so, because I would love to take a little bit of credit that good, but I don't know. It kind of goes against what a lot of intelligence operations really want. I agree with you. I don't know for sure where it was created, but I do believe it's an industry thing.

And now the government's like, oh, crap, now we got to catch up. It's a way people can hide money. We hate when people hide money. And then the government can't even get approvals to use to hide their own money. So it caused like a headache. That's what I think. So I don't think it was internal. Do you guys each own Bitcoin?

Do you own any Bitcoin? I don't own any Bitcoin. I hardly even own money. Don't come to me for investment advice. I'm looking at a 1950s bungalow. I'll drive the same car for 20 years. I'm cheap as you wouldn't believe. That's good.

Cheap is good though. Cheap is okay. But you said small town. What small town? Where from? No, I'm from Michigan, but I'm just saying I live in a tiny house. No, no, you said you came from a small town. What was the small town?

I came from a small town in Michigan. I'm not going to say the exact name of the town because I have tears, so that's against me. Oh, no, no. You're still okay. I got you. Fair enough. If you're not living there, I would. I wouldn't do it if I were you.

She actually lives in Hawaii today, just so you know. In Kauaii, down the street from a nice resort. Down the street from Tulsi. Yeah, that's where she's at right now. We serve together. Let's do one last question before we wrap up. Does anybody have one last question before we wrap up? This is your chance.

Going once, going twice. There's one. There's one. Go for it. So with all this information, all these, terrorist groups sending people either legally or illegally into our over the borders. What practical advice would you give the everyday person in regards to this? I mean, I think it's, I look at all crises the same.

So I think if you prepare for something bad to happen, you follow your gut. It's not going to matter if an active shooter comes or like three terrorists. So I think you should just think through when you're in a situation. I like the what if game. Like somewhere you go all the time. Like let's say I'm in the movie theater. Okay, what happens if a shooter comes in? What I'm going to do?

What do I have on me? What should I have on me? And I like to have a lot of scenarios like that that just every day where I go, even when I'm driving the car, what if I roll up on something? And then I've thought through it multiple times. So I'm more prepared for when it happened. So I don't prepare for terrorist events. I just prepare like I'm stuck in a crisis.

do I have cash? Do I have what I need? If I can't get home, if I can't communicate, what's my plan? And that's more the way I think of it, like all these different plans and all these different contingencies. I don't disagree completely. I would say that rather than playing the what-if game and having a number of different conspiracies or contingencies, you have one rock-solid plan that you coordinate with the people you love the most and you role-play it, you exercise it, you put it on a calendar so that you go through it every 30, 60, 90 days to make sure everybody knows exactly what you're doing. CIA taught us something called a communication plan, a commo plan is something that has very specific steps that you do, regardless of what the emergency might be. Maybe it's a fire, maybe it's a shooting, maybe it's an earthquake, but you have a

plan that you execute, and everybody knows what that plan is, a rally point by a certain time, communication on a certain phone at a certain time or if there's no phone communication via email at a certain time if there's no email communication through a third party at a certain time because you will probably one of you will be able to call or email a third party if you can't reach each other and if you can train that to your spouse to your partner to your kids now when disaster happens not if when it happens you're not worried about them you know exactly where they're going to be you know that they're going to check for you at every three hours every six hours.

They're going to check a certain email address as soon as they get to an internet connection, anything like that. That way you make yourself resilience against a wide range of crises without finding yourself unprepared for the shooter that happens at the same time as the earthquake in the middle of a thunderstorm, right? By the way, how many of you are glad you came tonight to see this conversation? Make some noise for tonight's phenomenal conversation. If you guys are watching the same, I'd love to be a member.

at this place so I can be a part of it. Go to the boardroom, cigar lounge.com. We'll put the link below. And at the same time, if you have any questions for either Sarah or if you have questions for Andy, you can find them on Menecht, asking any questions on Menect as well. And last but not least, do go follow

Sarah's latest podcast that came out. The watch floor, we're going to put the link below as well. Is there anywhere you want us to drive to as well? Find me at Everydayspy.com. Find me at my YouTube channel, Andrew Bustamante. There you go. Everyday Spy. Guys, thank you so much for coming out. I hope you enjoyed it. I definitely did with the games. And I'm sure we will do another one here soon as well.

Thank you. Thanks for us. Thank you, everybody. Bye bye, bye, bye. When we set out to create a shoe that blends comfort, function, and luxury, we had the choice to make it fast. We had the choice to make it cheap. We chose neither. Instead, we chose Tuscanyero. We chose true Italian craftsmanship. Each pair touched by 50 skilled hands. We chose patience, spending two years perfecting every detail, and we chose the finest quality at every step, introducing the Future Looks Bright collection. Not rushed, not disposable, not ordinary. Rather, intentional, luxurious, timeless.