The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - How The CIA Spreads CHAOS & WAR Around The World: Ex CIA Spy Exposes The American Deep State

Episode Date: August 11, 2024

Andrew Bustamante is a well known retired CIA spy. He gives us insight on how the CIA operates from an insiders perspective. He breaks down how intelligence is collected both inside and outside the boundaries of international law. Andy and Johnny have some heated debates over the concept of "The Deep State", international tensions, and the ethics of US involvement around the world. Go Support Andrew! Website: https://everydayspy.com Podcast: @EverydaySpyPodcast This episode is #sponsored by MOOD. Head over to https://mood.com/ and use promo code CONNECT at checkout to get 20% OFF your first order PLUS a FREE 5 count pack of gummies! Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The United States is a corrupt country. Don't doubt for a second that we're not a corrupt country. CIA is an espionage intelligence gathering tool. Espionage is illegal everywhere. So CIA, the carve out for us, is being able to collect foreign intelligence secrets through clandestine means, which means stealing secrets. We can steal secrets from anywhere in the world. It's a strategic imperative that the United States remain the only global superpower.

That's the whole U.S. secret sauce. We are the bully. My guest today is one of the most sought after and controversial figures on the internet. His name is Andrew Bustamante, a former CIA spy. And he went on missions all over the world doing deep undercover work in the CIA for nearly 20 years. He's highly intelligent, skilled at wet work, espionage, and mind games, making him a perfect fit for the CIA. But is he honest? That's what I had him on the podcast to figure out.

While we didn't agree on everything, I did get him to admit. admit that the Central Intelligence Agency is in fact a criminal organization that routinely violates international law and commits criminal acts, including the kidnapping and extradition of foreign drug lords like Mayo Zambata, as well as executing heads of state and, of course, enacting coups and overthrowing governments all over the world. I also asked him his thoughts on the deep state and the possibility that the CIA or another three-letter government agency might try and assassinate Donald Trump. his answer did not age well.

He had some very interesting and chilling things to say about the downfall of the American Empire, the rise of China as a superpower, the effects this will have on the American public, and the potential for a nuclear World War III with Russia. This might be the most important episode you've ever heard on this podcast. Andy talks about why he's leaving the United States until the heat blows over and what you can do to prepare and hedge against the possibility of severe, chaos and violence that will likely envelop the United States as we get closer to the election. Be sure to check out the Patreon episode with Andy, where he reveals his fallout with the CIA,

as well as explains what he's doing now with everyday spy, his personal coaching business. Also, he's got a podcast of the same name that you can check out on his channel, Andrew Bustamante. You are going to love this episode. It gets heated at times, but I am proud to call Andy a friend. He blew us away. Without further ado, I guess. give you Andrew Bustamante right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. I'm leaving the U.S. because the direction that the U.S. is going does not maximize the opportunities for my children. When the rest of the world looks at us and they see democracy doesn't work, guess what their next best alternative is? Authoritarianism. Russia's on the rise,

China's on the rise, North Korea is getting independent. Iran's on the rise. The America I was willing to die for at CIA is not the America that existed in. That's when I see light behind me, start the flash. And I didn't even think. I just hit it. I was driving like my life depended on. And then I parked the car, popped out, closed the door, and I started running. And he pulls out a burner, shank, it's like six inches. And then he passes it to me. And he goes, here, that's yours. Don't ever leave the cell block without this. He was the reason I made it out of that place alive. Well, I guess the first obvious question when I look at you, you know, internet famous, running around on every big podcast,

spilling the secrets of the CIA is, are you allowed to be talking about the most secret of organization in the world? It's so, I mean, is that what you, do you want to talk about it or do you want to do you live? Oh, no, we're going to realize, baby. Oh, we're alive.

Yeah, we just go into it. Realize that, my man. All right. Well, I mean, a big thing to understand is that while CIA may be a secret organization, that doesn't mean everything inside CIA is secret. So as an example, let's just say CIA has 10,000

staff. Of those 10,000 staff, that breaks into overt and covert cadre. Overt means publicly acknowledged CIA employees. You can work for CIA. You can get a paycheck from CIA, file your taxes to CIA, put down your work employment history at CIA. So about 8,000 people, of the 10,000, get to do that. And then the 2,000 that are covert, those are the ones that it's more complicated for it, right? So if you just look at it that way, 80% of what happens there is not secret. It's just protected. So a lot of what I talk about is on the skirts of what's secret to what's protected or what's secret to what's not secret. But what's important is that, I mean, a lot of what CIA has done in the past is called overclassify. And then that has turned into a

culture of not sharing things that are totally safe to share. And it just, that's really the kind of the secret sauce for me is sharing the things that don't do damage to the United States, Fortunately, those things that were never secret, but were always kept secret, now they get a chance to come to light. And let's face it, most of the secrets of the CIA that were buried and so corrupt, you know, Oliver North is a perfect example and what happened in the 80s. It all comes out eventually, you know, do you have classified information about the United States? Like, were you given access to things where you were like, okay, I could never talk about that. Yeah, absolutely. And when you leave CIA, when you're part of that covert cadre, even some of the overt cadre still get those secrets.

You go through a very detailed debriefing process where they tell you this amount of information, this content is something that you can share. This other content is something that you might be able to share if you clear it with us first. And then here's a bucket that you can never talk about ever. And then there's like a fourth bucket where it's like if you talk about anything in this. bucket we're going to come after you with criminal charges. So that's kind of generically the four buckets that you end up leaving with. And for the most part, we're all so afraid of criminal charges. We don't talk about any of it. Whereas for me, it's just important to me because I learned so much at CIA from the first two areas. I learned so much that changed. It changed how I thought about

myself. It changed how I thought about people. It changed how I thought about business and career. I was like, for me, I was like, there's a business here. There's something to be done here that can improve people's lives. It can improve the economic outlook of the United States. And then it just happened to be that when I launched our business, it also became this period of American history where people doubted the government. People had second thoughts about their economic outlook and COVID hit and economic recession hit. And it just turned into be like a good, bad news story. Yeah, yeah.

Well, you've certainly, just through your speaking on the internet, changed the face of the CIA because, I mean, you look like a soccer coach in Brazil. You know what I mean? You look like you juggle a soccer ball shirtless, you know, on the beaches of Rio. We all picture the CIA as Sean Connery or MI6, you know. So as the demographics are changing, are they like just like every government organization? Are they trying to hire more women and people of color, people that look different? So there's kind of a hard divide at CIA. You got to think of a pre-9-11 CIA

and a post-9-11 CIA. Pre-9-11 CIA officers have never looked like Sean Connery. Never. That's what media wants you to think they look like because, to be totally frank, who wants to believe in a fat, white hero? Right. Nobody wants to believe in a fat white hero.

That's why you never saw, like, that's why the fat white comedians very rarely ever play a heroic character, right? pre 9-11, that was your stereotypical CIA officer, was an overweight, well-educated, white man. It's just the way it worked. Because they were largely sitting behind desks. They were largely coming from Ivy League institutions

where they mastered some sort of academic skill instead of an athletic skill. That was what they looked like. And then 9-11 happened. Once 9-11 happened, essentially, the failure for CIA and FBI to prevent September 11th, resulted in a huge overhaul to the entire national security infrastructure. So the president got more involved in CIA.

The Congress got more involved in CIA. Demands and expectations and left and right limits were put on CIA that never existed before 9-11. And as a result of that, there was this huge hiring surge. And let's be honest, who were we fighting terrorists? What do I look like? So I was just one of many, many people who were hired because I looked like the enemy. Did you work in the Middle East? I can't confirm or deny where.

I worked specifically, but I will say that everywhere I worked, the way I looked, was a huge advantage. Okay, gotcha. So clearly you were covert, I assume. Right. I was part of the National Clandestine Service, which the term clandestine is the official government term for what TV and movies call. undercover or whatever else. Yeah. Now, the Navy SEALs, for example, the most trained killers, you know, the highest, the highest level of physical and mental capability of our military, of our national security, of our defense forces. Where does, where do covert CIA? How do you

guys fit into that. Like are you when say you got to go into you know, I don't know, do an extraction in pick a country, Libya, right? Is CIA involved in, you know, physical extraction like with the Navy SEALs or are you just providing intelligence? It's a great question actually. And, and I want to, I want to frame it correctly from the start. So I understand that most people think that the Navy SEALs are the best trained most capable killers in the United States. They're not. They're not. I would say there's two different levels above Navy SEALs.

The first most immediate layer above them is the Army Delta Rangers, Delta Force, that is so secret. They still don't really acknowledge that they exist, right? And these are people who are capable of doing everything the SEALs are capable of doing and doing everything that your clandestine services are capable of doing, all wrapped into one individual. And then you put five or six of those individuals together and you send them to the places where not only is there plausible deniability,

but there is essentially complete and total deniability. Right? So those are, and those people are amazing. So I understand why Navy SEALs have become popularized in media because you're allowed to talk about them, where you're not really allowed to talk about Delta. Right.

But anybody who really is deep into that culture of military and who served in uniform, we all know, like Delta is a whole different caliber. And then what's the top? And then I would say kind of adjacent to Delta becomes your CIA paramilitary. Because CIA has its own paramilitary organization that pulls the best seals, the best green berets, the best Delta Rangers, the best Marine Force recon, and then again trains them up to a CIA intelligence standard while also maintaining their tier one or upper level echelon military special operations train.

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Drink responsibly must be 21. Okay, so for us thick-headed people out there, basically they're badass motherfuckers. They can do wet work. They're fully trained to go into any part of the world. They can fuck up your body. They can fuck up your day and they can fuck up your mind. Yes.

Whereas your Navy SEAL typically can only really fuck up your day and fuck up your body. And I mean, I honestly, I know I'm going to piss a lot of seals off. because there are a lot of seals. Right. Just think about that, right? There's like six different teams. All of them have hundreds of different seals.

Like, there's a lot of seals out there. And they're, when you talk to them, if you've talked to them, if you haven't talked to them, you should 100% invite them on your show. It doesn't take long talking to a seal before you realize that they are just a highly trained human weapon. Right. There's not always, there's not a lot of depth to them. Right.

But when you get to like a Green Beret or a Delta trained operative, you're talking to a smart person, so scary because you realize for as smart and as kind as they seem, they're also lethal. Right. And that's, you start to get a humbling understanding of why we are the best, most powerful military in the world. And so you've got the intelligence of the central intelligence agency and the physical capability of a Delta Force or an ABC. Right. Exactly.

And to answer your question, your original question was like, you know, when an extraction happened? When an operation happens, how does it work? The formal term that we use is a joint team or a joint military operation, sometimes a joint strategic operation, but the word joint is the key word there. And it means that you bring in experts in multiple different disciplines,

and you use all of those experts simultaneously in an operation to master air land and sea, right? And then the fourth area is intelligence, right? So air land and sea and intelligence basically makes for a fulsome joint task, force that would essentially make it so that you would have an Intel operative who can keep up with the seals, like a paramilitary person, embedded with a Navy SEAL team that's executing an operation that's been fully built and planned by intelligence operators with airborne ISR, which is your surveillance and recon resources, and then some sort of littoral escape, which is a sea-based or river-based escape strategy, right? but now you have this incredible task force all coming together for one operation that might be an extraction of one or two people. And it's done professionally. It's done quickly. And it's done without discoverability.

Right. And so I assume that you were part of this paramilitary, this CIA. When I left CIA, I was in an office that was part of the paramilitary wing. That I can't acknowledge. Oh, I see. Okay. But you can't acknowledge whether you were on ground. Or, yeah, or like what role I had inside there. Okay. Okay. There's some pretty amazing people. I am not an amazing person. I'm a pretty normal dude. Like, I got a chance to work with some freaking incredible people who I hope are still there because it would make me very proud to know that they're still working and I get to brag about it. Hey, guys, this episode is sponsored by our longtime partner. Say it with me, mood. If you're a fan of the

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That's like understating it so much. But yet it seems since you've had, you know, I don't know how many interventions, right? whether that be, you know, helping topple governments through disinformation or, you know, if you take Chile in 1974, overthrowing Allende, it was a lot of just supplying weapons to people and bombs. They were bombing the embassy or the, excuse me, the presidential palace, right, to, you know, Vietnam. I'm sure the CIA was in there early in South Vietnam, you know, trying to whip up dissent against the communists, right, and for, the super corrupt government. And all of these, all of these interventions, really nothing has worked out. You see the conflagration that's happening in the world now. It's, in my opinion, because it's all fraying and it's all, we're becoming a multipolar world again. So it kind of makes me think, if you guys have the ability to go and kill Castro when he was alive or go and kill

the Ayatollah, you can get in and get out. And you could. probably be more affectual if you chose to do it. Is that correct? So there's a couple of things that are important for you to keep in mind. Because I appreciate your point of view. Your point of view is very clearly uninformed. Probably. Intentionally.

And that's what's so important. The American people are uninformed intentionally, which there's a term for that. We call that misinformation, right? Misinformation is information that isn't a lot. like disinformation. It isn't intentionally wrong. It's just incomplete or incorrect, right? So misinformation is an important tool that CIA uses that any secret intelligence service uses in the world. So to your exact example, right, there's all these examples of things that we've done wrong. Absolutely agree. Because every example of shit that we've done right, you don't get to know about.

You can't give us one example? I mean, like how in the few examples that have gone public, The bombings that get discovered and prevented. Right. Sure. The terrorists that get captured. The spies that get captured and put into jail. Of course. That happens every day.

Yeah. Right. Right. Those stories, they don't catch headlines. Right. They don't compete with the other news that's out there. So even the stuff that is disclosed, you guys don't care about. Yeah.

All the American people care about is the big, sexy failure story. Right. So the first thing to keep in mind is that all, All of your examples are true. Like, we have failed in all sorts of ridiculous schemes, right? Pre-9-11, trying to get Castro's beard to fall out of his face. Post-9-11, trying to prevent the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We fail all the time.

We failed in Afghanistan just a few years ago after 22 years of conflict, right? And it's because the success stories are not something that we talk about for lots of reasons and we can get to the strategic value of why we keep those secrets if you want to. But that's the first thing. And then the second thing to keep in mind is, could we be more? effective? Could we be more capable? Absolutely. But don't forget that CIA is a government organization. Let's list off some other government organizations. Of course. Right. The DMV. Right. When was the last time we had a good experience? The DMB. The IRS.

When was the last time the IRS was flawless? Right? And that's not even before you get into the government housing authority. You talk about like the Department of Education. It's still a federal bureaucratic engine where eight out of ten people are not. covert. So you've got all the same bureaucracy and all the same hurdles plus post 9-11. Like I said, you've got so much more meddling from Congress, from vice presidencies, from senators and Congress people and people running for office. Like it's just, it becomes a huge bureaucratic stew. If anything, they are less effective because they take fewer risks in the modern day. I see. Because there's so many more hurdles to go over. Well, you know, I like the, you know,

finding bin Laden and, yeah, stopping bombings, that's all good. That's like high-level police work. I think the rest of the world, though, it becomes a problem when you're trying to nation-build. Like, the CIA has been used as a tool, basically, of the hawks, the war-hawks, since the end of the Cold War. And now we find ourselves literally today as close to nuclear war, probably, as we were in 1962, right before the Cuban Missile Crisis. kicked off. So I guess what is your opinion? Do you think the CIA, because the world's splitting apart into three different polls, do you think the CIA should kind of be brought home just to a more of defensive, you know, America first? That's certainly where the body politics going, right?

It's going to like this populist, hey, we're not going to work. We don't want to, we don't want to metal in what's going on in the Middle East or Russia, we need to just fortify our own country and make sure that we're safe. Do you think the CIA should kind of reshift its focus that way because that's kind of where the world's going? So it's funny. It's funny that you think CIA would shift its focus, as if CIA was an independent organization. It's not. CIA falls under one of the three branches of government. It falls under the executive branch. So who's the chief executive? Yeah. The president. So how fucked up is CIA? it's as fucked up as the president is above it.

It doesn't get to choose its own course. So don't ever mistake the men and women who serve at CIA and the actions that CIA takes as being one in the same. The men and women at CIA take the action. That's dictated to them by the executive and the policy set by the executive branch of government. Which means when Trump is in office, they do what Trump says. When Biden is in office, they do what Biden says.

Because that's what a government servant is. Okay, so then the Russia Gate hoax scandal where they say that elements of the CIA were working to spread disinformation, I would call it, against Trump saying that he was a Russian spy. But this is while he was in office. So do you think that, what's your opinion on that? Is that a little too overblown as like a CIA hit job? So there's, well, there's multiple things happening, right? because you've got the United States, and the United States,

we have something called freedom of speech. People mistake what freedom of speech is. Freedom of speech means that you can speak out about your government without being held accountable to any kind of government overreach through the judicial system. It doesn't mean, like, if I say something bad about you, that's called slander.

You can take me to court, you can sue me, I pay you. There's no freedom of speech between people. Like, we mistakenly think that freedom of speech means we can say whatever the fuck we want, No, you can't. That's slander. That's covered by the court system. But when you say something bad about the government, it's a whole different rule.

Right. So when you have 10,000 people, again, just throwing out a number, 10,000 people at CIA, and 20 of them decide to raise their hand and say, well, the president's actually a Russian, whatever, sympathist. That's not CIA saying the president's a Russian sympathist. That's 20 individuals who happen to work for CIA putting their name on a whatever. It doesn't violate their contract. It doesn't violate their agreements.

Somewhere it might violate the, there's like a clause that we sign where we don't, we don't meddle in politics based on our position. So there's an actual enforceable rule in there that we sign contractually. But what ends up happening is the media gets a hold of 25 people at CIA who could be dumbasses. They could be frigging, for all we know, they could work in the transportation office or they could be like a senior leader on some important country desk. We have no idea who they are. What we know is that they work for CIA and they said the president can't be trusted. That's not the same thing as CIA

saying the president can't be trusted. But are there not high level? Certainly within the CIA, there's high level actors, executives that don't share, that act roguly, right? I don't even know if rogley is a word, that act rogue,

and that obviously don't involve most, you know, certainly not the, overt associates of the CIA, overt employees, and probably not most of the covert employees. It's really, I am shocked. I am shocked because you say things as if they are true when they're totally just, they're totally uninformed, right? You can't say surely there are rogue officers. Let's be logical about this for a second. How does somebody reach a senior position at CIA? There's only two ways, right? How does anybody in government reach a senior position? There's only two ways. You either spend enough time,

in government that you promote to that level or you're appointed and who appoints you. President. So if somebody at the senior level of CIA is there, it's because they've either learned how to play the game so well that they've promoted their way to the top or they were literally appointed by the executive who they work for. So why the fuck would anyone think there's a rogue element at the top of the CIA? There's no, there's no rogue element because if you worked your ass up there, acting in a rogue way, is going to get you kicked out and fired because nobody wants to work with you.

Because it's a organization that does not promote the elite. It's an organization that promotes the loyal. Right. Just like any government agency. So if anything, the higher you get, the less incentive you have to ever do anything other than the status quo. So it sounds like you don't really believe in the deep state. The deep state doesn't exist. The way that people talk about it, if anybody were to just do the mental exercise of how would you build a deep state, you'll find two things.

An organized deep state is too complicated and it goes against human nature. Does that mean there isn't some secret organization of people who are collaborating? No. It just means that they're not organized, right? Who is making 90% of the decisions for the United States? your senior company CEOs, like your wealthiest Americans. But that's not a deep state. That's not a group of people who are organizing together

to intentionally direct foreign policy and domestic policy. That's just a bunch of rich people who are working in their own rich people best interest, which is exactly what the forefathers intended for the United States. This idea that we were somehow built to be like a democratic test bed, like we were supposed to be some free country, that's not what the United States was born to do. The United States was born to be a land earning economically independent free zone away from the UK, away from Britain, away from England at the time.

That's what we were born to do. And we were supposed to be a non-interventionist country. That's foreign policy. That wasn't the forefathers, the forefathers most likely did not intend for us to be non-interventionist because guess how we won the fucking revolutionary war with intervention. What do you mean? The French are the reason we won our independence. They intervened. Like the French were critical to American independence.

And then from that point on, like the biggest question we had after we gained our independences, are we going to help France gain their independence? Right. And there's all sorts of shit that the forefathers, they participated in stuff in Mexico. They participated in stuff against Spain and France. Like, we were always involved in foreign affairs as long as those affairs benefited the U.S. economy. What I'm saying is the... So you have a very

Machiavellian worldview. Like this is, what you're saying is a, you're looking at the world, and you could be right, too. It's, I guess I'm an idealist, right? I'm like, there's got to be a way that we can all get along. There's no way we can all benefit from free trade.

Not that we can all be equal. We wouldn't want that. I'm not the furthest thing from a communist or a leftist or a leftist or collectivist. I abhor it. There's got to be a way that technology can move us beyond this jockeying for, like, power. So like there's got to be superpowers can maybe share power. And we're going to get into it. I, I, we're going to get into it.

Why is Iran? Why are Iran and Russia? Why do they have trade packs? Why is Russia now have trade packs with China in the east? These guys aren't fighting. Nobody wants to smoke anymore. The only people to want to smoke are America and Israel. You know what I mean?

The writing is kind of on the wall, in my opinion. The writing has been on the wall for a long time. We've all just been looking at different walls, right? That's the thing, right? So it's not, can we all get along? Yes. Can we all get along as equals? No.

Are there some people out there who still think that equality is what we're pursuing? Yes. Are there people out there who know full well equality is not what we're pursuing, but they still promote it as an idea? Yes, right? And that's where things start to get jumbled. As an example to the point previously where you were like, you know, how do we have all these failures?

How could the CIA be so incompetent, whatever else, right? Look at how we've succeeded. Basically, the United States has done one thing over and over again very, very well since the end of World War II that has led to us being a superpower. And what we have done is we have made us. Other countries dependent on us. That's all we've done. It's that simple, man.

It's that simple. It's because we have the dollar. No. I wouldn't give that credit to the CIA. No, it's not because the dollar. It's because... It is. We can print the money and we are the reserve currency.

And we kept everybody's gold, too. What does everybody pay us in? The pay us in dollar. Foreign currency and gold. Right. They don't pay us in dollars. Why do you think the United States doesn't take payment in dollars?

Because there are dollars. Because the dollars are worthless. Right. It's... So it's not because of the American dollar that we're powerful. We're powerful because coming out of World War II, how many Japanese and Nazi bombs happened in the United States? None.

We weren't destroyed. Our economic capacity was maxed. Of course. We actually got women into the workforce for the first time ever. Absolutely. But what was it like in the UK and France and Germany? Decimated. Decimated.

What was like in Japan? Decimated. So who became the, contractor of the world. We did. Right. So what an idealist like me, you're totally right. What an idealist would say is, wow, there's a real chance here because I believe America is good. Like fundamentally, if you just look at how far standards of living, race relations, dude, rights, like, we're the best. There was a chance for us to be like, okay, no more, no more bully. We have a huge surplus.

We rebuilt Europe. We could have given it back to Europe. You know, we gave it back to the Japanese. Communism will burn itself out on its own. Why do we need to kill two million Vietnamese people? Literally, they got out of Saigon and 75. By 1989, Nike is there and they're sewing soccer balls. Like, systems that don't work, the market will flesh out.

We don't need, in my opinion, or what people, And I'm going to explain why this pertains to the CIA because all of these quasi-militaristic interventions around the world to fight. Back then it was communism. Then it was, you know, Islam, right? Radical Islam. And now it's something else. Now it's Putin. It all starts with, you know, covert CIA.

I would seem there on the boots on the ground, putting the disinformation in, you know, causing us. up, stirring up rebellion, and then it falls, just like 53, Iran, the revolution, and it's been fucked up ever since. And now we've got this incredibly radical foe in Iran when you had a democracy. So what's, do you know what I mean? So that's why that would be the, that's the criticism of that kind of aggression by the CIA that I mean by that. And there's a, I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of incorrect statements that lead to the conclusions that you just made, right? So let me just start. You said less than a few minutes ago, we're the best, and then you also said America's

fundamentally good. Yeah. Best and good are two different things. You were like, we rebuilt Europe. We had the potential to say no more bullies. By rebuilding Europe, we were just becoming the new bully. That's what the United, that's the whole U.S. secret sauce.

We are the bully. We are the bully. Like, Team America, the movie, Team America, highlighted that we were the bully, but they did it in a way that was kind of tongue-in-cheek, right? By calling us the world's police officer.

Well, what do most people call the police now at days anyways, right? They call them bullies. The truth is, we became the bully. So then anybody in our camp, anybody on our side, they didn't call us the bully. They were like, we're on the winning side.

But that's exactly what we did. We forced democracy on countries that had no foundation or experience in democracy, which is why you've seen democracy like the United States fail everywhere else. There is no democracy like the one here. Right. The next three wealthiest democracies in the world are actually monarchies. Right. So you do think then that the CIA should stop trying to impose democracy on places where it's just not going to work.

CIA doesn't impose democracy. Or this is America. America. America promotes the ideology of democracy because it wants everybody to focus on the idea that somehow we could all be equal. But guess what happens when an actual superpower starts to rise to the level of the United States? Are we going to let them come to our level? Does the United States want two superpowers in the world? No. Because as soon as there's two superpowers in the world, all of the economic advantages that we have go out the window. All of the military security that we have go out the window.

The United States does not want another superpower. It doesn't want China to rise. It doesn't want Russia to rise. It doesn't want Iran to rise. It doesn't want Israel to rise. It always, it's a strategic imperative that the United States remain the only global superpower. It's why coming out of World War II, it was critical that the United States and Russia had some kind of conflict to identify one clear superpower. Because as long as there's two, something called the security dilemma takes place.

you cannot have too equally powerful anything. What if you did? Well, yes, right, nothing is equal just by physics and some kind of, I don't know, law, but nothing is equal. But say you had like relatively stable power between Russia and America, what would that do to Americans? If we had stable power doesn't, like, doesn't suggest anything about even near-term competitiveness. Like the United States could be a hundred trillion dollars wealthier than Russia. Right. And that would be, and there could be stability.

Okay. But that's not a quality. Right. The problem here is that you're not thinking about human nature through both lenses. Okay. When you're the top dog, what is the only thing you care about doing? Staying on top. When you are not the top dog, what is the only thing you're trying to do?

Become the top dog. That's it. That's what it all boils down to, right? That's human, human nature. That's animal instinct. It's what makes us the same as every creature out there that has blood and fur and a heartbeat, right? It's survival instinct.

As long as somebody else is more powerful than you, your survival is always threatened. You always see them as a threat. Even when they're your friend, you still see them as a threat. I guarantee you you have best friends that you're still jealous of because they have something else.

They're better looking. They're younger. They have a hotter girlfriend. They make more money. They have more freedom. Who knows what? I'm that guy. They're all jealous to me.

Perfect point. Then who do you think is number one on all of their hit lists? So is this attitude that you have, But this is enlightening. Is this attitude shared by most people at CIA? This attitude is this attitude that you're seeing is based in rational logic.

But it isn't very evolved. It's extremely evolved. No, you haven't even tapped on it yet. 200 years ago, it was very normal for people to be like, see, those people, they're from Senegal. They have black skin. They're just by nature, by God's law, by, you know, the law of the universe.

they are meant to be enslaved. It's just how it is. Okay. Come on. And now, 200 years later, not even the most ignorant, toothless, racist in Alabama would say that it's okay to enslave people. It's, you know, and you see, you see. You've got to, dude, hard pause.

Is that really what you think? Absolutely. Have you left the United States? Yeah. Where have you gone outside of the United States? Fulia-Con, Mexico. Okay. Go to fucking Dubai.

You know what exists in Dubai, even today? Slavery. indentured servitude slavery or do you really want to go you want to talk to me about how evolved we are and then make fine-tune adjustments between what slavery is defined as and not defined as are there if that's really where you want to go then let that be as an evidence that we're not as evolved as you think we are if we're actually going to get into a debate about the terminology that defines slavery indentured servitude versus slavery i guarantee you anybody who's got a background in slavery is not going to like that argument well i would say that is evolved i would say the fact

that you have people and I'm not downplaying a horrible slavery as sexual slavery human trafficking all it you know what you know but it's it's they have to keep a clandestine because as basically as a a society as a community that's seen now is inappropriate and there's the human rights the well the wealthiest sex trafficking in the world happens in the united states i agree there's a ton of murder that goes on in the united states too it doesn't mean we all Murder is not slavery, right? Yeah, but it's looked upon universally as something that we don't do. Slavery or murder?

Both. Murder is not something that universally people look at. We don't do. We have, we murder people here too. And we have the support of the court system to murder people. We just call it the death penalty. We say, oh, you know what? If 20 people sit on a stand who don't know you and they all raise their hand and say,

you should be killed, it's okay. Right. It's still murder. That's right. But the gut, but that is the, The monopoly of, yeah, it's the monopoly of violence from the government. So back in the day, the government had the monopoly. Their laws allowed the slave trade as an institution formally formalized to exist.

That has now gone away. I'm not saying we're even half as evolved as we should be as a species, but I'm saying I think it's possible through technology that consciousness and evolution. as a species where we don't, as countries, have to get to the point of annihilation to try to become top dog, I think, I mean, I hope we can evolve out of it. Yeah, so let me, it seems to me like you are using soft terminology. Like, maybe you're using words you haven't defined yourself. Probably. Right?

Like, evolve or annihilate. Like, you're using words that have a definition. I don't know that you're actually applying the definition to them as you're using them. Right. So, for example, can technology help us evolve? Of course technology can help us evolve. It's shown already that it comes in and it helps us in a million different ways. From medical technology to people being able to hear who couldn't hear before.

Right. That's like saying air is going to be available tomorrow. Like, no shit. Of course. Technology, technology, I mean, there's lots of technology that sucks and doesn't continue. it's actually the minority of technological improvements that make the majority of impact. So let's just assume that when you say technology,

what you're talking about is the minority of technologies that make massive impact, not the majority of technologies that trash, like the minidisc. So I'm going to assume you're talking about good technology making massive impact on the future of the human race. I would agree that is the direction we're going in. Annihilation is nothing other than... So true annihilation means the destruction of the existence of something.

what I'm trying to talk about and what I think you're actually trying to say is that somehow there's going to be less competition because of technology. There will never be less competition because of technology. The competition will become who makes the newest technology

that makes the biggest impact because you can't have more than one top dog. Human beings are tribal by nature. And in a tribe, you have to know where you land in the hierarchy of the tribe.

The difference is that we have upward mobility. So when you start lower on the totem pole, you try to work your way up your whole life. And some people make a complete difference. They change their family name forever. Right. Right. Some people are born at the top and they stay at the top. Some people are born at the top and they make all the wrong decisions

and they crash to the bottom. Usually that one. And that happens with nations. So what's happening, though, is you're seeing that the incentive to grow is an incentive that's innate in human beings. There's nobody who's born to a certain place and their caste system, and then they stay there forever. The closest thing that you have to that is India,

and even India is showing that people are jumping the caste system. Right. So the idea that CIA is somehow adopting a mindset or an attitude that is not evolved is a ludicrous idea. If anything, the CIA has always evolved to the current threat level and the current realities, where idealists tend to live 30 or 50 years, years in front of current realities.

If anything, being an idealist is inefficient and unproductive, which is why most idealists are fucking, they're unemployed, underemployed, or living in mom's basement, until they become grounded in reality. And I guarantee you, there are plenty of people out there listening and watching right now who are like, yep, you know what? I was an idealist when I was 22, and I was eating pizza and ramen noodles. And now I'm a realist at 35, and I make $150,000 a year, and I have a beautiful. wife and a couple of kids that I'm really happy with.

And does that make life great? No. Or would I pick my life today over my life at 22? Fuck, yes. What the idealist does is thinking 50 years into the future. And hopefully the right idealist, Elon Musk, that leads to innovation is when you are thinking 50 years down on. That's a visionary.

Elon Musk is not an idealist. There's nothing about Elon Musk. That means that he stands for ideals. If anything, he's like, hey, we're going to need to do this. this because the earth's failing. We're going to need to do this because we're going to run out of fossil fuels. It's pragmatic. It's visionary, not idealistic. Idealists are like, we're going to find a way to stop burning fossil fuels. So why bother investing in the future of technology? Let's all just stop burning fossil fuels. And instead, let's focus on shared consciousness

and tapping into the higher power. Right? That is not what Elon Musk is doing. Okay. So where are we at now? So makes total sense. CIA. as a law and well it's not a law enforcement body it's an intelligence gathering service i believe correct um although you you know you go into foreign countries and extracts people that's not enforcement of law again law enforcement has a definition of course uh what do you what is the proper way to define something like that so cia is an espionage intelligence gathering tool espionage is illegal everywhere everywhere espionage is illegal inside the united states right so when you go kill bin Laden in Pakistan.

Technically, that's illegal. Completely illegal. Oh, shit. The flight into Pakistan was illegal. Right. The U.S. troops on Pakistani soil was illegal. Yeah. Right.

The killing of bin Laden wasn't legal. The taking of his body parts to prove that he was dead was illegal. All that shit's illegal. So, like, because we talk to a lot of, you know, ex-DEA people and people that know, we focus on the cartel here a lot in Mexico. And, you know, these kingpins, high-level targets for the U.S. A lot of times, CIA.

is, at least according to them, helping the DEA gather intelligence. So when they go snatch a guy from his peak in some jungle in Dorango and fly him to the U.S., that's illegal. Yep. Wow. So the CIA does illegal shit all the time.

And here's why. So again. Do you see why, wow, call us all retards. Some people might, this might raise some questions. No, I'm not calling anybody retards. I'm just saying you're not informed. You're not informed, and it makes sense. because you're deliberately not informed.

Right. Right. So here's how it works. The federal government has, I think it's like 23 or 26 intelligence community members right now. So IC, intelligence community. Army has an IC component, an intelligence component. Navy has an intelligence component.

D.EA has an intelligence component. IRS has an intelligence component, right? CIA is the central intelligence agency. All other intelligence comes through CIA to be turned into a final product, meaning a final intelligence report that's given to the president every single day,

the president's daily brief. All of those members of the intelligence community are grant, they all fall under the executive branch and they're all granted what's known as an executive authority. That executive authority means

this is the law of the land, but you, DEA, do not have to follow this law. You, FBI, do not have to follow this different law. U.N.S.A. do not have to follow this other different law. And of course, you CIA don't have to follow this other different law. So no one agency is granted leniency against the laws. But every agency is given a different presidential authority that prevents them from bringing prosecuted under the U.S. law for acts that support national security in that way.

That's incredible. People don't realize this. It's in the law if you're willing to read the law. Right. So in the law, the president can give you permission to break the law. Correct. Just like the president can grant people amnesty. They can say, hey, you committed a crime.

The court system found you guilty. You're good now. Wow. The president has that authority. So CIA, the carve out for us is being able to collect foreign intelligence secrets through clandestine means, which means stealing secrets. We can steal secrets from anywhere in the world if that's. That secret applies to a foreign power posing a threat to the United States.

Homeland Security or Border Patrol. Border Patrol has a carve out. They are literally allowed to clone all of your information at the border. Right. Anybody's information at the border. Right. Right. So if you're crossing the border, they can use whatever.

Their authority. High tech to steal all your information. Steal everything. Wow. All they have to do is be able to tie that what we call a, a cloning or a grab, they just have to tie that to a national security threat, right? Which is why foreign terrorist organizations like ISIS

that recruit American citizens, that's why those American citizens can still get caught. Right. Because even though they're American citizens, they have the right to privacy and they rights out everything else. If they can be tied by the court system to a terrorist organization,

then that meets the authority criteria for Border Patrol to scrub their data and then be like, oh, This actually this person is working on behalf of al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hezbollah, you name it. So your carve-outs at the CIA were mostly stealing or grabbing of foreign intelligence. Correct. Can you explain that a little bit more, like what that means? So what that means is let's say that there's a terrorist operation that's being created out of the Middle East, right?

Let's just say that, you know, even better, let's go to Europe. Europe's an easier one. let's say there is a terrorist extremist in France who's planning an attack in New York. France is an ally to the United States. To collect secrets, to steal secrets out of France means that you're stealing secrets from an ally. But inside of France, there's this terrorist extremist.

So you want the secrets from that extremist. So you're going to go, you're going to essentially infiltrate France to then steal secrets from this. this extremist so that you can keep New York safe. Totally legal for CIA to carry out that kind of act because it supports national security under the authorities granted by the president to CIA. If FBI were to try to do the same thing,

they'd be breaking international laws. So even if France caught us stealing secrets from extremists inside France, which happens all the time. It's called a flap. Something called an intelligence flap. When an ally catches you stealing secrets inside their own country. When a flap happens,

It turns into a diplomatic issue. Hopefully it stops as a diplomatic issue. This ambassador slaps the hand of that ambassador who tells the president, hey, the French ambassador in D.C. is upset because the American ambassador in Paris got his hand slapped by the French president. Why not just ask France the ally for the information?

Because you never know if the ally is helping the threat. Oh, shit. You never know. Does it go that deep? Absolutely, it goes that deep, dude. Just think about, again, would you ask the manager of a sales person when you're buying a car to help you talk the salesperson down to a lower price?

Like, no, the manager is the one that's going to make the ultimate decision. So if you can't talk down the salesperson, you're not going to have any power talking down the manager. And anything that you do talk to the manager about, they've already scripted out a response between the two of them. I see. Does the CIA have carveouts for assassinations? The CIA pre-9-11 had a different set of rules because it didn't have defined authorities. So there was a, we call it the wild. We call it the wild. West. Even at CAA, we called everything pre-9-11 the Wild West, which shouldn't be surprising because Wild West Donovan was one of our founding members of the OSS. So the whole different world. But post-9-11, there's a very clear no assassination policy. However, assassination is defined as a U.S. resource killing a head of state. Right. So if... Bin Laden's not ahead of state. Exactly. So then, but more than that, you also don't have the state. that doesn't pertain to if somebody wants to kill Putin

and they're a Russian inside of Russia doesn't prevent us from helping that person succeed. Right? So now you're getting into the world. We've talked about clandestine operations. There's a specific type of operation called covert influence. That's what you were hinting at when you were like, oh, we tried to run all these changes of state

and these failed coups in the 70s, right? Not failed immediately. I kind of met like, Over time, it doesn't seem to be have worked, but they certainly worked at the time. Which is, again, I think it's funny that you think over time it didn't work when overtime, who is the world's only superpower? Sure, but it hasn't been. It hasn't been that much time, though, and it's already fraying. That would be my argument to you, is like it's already pulling, you know, it seems like Russia.

We're going to save this for, you know, a little later on, but it seems like the east and the south are like isolating and pulling away from America. slowly. I mean, it takes a couple hundred years, you know. We can, we can, we should talk about that later for sure. Yeah, definitely, definitely. But my point with all that is just that the carve-outs, the assassinations, that's what we were saying. Right. So covert influence is what allows the United States and other countries as well to go into an area where there's already conflict. Right. That's the magic of court influence. There's, CIA doesn't go into a country and then create an opposition group. That's what the movies make you think.

CIA finds an opposition group, of course, and then funds the operation. That's all you have to do. That's what happened in 2016. President Trump was elected in 2016. There was this big hubbabaloo where people were like, oh my God, Russia interfered with our elections. Do you really think Russia didn't interfere in our elections until 2016?

How ignorant and stupid and retarded a thought is that? If they inter, if they meddled with us in 2016, they meddled with us every four years before that too. It's just so happens that in 2016 they got caught. They pushed a little bit too hard on Facebook. They pushed a little bit too hard in Twitter at the same time that Facebook and Twitter became something that was being scrutinized heavily

by the national security infrastructure. So Obama could have been a product of Russian meddling. Bush could have been a product of meddling. Every president, every congressperson, everybody elected ever. I guarantee you, foreign countries have meddled in the elections. Does that mean that the foreign

country wanted to see Joe Biden elected as president? Most likely not. Because the overarching strategy, the doctrine that drives most intelligence is a doctrine of anarchy versus chaos. That's the master doctrine. That's the master doctrine.

That's a doctrine most people don't even know exists. Right? Anarchy means the complete, dissolvent, this complete disillusion of any kind of structured government at all. That's anarchy. Chaos means that you are causing

friction to whatever structure exists. Two totally different things, right? What foreign countries want is not anarchy. Anarchy is unpredictable. Anarchy means that there's like whole revolutions. Right. Chaos is what everybody wants because chaos

burns resources. Chaos is inefficient. Chaos is unpredictable, but what you can guarantee, what you can confidently predict is that chaos will distract, alienate, and burn resources.

And they want that happening to us. They want internal chaos. Everybody wants their opponent to be trapped in chaos. I see. And it's much easier to do that. Let the country disintegrate within itself.

Do you think that's working? Absolutely. It's working. What's happening to Russia right now? They're getting stronger. Well, this is what I'm reading. Again, you've got to, the information that I'm watching, reading, consuming is that they are taking Ukraine very without sustaining heavy casualties. They're making trade packs with, you know, the countries you've mentioned, including India, China, Thailand. You know, there's a whole, you know, South Asian trade organizations coming together, BRICS.

And as well as Iran. So I think they're playing it really well. I think Putin's gotten stronger since the invasion, since the freezing of, you know, since we basically stole a bunch of money from them. That's what I, that's my perception of it. What was the narrative six months after the war? Six months after the war started.

Yeah. Do you remember? I can't remember. The exact opposite. That he, right, that he was almost. Yeah. Do you remember that? Russia's like a couple weeks away from fucking falling.

And Putin's got brief. cancer and nobody knows about it and his own internal people are going to oust him right that was the narrative for about the first six months what's the what's happening in Ukraine right now right in Ukraine right now Zelensky has a hard time getting support

consistently from the West he's afraid of the next round of elections that are going to happen in NATO countries corruption has become such a it has now become a mainstream realization about Ukraine that corruption existed three years ago too I was out talking to people about Ukrainian corruption like a week

after that invasion started. Could you look into the camera and talk to my parents right here that watch all they do is consume CNN? Yeah. CNN is lying to you. Mom and dad of Johnny. Mr. and Mrs. Mitchell? Yeah.

If you want to watch CNN, you must also watch Fox News because the two of them are basically on par with equality of fact. Right. Exactly. So what is... So anyways, I interrupted. How corrupt is the state of Ukraine? What is the situation?

now and are these strikes that are happening or I think green lit by the Biden administration to hit inside of Russia? Is this all going to lead to a nuclear conflict? That's the main thing that I don't want because I just got money. So I, earlier in our conversation, you said like we're closer to nuclear war than we've been since like the Cuban missile crisis. And again, I'm a comedian. This is what I'm hearing from political scientists.

Gotcha. And if they're a political scientist saying that, they're not very scientific. They're political ass clowns, right? Okay. We are nowhere closer to a nuclear war. I want to differentiate between a nuclear war and the triggering of a nuclear weapon. Two different things. Nuclear war means there's an exchange of nuclear weapons.

Multiple nuclear warheads, multiple nuclear delivery vehicles, right? Because there's multiple types of delivery vehicles to deliver warheads. That is different than a nuclear bomb. being delivered in a suitcase to the center of Kiev where it's triggered remotely one time. Completely different thing, right? So here's how I see it. The superpowers of the world have no interest

in exchanging nuclear blasts. Russia does not want to blow up Ukraine, because if it blows up Ukraine, it's going to spend the next 60 years trying to clean up its own mess. The United States does not want to send missiles with nuclear warheads to Russia. China doesn't want to engage, Iran doesn't want to engage,

North Korea doesn't... Nobody wants nuclear war. However, depending on the situation, some countries might see an opportunity to get away with a nuclear blast. So North Korea delivering a what's called a tactical nuclear bomb through a car, through a delivery vehicle or through a suitcase, and it happens to end up in Seoul could be a good thing because it didn't come, it doesn't, there's no smoking gun that it came from North Korea. even better. What if North Korea gives, what if North Korea buys a nuclear warhead from Russia, Russia hires a Belarusian transportation company to then deliver that through China into South Korea? Now who's responsible for it? That's the world, that's the real world that we're living in now. That's why the alliances are so important. That's also why the United States has had an alliance with NATO,

which we talked about this. What is the United States' relationship with NATO? U.S. is the bully. NATO does what the U.S. wants, which is why you see France falling apart, Germany falling apart, you see Bulgaria not supporting NATO policy, you see Hungary not supporting NATO policies. Because the world is waking up to the fact that all the U.S. has done since the 1950s is create a hegemony, which is another way of saying a big bully, a big economic bully. So my question to you, and that was very concise, and it's what I meant to say, through all my bumbling of trying to sound smart. I went to state school, man.

I was a fucking drug dealer. I took keg stands when I should have been studying. But do we need a hegemon anymore? A single hegemon. Yes. Okay. We do. But we absolutely do.

And if we're going to be honest, we always need a hegemon. And we always want to be the hegemonic power. We always, like, you have to accept that. If you don't accept that, you're basically accepting that you're willing to be number two or three or seven or 12 on the food chain. And if that's where you want to be, you might as well just skip ahead of the line and go there now. Right. You've got a U.S. passport.

You can go live in Mexico and you can be 25th on the hierarchy. And that's fine with me because the rest of us who are here want to be the biggest superpower in the world. So do you see us ceasing to be the hegemon? Because I've seen you online saying, once we cease. to be the superpower, I'm out of here. Like, I'm literally taking my family and moving. I'm out of here, even if we stay, the superpower. Okay, go into this because of my, all of my hair is standing on end.

So it's not, it's not me that says that we won't be the hegemony. It's, it's multiple economic outlooks, right? Essentially what we're having is we're watching as China is China is a threat to the United States, not because of Taiwan, not because they have some growing army or navy. Right. They're a threat because they're, they're mimicking. our structure. So the U.S. makes all of its money from financial products, like New York and L.A. Yeah. And technology, like you see in northern.

Yeah. Well, exporting. Exactly. So we have an edge in technology, and we have an edge in finance. Right. Well, China took Hong Kong because the next biggest financial center was Hong Kong. Yeah. And now China's, I mean, China's making a huge ripple or riptide right now across the world because of its growth of electronic vehicles. What China wants is to be an economic exporter of technology, independent homegrown technology, most of which it stole from somebody else. But that's what it wants to be because China's been watching the United States.

The whole time that we were engaged in a global war on terror, China wasn't engaged in a global war on terror, what they were doing was they were mimicking us in a communist, authoritarian system. Well, when you have an authoritarian system, you don't have to get approval for everything, which means you can skip decades at a time. So what took us 70 years, they were able to do in 20 years. Right. So we have Apple, they have Huawei. Right. We have XYZ, they have ABC. It's all the same. We have Tesla. They have whatever the fuck, there are five different electronic vehicles are. So what China wants to be able to do is just replicate the American model of exporting finance and technology. Well, they were able to create

the ability to export finance. Because right when Hong Kong fell, COVID broke out. So nobody stopped them. Right. If you recall 2019, all the headlines were talking about the police. The uprising, yeah, and then putting it down. Yeah. Well, now, with Trump and the economic tariffs that he put on China,

with Biden and the American Chip Act, what everyone's trying to do now on the U.S. side is keep China from becoming an exporter of technology. Well, that's the threat, because of the source. soon as China becomes an exporter of technology, it's just like having Starbucks and something else like Starbucks. Now there's a competitor. What happens when there's a competitor? Their whole world gets to decide, do we keep doing business with the U.S.? Or do we start doing business with China? That's what China wants. That's all the talk about like the population crisis and the fertility crisis and all that other bullshit.

China's people are dying too fast. They're going to have an economic crisis. I always see that every YouTube fear porn, I call it. It's all China's collapsing. You're saying that. That's erroneous. Because you don't need 1.7 billion people if you are an exporter of technology. Right. How big is the United States? 300 million. Right.

The wealthiest country in the world is 300 million people. Okay. So that's all they're trying to do is create an alternative for the world because when there's an alternative for the world, their income goes up. But what happens to the U.S. income? It goes down. Okay. So that and that's the consequence. once China becomes a net exporter of technology,

what happens to the U.S. and how? Correct. Now, that's where we have to get real. Okay. I'm real here, baby. I'm with you. If the U.S. starts to decline in terms of its economic power, meaning people are doing business in Rupils and Runman B.

People aren't exporting from Silicon Valley. They're exporting from Beijing or from Singapore. As soon as that happens, right? For every dollar that China makes, for every runman bee that China makes, the U.S. loses a dollar or a runman B, right? So all of a sudden, we start reaching what's called parity. Parity means equality.

When there's equality, it's guaranteed that there will be conflict because there has to be something to differentiate during parity. Does that mean there's going to be guns and, like, nuclear weapons? No, it could mean tariffs. The United States just put a 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles inside the United States. Think about what that means. That means we want,

more electric vehicles. We want a greener country. We want alternate energy. But we don't want it to come from China. And China's creating electric vehicles at a very cheap price. But the United States knows that if you or I by a $24,000 electric vehicle from China,

$24,000 U.S. dollars leave the United States. They turn into Redmond B and they go to China and they don't come back. China, on the other hand, knows that for every $24,000 car that they sell to the United States, they get more run-men-be. They get more power. That parity starts to shift.

United States can't let that happen because that makes for a new superpower. Not only that, but the United States is smart enough to realize that if China becomes a superpower, it's going to follow the same methodology that the U.S. used to gain power and influence all over the world. They're going to become the bully.

They're going to make every debt have to be in their currency, just like we made every debt had to be in our currency. They're going to make it so that you can trade land in exchange for military bases. So now it's like, oh, you know what? If you will come give, we'll build your schools, we'll build your runway. They're already doing the highways through Africa, this infrastructure projects in South America. It's called the Belt Road Initiative. They're already doing it. They've been testing it in the third world for 20 years. And it's been hugely successful with the exception of the fact that there's a debt crisis because of it, right? But it's been hugely

successful in the third world. So if the United States loses NATO, then who's, who's, you? NATO has to partner with somebody. Guess who their number one trade partner is in Germany and France? China. Guess who our number one trade partner is? Who? China. China?

Fuck. See, and that's why I'm like, well, how can there be conflict if we all depend on each other? You know what I mean? Like that was the whole theory about, you know, going back to Adam Smith and capitalism. Free trade makes a rising tide that lifts all boats. It's true. It's true. but the tide is not equal to everybody

because the boats are not equal. Okay, so because, you know, they say going back to a Starbucks in the corner, when a coffee bean pops up across the street, it's actually good for business because now you have more people coming to the area to get coffee and it actually creates more customers for everyone. For everyone except Starbucks.

No, no, if more people are coming, though, just mathematically, more people, more people that weren't coming to the area before are there now. So some are going to, you know, it's surely going to be some of those people are going to go to Starbucks. And that's where you have to actually do the real analytics. Right. Right.

Because for your exact example, right? Here's one street corner. That one street corner only has X number of people that are within walking distance of that street corner. And let's just keep it simple and say only walking distance. Those people can always walk to that street corner. So when there was a Starbucks on that street corner, if people came to that street corner, they went there for Starbucks. or they went there to buy leather shops or shoes or whatever else, right? When there's a coffee bean that opens on the other side,

part of the Starbucks consumers are now going to the coffee bean. But all the other businesses benefit because the leather shops and the shoe stores have more people coming. The only one that really loses is Starbucks. Because while there might be a 10% increase in foot traffic, only 1% of that increase is going to Starbucks. 8% of that increase is going to coffee beans. So the rest of the world stands to benefit, especially this global south, especially the third world,

from this competition between China and America, Americans are the ones who are going to see our standards of living go down. That's what it sounds like to you. It depends on how, again, I don't know what you're defining a standard of living. Okay. You're not going to see, it's not like your roads are going to stop being built or electricity is going to stop. We're not going to turn into the third world.

But what it does mean is like your children might have to learn Chinese. Okay, is that really going to happen? So explain the best way to it would be. explain it is why you are going to leave America. Because this is, I think, what a lot of people are thinking about now. I'm thinking about it. So for different reasons, I don't worry about China. I worry about our collapse of a functioning government. But once we reach parity, what happens to the U.S. and why are you going to leave? And maybe where are you going to go? So there's a couple of questions there, right? So first,

I'm leaving the U.S. regardless of whether or not we reach parity or not because the direction that the U.S. is going for the foreseeable future for the next five to ten years, the direction the U.S. is going does not maximize the opportunities for my children. There's going to be more legislation, more

bureaucracy, more laws, more economic uncertainty. Inflation. Like everything, and more conflict in government. We're not going to figure out who our fucking president is in November. We're going to argue about it for another four years. And then there's going to be an even more dramatic election four years from now that's going to result in four more years of arguing. I have an 11-year-old son right now. In eight years, he'll be 19. Right. I have a six-year-old daughter right now. In eight

years, she's going to be 14. I want them to have the best possible opportunities. Unfortunately, I don't think that can happen in the United States. The United States that dictates what their level of education has to be. The U.S. dictates when they have to register for selective the U.S. Debt, it's like there's tons of rules that they fall under that come before opportunity. That's not what we used to be. That's what we've become and that's what we stand to see in the future. I can take our American passport and be an American citizen, pay American taxes, be proud to be an American. I am very proud to be a 44-year-old American.

I am not so proud to be an American father of a six-year-old child and an 11-year-old child. because the America that I fought for when I was in the military, the American I, the America I was willing to die for at CIA is not the America that exists today. We're in middle school. Remember middle school? How much did you like middle school? Not much.

Nobody liked fucking middle school. We're forgetting that as a country, we're young. Like we just got out of the elementary school years or everything was easy and everything was fun and we got nap time and we got like treats and playground time, right? Now we're getting into middle school where there's people that want to put us in a closet and give us a fucking wedgey. Yeah, right?

We don't, I don't feel like I have to be here while the rest of the country goes through middle school. So it sounds like it's economic runaway, like all the problems that we know about with the debt, which is impossible to solve, right? And just inflation that's going to keep going up, coupled with political, like more and more political instability. Those are the reasons. And that just creates chaos.

It creates a less pleasant, vibrant place to be. So if you're trying to grow a future leader of the world, if you're trying to grow a future successful contributing citizen of the world, not necessarily just the United States, are you going to stay in like the messy place to try to grow that? Are you going to put your seed into a, into like a sandy, plant bed? No. When I take my children and we go somewhere else with an American passport, with a company that's tied to making American dollars, we are a global company. Like, I love America. I serve America first. I don't have to serve America from within the United States.

Some people are forced by the nature of their business to serve or the nature of their job or career. They have to stay inside the United States. I don't. I can take my kids to, let's just say, country like Portugal. Portugal is a European ally to the United States. It is, it's got its own problems, but its problems are not like the ones here. And by having a U.S. passport and having U.S. dollars, it gets you above almost all the problems that exist there. Right? Romania is another example of that. If you have $100 in Romania, you can basically get anything done overnight. Here in the United States, I tried to get my license, my driver's license in Colorado. I am a military veteran, I am a CIA veteran. When I went to the DMV, I didn't have the right paperwork to prove my

military background. I was like, here's my Florida license that says I'm a veteran. Here's the fucking internet that says I'm an American. Here's my digital record from the military that says that I'm a veteran. And they were like, well, you didn't fill out this specific form that's required for us to do it. So we're going to issue you a license that does not recognize your veteran status. And when you want, when you get that document complete, come back and we'll do this whole thing again. So it's just... It's inconvenient.

It's inefficient. And why would I voluntarily put my child or put my children through four or eight years of this when I know it can be avoided? So I guess what does China's growth in competition? What does Russia's basically autonomy? Like they're breaking out and saying we will not be run over by American hegemony anymore. What does that have to do with the situation in America? It has a lot to do with it. But the situation in America, the social realities of America are separate from the foreign policy

issues of America. So they're two separate issues. The problem is that they, when they overlap, like a Venn diagram, when they overlap, the areas where they overlap are impacted negatively twice as much. So for example, right, inside the United States, we have this very clear understanding now of injustice, right? Black Lives Matter. The wealthy people get a pass in the judicial system because they're friends with their right people. We have a convicted felon who's running for president

and has a very, very good chance of winning. Right. And Biden's kids are felon now? It's like, I'm thinking about running for office. I'm like, everything is on the table now. But that's the reality of what we're looking at, right? So socially, that's what we see internally. Well, now externally what happens is that's what the rest of the fucking world sees, too.

Right. And all these people who have been believing or been told for the last 30 years that democracy is equality and democracy is going to change the world and democracy is what you want. Now you've got African warlords that are like, I'm really glad I stayed as a warlord. Right. Nobody believes America. Nobody believes in America anymore. So Americans believe in America and we want to get it back, especially those of us who served in uniform or served part of our life trying to keep the American. dream alive and the American dream is very much alive. You and I know that for all of our problems,

they are actually quite a bit smaller now than they were 10 or 15 or 30 years ago, which means if we stay the course, we could eradicate these problems in the next 20 years or so, right? We could. We could correct our judicial system if we just focused on it and stayed focused on it for 15 or 20 years. It's not going to happen overnight, but it could be done. But now what's happening is because the rest of the world doesn't believe in us, we've got bigger fish to fry because we're losing influence, we're losing revenue, we're losing market share. Because when the rest of the world looks at us and they see democracy doesn't work, guess what their next best alternative is?

authoritarianism. And guess what authoritarianism looks like right now? Russia's on the rise, China's on the rise, North Korea is getting independent, Iran's on the rise. Netanyahu, who runs a democracy is acting more like a dictator right now than an elected official. And the whole world is doing what? Watching. So what would you do, dude, if you were in charge of Senegal? What would you do if you were in charge of Indonesia? What would you do if you were in charge of Kenya? Get those diamonds out, boys, or you're losing a foot.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Because you know what? The world's police officer is busy. Yeah. And I know. I'm such a fucking Portland, Oregon, liberal, fucking pussy. I'm like, but can't, isn't it better? You know, there's a nuclear theory that says it's actually better if more people have, more of the superpowers have equal amounts of nuclear weapons because it puts everybody at bay. Nobody wants it, you know? Clearly, I agree with you. I don't think anybody wants nuclear war because the standard of living compared to 100 years ago is everybody's prospering way more than from mutual trade and shit like that. So, I can't remember my question. Well, that's the security dilemma. What you're laying out is exactly.

Exactly that. When everybody has the same amount of guns, bombs, and guard dogs at their house, then nobody breaks into anybody else's house. But that doesn't mean that people rest well. That doesn't mean that each household is at optimal financial success. And it also doesn't mean that when one country, when one house needs help, other houses don't feel a need to help. Right. If anything, they're like, oh, I heard Joe's kid got hit by a car. Awesome. That means Joe's going to be distracted for the next few weeks. I wonder if that's enough chance for me to, like, file a claim so I can get 15 extra, you know, 15 extra feet into his yard with my fence.

Right. That's the kind of stuff that the world, that's geopolitics in a nutshell. Right. Geopolitics is just the same shit that happens in your HOA on a national or on an international level. So governments act like human beings in the best. interests of themselves first, and they will take advantage when they see it, if they see weakness. That's the definition of a state, right? So I think it's great that you're highlighting this. Individuals act like individuals. Collections of individuals act like individuals, right? You've heard of

mass hysteria and mob mentality. What does that mean? All that's saying is that groups of people act like a single organism. Well, then when you define the terms of a state, meaning that you define the terms of a government, what you are doing is you are identifying the U.S. federal government as an entity, even in the United States. A company is an entity. Of course. Right?

A person is an entity. A company is an entity. So when you get to the highest levels of the national government, right? When you think like the U.S. president, can you let Americans die and still save America? Yes. Can you let the American government die and still save America? No. Right.

That's the huge difference that people don't realize. The federal government doesn't need you to keep itself safe. So everybody who thinks that the government's there to protect them or take care of them, no. The government is not Big Brother. The government is not Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad care about you. Big Brother cares about you. The federal government is more like your boss.

It only is as invested in you as the GDP you create. And as soon as you stop serving the government, it could give two fucks about you, which is why everybody's worried about Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, except the government. The government's like, well, that's because we have the World Reserve Currency. So we have the money printer. You know, a lot of countries can't do that. They have to default on their debt.

They have to raise taxes. And, you know, there's a whole discussion about fiat currency and the way that I think, like, Bitcoin could be like a savior. your, again, technology could solve a lot of these problems. But let's put that aside for a second. What in your mind, you kind of actually, I think, are not an idealist, but I think you're not as doomsday as you come off. I'm not.

For sure, I'm not. The doomsday, the doomsday nature of what people project on me comes from the viral clips. Clickbait, yeah. The viral clips that other people make of my conversations that go out there. Yeah. Right? Because you're totally right. I don't think the end is nigh.

I think a long period of discomfort is coming up. And we all have to decide whether or not we're going to try to dedicate our lives to fighting through that discomfort, fixing that discomfort, fixing that discomfort, avoiding that discomfort. Like, it's up to us to decide. It's kind of like, so when I have a cold, when I have the flu and I have a fever, I'm one of those weird people that doesn't want to take Tylenol and aspirin. I have a headache. I have a fever. I don't feel good. but I want to keep feeling bad

because I want to know exactly when my fever breaks. It's going to be two or three days, but why would I take Tylenol that's only going to make me feel better for four or six hours and then I'm going to feel like shit again. I'd rather just feel like shit all the time so then when my fever breaks, I know I'm better. Yeah.

What we're going into right now for the next decade or so? Tylenol, Tylenol, Tylenol. That's what money printing is. It's, man, this debt will worry about it in five years. Well, that's also what you're seeing with We're going to impeach this president. We're going to impeach that president. We're going to create an investigation to that president.

We're going to investigate that president. Okay. Now that seems what, how does this, let's talk about the worst case scenario. Do you see, just start with something that I think is kind of implausible now in the modern age? Do you see Donald Trump going, get an old school Kennedy before he takes office if he gets election, if he gets elected. No. You don't see him getting hit? No, I mean, I'm not saying I don't see Kennedy getting hit. I'm saying I don't see you don't see Donald Trump getting assassinated if he wins. Correct. I don't see Donald Trump doing it. I don't see the federal government trying to organize

Donald Trump to do it like that. But here's here's one of the things that I think is so important about the next election. There are three outcomes. Three outcomes. All three of those outcomes are completely unprecedented in American history. All of them. So Donald Trump is elected. we elect a convicted felon unprecedented. Now, yes, I agree. He was only convicted in New York and there was all sorts of shadiness around it

and blah, blah, blah, blah. I get it, I get it. I don't disagree with any of it. However, end of the day, convicted felon gets elected. Option two, Joe Biden gets elected. Joe Biden, who very clearly has age issues, very clearly has mental deficiencies, very clearly has, like, his age

and his cognitive abilities will impact his president. Yeah. Very clear. I don't think he's running the government. Whatever it is. Yeah, I think it's blinking. That's unprecedented. Unprecedented, yeah.

Like, the American people voluntarily electing somebody who's mentally insufficient? It's crazy. What's the third option? The third option is one of the two of those, one of the two gentlemen that we're talking about. Something completely unexpected happens, right? Like the eve of the election, Joe Biden goes into the emergency room. or Donald Trump gets into a car accident because his auto his auto cate or whatever gets intercepted by some crazy person.

Who knows what, right? Or Trump is elected and there's another riot and then whatever else. Like there's something crazy. So crazy, we can already assume it will be unprecedented. So in all scenarios, the outcome of the election this year is unprecedented. That means the rest of the world watches absolutely. buffoonery happen inside the United States. That's how they're going to see it.

Totally. And we just watched a very calm re-election of Putin. We watched a very calm re-election of Xi Jinping. Yeah. Right? There is no such thing as an election in North Korea. The Ayatollah is in Iran is already talking shit about how unpredictable

and unstable the West is and saying, why would anybody want to participate in something so unstable and unpredictable? Right. Do you think do you think potentially there could be an outcome where some say Trump gets elected and Biden, they just don't let him take office? Do you think there could be some kind of usurping of the peaceful transfer of power, say Hyatt military generals take over the White House, you know, a coup, something like that? There's, I mean, all of those are possibilities, but that doesn't make them probabilities, right?

Like I think the situation that I'm the most afraid of, and when I say fear, I don't fear for my health, my safety, my business. I don't fear for any of that. What I fear for is the country that I love being degraded to the place where my children don't have the opportunities inside the U.S. That I could get for them outside of the U.S. But my biggest concern is that in the final days in the lead up to the election, when Biden's already got the ticket, when all that stuff is moving forward, Some law is exercised that puts the power in Kamala Harris's hands. And then Kamala Harris identifies an incumbent instead of Biden who just automatically gets the nomination like RFK.

And then now everybody who's planning on voting for Biden is essentially voting for RFK. And if there's a split decision among the people, which has happened in the past, then it goes to the electoral college. And in the electoral college, who has the deciding vote, the vice president. so that is a realistic relatively probable outcome. If that were to happen, all faith in our democratic institution would be shattered outside of the United States. Inside of the United States, there would be lawsuits and there would be infighting, and we would all be like, well, that's just, it'll never happen again.

Because in the United States... You don't think there'll be huge upheaval in the streets, if something like... like that happens? You don't think this, if Kamala Harris is either becomes president or appoints a president that was not elected by the people, you don't think all the red states are going to, it won't be just, I think a lot of people will be pissed, but I don't think there's going to be mass hysteria. This is the thing. You want to know why I'm not worried about a civil, exactly. You just said it. You're right. Because it's just too much money here still. And it's too much work. Yeah. The reason there will not be a civil war in the United States,

and I will say this until there's a fucking civil war in the streets. The reason there will not be a Civil War in the United States is because there aren't enough people who actually care enough to get off their fucking ass, grab a gun, and go fight. And of the people who do care enough to get off their ass, grab a gun, and go fight, they're only going to be able to walk like a quarter of a mile. Yeah. And then they're going to be out of breath. And they're going to be looking for their Coors Light and their Cigs. Yeah. Right. That's right. That's it. That's right. That's why there's not going to be a civil war inside the United States. I've seen civil wars. They are fucking hard work. I've seen them in Africa. I've seen them in Africa. I've

I've seen them in Latin America. I've seen them rage on in the Middle East. What we have here, people can't even conceive what an actual civil war looks like. To get to the place where you have a civil war, so many cuts have happened. So many irreparable cuts. The only option left to you is to grab a gun and fight. And when you grab a gun and fight, dude, you're not carrying around 600 rounds of ammunition with a whole logistical supply chain behind you like we see with the U.S.

military. Like these are fucking 35-year-old dudes who fill their pockets with with ammunition. And then they sit on the corner of like the 7-Eleven, the equivalent of a 7-Eleven in some foreign third world country. And then they fire two or three shots every six or seven hours, right? Trying to just like hold the ground because they know that they're fighting against somebody who's only got 50 or 75 rounds in their two pockets. And it's a, the real race is who's going to get water and who's going to get Twinkies next.

because without water and fuel, without water and food, you have no way of fighting a war. So I'm not at all worried about civil war in the United States. I'm worried about a bunch of pissed off people, and I'm worried about an overstretch of law enforcement trying to take care of people who are demonstrating possibly within the realms of their right to demonstrate. But that's really how it's going to go.

Yeah, I'm worried about just fascism. I'm worried about totalitarianism, authoritarianism. That's my biggest, you know, As the empire wanes, just like every empire has to wane, you can at least grant me that. Oh, yeah, for sure. You know, then the government, the empire turns on itself. And now you have a very, you know, you have the final days of Rome and mass inflation and just a lot of inequality. And, yeah, hopelessness.

And it's hard to compare us to Rome because Rome ruled a lot longer than we are alive. Right, right. Yeah, a lot longer. Are we waning? Without a doubt, compared to where we were economically and influence-wise in the 90s, we are definitely waning. But does that mean that we're not going to bounce back? No, that's not what it means at all. Okay, so what, let's turn our sights to Russia in the immediacy.

How long, what should we, what would responsible foreign policy be for us to do right now, knowing that Russia could, you know, sack Ukraine pretty quickly? So responsible foreign policy, believe it or not, is what we're doing in Ukraine. The thing that needs to be changed is the narrative about what we're doing in Ukraine. Right now, the federal government is still letting the people believe or trying to get the people to believe that we're defending democracy in Ukraine. And we're defending against Russia's spread into Europe. That's not what we're doing in Ukraine. What we're doing in Ukraine is we are slowly bleeding Russian resources

and testing cutting-edge American weapons and projecting force to show NATO that they still need the United States to defend Europe. So foreign policy-wise, we're winning in Ukraine. Russia's winning ground and territory, but we are winning according to American foreign policy requirements in Ukraine. For now, if NATO, actually turns more populist.

If we see, like if Macron, who just dissolved his fucking legislature, if that gamble loses and they become a conservative government, and if Germany becomes a conservative government, now all of a sudden that our foreign policy in Ukraine is going to have to change. But the nice thing is, if more conservative governments take over in Europe, there will be more people who will step up to the plate to oppress Russia. And we won't have to be the only ones doing it. Right now, we've got a very socialist, very liberal, very, like, laissez-faire Europe because they're accustomed to letting the U.S. call all the shots. Right, right.

If that changes and we actually step away from Ukraine, theoretically, it would see other countries step into Ukraine. But isn't, you know, what I want to see is a ceasefire, right? So I think that's what most just voters in America want to see, like, that are paying attention to what's going on over there. Because we would rather have resources directed to the improvement of our own country. So we would like to see, and because Putin's a G, I like him. I hate the Biden administration. I hate the gaslighting. I hate the lying.

And I love an underdog. And I know he's like a bad guy. I know he's poisoned officials. But how many people, how many dictators have we supported? Is Zelensky and their government a lot better than Russia? I don't think so. Yeah, I wouldn't say that either. So in the event of a ceasefire, the real question becomes,

who gets the money for rebuilding Ukraine? because if we don't get the money for rebuilding Ukraine, then we lost all of our investment. All of the money that we've sent in there as an investment in getting to be the ones that rebuild Ukraine. That's the MO. What did I just tell you about what we did in UK and France and Germany? But that's what I think people don't like

is because that goes to, you know, the contractors in Washington, the military industrial complex, the senators that are, you know, taking lobbying money from people that benefit from all the guys, grain in Ukraine and all the resources under the ground and all the you're right all the rebuilding contracts all of it comes to us all that money comes to the u.s. economy but i don't i think it's all taxable which is what gets put into our school systems and our everything else and there's going to be you're talking about hundreds of thousands of americans who are in niche jobs yeah who will be paid because of that effort right not to mention the reclaiming of all that illegally seized money

uh-huh that's going to be used to rebuild ukraine so it's not even going to cost us dollars to rebuild Ukraine because they're just going to pull it out of the bank accounts that were illegally seized from Russia. So we can't, a ceasefire, a ceasefire or a Russian win means that all the money we've invested is gone. It's exactly what we did in Afghanistan. We spent 20 years investing in Afghanistan and it's all gone. And now China gets the benefit of everything that we built there.

So I think that that's probably where we're headed, though. What we need to do is we need to find a treaty. That's what needs to happen, not a ceasefire. Explain the difference between a ceasefire and a treaty. That's interesting. Because a ceasefire basically means everything stays the same. We just stop shooting. Right.

And then we go into debates about who gets what and who doesn't. Right. With a treaty, what that means is this is your sovereign territory. This is my sovereign territory. If there's a treaty that's signed and if negotiations take place, what will most likely come out of that treaty is Russia will maintain control or create some new state on the eastern side of. Ukraine and then the western side of Ukraine will remain

within Ukrainian sovereignty. Right. Right. There's probably going to be some carve out where Zelensky is not allowed to stay in power or something like that, right? He'll go in, he'll come to the United States and he'll be protected forever as a hero. Totally. Totally. But, but then what that means is at least we get to rebuild Western Ukraine. And Russia

gets to rebuild eastern Ukraine. And then the next question just becomes, what do we do with all the Russian money that's tied up in American dollars and banks? So that... But then we get some limited return on investment. Sure, sure, sure. Okay, so perfect. Shouldn't we be talking to Putin? Shouldn't we be like, somebody pick up the phone and be like, okay, all right. What's fucked up is we probably are. What? We probably are. You think so? Absolutely. Somebody in

Washington is talking to Putin. He just, he floated in a speech about a week ago, a, you know, his desire to see the war come doing it. He's been saying that since the day that he invaded. Right. So then why isn't it happening if we're picking up the phone? So here's the predominant train of thought when it comes to my intel peers, right? So the people and I work in my company is a direct-to-consumer company. But because of my background, I end up working in a lot of what's called private intelligence, private intelligence contracts, right? In the private intelligence community, you've got a bunch of people like me, former CIA, former FBI, former NSA, former whatever, former SEALs. and we do things for other people

that the federal government won't do or can't do. But in that community, what we believe happened is that Putin said, we don't have to have this war, we can end it. Zelensky, on the other side, was like, we don't have to have this war, we can end it. But he was under the advisement of the U.S. federal government. The U.S. federal government said,

you can't cave this quickly. You can't stop this now. We can give you a bunch of money. we can help you fight this war we can turn you into like a beacon of hope for the rest of the world and then in the spring offensive in August we're going to like

have you take back most of Ukraine well all that then played out right we all everybody thought that the war was going to be over in weeks I mean senior analysts at MI6 and CIA and beyond we're all like this is going to last more than four six weeks

right I was out there saying it's not going to last very long well then there was a twist and then there was another twist and then there was yet another twist. And then there was a spring offensive that was fully funded by the West that nobody saw coming, right? That was a successful feint in the north and the south and blah, blah, blah, and Russia, and Ukraine came back and took back. I think it was like 5% of the land that Russia had taken. Well, then after that, there was this issue of a long-term conflict. Well, in the face of that long-term conflict, Zelensky went back to his U.S. advisors again, and he was like, are you guys going to be there with me forever? And now we were kind of like, we'll back

you as long as possible under these conditions, right? You let us use our weapons and you let us be this and you let us dictate that and you do what we tell you to do. And then at that point, NATO was like, we don't want to do this anymore. And that's when the NATO countries

were like, this is kind of fucked up, right? Because this is, it's affecting Germany's winter. It's affecting everybody's energy aspects. It's messing with their economies. But Zelensky was in this place where now he's the hero of the world. He doesn't have a choice. He can't go back. Right? you recall some of the incredibly brazen things that he was demanding in the first six months,

they were impossible then, but somewhere he had somebody's advisory board telling him what to say. Right. So now it's all fucked up. So the idea is that what most likely happened is Putin and Zelensky were on the same page pretty early on. Right. Zilinski, not being a good statesman, got some bad promises from us. Right. And now he's stuck in a position where he's got to do our bidding. Right. So this goes back to everything, you know, my thesis of, you know, my lay interest in foreign policy is that the rest of the world seems to want peace and we want conflict. Correct. That is exactly correct. And we want that conflict because we are trying to remain the world's superpower. So we could have, we can't remain the superpower without causing all these people to die. all this war and they're not our people.

It's not Americans dying. All this instability and all this. I know it's not Americans. It's not our country. You've got to get pragmatic about this, man. How much of our economy is dependent on Russia? How much of it's dependent on Ukraine? Very, very little.

Are there any American lives that are being lost because of American direction? Right. No. We are literally getting shit for free right now. The only thing that's happening is that our armament supply is down, but our armament supply is down, because we've been shipping out a bunch of stuff that's been collecting dust.

I think that... Meanwhile, we have modernized Ukraine's military with American weapons. So once this conflict does end, guess where they're going to have to buy the next shipment of weapons from? Us. What money are they going to use to buy those weapons? The Russian funds that were seized. Now, like, it is...

I hate the fact that we've put trillions of dollars whatever the hell we've put into Ukraine, because that's been taken away from the American people. Yeah. The only way that makes it okay is if we get a three to one return in two years. It's going to be a three to one return. It's going to be a massive long-term return. It seems like it mostly slashes around at the top.

Oh, yeah. You know, you can't. That's the way it's the way it is. That's the way America works, man. Do you think that, you know, do you believe in karma? Do you believe in God? I think that's probably the stupidest question I've asked on this podcast. Andy Bustamande, do you believe in?

a higher power. So I do believe in a in the Christian faith and I believe in God. I believe in that. I do not believe in karma. Okay. But my wife believes in karma. And I love my wife. Yeah. But I just, I just feel bad that she believes in karma. Well, because we interview a lot of criminals, ex criminals on this podcast, really high level ones. And it seems like at the end of the day, doing that much wrong and we'll just define wrong by like you know broad Christian terms doctrine right killing poisoning with drugs you know and then all that other bad shit that comes with it right uh lust for power greed all of that nobody ever gets away with anything at the end of the day right Sammy the bull was here yesterday he still did 22 years

in prison, right? So if the government is just a collection of individuals as an entity, if all of these individuals do wrong, meaning destabilize, allow hundreds of thousands of people to get killed, whether they're Ukrainians or Russians in a war that we could just, could have just stopped, right? Long term, isn't that just going to, just going to, cause our demise, doesn't it have to? Doesn't it then become criminal? Killing and supporting killing or being behind killing? So you're asking a philosophical question.

Yeah, but it's based in theology. Yeah. So let me give you a theological answer. Okay. Do you remember the story of Moses bringing the people out of Israel, bringing the Israelites out of Israel? Yeah. Do you remember what the Bible passage said every time Pharaoh had a chance to let them go?

I'm reading it right now. It's a fucking snooze fest. It is. It is totally tough. Exodus is tough. But over and over again, inside Exodus, what the Bible says is God did this thing

that Moses asked for and Pharaoh, his heart was hardened. That's what it says. Pharaoh's heart was hardened. It doesn't say that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. It said that Pharaoh's heart

was hardened and then he kept pushing. He kept being the villain. It happened over and over again until the Israelites were finally led to leave, and then Pharaoh had this, then he went and tried to kill them in the desert, right? My point is, without Pharaoh, there is no Exodus story. Without Pharaoh, there is no Moses.

Without Judas, there is no Jesus dying on a cross. The fact that we as human beings believe that there's such a thing as good and evil that we can understand. The fact that we keep trying to place everything and right and wrong buckets, it shows that we're not listening to the scripture where the scripture says

that our ways are not his ways. Like God has a plan. God is omnipresent. God is God and we cannot even begin to think or fathom the world through his eyes. I agree with that. So when we oversimplify stuff, just to your point, right?

what we do wrong and isn't that criminal and isn't there this and won't there be retribution? I can't help but at least ask the question, is Pharaoh in heaven or is Pharaoh in hell? Because God needed Pharaoh to execute his will. So I have no idea whether God passed like grants Pharaoh some sort of different special service or whether Pharaoh's damned forever. I have no idea because God's ways are not my ways. I don't know.

I can't even fathom it. So you need bad. just for context for good. Without bad, there is no good. Without dark, there is no light. And I'm not trying to be philosophical. I'm just trying to say that since we can't answer those questions, I don't even try.

Instead, all I try to do is talk about what's actually happening in real terms, not in ideological terms, not in theoretical terms, not according to disinformation and misinformation. Let's just call it what it actually is. Okay, okay. So, thank you for that. do you think, and you look at what's best for the United States, above all else? For me, I look first at myself and my family.

Right. And then I look at my country. Yeah. And then everybody else can kind of go to hill. So then when does this treaty happen? And how does it happen? Since we've missed so many opportunities, you know, we sent fucking Boris Johnson there to, you know, torpedo a peace treaty at the beginning, how does it conclude? Is it after the election? Our election? Is that when the treaty signed?

I think our election has to happen. Right. Because until our election happens, Zelensky is still stuck in the same shit's position. Right. Right. Because he made a deal with the current administration. Right. Or the current administration made a deal with him. Yeah. So the administration at least has to change for the deal terms to change. But if the administration doesn't change, or if the administration changes in a way that doesn't benefit Zelensky, it may just continue going. But the thing is, the next Donald Trump stands to gain by ending the conflict in Ukraine, politically. Politically, I agree. I agree with you. Right? He stands to gain by ending the conflict in Israel. Even if the, even if the bad guy wins, he's the one that ended it and he's the one that got us out of involvement. Because right now,

it's just our dollars that are going to fight. Right. Except, when we start talking about, you know, American sailors having to attack Yemen, that's kind of some bullshit, right? But, and especially with things in the Middle East escalating to include Lebanon. Okay, let's talk about that in a sec, though. So it sounds, I just want to wrap up with Russia. What I'm hearing is nothing's going to happen before this election. It doesn't make sense for things to happen before the election. Do you think if Trump gets in, what will happen to NATO? We don't, I mean, there's a lot of questions.

NATO is a bigger question than just Trump because NATO also depends on what's going to happen within the countries in Europe that are going through their electoral cycle right now too. And keep in mind, we need to look at the conflict in Europe through a lens of what, knowing that the U.S. is trying to remain a superpower,

that's the lens we have to look at. The Biden administration could very well go and essentially put pressure on Zelensky to call for a ceasefire so they can claim victory before the election. Yes. Right? They could very easily do that.

That would not shock me at all. The only risk they're taking is if they call for a ceasefire and a ceasefire is granted and they lose the election, then they lost all that momentum. Right? So it's a tricky, it's a tricky game, but it's a game, right? And the reason that that game is still being played is because American lives aren't being lost.

Wow. If American lives are being lost, the American people would put a whole lot more pressure on the government. But right now, the government knows if it turns out in our favor, it's like, I just got back from Las Vegas. That's essentially what Ukraine is.

It's a giant craps table. Odds are we're going to get a 5 to 1 payout. But worst case scenario, we could get a 1.5 to 1 payout. But the only way we lose is if we quit. Right. But you don't think we should have got into it in the first place. It's a net negative for America. So we should have never gotten involved.

We should have let NATO decide how much NATO got involved because the containment and degradation of Russia was the original objective. But as a result of America getting involved, that's why everybody else got behind China, including India, or everybody else got involved, got behind Russia, right? Including India.

India is an American ally. And India got involved supporting Russia. And the only reason all that shit happened was because the United States came in and was the bully. If we would have forced Germany and Spain and France and the UK to do their own thing, it would have all turned out very differently. And U.S. money would have been,

used in support of NATO instead of U.S. money being used in support of the U.S. and NATO having a problem with that. So it sounds like, gosh, I don't know what to make of this. I'm always trying to like come up with like an answer with a bow tie on it with like a period. Should we be the bully or it doesn't sound like it's good for us to be the bully? We should be the bully. But you said it was because we were the bully that were in the situation in Ukraine and Russia. Did was that not clear? No, no, you're right. It's we are in the situation.

Remember, what I also said is that it's good for us to be in Ukraine right now. Right, right. So we're the bully, and it's good for us right now. Right. But long term, it's also bad for us. Long term, we don't know. Two truths. Because the thing that's the thing, right, we don't know what the future brings because we've

pushed NATO away. Essentially, we became a bully that stopped like being nice to the other kids that were on our side. I see. Right. I see. So, yeah. Right, right.

We're kind of not the popular bully anymore. Right. Now there's other bullies that are coming, that are coming up and we're distracted. Right. So maybe you, maybe the ideas. for a superpower like America to be a benevolent bully. I don't know. Or be a bully with some circumspect.

We should be a meddling bully. That's really how it's, that's what we did right for many, many years that we stopped doing right, that we started doing wrong when we invaded Afghanistan. Okay, right. And they call that the beginning of the end.

That's true. Up until then, we just kind of, we fucked around with everybody. Right. We caused a bunch of like little fires and then we just let them burn. Well, then in Afghanistan, and we were like, we're going to fix this one.

We didn't. And now we're not fixing Ukraine and we're not fixing Israel. Right. So what the fuck is going to happen with Israel? Israel, from what I'm consuming, the media that I consume, it looks like it's on its way to becoming like a pariah state in terms of like on par with how South Africa was in the waning days of apartheid. What is your take on what's happening right now? And let's use pragmatic terms. Let's throw out morality.

I like your cold-hearted chess piece mentality. Is why you were great at your job. That's why you're a CIA agent. What the fuck's happening? And, yeah, and talk about Hezbollah with Lebanon. Could this break out into hot war with America? And does that draw in Iran that has the backing of Russia? It seems like a more dangerous situation in terms of, like, global war and conflagration.

What's happening in Israel does not pose a war, does not pose a hot war threat to the United States. I do not believe that. Okay. Because Israel is already making decisions that America has distanced itself from, right? As Netanyahu's continually pushed the Palestinian people through the auspices of saying he's attacking Hamas, but killing Palestinians, right? He's forced America to distance ourselves. And then he continues to push South into Rafah, which is. like that threatens the international criminal court of the UN,

which is a governing body that Israel's part of. And now he's also talking about potentially forcing conflict into Lebanon. And not just Netanyahu, but Benny Gantz, too, who left Yahoo's war cabinet. Netanyahu's war cabinet, right? So what you're seeing is Israel is making its own decisions. It's not playing as part of a large international community. That benefits the international community,

because now they can basically choose if and when they have, get involved. Or they can let Israel die on its sword, right? That's kind of where they're at right now. Would we let Israel die on a sword, though? Because, I mean, they're basically a client state, even though it does seem like they actually control us through all of the lobbying and the A-PAC money.

It's a twisted relationship. You're totally right. It's a twisted relationship. We would not let them die on the sword, but we would always step in to find a way to prevent them from a full loss. Right. But what we don't necessarily have to do is put ourselves at risk or at mercy of their bad policies right now. Yeah. So the thing to understand about what's happening as this conflict escalates. Yeah. The conflict is not between Israel and Hamas. It has never been between Israel and Hamas, right? That's why Israel has been okay killing Palestinians who are not part of Hamas.

Right. And that's why Palestinians around the world, and Muslims around the world are claiming outrage at what's happening because the conflict has never been between Israel and Palestine or Israel and Hamas. It's been between Israel and Iran. Right. Yeah.

Well, you know who else Iran funds? Hezbollah. Right? So why is Hezbollah amplifying their attacks against Israel? It's because Joe Biden and the Biden administration have been trying to negotiate

with Saudi Arabia to get Saudi Arabia to sign the Abraham Accords. The Abraham Accords are basically Saudi Arabia, the largest, wealthiest Sunni Muslim government in the region. The Abraham Accords are their diplomatic recognition of Israel, which has never happened before, right? Right. It's wild. It's huge.

So the reason the attacks happened on October 7th was to dismantle the Abraham Accords. Now Joe Biden has been making real progress in getting Saudi Arabia to sign the Abraham Accords again. do you know what it was in exchange of in exchange of American security guarantees in Saudi Arabia so essentially Saudi Arabia is sitting there and they're thinking

all we Saudi Arabia's number one threat is Iran like it's Iran it's a battle for influence in the Gulf Sunni Sunni Islam versus Shia Islam but I've heard that they're actually they're fucking

with each other now they do they're allies too Yo, I don't get what's going on. You're blowing my mind. In Saudi Arabia, in the Middle East, everything's different than in the West. Right. So you've got to put yourself in the shoes of somebody who's a bedwind. Sandals.

The sandals of somebody from the Middle East, right? Saudi Arabia has no agriculture. They have dates and they have coffee and that's basically it. Iran is the breadbasket for the Middle East. So nobody in the Middle East eats unless Iran grows the president. produce. So they all cooperate so they can get Iranian food. I don't know if you knew this or not. We have carveouts in the United States where we still cooperate with the Russians, even now. No. There are all sorts of carveouts in our space program, in our science programs, in our medical programs where we're like, we hate Russia, except for the people who do space and the people who do medicine and the people who are in charge of this.

So we have carveouts that allow us to still work with Russia. So there's Americans that are in government. that are still working with Russians in the Russian government. Yep. Wow. Which is why, of course, Putin's talking to somebody, right? Yeah. And it's the same way between Saudi Arabia and Iran. I see.

And all the Gulf countries, right? But at the end of the day, the strategic objective of Saudi Arabia is to become the Sunni sphere of influence across all the Middle East. And the same objective that Iran has always had to create the Shia crescent of influence has always been there, right? So when you talk about Hezbollah, Hezbollah is an organization of Shia Muslim extremists, just like Iran. But Hamas is Sunni Islam, just like Saudi Arabia. Yet the Shias are helping the Sunnis to fuck with Israel.

Right. Exactly right. So what that means... We all just don't like Jews. Well, it's not about Judaism. That's the other thing that people do wrong, right? The conflict that's happening in Israel has nothing to do with Judaism. It's about land.

It's about land. It's about the fact that Israel is a state. It's a nation state that is abusing and oppressing other free human beings. It has nothing to do with Islam. It has nothing to do with Judaism. But the problem is that Israel, as much of a democracy and a partner to the U.S. as we towed it, does not have the separation of church and state. That's right.

It was built to be a Jewish state, an ethno state. So I think nobody should be surprised at their dream. of ethnic cleansing. Literally, if you want to have a Jewish state, that means you can't have anything else. Anything else. Yep, and it's part of the government, right? So that's what we're seeing is so much more

complex than it looks, and it's way more complex than what American headlines let you read, because they're all slanted. So now what you have is this very dangerous intersection. Just think about this. What happens if the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, who Joe Biden called a pariah

state during his election cycle. Remember that? He swore in 2019 that he would hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its pariah actions, killing Khashoggi, that it's going to be called to justice. Now, four years later, he's trying to get them to sign an American security treaty similar to what we have with South Korea and Japan, guaranteeing Saudi Arabia security with American military power. That is fucked up. Now, from Saudi Arabia, Arabia's point of view, they're like, it's a win-win. Because they can still import from Iran. But now if Iran does anything against Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia gets all of their military power, which is significant, and all of the American military power. And all they have to do is recognize Israel.

However, Saudi Arabia also knows that if they recognize Israel in its current state, then they're basically abandoning the Palestinians, which are Sunni Muslims who have been without a home, right? What's really happening here is what the Human Rights Commission and what the International Criminal Court and what the UN has seen for decades. Of course. Israel has been wrong in their abuse of Palestinians forever. But it never was really something that people cared about because we didn't have the technology to spread the information like we do now. It kind of goes back to my point about the evolution of humanity that I spoke about in the way that technology. allows us to be outraged at 37,000 people getting killed.

Dude, they used to do that back in the 20th century. That was like a Friday night. Yeah. That was nothing. You know, it would take millions of people killed in a genocide for us to be like, well, we should probably go to war to stop this. We should stop this. But now it's like, you know, it's actually what gives me hope, to be honest with you.

So does this, I mean, it certainly seems more volatile. when you're talking about hot war, but you actually don't see this. You don't see a situation like Douglas McGregor. He says, you know, worst case scenario is Hezbollah gets in a full-on campaign with Israel. Iran has to step in because they won't let Israel destroy Hezbollah. That leads to full-on war with Iran and Israel. And then Russia has to step in to not let Iran get destroyed by.

Israel and that brings in the United States. It'll de-escalate before that. It'll de-escalate, okay. Yeah, so here's, there's a couple things to keep in mind, right? Hezbollah is older than Hamas. Yeah. By just a few years. But Hezbollah is significantly larger.

Right. Better trained, better funded, better experience, because they fought in Syria. Hezbollah is a fighting force. Hamas didn't fight anywhere. Hamas only ever existed in the, in the Gaza Strip. Yeah. Right? They only ever existed on.

on the land that is considered Israel, right? They're not hardened fighters. They're extremists, and they have some rockets that they build at home. That's completely different than the armament and the training that Hezbollah has. Israel's been spending very real time, money, effort, has lost real lives,

it's stretched its logistics chains as far as it can, just fighting Hamas and killing Palestinians. To the south. Now it's splitting its forces to the north and the south to fight a more adept, better trained, more highly equipped military without actually fixing the problems with Hamas. So now Iran as a proxy, as a proxy provider,

can fund both the North and the South simultaneously, while Israel just continues to stretch itself thin and not gain support from the rest of the world because they're going to keep killing Palestinians. They're trying to say, oh, well, now we're fighting Hezbollah. But as soon as they start fighting Hezbollah, Hamas leadership is going to come right back up and start fighting again, and they're going to go right back to bombing Palestinians,

killing medical providers and women and children, right? So they're going to get stuck in this situation where they don't have incoming support, but they are spending real resources. Fighting a war on two fronts is a strategic doctrinal strategy that's taught at the Army War College, a naval war college all across the Western world. You do not fight a war on two fronts.

Because you're guaranteed to lose. That's exactly what Israel's doing right now if they continue to pursue this approach. what's more likely going to happen is at some point Israel is going to claim big victories to the north and south, agree to a ceasefire, and then we'll be able to go back

hopefully to talking about a two-state solution if Netanyahu is successfully elected and voted out. Unfortunately, because of Netanyahu's position, the thing that's more likely, it's unlikely Netanyahu is going to be the leader when a ceasefire is called. It might be the more radical people in the government.

Because whatever happens, just like Zelensky, Netanyahu's political career is over. Once the war ends, Netanyahu's gone. Netanyahu might be voted off before the war even ends. Zalinski is the same way. Once the war ends, Zelensky's gone. Do you see Trump, if nothing else? Because a lot of his policies are the exact same to Joe Biden. That's what they don't tell you. There really isn't much difference, at least fiscally. A lot of the other shit that they do, you know, migrants at the border. Right. But do you see him? forcing an end to the two conflicts, those two big conflicts right now, Russia and the Middle East.

So this is what's sick and sad and true about how things work. If Joe Biden has spent four years planning or being advised down this road, he can't change his mind without looking weak. Yeah. Fucking Trump, if he gets into office, he calls Netanyahu. Netanyahu, he's like, here's a deal, dude. like I'm going to give you $15 million in contracts. You're going to leave the Israeli government and you're going to go live out your days in Switzerland

and you're going to be okay with that. And then he calls up the fucking Ayatollah in Iran and he's like, here's the deal, dude. We're going to lift sanctions on your nuclear program and all you're going to do is call off Hezbollah and then boom, it's done. That's it. That's all he has to do.

And Trump will do it because Trump is pragmatic, practical, and all he wants is to look strong in the first few days in office. Of course. Biden isn't pragmatic. He's ideological. He isn't independently driven. He's driven by a party because he's been a party politician forever. Right. Right. He can't make those calls. If he makes those calls today, then what the fuck was the last four years for, Joe? Yeah. Right? It's tough. And then what does Trump do with Putin? So Trump and Putin have already had, like, there's already relationships between the two of them. They're boys. They text. Well, not only, I mean, whether or not they're close friends or not, but I want that. They know how the two of them.

they both know how it works. So that could be a third phone call where he's like, here's a deal, dude. Zelensky's going to live out his days on Miami Beach. I will give you, like once every three years,

I'll tell you what a dress he's at. Right. But otherwise, you pick a shadow government for Ukraine, as long as we get to rebuild Ukraine, and you get to keep all the oil and all the,

the geographic benefits of eastern Ukraine. Right. Right. And if you just stop, I'll tell Zelensky to stop today. Wow. Like the whole, the whole fucking world, all the conflict could be over in a matter of like 72 hours.

It's all a game. It's all a game to the politicians. Correct. To all of us, it's about ideology. What's right. What's wrong. It's good. What's in my heart right.

To them, it's like, no. Yep. What is practical, pragmatic to maintain power and maybe do what's best gain an advantage for their own countries. Economically. America needs a return on investment for Ukraine. Russia needs to get its money back that was taken from it for Ukraine. Right.

India, China, North Korea are going to keep doing whatever they're going to do. But we're going to hope that by stopping the Russian war machine, Russia's economy will fall. Russia's economy is booming because it's a war machine economy, just like ours in World War II. Once the war ends, all that production is going to go down. And then it's going to become more of a drain on its allies in the east.

So it's actually a good thing for us for us to stop the war right but that's why russia's trying to like build relationships with ira or with india and with china to try to uphold that up how could you possibly vote for joe biden again how could you possibly it is so fucking crazy okay and you're blowing my mind brother because if you don't vote for joe biden you either don't vote or you have to vote for don't Trump. What do you do what do you think about RFK? Do you give that any veracity? Do you give that any hope? I mean, there's a there is a possibility. There is even a probability that RFK finds his way in there somehow, right? Either, either Joe Biden decides to do some weird sort of last minute nomination or

who knows what, right? Or he has some sort of mental episode and Kamala Harris decides to make it RFK. Who knows, but you don't think you could get elected by a vote? I don't, I don't think the Democratic national convention would even risk it. Because RFK is fucking crazy too. He still thinks the CIA killed his dad and they're after him. Could you imagine that guy is the executive? Yeah, man. He's not electable.

And even if he did become president, oh my gosh, think about what the rest of the world would think. Are we really a free democracy when a Kennedy takes office? Right. Like it's the Kennedy legacy. It's the Clinton legacy. It's the Bush legacy. It's the Obama.

Like, oh, my gosh, dude. It's just insane. Because that's what Joe Biden is. Joe Biden is Obama legacy. Right. That's all that is. So Trump is like, oh, your only hope, Obi-1 Kenobi,

which I actually don't, I don't hate it. I see him becoming a better politician. I really do. I see him becoming a much more thoughtful, guarded, less vindictive person. Unless he's just like, it's going to be a massive bait and switch when he gets elected.

I mean, maybe. I mean, I don't necessarily see any of those things the same way as you do. I also, I don't think he's our only hope. I think he is a very convenient solution. Yeah. To fixing the world's problems in a short period of time. Yeah. If his advisors can convince him to do it.

Mm-hmm. Right? And then it's four years. And the one thing that is really nice about Trump is that Trump is always looking out for Trump. Right. Donald Trump is predictable because it's all about team Trump. And that's a good thing because for us,

he listens, he listens to what the population is saying. He's literally calling Joe Biden genocide Joe. It means he sees all of those protests and he's like, oh, the people don't want this. I'm going to, I'm going to listen to that. Like, I want a leader that only cares about getting reelected because in our system, that means he does what the people that would elect him want him to do. What I'm saying is.

we want a leader. Yeah. All of the options for election are not leaders. Don't mistake Donald Trump with being a leader. Donald Trump is a pragmatist. Right. And he is a kind of pragmatist that's in line with the vision that our forefathers set out originally. Right.

So when he's in office, shit's unpredictable because it doesn't work like normal politics. But when you look at it through a lens of what's in Donald Trump's best interest, it makes more sense. Joe Biden is also not a leader. Joe Biden is a, he's a stooge for the Democratic National Convention. The same Democratic National Convention that tried to undermine Bernie Sanders and support Hillary Clinton until they got caught. Remember that? Yeah.

Like, that's all politics. Right. That's not leadership. But isn't that the deep state? I'm the king of bringing it back. Isn't the deep state those incredibly powerful actors in those. institutions like the CIA, the Democratic National Convention, or the Republican National Convention, coupled with, you know, lobbyists, like, we're all working for the same interest, which is to

enhance American hegemony at their behest and not at what's best for the American people. Again, it has to, without it being organized. Without it being organized. It's not the deep state. Because the deep state is defined. it's assumed as being some sort of organized body. What you're saying is just as a bunch of rich people whose best interest is to stay rich.

That's just human nature. But it's corruption. The United States is a corrupt country. Don't doubt for a second that we're not a corrupt country. We're just not as corrupt as some of the other countries that are out there. So Kennedy, well, let's talk some fun now. Man, my mind is blown. You really like, this is why I've got to get more smart people on this podcast.

No offense to my guess because they've all been intelligent in their own ways. You said RFK Jr. thinks his father was whacked by the CIA. I don't even believe that. And I believe a lot of conspiracies. So JFK, your thoughts? I know you've been asked this a thousand times. But if not the deep state, could it have been a collusion between certain individuals, a conspiracy, right, to take Kennedy out?

Here's what's so, here's what's undeniable, right? Kennedy was assassinated, undeniable. He was a, like, he was an unprecedented and very dynamic leader at the time, right? And there's a lot of reasons why people would feel threatened by JFK. Right. So all of that's true. We can't ignore any of that. Right.

when there's other, some other interesting data points, when intelligence information is classified, it's classified under a header called two times two five, or a two five X2, which means 25 years times two. So the most classified sensitive information is by default classified for 50 years. Because the assumption is that after 50 years, whatever was a secret can now be reviewed and declassified and shared with the American people. Now, the vast majority of information that's classified at 25x2, 25 times 2, the vast majority of information, when it's reviewed, if it's reviewed, it's released because it's not relevant anymore.

But for some reason, when his stuff came up to be reviewed after 50 years, it was reclassified again. Did Biden or Trump do that? Trump. It was under Trump. A certain number of pages were released, but then the rest of the file was not released. So what that means is either it's DMV-style bullshit and nobody actually did it, or there are still secrets in that file that would have negative impact on American national security today. Right. That's something before, this is important to me, because before that time period,

we didn't know whether or not it was all just smoke and mirrors. Now we have additional new data that suggests there really is something in that file. that could harm national security. Now, does that mean that it was an American shooter? No. It could also mean that it was a Soviet shooter. It could also mean that it was an allied shooter. It could also mean that it was some sort of weird compromise.

It could just be the fact that they don't ever want anyone to know how to assassinate American president. We don't know. But there's still some sort of relevant secret in the JFK-5. It's like, do you think, like, do you know shit that, if Americans knew it broadly, it would shake our faith in the system? Yes. And that is why when you talk to me, you see the level of faith I have in the system.

Right? Because my foundations were rocked. My foundations were rocked. I have two aha moments. My first aha moment was when I went through training at the agency, at CIA, when I went through the farm. Because I was one of those kids and young adults and college students where I was like, and I'm sure you're the same way.

you were a successful criminal for a while. That's why I love criminals, just so you know. I love talking to criminals because criminals are the only people who are willing to risk it all on what they think might be true, even though it's completely contradictory to what everybody has told them. Right. And what history is shown. And you make a shit, yeah, but you make a shit ton of money,

you have a shit ton of fun, but unfortunately the odds usually turn out against you because you're not sanctioned like we are. Right. But my point is, my first aha moment came at the agency when I went through the farm because I had all these suspicions. I was like, I don't think this is true, and I don't think this is true, and I don't think it works this way.

But everybody says it does, and I had to take tests that said that this is the way it works, and I've had to follow these rules to not get in trouble, but I have to doubt that this is really how it works. And then I go to the agency, and they teach me exactly how it works, and I realize that the reason we're taught all that wrong bullshit is to make sure that people who are trained know how to break the rules.

Like, you, went to the criminal school of hard knocks i went to the criminal school sanctioned and and cultivated by the federal government we had the same skills i just was taught them by a guy named nick and you were yeah had to learn them on your own right right but once we learned similar skills i could professionalize my skills because they always worked and i had the best what the best tools the best tech the best you know people to help me you didn't have those things you had to figure what might work and you had to always worry about technological advances and how that was going to undermine your ability to cover your tracks.

Right. Can you name without, you know, I don't want to poke the NDA that you had to sign, but can you name just a couple of things right off the bat that blew your mind when you went through the farm? So just about the capabilities of spying or. Let me give you two things, right? I'll give you one tech capability and one human behavior capability, right? So the human behavior capability that blew my mind was something called elicitation.

And elicitation is a series of skills that you can use to get someone to diversely. VOLG sensitive information without you asking for it. Right? Wow. So there is a predictable human response to asking questions, having a conversation, smiling, changing body position. Like there's a predictable response that transcends education, language, culture, age, you know, religion.

It's just, it's human nature. Like if I were to stop talking right now after about three seconds, it would be so awkward that you would feel the compelled to talk. Let's do it. I've bombed so many times on stage that I can just sit in silence, so I'm not the one to do this experiment with. But you're right, yes, of course. But people will feel the awkwardness, the audience would feel the awkwardness, right?

So that's one form of elicitation. But then there's other forms like, you know, asking people loaded questions, like if you were king for a day, what would you do about this? Or if you were to have $1,000 today, what would you do about that? Or you could ask them parallel questions, where you ask them about when they graduated college, because what you're really trying to find out is how, old are you? And when you ask them, what's your favorite football team? Because what you're

really trying to get to is where did you grow up? So there's all sorts of elicitation skills. And for me, we were always taught like, if you need something, ask for it. If you want something, ask for it. And I remember growing up being like, I don't think that's true. Because when I go to my mom and dad and I say, can I stay out late on Friday, they know exactly what I want. Yeah. Well, I should ask something else. Right? I should ask something else so they don't know what I want. So I should say something like, hey, is it okay if I hang out with Brian on Friday night? Because maybe they'll say yes to that, but as soon as I say, can I stay out late, they think he's going to go have sex and get pregnant prematurely, right? Right, right. So for a long time,

I thought that there had to be some kind of social dynamic that is different than what we were taught. CIA taught me through elicitation, which was just one example of the social dynamic, that that was true. Let me give you a second, a tech example. Right. I believed for a long time that you could have a cell phone and if you turned off your cell phone, you couldn't be tracked. Or if you took out the battery from your cell phone, you couldn't be tracked, right?

So if you ever wanted to get off the grid, just turn off your phone or put it in airplane mode or do whatever else, right? What I learned when I was at the agency is there are so many different types of technology on your phone that your phone can't survive. Your phone is built to survive even when the battery doesn't work.

Wow. So it's always a receiver. It may not always be a transmitter. Right. So technology, there's a technology out there. I'll give you one right now called ad tech. Have you ever heard of ad tech? No.

Ad tech means advertising technology. Your phone serves you advertisements. Yeah. And those advertisements relate to two things, things that you've searched in the past and locations where you are. Oh, oh, right. How does the ad tech know where you are? Yeah, the fuck does it?

But can't you turn it off? You can turn your location off. You can turn your location off, but turning off your location does not turn off your ad tech. Right. Because your ad tech can still know where you are. Because for the advertisers who pay money

to be presented to your phone, the technology still wants to collect their money. So if you turn off your location, if you were able to turn off your ad tech, then they would no longer be able to advertise to you on behalf of the advertising. They would lose money. So instead they leave your ad tech on,

you turn off your location and then they still serve the ad to you as an amalgam, but they don't serve the ad on your actual device. And where, I wonder where they got that technology from. They would get that technology from, and here's the thing that everybody needs to understand. New technology, you name the technology. New technology is expensive. The first buyer for new technology is the federal government. Right.

Because the first thing they want to do is test it for national security capability. Right. So when AdTech came out in the public sector, it was already available to law enforcement, military, and us long before that, right? Just in a more rudimentary form. Now, what about NSA? What about like some current events? Like, are there, do Americans really have any rights to privacy? The privacy question is relevant, but it's tied up in legal definitions. So yes, Americans have a right to privacy from their government. But what happens is you waive your rights of privacy from commercial entities.

Right. So whenever you sign up for Verizon and you pay for a Verizon plan and you share your contacts with Verizon and all those apps that you download where you click yes, yes, you can use this. Yes, you can share my location. Yes, you can access my contact list. Every time you hit yes, you're giving away your privacy to Verizon or to AT&T or to T-Mobile. So then when the federal government wants information about it, you, they just buy it from Verizon.

Right, right. And does that not fly in the face of the TikTok ban where they're like the Chinese can, they set up this whole app to spy on Americans? Can't they just, the Chinese, a foreign government, also just buy Americans information? The difference between TikTok, the reason TikTok is such an issue in the national security sector isn't because it's collecting your information. It's because of what it's doing to feed you information. the TikTok algorithm is outside of our control.

So we don't know why it's choosing to feed us, what it chooses to feed us. And I'm sure if you've ever used TikTok, you've seen shit where you're like, why am I seeing this? Right. When you're looking at Facebook or Instagram, it's much less often that you look at something

and you're like, why am I seeing this? Well, but clearly the market, more people like what TikTok is doing with the algorithm. That's why it's the most used social media app. Or what people like is the constant distraction. So what do you make of this ban? I think the ban is wise. Really?

I think the ban is wise. And I'll tell you why. Because we need to be, we need to be more aware of, I can understand that when Facebook and Instagram and even LinkedIn, when they all came on board, Twitter, when they all came on board, social media was new to us. Nobody had ever known what it was like to scroll, like, dislike, share, all that shit was new. Well, now we've had a decade to learn what scrolling behavior does to us. We've watched the demise of our social engagement, the increase in anxiety, the decrease in paying attention, the work impact of constant like scrolling and being sucked into technology. It's very similar to 1950s cigarettes versus 1990s cigarettes. We learned that they're bad for you.

And then the thing that killed cigarettes was the taxes. Yeah, legislation. So now what we've learned is how negative social media can be. TikTok has the dual negative impact of one being the next evolution of stupid scrolling. You don't even actually have to scroll, right? It just changes. It just feeds you constant distraction without any real meat. But then on top of that, it's also owned by a foreign corporation.

So we don't control the actual algorithm that feeds you. So when it knows that you're a 34-year-old male, who's a professional, it can feed you a line of content that China wants to feed a 34-year-old professional. But more dangerous than that is when it feeds an 11-year-old. It could be feeding an 11-year-old a thread of narrative that it wants an 11-year-old to learn so that when that 11-year-old is 31, they already have their mind is already shaped on certain opinions. So like cigarettes, like a, you know, a minimum ages for drinking, for driving, drinking and driving. It's a, the public good is Trump's free speech. That's not free speech. Free dumb. Freedom of information. So you think you think that's more

important. A lot of people would agree with you. I'm not criticizing. I'm saying that we have to invent a new kind of decision. We have to invent a new kind of policy here for ourselves. Because here's the thing. Anybody out there who has an 11-year-old child does not want them to have freedom of information. Right. There's no freedom when you're a kid. You're not entitled to freedom. Most 18-year-olds, I think you would probably agree. You were probably still dumb as shit. So do we want 18-year-olds to have freedom of information? Right. They're free to do everything else. Except drink. I guess I drink. So there's all these arbitrary, they're free to die for the country, but they're not free to drink. There's all sorts of these arbitrary rules. So what I'm saying is we just need to

figure out how we're going to do it, right? Is it, do you remember when, do you remember when you could only get music through CDs? I do. And old enough. And you could sign up for those, you could sign up to have new CDs of upcoming music mailed to you. Yes. I forget what those were called. Yes. Clearing houses, whatever. Yeah, right, right. Well, if you wanted to buy that for your child, you always had to check a box whether explicit was allowed or whether explicit was not allowed or whether explicit was allowed with a label on it and then it would be bleeped out. Something similar to that might be what is the future of social media.

Right. Where if a user is registered with a birthday before, whatever, then explicit is either not presented or like certain categories of information, like foreign information cannot be presented. News sources cannot be presented. Who knows what, right? YouTube does something similar with YouTube children, right?

So it could go in that direction or it could just be something where it's like if you're not 21 years old, you can't use this app, or what TikTok, if it was a truly legitimate business, it would just, it would create a TikTok America and it would let Americans or let, like it would fit itself into American requirements

and it would stop using Chinese servers and Chinese content. I think that's what people argue is that it's, this is just a play to, you know, some people say, well, it's because TikTok. and their algorithm is exposing what's happening in Gaza and Palestine and Israel.

And then other people say this is just a play by big tech in America to cut out the competition. It's both. Right. Both is what makes sense. It's a good technology. Right. So how can you support that? Because it benefits the United States.

Right. It benefits Americans. That's right. The U.S. economy. I've got to start to think like you, man. The U.S. economy, the GDP. Right. You know what, if I'm the CEO of TikTok America,

and I can basically flip a switch and turn off the algorithm from China and I can turn on the algorithm for America, do you know what my algorithm is going to feed a bunch of 11 and 12-year-old kids? Pro-America stuff. I'm going to make sure they see lots of flags and lots of freedom and lots of police doing a good job and lots of nurses doing a good job and lots of trust your teacher and lots of stay off of drugs. That's what I'm going to make sure gets fed on TikTok, right?

But if I'm not in charge of it, then now it's some fucking executive in Shanghai who's deciding what 11 and 12 year old Americans see. Right. And I'm not saying I'm going to use it as a covert influence tool, but I am going to say I'm going to control the algorithm so that it benefits my country and it benefits the business. Yeah. Does the CIA have real hooks in American social media companies, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram? I will answer this carefully. because it's one of those types of countries, one of those types of questions, right?

The U.S. intelligence community works very closely with American companies to support American interests. And American companies work very closely with CIA and other intelligence community companies or intelligence community agencies because they know that if they get manipulated

by a foreign power, then policy will change and their company will be killed. So when you think of Facebook, Facebook is a company. It's not a federal agency. That means a simple act of legislation can totally destroy the company. So when Zuckerberg cooperates with the federal government,

when Zuckerberg agrees to block certain content, it's not because he's blocking freedom of speech. It's because he's being very conservative and protecting his business. Right. He doesn't want Hunter Biden laptop story coming up because they asked him, yeah, he's trying to protect himself. Oh, I understand that. Thousand percent.

Right. So now you see both sides of the same. Now you see both sides of the coin. Now you see federal government would want to work with Zuckerberg because he has reach. Zuckerberg would want to work with the federal government because they have power. They have power. So is that freedom to operate, though, if you have in a supposedly free country with a relatively free market? We're not a free country.

We are a free market. Oh, shit. Think about it, dude. Are you allowed to have a business if you're not registered? No. Is that freedom? Are you allowed to steal a car in Georgia and take it to Kentucky and then be free? I think laws make freedom.

I think we're a freer. I think we're truly, we've been to Mexico. We've seen what happens when there are no laws. What to me, there's a net less freedom. So what you're, what you're describing there is the antithesis of what freedom is. Freedom is the freedom to choose for yourself. Just absolutely. That is freedom.

So no country has that. No country has it. That's why when people talk about the United States, they talk about the freest country. Right. Right. Okay. Because we have a lawful structure. Yeah.

And that lawful structure is even worse, right? Like, we have laws. Are those laws immutable? No, they can be changed. Do you know what a judge's job is? A judge's job is not to enforce the law. A judge's job is to infer the law. Interpret the law.

So you could literally sit with the same charge in front of two different judges and have two different outcomes. what's mostly the Supreme Court, right? That's all judges. That's all judges. Every judge everywhere is supposed to interpret the law for their court. That's why there's an appeal process. So if you disagree with this judge, you can appeal to that judge. Okay, so back to my question about Facebook, though, in the intervention, if it's a free market, let's say that.

Or, you know, obviously it's a mixed economy, right? But pretty free market, pretty driven, you know, at least ideologically by capitalism and competition. if a government can legislate your company away, is that, that's a, seems like a bad thing. It seems like a thing that, whatever, you know, elements of the intelligence agencies and the political parties should not be doing. Or am I wrong?

If a Facebook has such a reach that it could be manipulated by Russia, then it should be intervened. Is that how you guys think about it? Well, it's not that they don't legislate away a company. they legislate away a sellable market. What, what happened with, with burning coal? What happened with big tobacco?

What happened with alcohol above a certain proof? What happened with, I mean, think about it, what happened with unlimited speed limits? Right. Like, they don't, they don't kill the company. Just tax it or, or they change the rules around it. So now all of a sudden, if they were to have something like, if they were to create a cyber tax,

where for every megabyte of information that you use on the electrical grid, you pay a certain taxes, well, now that would absolutely destroy social media. Right. Overnight. Right. Right?

Without attacking social media. Okay. Well, you definitely answered the question without answering it. Brilliant. No, no, but we got that, though. Okay. So, by the way, what would happen if,

You as ex-CIA, and your wife, too, which I think people who are a fan of you know, your wife is ex-CIA. What would happen if you violated the fourth basket of secrets? We would be held criminally liable. Like treason? It wouldn't be treason. It would be treason if we violated that secret. If we violated the fourth bucket of secrets by willfully giving those secrets to a foreign adversary, knowing that that adversary would get an advantage over the American people.

people, that would be treason. I see. Because treason requires intent, and intent has to be proven. Right. There have been plenty of CIA officers who have violated the fourth basket, right? John Kiriak is one of the most notorious, right? He told secrets, he was told not to tell that damaged national security, but what he was held in was, he was held in violation of his contract, but he was also held in the mismanagement

of classified information. Right. So he didn't go to prison for treason. He went to prison for irresponsibility, basically. Okay. Right? That's the most likely thing. It's still a criminal offense, but that's what happened.

Okay. So this leads into me asking your opinion first on Edward Snowden. You know, one side sees him as a, you know, freedom fighter, a brave individual. Certainly a brave individual, whether you agree with what he did or not, somebody who exposing information, to the American people about the NSA and basically warrantless spying. He's now in Russia in exile. What do you think about that?

Edward Snowden's a coward and a villain, and there's no way around it. Like, I understand people have a different opinion. Their opinion is 100% ill-informed and wrong. Okay. If you think Snowden is innocent, you're an idiot. Snowden is not innocent. he took secrets, he knew he was not supposed to share.

And then he took extra secrets that had nothing to do with spying on Americans. He took additional secrets from his knowledge of what was happening at NSA, and he used them both as bargaining chips so that when he was, when he exposed, when he whistleblown on NSA, and then America didn't like it, he knew he had extra money in his pocket, and that's how he was able to negotiate his way across all the adversaries of the United States. Where did he go first? He left here, and I think he went to Cuba, or possibly he went to Uruguay. But he basically jumped from anti-American government to anti-American government until he ended up getting residency in Russia.

What kind of hero whistleblower has to befriend every adversary of the United States? Well, that's because he knows what's going to happen to him for exposing. this would be the counterargument because he knows the consequences of exposing the American government. And he has no choice but to live in Russia because it's the only place he's safe. That is a

narrative that was written by our adversaries. That dude could have just as easily gone to Sweden or Switzerland or Norway or any country that's neutral and it had been like hey, I'm looking for political refuge because my government is going after me for whistleblowing.

And those countries would have Those countries would not have turned him over to the United States. Those countries would have... Norway wouldn't have. No, those countries would have been like, America, tell us what you're going to do with this individual who seems to be adhering to the laws of your own land. But he didn't.

Right out of the gates, he didn't adhere to the laws of land because he was exposing secrets that did not have to do with what he was whistleblowing on. That's what he was using as trade currency. And the damage, the damage that Snowden did to national security operations for the United States for decades. To who?

To the American people. Right. But how was that damaging to the American people to show them that they're being spied on illegally? That's not what was damaging to the American people. So first of all, the American people were not being spied on. The American people were granting approval. They were granting acknowledgement to a company to collect their data. And then the company was selling the data to the federal government.

There was no federal government mass collection of data. There was an agreement that followed American laws that was approved by court systems that were granted classification levels to be able to understand the program. So the whole thing was legal through the eyes of the court that was being leveraged at the time. Does that mean that a different court interpreting the law a different way at a different time judged differently? Absolutely. That's exactly what happened. The court of 2001 decided it was okay. The court of 2009 decided it was not okay, right?

That's the problem with our court system. That's the problem with our judicial system. The point is, there was no mass collection of American data. It was all legal according to the laws at the time. What was for sure illegal was that he was whistleblowing about that program. But what he was trading, the information that he actually downloaded and stole from NSA were multiple programs. in addition to that program. What were those other programs?

I can't tell you what those other programs were. But those other programs were programs that had nothing to do with collecting on Americans, and they had everything to do with operations that would keep Americans safe. And as a result of his... Negligence. ...wasing both chips to protect himself. It put all of us at risk for a long time. Do you think that there are situations when it's appropriate for CIA whistleblowers?

to whistleblow? There's always whistleblowing is protected because there's times when it's appropriate. But it should always be an option of last resort. Like Edward Snowden didn't even go to the office of internal affairs. Like that's what you're supposed to go to first. Whatever your biggest concern is with what's going on inside, you take it to the internal affairs office first.

And if the internal affairs office doesn't take you seriously, you either take it to them again or you take it to another office of internal affairs. Right? Here's what's fucking crazy. Snowden wasn't even, he wasn't a staff officer. He was a contractor, which means he worked for an American company that was on contract to work for NSA. So he could have raised it in his own company.

Then he could have raised it inside of the NSA. Then he could have raised it with like a third party government agency whose job is to keep contractors and agencies accountable. He had three different internal investigative options that he could. could have raised that to, protected by the whistleblower laws and everything. Right. And then even after all three, if all three of those still would have rejected him, he still could have gone to media if it was American media. Instead, this fucking guy skipped all three of those,

went to foreign media, and then took like bonus secrets. Like that, that shows that either he was wildly ignorant, like wildly ignorant of what he was about to do. or he was very malicious in his intent and he knew that he needed to have an insurance policy because he would need to run and he would need to have a plan. Could it be possible that he was an asset of Russia? Unlikely.

It's unlikely that he would have been an asset because Russia would have had more to gain if Snowden would have just stayed invisible because they'd be able to keep pulling secrets from him forever. As soon as he goes public, he's useless. Right. Now he's essentially like a, what's it called a scapegoat, and he's a model.

He's a representation now of all the things wrong with democracy. Now, the guy in the news, you know, we've kind of forgotten about Snowden a little bit. The guy in the news now who just got basically signed a plea deal and is not going to spend the rest of his life in prison is Julian Assange. I'm sure you saw that just a couple of days ago. Refresh my memory. He was the WikiLeaks guy. Correct. What is your take on this?

He's not an American citizen. Right. He has no responsibility to protect American secrets. He is not under American jurisdiction. He has not signed any contract to protect American knowledge. Like Julian Assange, he exposed American clan like secrets. And he, he, he, can you refresh us? What were some of those secrets?

I mean, in the WikiLeaks. There's so many. And WikiLeaks, WikiLeaks has shared classified documents. Essentially what they do is they share classified documents. Right. So documents classified by the U.S. federal government from the Department of State, the CIA, the FBI. he would post them to a website. So somebody would give him those documents.

He would then post them on that person's behalf. Right. So he was part of the chain of custody for espionage, the stealing and disclosure of secrets. But the only way that he could be prosecuted under U.S. law is if he was on U.S. soil to be prosecuted under U.S. law. Because otherwise it was law out that he was not part of that jurisdiction. Right.

And not an American citizen. And not an American citizen. So his adjudication was just. in your opinion? I mean, yeah. By the fact, the world has an argument that Julian Assange

should not be villainized. Right. All he was is he was an entrepreneur. And he made his money by increasing transparency. There's problems with that, right? Like, if you're very transparent

about America, but not so transparent about Russia, then you're a tool of covert influence. Right. But you're not an American company. And you're not an American citizen. so you're kind of like you can't be held to an American standard. You might be held to an international standard,

especially if you violate multiple countries' laws and like a United Nations ICC kind of thing comes into you. That's why that exists. I see. Right? So yes, I would say that the Assange example is a much clear example of how governments overreact to information sharing,

where the Snowden example is a very clear example of someone who violated multiple, civil and criminal contracts and violated American laws. I see. And was within American jurisdiction. Okay. Wow. Last couple of questions.

Do I always seem to like, maybe it's the child in me. I always come back to like morality, but it doesn't seem like that's how foreign policy is dictated. It seems like it's all about what is best for, your particular nation state. What happens, so there's a concept in covert influence called messaging and narrative. We hear it all the time as narrative, political narrative, et cetera, et cetera, right? Narrative comes after messaging.

So you can't talk about narrative unless you talk about messaging first. Messaging is emotional. So you message an idea using emotions. So when it comes to foreign policy, you message the foreign policy emotionally. right? It's an attack on democracy. What about the starving children? We can't let warlords rule the day. It's not Christian, right? So you have to message emotionally. And then you have several emotional messages that all amount to one rational narrative. The war on drugs. We must fight a war on drugs. We must fight a war against Islamic extremism. Right? But then you even see, when Islamophobia becomes a thing, they stopped calling it Islamic extremism, and they just started calling it extremism.

Oh, right, right, right, right. Right. Because they didn't want to trigger Muslims who were not extremists. Right. So they just started calling it extremism. But that's all the process of messaging and narrative. So what happens in foreign policy is that when geopolitics need to be shaped, they tell the American people a message. and they know that that message will be adopted over time with a narrative, a narrative that you tell yourself. The message is what I tell you. The narrative is what you tell yourself.

The message is what I tell you that makes you emotional. The narrative is what you tell yourself to rationalize how you feel. Think about when you buy a new pair of shoes. The advertisement for the shoe is like bright colors, cool music, beautiful women, hardcore athletes. So you tell yourself, like that shoe makes me...

What's actually happening is that shoe makes me feel good, makes me feel sporty, makes me feel hip. And then you go spend $250 on the shoes, and you tell yourself, rationally, these are good shoes, they're high quality, they fit me well, I got a 50% discount because I went to whatever. You rationalize why you bought, but you bought emotionally. It's the same way in politics, the same way with foreign policy. It's the same way with why every single person who casts a vote in November is casting a narrative vote. after a series of messages that set them on a rational, internal path.

So my question was morality. When you were getting in the farm, CIA taught, you know, CIA brainwashed, whatever it is. You know, it's brainwashing, but you know you're getting brainwashed. Are you taught that, you know, the School of Americas, I'm just using that as an example because I studied Latin American, you know, modern history for a long time, like teaching people, that were, you know, ran dictatorships in Central American countries and they, you know, brutally killed people in Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, in tactics that they learned in Georgia from, you know, the Army and the CIA and shit like that,

are, does the CIA now look at that stuff as like, oh, that's wrong? Like, we shouldn't work with them. Or do they just look at it as whatever benefits the United States? it's more of the latter. Yeah. Because here's the thing. And should we, are we better off? Even though, yes, life, there's awful shit that happens.

Are we still better off looking at the world and the CIA looking at the world through what's good for us? I mean, that's up to you to decide. I'm of the opinion that it's a clear yes. Right. The world is safer with the CIA collecting information around the world. Absolutely. Because here's the thing. somebody is going to be the superpower.

Somebody's going to be the superpower. And whoever that superpower is, they're going to have a secret intelligence service. Yeah. So who better than us? Are we perfect? No. Are we good?

Like, do we do it for good reasons? Probably not. But are we the best? The answer is probably empirically, yes. And if somebody has to be the superpower, I'm glad that's the superpower that I have on my passport cover. Yeah. Because that gives me an advantage.

that gives me power, that gives me wealth that somebody else who has a Argentine passport doesn't have. So at the end of the day, it has to be somebody. If you wanted to be somebody else, good on you. I would recommend you just go there now.

Right? If you think it's better for China to be the superpower, just go ahead and hop a flight to China right now. Just go invest right there. You want Spain to be the superpower? Go to Spain. You want Canada to be the superpower.

Go to Canada. Get the fuck out of here. So that the only people here are the people that are contributing to making America the only superpower in the world. Because here's the thing. But you're leaving, though. I'm leaving, but I'm still building American economy wherever I'm going. So you're still going to pay taxes here? Absolutely.

Why don't we talk about you? I'm still going to have an American company. I'm still going to build a pay taxes here. I'm still going to raise my kids as Americans. So do you think, well, okay, we'll argue about that on the Patreon. Do you think now what would you recommend for somebody that's, Say not even me. Somebody that's 25 years old.

And they want the best. And they're entrepreneurial. They're not fucking asking for handouts. They don't want, they want as much freedom as possible to do business and to have a clean, safe life. And kind of be away from a nuclear accident, right? Would you recommend that they leave the country? No.

But retain their passport? No. No, no, no. I'm only leaving the country for my children. Okay, but yeah, but say, okay, say they are children, 22 years old. 22 years old, not a child. 22 years old. That's a kid.

But it's a kid compared to us. Right. It's not an 11 year old. Right. Right. By 22 years old, you've studied what you want to study. You have the education you want. Like, there are tons of opportunities for you to go abroad.

Absolutely. Right. Right. But what I'm saying is the thing that drives me to make my decision is because I want my son, who is 11 now, when he turns 14, I want him to be in a different country where there are more opportunities for him to learn a language, for him to meet new people,

for him to have freedom of movement, for me not to worry about him getting shot or run over by a car because we're in a country where, like, it's so heavily... Again, I'm going to most likely move us to a very socialist country because it's very structured. The rules are very set. the government overspends to support the people. Like that's in our,

that will be in my best interest for that moment. But then once my kid's 24, 25, I bring him right back here and now he's got multiple languages. He appreciates American freedom because he's experienced what it's like to be in a socialist country that doesn't have freedom. Right? Right now, your average 22 year old has no fucking idea what it's like in the rest of the world. Like you were saying earlier, slavery doesn't exist. You're fucking wrong.

I didn't say slavery doesn't exist. I meant the institution, the formalized government-sanctioned institution of the slave trade no longer exists. Of course, they say there's... In the United States. Are there countries that formalize on the books? It's not called slavery. It's called something else, but 100% it is institutionalized. If you go anywhere, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Jordan, I'm sorry, not Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE,

If you go to any of those countries, it is 100% a fundamental requirement for them to even have working economies. The UAE, the population of Emirates, 800,000. Yeah, and none of them work. It's too hot. And they're all sanctioned because they all have oil money. So who runs the country? Nepalese workers. And Pakistani workers and Indian workers and they're all, and Filipinas, and they're all third world countries. When they come over, they sign a contract with a company.

that part of their contract stipulates that they give up their passport until they earn a certain amount of money to get their passport back. Wow. And then when they go, like, they'll sign up with Company A, and then they'll actually go to the country, and they'll be registered and documented and everything to fall under, like, complete control of the Emirati government. And then they won't have any of the fair treatment laws

or anything that even allow them to complain about their boss. Right. So they get beat. They get overworked. They get taxed. They get told that they can only buy their water from one source, and that one source is controlled by the boss. It's all the same shit that we did,

like to the Chinese and to the Irish, right? It's still slavery. It's just not, we're not clubbing people over the head, putting them on a boat, and then, like, beating them in the field. But it's the same process. I think it's very well swept under the rug, and that's why I think a thing like TikTok

for as much as it fucks kids' brains up, a lot of things are fucking their bros. You can get just as, stupid off of Instagram as you can off TikTok. The fact that people, when they really learned, if we knew on a mass scale what's happening to Nepalese laborers in Qatar, in the UAE... Nothing would change.

I don't necessarily think that's true. Look at what's changing in 37,000 people is all it took for things to change in Gaza, at least in terms of, you know, the world coming together and doing what they can to stop Israel from doing that. My point, I guess, is that ubiquitously back in the day, owning people was just part of life. It's what God ordained. I'm just making the argument to you, or not even an argument, just kind of what I think. I'm an optimist.

I think humanity is moving to, I think we're moving towards God and we're moving towards more cooperation. I think technology is enabling that. And I think that government bodies will ultimately become redundant because there will hopefully, in an ideal world, nothing will be ideal. Hopefully we'll get to the point where you won't need to have the CIA spying and causing disruption, you know, or the KGB, whatever they're called now, secret police meddling everywhere in the world. because everybody lives better. I hope that you're right, but I'm betting against you. That's fair.

That's fair. Dude, Andy Bustamante. Well, come over on Patriots. I want to promote your business because I'm fascinated, and I do, I kind of want to leave the U.S. too. I think we should all leave for a while.

You know what I mean? We've been here. We get it. Gap year. Gap year. Team gap year. Yes, a gap year. So please plug away.

Tell us about everyday spy. Absolutely. my company Everyday Spy. I'm a teaching and learning platform. I train individuals. I train corporate executives. I train the ultra high net worth on how to apply spy skills to everyday life to gain an unfair advantage. So that's what we're all about. We're all about using spy education to break whatever barrier is holding you back personally, emotionally, physically, in your business, in your career. because like I was telling you before, there are a lot of secrets that have been kept

from the American people about CIA, the skills that we use, the training that we have, but those secrets were never meant to be kept secret. They were just over protected. So now I get a chance to share those with the world

and as a result, I get to make a better, stronger America and a better and stronger world. Okay. So even individuals that, you know, maybe want to improve their own business, they want to learn how to pick up girls. They want to get more respect from their peers.

Optimize their brain. Optimize their health. Get better sleep. Build better social networks. Build networks that actually work for you instead of networks that drain you of all of your time, energy, and resources. Right. All of those are systematic processes that CIA taught us. Okay.

Can we get some examples on the Patreon? Because I want to know. Let's do it. I might become a student. You never know. Okay. Dude, Andy, what a pleasure. How have I done as an interviewer?

On a scale of one to 10? Yeah. I'll give you a solid like seven. Yo, take it. Take it, son. Yeah, no, that was a treat, man. And this is how you learn. You talk to, you know, just brains like yours, man. I really appreciate it. So Patreon.com slash The Connect show. A little more Andy Bustamante.

Check him out. He's all over the internet. And then, yeah, Everyday Spy. Congratulations on the business. Thanks, man. You'll find me at Everydayspy.com. And you'll find my podcast at the Everyday Spy Podcast. and on social media at Everyday Spy. Yes, sir. Thanks, buddy.