back to indexAndrew Bustamante: CIA Spy | Lex Fridman Podcast #310
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Mossad will do anything.
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Mossad has no qualms doing what it takes
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to ensure the survival of every Israeli citizen
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Most other countries will stop at some point,
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but Mossad doesn't do that.
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The following is a conversation with Andrew Bustamante,
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former CIA covert intelligence officer
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and US Air Force combat veteran,
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including the job of operational targeting
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in cryptic communications and launch operations
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for 200 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles.
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Andrew's over seven years as a CIA spy
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have given him a skillset and a perspective on the world
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that is fascinating to explore.
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This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors
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in the description.
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And now, dear friends, here's Andrew Bustamante.
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The Central Intelligence Agency was formed
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almost 75 years ago.
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What is the mission of the CIA?
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The mission of the CIA is to collect intelligence
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from around the world that supports
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a national security mission and be the central repository
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for all other intelligence agencies
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so that it's one collective source
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where all intelligence can be synthesized
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and then passed forward to the decision makers.
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That doesn't include domestic intelligence.
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It's primarily looking outward outside the United States.
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CIA is the foreign intelligence collection,
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king spoke, if you will.
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FBI does domestic,
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and then Department of Homeland Security does domestic.
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Law enforcement essentially handles all things domestic.
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Intelligence is not law enforcement,
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so we technically cannot work inside the United States.
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Is there clear lines to be drawn between,
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like you just said, the FBI, CIA, FBI,
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and the other U.S. intelligence agencies
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like the DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency,
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Department of Homeland Security,
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NSA, National Security Agency, and there's a list.
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There's a list of about 33
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different intelligence organizations.
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Yeah. So like the Army, the Navy has,
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all the different organizations
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have their own intelligence groups.
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So is there clear lines here to be drawn,
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or is the CIA the giant integrator of all of these?
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It's a little bit of both, to be honest.
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So yes, there are absolutely lines,
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and more so than the lines.
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There are lines that divide what our primary mission is.
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Everything's gotta be prioritized.
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That's one of the benefits
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and the superpowers of the United States,
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is we prioritize everything.
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So different intelligence organizations are prioritized
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to collect certain types of intelligence.
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And then within the confines of how they collect,
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they're also given unique authorities,
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authorities are a term that's directed
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by the executive branch.
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Different agencies have different authorities
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to execute missions in different ways.
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FBI can't execute the same way CIA executes,
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and CIA can't execute the same way NGA executes.
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But then at the end, excuse me, when it's all collected,
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then yes, CIA still acts as a final synthesizing repository
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to create what's known as the president's daily brief,
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the PDB, the only way CIA can create the PDB
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is by being the single source of all source intelligence
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from around the IC, the intelligence community,
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which are those 30 some odd and always changing organizations
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that are sponsored for intelligence operations.
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What is the PDB, the president's daily brief look like?
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What does it contain?
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So first of all, it looks like the most expensive
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book report you can ever imagine.
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It's got its own binder.
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It's all very high end.
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It feels important, it looks important.
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It's not like a cheap trapper keeper.
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It's somewhere between, I would give it probably
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between 50 and 125 pages a day.
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It's produced every day around two o clock in the morning
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by a dedicated group of analysts.
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And each page is essentially a short paragraph
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to a few paragraphs about a priority happening
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that affects national security from around the world.
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The president rarely gets to the entire briefing in a day.
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He relies on a briefer instead to prioritize
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what inside the briefing needs to be shared
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with the president.
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Because some days the PDB will get briefed in 10 minutes
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and some days it'll be briefed over the course of two hours.
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It depends on the president's schedule.
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How much competition is there for the first page?
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And so how much jockeying there is for attention?
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I imagine for all the different intelligence agencies
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and within the CIA there's probably different groups
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that are modular and they all care about different nations
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or different cases.
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Do you understand how much competition there is
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for the attention, for the limited attention
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You're 100% correct in how the agency
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and how officers and managers at the agency handle the PDB.
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There's a ton of competition.
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Everybody wants to be the first on the radar.
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Everybody wants to be on the first page.
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The thing that we're not baking into the equation
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is the president's interests.
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The president dictates what's on the first page of his PDB
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and he will tell them usually the day before,
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I wanna see this on the first page tomorrow.
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Bring this to me in the beginning.
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I don't wanna hear about what's happening in Mozambique.
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I don't really care about what's happening in Saudi Arabia.
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I wanna see one, two, three.
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And regardless of whether or not
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those are the three biggest things in the world,
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the president's the executive, he's the one.
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He's the ultimate customer.
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So we do what the customer says.
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That has backfired in the past.
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If you haven't already started seeing
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how that could go wrong, that has backfired in the past,
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but that is essentially what happens
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when you serve in the executive branch.
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You serve the executive.
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So what's the role of the director of the CIA
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versus the president?
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What's that dance like?
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So the president really leads the focus of the CIA?
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The president is the commander in chief for the military,
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but the president is also the executive
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for the entirety of the intelligence community.
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So he's the ultimate customer.
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If you look at it like a business,
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the customer, the person spending the money
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is the president and the director is the CEO.
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So if the director doesn't create what the president wants,
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there's gonna be a new director.
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That's why the director of CIA
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is a presidential appointed position.
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Sometimes they're extremely qualified
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intelligence professionals.
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Sometimes they're just professional politicians
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or soldiers that get put into that seat
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because the president trusts them
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to do what he wants them to do.
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Another gaping area that causes problems,
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but that's still the way it is.
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So you think this is a problematic configuration
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of the whole system?
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Massive flaw in the system.
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It is a massive flaw in the system
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because if you're essentially appointing a director
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to do what you want them to do,
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then you're assigning a crony.
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And that's what we define corruption as
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within the United States.
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And inside the United States,
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we say if you pick somebody outside of merit
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for any other reason other than merit,
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then it's cronyism or it's nepotism.
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Here, that's exactly what our structure is built on.
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All presidential appointees
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are appointed on something other than merit.
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So for an intelligence agency to be effective,
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it has to discover the truth and communicate that truth.
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And maybe if you're appointing the director of that agency,
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you're not, they're less likely to communicate the truth
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to you unless the truth aligns perfectly
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with your desired worldview.
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Well, not necessarily perfectly
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because there are other steps, right?
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They have to be, they have to go in front of Congress
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and they have to have the support
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of multiple legislatures or legislators,
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but the challenge is that the shortlist of people
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who even get the opportunity aren't a meritorious list.
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It's a shortlist based off of who the president is picking
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or who the would be president is picking.
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Now, I think we've proven
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that an intelligence organization can be,
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an intelligence organization can be extremely effective
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even within the flawed system.
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The challenge is how much more effective could we be
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And that's, I think that's the challenge
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that faces a lot of the US government.
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I think that's a challenge that has resulted
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in what we see today when it comes to the decline
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of American power and American influence,
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the rise of foreign influence, authoritarian powers,
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and a shrinking US economy, a growing Chinese economy.
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And it's just, we have questions, hard questions
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we need to ask ourselves
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about how we're gonna handle the future.
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What aspect of that communication between the president
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and the CIA could be fixed to help fix the problems
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that you're referring to
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in terms of the decline of American power?
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So when you talk about the president wanting to prioritize
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what the president cares about,
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that immediately shows a break
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between what actually matters
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to the longterm success of the United States
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versus what happened,
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what benefits the short term success
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of the current president.
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Because any president is just a human being
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and has a very narrow focus.
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And narrow focus is not a longterm calculation.
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Exactly, what's the maximum amount of years
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the president can be president?
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He has to be, he or she.
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In the United States.
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In the United States,
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according to our current constitution.
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But they're very limited
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in terms of what they have to prioritize.
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And then if you look at a four year cycle,
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two years of that is essentially preparing
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for the next election cycle.
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So that's only two years of really quality attention
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you get from the president,
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who is the chief executive
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of all the intelligence community.
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So the most important thing to them
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is not always the most important thing
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to the longterm survival of the United States.
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What do you make of the hostile relationship
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that to me at least stands out of the presidents
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between Donald Trump and the CIA?
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Was that a very kind of personal bickering?
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I mean, is there something interesting to you
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about the dynamics between that particular president
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and that particular instantiation
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of the intelligence agency?
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Man, there were lots of things fascinating to me
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about that relationship.
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What's the good and the bad, sorry to interrupt.
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So let me start with the good first
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because there's a lot of people
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who don't think there was any good.
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So the good thing is we saw that the president
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who's the chief customer, the executive to the CIA,
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when the president doesn't want to hear
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what CIA has to say, he's not gonna listen.
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I think that's an important lesson
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for everyone to take home.
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If the president doesn't care what you have to say,
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he's gonna take funding away
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or she will take funding away.
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They're gonna take attention away.
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They're going to shut down your operations, your missions.
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They're gonna kill the careers of the people working there.
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Think about that, for the four years
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that President Trump was the president,
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basically everybody at CIA, their career was put on pause.
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Some people's careers were ended.
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Some people voluntarily left their career there
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because they found themselves working for a single customer
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that didn't want what they had to produce.
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So for people who don't know,
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Donald Trump did not display significant,
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deep interest in the output.
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He did not trust it, yeah.
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He was a disinterested customer.
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Of the information.
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And then what do disinterested customers do?
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They go find someone else to create their product.
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And that's exactly what Donald Trump did.
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And he did it through the private intelligence world,
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funding private intelligence companies
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to run their own operations that brought him
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the information he cared about when CIA wouldn't.
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It also didn't help that CIA
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stepped outside of their confines, right?
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CIA is supposed to collect foreign intelligence
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and not comment on domestic matters.
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They went way outside of that
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when they started challenging the president,
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when they started questioning the results,
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when they started publicly claiming Russian influence.
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That's all something the FBI could have handled by itself.
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The Justice Department could have handled by itself.
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CIA had no place to contribute to that conversation.
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And when they did, all they did was undermine
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the relationship they had with their primary customer.
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Let me sort of focus in on this relationship
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between the president or the leader
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and the intelligence agency
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and look outside the United States.
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It seems like authoritarian regimes
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or regimes throughout history,
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if you look at Stalin and Hitler,
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if you look at today with Vladimir Putin,
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the negative effects of power
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corrupting the mind of a leader
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manifest itself is that they start
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to get bad information from the intelligence agencies.
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So this kind of thing that you're talking about,
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over time, they start hearing information
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they want to hear.
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The agency starts producing
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only the kind of information they want to hear,
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and the leader's worldview starts becoming distorted
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to where the propaganda they generate
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is also the thing that the intelligence agencies
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provide to them, and so they start getting this,
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they start believing their own propaganda,
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and they start getting a distorted view of the world.
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Sorry for the sort of walking through in a weird way,
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but I guess I want to ask, do you think,
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let's look at Vladimir Putin specifically.
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Do you think he's getting accurate information
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Do you think he knows the truth of the world,
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whether that's the war in Ukraine,
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whether that's the behavior of the other nations,
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in NATO, the United States in general?
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What do you think?
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It's rare that I'll talk about just thinking.
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I prefer to share my assessment,
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why I assess things a certain way,
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rather than just what's my random opinion.
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In my assessment, Vladimir Putin is winning.
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Russia is winning.
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They're winning in Ukraine, but they're also winning
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the battle of influence against the West.
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They're winning in the face of economic sanctions.
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Empirically, when you look at the math, they're winning.
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So when you ask me whether or not Putin
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is getting good information from his intelligence services,
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when I look at my overall assessment of multiple data points,
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he must be getting good information.
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Do I know how or why?
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I don't know how or why it works there.
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I don't know how such deep cronyism,
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such deep corruption can possibly yield true real results.
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And yet, somehow there are real results happening.
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So it's either excessive waste and an accidental win,
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or there really is a system and a process there
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that's functioning.
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So this winning idea is very interesting.
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In what way, short term and long term, is Russia winning?
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Some people say there was a miscalculation
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of the way the invasion happened.
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There was an assumption that you would be able
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to successfully take Kiev.
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You'd be able to successfully capture the East,
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the South, and the North of Ukraine.
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And with what now appears to be
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significantly insufficient troops
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spread way too thin across way too large of a front.
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So that seems to be like an intelligence failure.
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And that doesn't seem to be like winning.
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In another way, it doesn't seem like winning
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if we put aside the human cost of war.
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It doesn't seem like winning
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because the hearts and minds of the West
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were completely on the side of Ukraine.
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This particular leader, Volodymyr Zelensky,
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captured the attention of the world
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and the hearts and minds of Europe, the West,
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and many other nations throughout the world,
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both financially, in terms of military equipment,
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and in terms of sort of social and cultural
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and emotional support for the independence fight
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That seems to be like a miscalculation.
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So against that pushback,
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why do you think there's still kernels
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of winning in this on the Russian side?
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What you're laying out isn't incorrect.
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And the miscalculations are not unexpected.
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Anybody who's been to a military college,
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including the Army War College in Pennsylvania,
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where so many of our military leaders are brought up,
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when you look at the conflict in Ukraine,
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it fits the exact mold
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of what an effective longterm military conflict,
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protracted military conflict,
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would and should look like for military dominance.
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Now, did Zelensky and did the Ukrainians
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But in that, they also shocked American intelligence,
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which, like you said, miscalculated.
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The whole world miscalculated
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how the Ukrainians would respond.
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Putin did not move in there accidentally.
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He had an assessment.
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He had high likelihood of a certain outcome,
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and that outcome did not happen.
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Why did he have that calculation?
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Because in 2014, it worked.
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He invaded, he took Crimea in 14 days.
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He basically created an infiltration campaign
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that turned key leaders over
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in the first few days of the conflict.
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So essentially, there was no conflict.
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It worked in 2008 when he took Georgia.
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Nobody talks about that.
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He invaded Georgia the exact same way, and it worked.
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So in 2008, it worked.
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In 2014, it worked.
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There was no reason to believe it wasn't going to work again.
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So he just carried out the same campaign.
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But this time, something was different.
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That was a miscalculation for sure on the part of Putin.
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And the reason that there was no support from the West,
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because let's not forget, there is no support.
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There is nothing other than the Lend Lease Act,
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which is putting Ukraine in massive debt right now
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That's the only form of support they're getting
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from NATO or the United States.
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So if somebody believed Ukraine would win,
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if somebody believed Ukraine had a chance,
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they would have gotten more material support
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And we can jump into that anytime you want to.
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But the whole world miscalculated.
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Everybody thought Russia was going to win in 14 days.
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I said that they would win in 14 days
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because that was the predominant calculation.
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Once the first invasion didn't work,
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then the military does what professional militaries do, man.
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They reevaluate, they reorganize leaders,
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and then they take a new approach.
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You saw three approaches.
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The first two did not work.
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The first two campaigns against Ukraine did not work
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the way they were supposed to work.
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The third has worked exactly like it's supposed to work.
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You don't need Kiev to win Ukraine.
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You don't need hearts and minds to win Ukraine.
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What you need is control of natural resources,
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which they're taking in the East,
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and you need access to the heartbeat,
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the blood flow of food and money into the country,
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which they're taking in the South.
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The fact that Ukraine had to go to the negotiation table
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with Russia and Turkey in order to get exports
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out of the Black Sea approved again
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demonstrates just how much Ukraine is losing.
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The aggressor had a seat at the negotiation table
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to allow Ukraine the ability to even export
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one of its top exports.
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If Russia would have said no,
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then they would not have had that.
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Russia has, that's like someone holding your throat.
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It's like somebody holding your jugular vein and saying,
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if you don't do what I tell you to do,
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then I'm not gonna let you breathe.
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I'm not gonna let blood flow to your brain.
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So do you think it's possible that Russia
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takes the South of Ukraine?
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It takes, so starting from Mariupol, the Kherson region.
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All the way to Odessa.
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All the way to Odessa.
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I believe all of that will happen before the fall.
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Fall of this year?
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Fall of this year.
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Before winter hits Europe,
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NATO wants Germany needs to be able to have sanctions lifted
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so they can tap into Russian power.
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There's no way they can have those sanctions lifted
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unless Russia wins.
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And Russia also knows that all of Europe,
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all of NATO is the true,
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the true people feeling the pain of the war
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outside of Ukraine are the NATO countries
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because they're so heavily reliant on Russia.
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And as they have supported American sanctions against Russia,
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their people feel the pain.
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Economically, their people feel the pain.
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What are they gonna do in the winter?
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Because without Russian gas,
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their people are gonna freeze to death.
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People all over NATO.
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Ukraine, everybody knows Ukraine's at risk.
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Everybody knows Ukrainians are dying.
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The game of war isn't played just,
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it isn't even played majoritively
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by the people who are fighting.
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The game of war is played by everyone else.
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It's an economic game.
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It's not a military game.
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The flow of resources and energy.
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Attention. And food.
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I was on the front in the Kherson region,
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the very area that you're referring to,
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and I spoke to a lot of people,
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and the morale is incredibly high.
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And I don't think the people in that region,
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soldiers, volunteer soldiers, civilians,
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are going to give up that land without dying.
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I mean, in order to take Odessa,
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would require huge amount of artillery
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and slaughter of civilians, essentially.
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They're not gonna use artillery in Odessa
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because Odessa's too important to Russian culture.
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It's gonna be even uglier than that.
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It's going to be clearing of streets,
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clearing of buildings, person by person, troop by troop.
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It'll be a lot like what it was in Margol.
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Just shooting at civilians.
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Because they can't afford to just do bombing raids
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because they're gonna destroy cultural,
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significant architecture that's just too important
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to the Russian culture,
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and that's gonna demoralize their own Russian people.
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I have to do a lot of thinking
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to try to understand what I even feel.
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I don't know, but in terms of information,
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the thing that the soldiers are saying,
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the Russian soldiers are saying,
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the thing the Russian soldiers really believe
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is that they're freeing,
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they're liberating the Ukrainian people from Nazis.
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And they believe this.
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Because I visited Ukraine,
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I spoke to over 100,
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probably a couple hundred Ukrainian people
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from different walks of life.
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It feels like the Russian soldiers, at least,
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are under a cloud of propaganda.
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They're not operating on a clear view of the whole world.
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And given all that,
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I just don't see Russia taking the South
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without committing war crimes.
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And if Vladimir Putin is aware of what's happening
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in terms of the treatment of civilians,
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I don't see him pushing forward all the way
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to take the South,
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because that's not going to be effective strategy
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for him to win the hearts and minds of these people.
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Autocracies don't need to win hearts and minds.
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That's a staunchly democratic point of view.
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Hearts and minds mean very little
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to people who understand core basic needs and true power.
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You don't see Xi Jinping worrying
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about hearts and minds in China.
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You don't see it in North Korea.
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You don't see it in Congo.
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You don't see it in most of the world.
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Hearts and minds are a luxury.
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In reality, what people need is food, water, power.
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They need income to be able to secure a lifestyle.
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It is absolutely sad.
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I am not in any way, shape or form saying
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that my assessment on this is enriching
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or enlightening or hopeful.
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It's just calculatable empirical evidence.
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If Putin loses in Ukraine, the losses,
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the influential losses, the economic losses,
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the lives lost, the power lost is too great.
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So it is better for him to push and push and push
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through war crimes, through everything else.
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War crimes are something defined
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by the international court system.
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The international court system has Russia
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as part of its board.
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And the international court system is largely powerless
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when it comes to enforcing its own outcomes.
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So the real risk gain scenario here
link |
for Russia is significantly in favor of gain over risk.
link |
The other thing that I think is important
link |
to talk about is we, everybody is trapped
link |
in the middle of a gigantic information war.
link |
Yes, there's battlefield bullets and cannons and tanks,
link |
but there's also a massive informational war.
link |
The same narrative that you see these ground troops
link |
in Ukraine, these Russian ground troops in Ukraine,
link |
believing they're clearing the land of Nazis.
link |
That information is being fed to them
link |
from their own home country.
link |
I don't know why people seem to think
link |
that the information that they're reading in English
link |
is any more or less true.
link |
Every piece of news coming out of the West,
link |
every piece of information coming out
link |
in the English language is also a giant narrative
link |
being shared intentionally to try to undermine the morale
link |
and the faithfulness of English speaking Russians,
link |
which somebody somewhere knows exactly
link |
how many of those there are.
link |
So we have to recognize that we're not getting
link |
true information from other side
link |
because there's a strategic value in making sure
link |
that there is just the right amount
link |
of mis or disinformation out there.
link |
Not because someone's trying to lie to Americans,
link |
but because someone is trying to influence
link |
the way English speaking Russians think.
link |
And in that world, that's exactly why you see
link |
so many news articles cited to anonymous sources,
link |
government officials who do not wanna be named.
link |
There's nothing that links back responsibility there.
link |
There's nothing that can go to court there,
link |
but the information still gets released.
link |
And that's enough to make Ukrainians believe
link |
that the United States is gonna help them
link |
or that the West is gonna help them.
link |
It's enough to make Russians think
link |
that they're going to lose.
link |
And maybe they should just give up now
link |
and leave from the battlefield now.
link |
We have to understand.
link |
We are in the middle of a giant information war.
link |
Maybe you can correct me,
link |
but it feels like in the English speaking world,
link |
it's harder to control.
link |
It's harder to fight the information war
link |
because of, some people say there's not really
link |
a freedom of speech in this country,
link |
but I think if you compare,
link |
there's a lot more freedom of speech.
link |
And it's just harder to control narratives
link |
when there's a bunch of guerrilla journalists
link |
that are able to just publish anything they want
link |
on Twitter or anything.
link |
It's just harder to control narratives.
link |
So people don't understand what freedom of speech is.
link |
That's the first major problem.
link |
And it's shameful how many people in the United States
link |
do not understand what freedom of speech actually protects.
link |
So that aside, you're absolutely right.
link |
Fighting the information war in the West
link |
is extremely difficult
link |
because anyone with a blog, anyone with a Twitter account,
link |
anyone, I mean, anyone can call themselves
link |
a journalist, essentially.
link |
We live in a world, we live in a country
link |
where people read the headline
link |
and they completely bypass the author line
link |
and they go straight into the content.
link |
And then they decide whether the content's real or not
link |
based on how they feel
link |
instead of based on empirical, measurable evidence.
link |
So you mentioned the Lend Lease Act
link |
and the support of the United States,
link |
support of Ukraine by the United States.
link |
Are you skeptical to the level of support
link |
that the United States is providing
link |
and is going to provide over time?
link |
The strategy that the United States has taken
link |
to support Ukraine is similar to the strategy we took
link |
to support Great Britain during World War II.
link |
The enactment of the Lend Lease Act
link |
is a perfect example of that.
link |
The Lend Lease Act means that we are lending
link |
or leasing equipment to the Ukrainian government
link |
in exchange for future payment.
link |
So every time a rocket is launched,
link |
every time a drone crashes into a tank,
link |
that's a bill that Ukraine is just racking up.
link |
It's like when you go to a restaurant
link |
and you start drinking shots.
link |
Sometime the bill will come due.
link |
This is exactly what we did when Europe
link |
and when Great Britain was in the face of a Nazi invasion.
link |
We signed the same thing into motion.
link |
Do you know that the UK did not pay off the debt
link |
from World War II until 2020?
link |
They've been paying that debt since the end of World War II.
link |
So what we're doing is we're indebting Ukraine
link |
against the promise that perhaps
link |
they will secure their freedom,
link |
which nobody seems to wanna talk about
link |
what freedom is actually gonna look like for Ukrainians.
link |
What are the true handful of outcomes,
link |
the realistic outcomes that could come of this
link |
and which of those outcomes really looks like freedom
link |
to them, especially in the face of the fact
link |
that they're going to be trillions of dollars in debt
link |
to the West for supplying them with the training
link |
and the weapons and the food and the med kits
link |
and everything else that we're giving them
link |
because none of it's free.
link |
It's all coming due.
link |
We're a democracy, but we're also a capitalist country.
link |
We can't afford to just give things away for free,
link |
but we can give things away at a discount.
link |
We can give things away, lay away,
link |
but the bill will come due.
link |
And unfortunately that is not part of the conversation
link |
that's being had with the American people.
link |
So debt is a way to establish some level of control.
link |
That said, having a very close relationship
link |
between Ukraine and the United States
link |
does not seem to be a negative possibility
link |
when the Ukrainians think about their future
link |
in terms of freedom.
link |
And the other, there's some aspect of this war
link |
that I've just noticed that one of the people I talked to
link |
said that all great nations have a independence war,
link |
have to have a war for their independence.
link |
In order, there's something, it's dark,
link |
but there's something about war just being a catalyst
link |
for finding your own identity as a nation.
link |
So you can have leaders, you can have sort of
link |
signed documents, you can have all this kind of stuff,
link |
but there's something about war
link |
that really brings the country together
link |
and actually try to figure out what is at the core
link |
of the spirit of the people that defines this country.
link |
And they see this war as that,
link |
as the independence war to define the heart
link |
of what the country is.
link |
So there's been before the war, before this invasion,
link |
there was a lot of factions in the country.
link |
There was a lot of influence from oligarchs
link |
and corruption and so on.
link |
A lot of that was the factions were brought together
link |
under one umbrella effectively to become one nation
link |
because of this invasion.
link |
So they see that as a positive direction
link |
for the defining of what a free democratic country
link |
looks like after the war,
link |
in their perspective after the war is won.
link |
It's a difficult situation because I'm trying to make sure
link |
that you and all, everybody listening understands
link |
that what's happening in Ukraine, among Ukrainians,
link |
is noble and brave and courageous
link |
and beyond the expectations of anyone.
link |
The fact is there is no material support
link |
coming from the outside.
link |
The American Revolution was won
link |
because of French involvement.
link |
French ships, French troops, French generals,
link |
French military might.
link |
The independence of communist China was won
link |
through Russian support, Russian generals,
link |
Russian troops on the ground fighting with the communists.
link |
That's how revolutions are won.
link |
That's how independent countries are born.
link |
Ukraine doesn't get any of that.
link |
No one is stepping into that
link |
because we live in a world right now
link |
where there simply is no economic benefits
link |
to the parties in power to support Ukraine to that level.
link |
And war is a game of economics.
link |
The economic benefit of Ukraine is crystal clear
link |
in favor of Russia, which is why Putin cannot lose.
link |
He will not let himself lose.
link |
Short of something completely unexpected, right?
link |
I'm talking 60%, 70% probability, Ukraine loses.
link |
But there's still 20%, 30% probability
link |
of the unimaginable happening.
link |
Who knows what that might be?
link |
An oligarch assassinates Putin
link |
or a nuclear bomb goes off somewhere
link |
or who knows what, right?
link |
There's still a chance
link |
that something unexpected will happen
link |
and change the tide of the war.
link |
But when it comes down to the core calculus here,
link |
Ukraine is the agricultural bed to support a future Russia.
link |
Russia knows, they know they have to have Ukraine.
link |
They know that they have to have it to protect themselves
link |
against military pressure from the West.
link |
They have to have it for agricultural reasons.
link |
They have major oil and natural gas pipelines
link |
that flow through Eastern Ukraine.
link |
They cannot let Ukraine fall
link |
outside of their sphere of influence.
link |
The United States doesn't really have
link |
any economic vested interest in Ukraine.
link |
Ideological points of view and promises aside,
link |
there's no economic benefit.
link |
And the same thing goes for NATO.
link |
NATO has no economic investment in Ukraine.
link |
Ukrainian output, Ukrainian food
link |
goes to the Middle East and Africa.
link |
It doesn't go to Europe.
link |
So the whole, the West siding with Ukraine
link |
is exclusively ideological
link |
and it's putting them in a place
link |
where they fight a war with Russia
link |
so the whole world can see Russia's capabilities.
link |
Ukraine is a, as sad as it is to say, man,
link |
Ukraine is a pawn on a table for superpowers
link |
to calculate each other's capacities.
link |
Right now we've only talked about Russia and the United States.
link |
We haven't even talked about Iran.
link |
We haven't even talked about China, right?
link |
It is a pawn on a table.
link |
This is a chicken fight so that people get to watch
link |
and see what the other trainers are doing.
link |
Well, a lot of people might've said the same thing
link |
about the United States back in the independence fight.
link |
So there is possibilities, as you've said.
link |
We're not saying a 0% chance
link |
and it could be a reasonably high percent chance
link |
that this becomes one of the great democratic nations
link |
that the 21st century is remembered by.
link |
And so you said American support.
link |
So ideologically, first of all,
link |
you don't assign much longterm power to that.
link |
That US could support Ukraine
link |
purely on ideological grounds.
link |
Just look in the last four years, the last three years.
link |
Do you remember what happened in Hong Kong
link |
right before COVID?
link |
China swooped into Hong Kong violently,
link |
beating protesters, killing them in the street,
link |
imprisoning people without just cause.
link |
And Hong Kong was a democracy
link |
and the whole world stood by and let it happen.
link |
And then what happened in Afghanistan just a year ago
link |
and the whole world stood by
link |
and let the Taliban take power again
link |
after 20 years of loss.
link |
This, we are showing a repeatable point of view.
link |
American politicians, American administrations,
link |
we will say a lot of things.
link |
We will promise a lot of ideological pro democracy,
link |
rah rah statements.
link |
But when it comes down to putting our own people,
link |
our own economy, our own GDP at risk,
link |
we step away from that fight.
link |
America is currently supplying
link |
military equipment to Ukraine.
link |
And a lot of that military equipment
link |
has actually been the thing that turned
link |
the tides of war a couple of times already.
link |
Currently that's the high mar systems.
link |
So you mentioned sort of Putin can't afford to lose,
link |
but winning can look in different ways.
link |
So you've kind of defined so on.
link |
At this moment, the prediction is that winning
link |
looks like capturing not just the east,
link |
but the south of Ukraine.
link |
But you can have narratives of winning
link |
that return back to what was at the beginning of this year
link |
before the invasion.
link |
That Crimea is still with Russia.
link |
There's some kind of negotiated thing about Donbass
link |
where it still stays with Ukraine,
link |
Puppet government.
link |
Just like that's what they have in Georgia right now.
link |
And that could still be defined through mechanisms.
link |
As Russia winning.
link |
As Russia winning for Russia and then for Ukraine
link |
as Ukraine winning and for the west as democracy winning
link |
and you kind of negotiate.
link |
I mean, that seems to be how geopolitics works
link |
is everybody can walk away with a win win story
link |
and then the world progresses with the lessons learned.
link |
That's the high likely.
link |
That's the most probable outcome.
link |
The most probable outcome is that Ukraine remains
link |
in air quotes, a sovereign nation.
link |
It's not going to be truly sovereign
link |
because it will become,
link |
it will have to have new government put in place.
link |
Zelinsky will, it's extremely unlikely he will be president
link |
because he has gone too far to demonstrate his power
link |
over the people and his ability to separate
link |
the Ukrainian people from the autocratic power of Russia.
link |
So he would have to be unseated whether he goes into exile
link |
or whether he is peacefully left alone
link |
is all gonna be part of negotiations.
link |
But the thing to keep in mind also is that
link |
a negotiated peace really just means a negotiated ceasefire.
link |
We've seen this happen all over the world.
link |
North Korea and South Korea are technically still
link |
just in negotiated cease power.
link |
What you end up having is Russia will allow Ukraine
link |
to call itself Ukraine, to operate independently,
link |
to have their own debt to the United States.
link |
Russia doesn't wanna take on that debt.
link |
And then in exchange for that,
link |
they will have firmer guidelines
link |
as to how NATO can engage with Ukraine.
link |
And then that becomes an example
link |
for all the other former Soviet satellite states,
link |
which are all required economically by Russia,
link |
not required economically by the West.
link |
And then you end up seeing how it just,
link |
you can see how the whole thing plays out
link |
once you realize that the keystone is Ukraine.
link |
There is something about Ukraine,
link |
the deep support by the Ukrainian people of America
link |
that is in contrast with, for example, Afghanistan,
link |
that it seems like ideologically,
link |
Ukraine could be a beacon of freedom
link |
used in narratives by the United States
link |
to fight geopolitical wars in that part of the world,
link |
that they would be a good partner
link |
for this idea of democracy, of freedom,
link |
of all the values that America stands for.
link |
They're a good partner.
link |
And so it's valuable,
link |
if you sort of have a cynical, pragmatic view,
link |
sort of like Henry Kissinger type of view,
link |
it's valuable to have them as a partner,
link |
so valuable that it makes sense to support them
link |
in achieving a negotiated ceasefire
link |
that's on the side of Ukraine.
link |
But because of this particular leader,
link |
this particular culture,
link |
this particular dynamics of how the war unrolled
link |
and things like Twitter
link |
and the way digital communication currently works,
link |
it just seems like this is a powerful symbol of freedom
link |
that's useful for the United States
link |
if we're sort of to take the pragmatic view.
link |
Don't you think it's possible
link |
that United States supports Ukraine
link |
financially, militarily enough
link |
for it to get an advantage in this war?
link |
I think they've already gotten advantage in the war.
link |
The fact that the war is still going on
link |
demonstrates the asymmetrical advantage.
link |
The fact that Russia has stepped up
link |
to the negotiating table with them several times
link |
without just turning to Chechen,
link |
I mean, you remember what happened in Chechnya,
link |
without turning to Chechnya level,
link |
just mass blind destruction,
link |
which was another Putin war.
link |
To see that those things have happened
link |
demonstrates the asymmetric advantage
link |
that the West has given.
link |
I think the true way to look at the benefit of Ukraine
link |
as a shining example of freedom in Europe for the West
link |
isn't to understand whether or not they could.
link |
They absolutely could.
link |
It's the question of how valuable is that in Europe?
link |
How valuable is Ukraine?
link |
Which before February, nobody even thought about Ukraine.
link |
And the people who did know about Ukraine
link |
knew that it was an extremely corrupt former Soviet state
link |
with 20% of its national population
link |
self identifying as Russian.
link |
There's a reason Putin went into Ukraine.
link |
There's a reason he's been promising
link |
he would go into Ukraine for the better part of a decade.
link |
Because the circumstances were aligned,
link |
it was a corrupt country that self identified
link |
as Russian in many ways.
link |
It was supposed to be an easier of multiple marks
link |
in terms of the former Soviet satellite states to go after.
link |
That's all part of the miscalculation
link |
that the rest of the world saw too
link |
when we thought it would fall quickly.
link |
So to think that it could be a shining example of freedom
link |
But is it as shining a star as Germany?
link |
Is it as shining a star as the UK?
link |
Is it as shining a star as Romania?
link |
Is it as shiny a star as France?
link |
It's got a lot of democratic freedom based countries
link |
in Europe to compete against
link |
to be the shining stellar example.
link |
And in exchange, on counterpoint to that,
link |
it has an extreme amount of strategic value to Russia
link |
which has no interest in making it a shining star
link |
of the example of democracy and freedom.
link |
Outside of research in terms of the shininess of the star,
link |
I would argue yes.
link |
If you look at how much it captivated
link |
the attention of the world.
link |
The attention of the world
link |
has made no material difference, man.
link |
That's what I'm saying.
link |
That's your estimation, but are you sure we can,
link |
we can't, if you can convert that into political influence
link |
into money, don't you think attention is money?
link |
Attention is money in democracies and capitalist countries.
link |
Which serves as a counterweight
link |
to sort of authoritarian regimes.
link |
So for Putin, resources matter.
link |
For the United States, also resources matter,
link |
but the attention and the belief of the people also matter
link |
because that's how you attain and maintain political power.
link |
So going to that exact example,
link |
then I would highlight that our current administration
link |
has the lowest approval ratings of any president in history.
link |
So if people were very fond of the war going on in Ukraine,
link |
wouldn't that counterbalance some of our upset,
link |
some of the dissent coming from the economy
link |
and some of the dissent coming from the great recession
link |
or the second great, or the great resignation
link |
and whatever's happening with the draw
link |
with the down stock market?
link |
You would think that people would feel
link |
like they're sacrificing for something
link |
if they really believed that Ukraine mattered,
link |
that they would stand next to the president
link |
who is so staunchly driving and leading the West
link |
against this conflict.
link |
Well, I think the opposition to this particular president,
link |
I personally believe has less to do with the policies
link |
and more to do with a lot of the other human factors.
link |
But again, empirically, this is,
link |
I look at things through a very empirical lens,
link |
a very cold fact based lens.
link |
And there are multiple data points that suggest
link |
that the American people ideologically sympathize
link |
with Ukraine, but they really just want
link |
their gas prices to go down.
link |
They really just want to be able to pay less money
link |
at the grocery store for their food.
link |
And they most definitely don't want their sons
link |
and daughters to die in exchange for Ukrainian freedom.
link |
It does hurt me to see the politicization
link |
of this war as well.
link |
I think that maybe has to do with the kind of calculation
link |
you're referring to, but it seems like it doesn't.
link |
It seems like there's a cynical,
link |
whatever takes attention of the media for the moment,
link |
the red team chooses one side
link |
and the blue team chooses another.
link |
And then I think, correct me if I'm wrong,
link |
but I believe the Democrats went into full support
link |
of Ukraine on the ideological side.
link |
And then I guess Republicans are saying,
link |
why are we wasting money?
link |
The gas prices are going up.
link |
That's a very crude kind of analysis,
link |
but they basically picked whatever argument
link |
on whatever side, and now more and more and more,
link |
this particular war in Ukraine is becoming
link |
a kind of pawn in the game of politics
link |
that's first the midterm elections,
link |
then building up towards the presidential elections,
link |
and stops being about the philosophical, the social,
link |
the geopolitical aspects, parameters of this war,
link |
and more about just like whatever the heck
link |
captivates Twitter, and we're gonna use that for politics.
link |
You're right in the sense of the fact that it's,
link |
I wouldn't say that the red team and the blue team
link |
picked opposite sides on this.
link |
What I would say is that media discovered
link |
that talking about Ukraine wasn't as profitable
link |
as talking about something else.
link |
People simply, the American people who read media
link |
or who watch media, they simply became bored
link |
reading about news that didn't seem to be changing much.
link |
And we turned back into wanting to read
link |
about our own economy, and we wanted to hear more
link |
about cryptocurrency, and we wanted to hear more
link |
about the Kardashians, and that's what we care about,
link |
so that's what media writes about.
link |
That's how a capitalist market driven world works,
link |
and that's how the United States works.
link |
That's why in both red papers and blue papers,
link |
red sources and blue sources,
link |
you don't see Ukraine being mentioned very much.
link |
If anything, I would say that your Republicans
link |
are probably more in support of what's happening
link |
in Ukraine right now, because we're creating
link |
new weapon systems, our military is getting stronger,
link |
we're sending these, we get to test military systems
link |
in combat in Ukraine, that's priceless.
link |
In the world of the military industrial complex,
link |
being able to field test, combat test a weapon
link |
without having to sacrifice your own people
link |
is incredibly valuable.
link |
You get all the data, you get all the performance metrics,
link |
but you don't have to put yourself at risk.
link |
That is one of the major benefits of what we're seeing
link |
from supporting Ukraine with weapons and with troops.
link |
The longterm benefit to what will come of this
link |
for the United States, practically speaking,
link |
in the lens of national security,
link |
through military readiness,
link |
through future economic benefits, those are super strong.
link |
The geopolitical fight is essentially moot,
link |
because Ukraine is not a geopolitical player.
link |
It was not for 70 years, and after this conflict is over,
link |
it will not again.
link |
Just think about what you were just saying
link |
with the American people's attention span
link |
to Twitter and whatever's currently going on.
link |
If the Ukraine conflict resolved itself today
link |
in any direction, how many weeks do you think
link |
before no one talked about Ukraine anymore?
link |
Do you think we would make it two weeks?
link |
Or do you think we'd make it maybe seven days?
link |
It would be headline news for one or two days,
link |
and then we'd be onto something else.
link |
It's just an unfortunate reality
link |
of how the world works in a capitalist democracy.
link |
Yeah, it just breaks my heart how much,
link |
you know, I know that there's Yemen and Syria
link |
and that nobody talks about anymore.
link |
Still raging conflicts going on.
link |
It breaks my heart how much generational hatred is born.
link |
I happen to be from, my family is from Ukraine
link |
and from Russia, and so for me, just personally,
link |
it's a part of the world I care about.
link |
In terms of its history, because I speak the language,
link |
I can appreciate the beauty of the literature,
link |
the music, the art, the cultural history
link |
of the 20th century through all the dark times,
link |
through all the hell of the dark sides
link |
of authoritarian regimes, the destruction of war.
link |
There's still just the beauty that I'm able to appreciate
link |
that I can't appreciate about China, Brazil,
link |
other countries because I don't speak their language.
link |
This one I can appreciate.
link |
And so in that way, this is personally really painful to me
link |
to see so much of that history, the beauty in that history
link |
suffocated by the hatred that is born
link |
through this kind of geopolitical game
link |
fought mostly by the politicians, the leaders.
link |
People are beautiful, and that's what you're talking about.
link |
People are just, people are beautiful creatures.
link |
Culture and art and science,
link |
these are beautiful, beautiful things
link |
that come about because of human beings.
link |
And the thing that gives me hope is that
link |
no matter what conflict the world has seen,
link |
and we've seen some devastating,
link |
horrible crimes against humanity already.
link |
We saw nuclear bombs go off in Japan.
link |
We saw genocide happen in Rwanda.
link |
We've seen horrible things happen.
link |
But people persevere.
link |
Language, culture, arts, science, they all persevere.
link |
They all shine through.
link |
Some of the most, people don't even realize
link |
how gorgeous the architecture and the culture is
link |
People have no idea.
link |
Chinese people in the rural parts of China
link |
are some of the kindest, most amazing people
link |
And Korean art and Korean dance, Korean drumming,
link |
I know nobody has ever even heard of Korean drumming.
link |
Korean drumming is this magical, beautiful thing.
link |
And the North, in North Korea, does it better
link |
than anybody in the world.
link |
Taekwondo in North Korea is just exceptional to watch.
link |
Nobody knows these things.
link |
How do you know about Taekwondo in North Korea?
link |
That's fascinating.
link |
That's, people don't think about that,
link |
but the culture, the beauty of the people
link |
still flourishes even in the toughest of places.
link |
Absolutely, and we always will.
link |
We always will because that is what people do.
link |
And that is just the truth of it.
link |
And it breaks my heart to see travesties
link |
that people commit against people.
link |
But whether you're looking at a micro level,
link |
like what happens with shootings here in the United States,
link |
or whether you look at a macro level,
link |
like geopolitical power exchanges
link |
and intra and interstate conflicts,
link |
like what you see in Syria and what you see in Ukraine,
link |
those are disgusting, terrible things.
link |
War is a terrible thing.
link |
That is a famous quote.
link |
But people will persevere.
link |
People will come through.
link |
And I hope we don't do something
link |
that I'll probably also ask you about later on
link |
is things that destroy the possibility of perseverance,
link |
which is things like nuclear war,
link |
things that can do such tremendous damage
link |
that we will never recover.
link |
But yeah, amidst your pragmatic pessimism,
link |
I think both you and I have a kind of
link |
maybe small flame of optimism in there
link |
about the perseverance of the human species in general.
link |
Let me ask you about intelligence agencies
link |
outside of the CIA.
link |
Can you illuminate what is the most powerful
link |
intelligence agency in the world?
link |
The CIA, the FSB, formerly the KGB, the MI6, Mossad.
link |
I've gotten a chance to interact with a lot of Israelis
link |
Just incredible people.
link |
Yeah, in terms of both training and skill,
link |
American soldiers too, just American military is incredible.
link |
I just, the competence and skill of the military,
link |
the United States, Israeli I got to interact,
link |
and Ukrainian as well.
link |
It's striking, it's beautiful.
link |
I just love people, I love carpenters,
link |
or people that are just extremely good at their job
link |
and then take pride in their craftsmanship.
link |
It's beautiful to see.
link |
And I imagine the same kind of thing happens
link |
inside of intelligence agencies as well
link |
that we don't get to appreciate because of the secrecy.
link |
Same thing with like Lockheed Martin.
link |
I interviewed the CTO of Lockheed Martin.
link |
It breaks my heart, as a person who loves engineering,
link |
because of the cover of secrecy,
link |
we'll never get to know some of the incredible engineering
link |
that happens inside of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon.
link |
Yeah, you know, there's kind of this idea
link |
that these are, you know, people have conspiracy theories
link |
and kind of assign evil to these companies in some part,
link |
but I think there's beautiful people inside those companies,
link |
brilliant people, and some incredible science
link |
and engineering is happening there.
link |
Anyway, that said, the CIA, the FSB, the MI6,
link |
Mossad, China, I know very little about the...
link |
MSS, the Ministry of State Security.
link |
I don't know how much you know.
link |
Or just other intelligence agencies.
link |
In India, Pakistan, I've also heard...
link |
Yeah, RAW is powerful, and so is ISSI.
link |
And then, of course, European nations in Germany and France.
link |
Yeah, so what can you say about the power,
link |
the influence of the different intelligence agencies
link |
within their nation and outside?
link |
Yeah, so to answer your question, your original question,
link |
which is the most powerful,
link |
I'm gonna have to give you a few different answers.
link |
So the most powerful intelligence organization in the world
link |
in terms of reach is the Chinese MSS,
link |
the Ministry of State Security,
link |
because they have created
link |
a single, solitary intelligence service
link |
that has global reach and is integrated
link |
with Chinese culture, so that essentially,
link |
every Chinese person anywhere in the world
link |
is an informant to the MSS,
link |
because that's their way of serving the Middle Kingdom,
link |
Zhongguo, the Central Kingdom, the Chinese word for China.
link |
So they're the strongest.
link |
They're the most powerful intelligence service
link |
in terms of reach.
link |
Most assets, most informants, most intelligence.
link |
So it's deeply integrated with the citizenry.
link |
Correct, with their culture.
link |
You know what a Chinese person who lives in Syria
link |
thinks of themself as?
link |
Do you know what a Chinese person,
link |
a Chinese national living in the United States
link |
thinks of themself as?
link |
A Chinese person, right?
link |
Americans living abroad often think of ourselves
link |
as expats, expatriates, living on the local economy,
link |
embracing the local culture.
link |
That is not how Chinese people view
link |
traveling around the world.
link |
And by the way, if I may mention,
link |
I believe the way Mossad operates
link |
is a similar kind of thing,
link |
because people from Israel living abroad
link |
still think of themselves as Jewish and Israeli.
link |
First, so that allows you to integrate the.
link |
Culture, and yep, the faith based aspects.
link |
But the number of people in Israel is much, much smaller.
link |
The number of people in China.
link |
When it comes to reach, China wins that game.
link |
When it comes to professional capability,
link |
it's the CIA by far, because budget wise,
link |
capability wise, weapons system wise,
link |
modern technology wise,
link |
CIA is the leader around the world,
link |
which is why every other intelligence organization out there
link |
wants to partner with CIA.
link |
They want to learn from CIA.
link |
They want to train with CIA.
link |
They want to partner on counter narcotics,
link |
and counter drug, and counter terrorism,
link |
and counter Uyghur, you name it,
link |
people want to partner with CIA.
link |
So CIA is the most powerful
link |
in terms of capability and wealth.
link |
And then you've got the idea, you've got tech.
link |
So tech alone, meaning corporate espionage,
link |
economic espionage, nothing beats DGSE in France.
link |
They've got a massive budget
link |
that almost goes exclusively to stealing foreign secrets.
link |
They're the biggest threat to the United States,
link |
even above Russia and above China.
link |
is a massively powerful intelligence organization,
link |
but they're so exclusively focused
link |
on a handful of types of intelligence collection
link |
that nobody even really thinks that they exist.
link |
And then in terms of just terrifying violence,
link |
Mossad will do anything.
link |
Mossad has no qualms doing what it takes
link |
to ensure the survival
link |
of every Israeli citizen around the world.
link |
Most other countries will stop at some point,
link |
but Mossad doesn't do that.
link |
So it's the lines you're willing to cross.
link |
And the reasons that you're willing to cross them.
link |
The CIA will let an American stay in jail in Russia,
link |
unlawfully, and seek a diplomatic solution.
link |
I mean, the United States has let people,
link |
there are two gentlemen from the 1950s
link |
who were imprisoned in China for 20 years
link |
waiting for diplomatic solutions to their release.
link |
So we do not kill to save a citizen, but Mossad will.
link |
And then they'll not just kill,
link |
they'll do large scale infiltration.
link |
They'll do amazing things.
link |
There is no, they spare no expense
link |
because it's a demonstration to their own people.
link |
Again, going back to the whole idea of influence.
link |
Every intelligence operation that sees the light of day
link |
The first purpose is the intelligence operation.
link |
But if it was just the intelligence operation,
link |
it would stay secret forever.
link |
The second purpose
link |
of every successful intelligence operation,
link |
when they become public,
link |
is to send a signal to the world.
link |
If you work against us, we will do this to you.
link |
If you work for us, we will take care of you in this way.
link |
It's a massive information campaign.
link |
Do you think in that way, CIA is not doing a good job?
link |
Because there is the FSB, perhaps much less so GRU,
link |
but the KGB did this well,
link |
which is to send a signal, like basically communicate
link |
that this is a terrifying organization with a lot of power.
link |
So Mossad is doing a good job of that.
link |
The psychological information warfare.
link |
And it seems like the CIA also has a lot of kind of myths
link |
about it, conspiracy theories about it,
link |
but much less so than the other agencies.
link |
CIA does a good job of playing to the mythos.
link |
So when General Petraeus used to be the director of CIA.
link |
Yeah, and your workout partner.
link |
And my workout partner.
link |
I read about this.
link |
So I loved and hated those workouts with Petraeus
link |
because he is a physical beast.
link |
He's a strong fit, at the time, 60 something year old man.
link |
Let me take a tangent on that because he's coming
link |
Oh, excellent man.
link |
So can you say what you learned from the man
link |
in terms of, or like what you think is interesting
link |
and powerful and inspiring about the way he sees the world,
link |
or maybe what you learned in terms of how to get strong
link |
in the gym or anything about life.
link |
Two things right away.
link |
And one of them I was gonna share with you anyway.
link |
So I'm glad that you asked the question.
link |
So the first is that on our runs and man, he runs fast
link |
and we would go for six mile runs through Bangkok.
link |
And he talked openly about, I asked him,
link |
how do you keep this mystery, this epic mythology
link |
about your fitness and your strength?
link |
How do you keep all of this alive with the troops?
link |
And he had this amazing answer.
link |
And he was like, I don't talk about it.
link |
Myths are born not from somebody orchestrating the myth,
link |
but from the source of the myth, simply being secretive.
link |
So he's like, I don't talk about it.
link |
I've never talked about it.
link |
I've never exacerbated it.
link |
I just do what I do.
link |
And I let the troops talk.
link |
And he's like, when it's in favor, when it goes in favor
link |
of discipline and loyalty and commitment, I let it run.
link |
If it starts getting destructive or damaging,
link |
then I have my leadership team step in to fix it.
link |
But when it comes to the mythos,
link |
the myth of him being superpowered soldier,
link |
that's what he wants every soldier to be.
link |
So he lets it run.
link |
And it was so enlightening when he told me,
link |
when there's a myth that benefits you, you just let it go.
link |
You let it happen because it gets you further
link |
without you doing any work.
link |
It costs no investment for you.
link |
So the catalyst of the virality of the myth
link |
is just being mysterious.
link |
And that's what CIA does well,
link |
to go back to your first question.
link |
They don't answer any questions.
link |
They don't say anything.
link |
And wherever the myth goes, the myth goes,
link |
whether it's that they sold drugs
link |
or use child prostitutes or whatever else,
link |
wherever the myth goes, they let it go.
link |
Because at the end of the day,
link |
everybody sits back and says, wow, I really just don't know.
link |
Now, the second thing that I learned from Petraeus,
link |
and I really am a big fan of Petraeus.
link |
I know he made personal mistakes.
link |
You don't get to be that powerful
link |
without making personal mistakes.
link |
But when I worked out with him,
link |
the one thing that my commanding officer
link |
told me not to ask about,
link |
he was like, never ask the general about his family.
link |
So as soon as I met General Petraeus,
link |
one of the first things I asked him was,
link |
hey, what was it like raising a family
link |
and being the commander of forces in the Middle East?
link |
Like you weren't with your family very much.
link |
And the thing I love about the guy,
link |
he didn't bite off my head.
link |
He didn't snap at me.
link |
He didn't do anything.
link |
He openly admitted that he regretted
link |
some of the decisions that he made
link |
because he had to sacrifice his family to get there.
link |
Relationships with his children,
link |
absentee father, missing birthdays,
link |
missing, we all say, we all say how sad it is
link |
to miss birthdays and miss anniversaries,
link |
Everybody knows what that feels like.
link |
Even business people know what that feels like.
link |
The actual pain that we're talking about
link |
is when you're not there to handle
link |
your 13 year old's questions when a boy breaks up with her
link |
or when you're not there to handle the bloody lip
link |
that your nine year old comes back with
link |
from their first encounter with a bully.
link |
Those are the truly heartbreaking moments
link |
that a parent lives and dies by.
link |
He missed almost all of those
link |
because he was fighting a war that we forgot
link |
and we gave up on 20 years later, right?
link |
He's so honest about that.
link |
And it was really inspiring to me
link |
to be told not to ask that question.
link |
And when I broke that guidance, he didn't reprimand me.
link |
He just, he was authentic.
link |
And it was absolutely one of the big decisions
link |
that helped me leave CIA on my own in 2014.
link |
And he was honest on the sacrifice you make.
link |
The same man, the same man who just taught me a lesson
link |
about letting a myth live,
link |
that same guy was willing to be so authentic
link |
about this personal mistake.
link |
I like complicated people like that.
link |
So what did you, what do you make of that calculation,
link |
of family versus job?
link |
You've given a lot of your life and passion
link |
to the CIA, to that work.
link |
You've spoken positively about that world, the good it does.
link |
And yet you're also a family man and you value that.
link |
What's that calculation like?
link |
What's that trade off like?
link |
I mean, for me, the calculation is very clear.
link |
I left CIA because I chose my family.
link |
And when my son was born, my wife and I found out
link |
that we were pregnant while we were still on mission.
link |
We were a tandem couple.
link |
My wife is also a former CIA officer, undercover like me.
link |
We were operating together overseas.
link |
We got the positive pregnancy test, like so many people do.
link |
My wife was a bad ass.
link |
I was just, I was like the accidental spy,
link |
but my wife was really good at what she does.
link |
And she cried and she was like, what do we do now?
link |
It's what we've always wanted, a child,
link |
but we're in this thing right now.
link |
There's no space for a child.
link |
So long story short, we had our baby.
link |
CIA brought us back to have the baby.
link |
And when we started having conversations about,
link |
hey, what do we do next?
link |
Cause we're not the type of people
link |
to wanna just sit around and be domestic.
link |
What do we do next?
link |
But keep in mind, we have a child now.
link |
So here's some of our suggestions.
link |
We could do this and we can do that.
link |
Let us get our child to a place where we can put him
link |
into an international school,
link |
or we can get him into some sort of program
link |
where we can both operate together again during the day.
link |
But CIA just had no,
link |
they had no patience for that conversation.
link |
There was no, family is not their priority.
link |
So the fact that we were a tandem couple,
link |
two officers, two operators trying to have a baby
link |
was irrelevant to them.
link |
So when they didn't play with us,
link |
when they did nothing to help us prioritize parenthood
link |
as part of our overall experience,
link |
that's when we knew that they never would.
link |
And what good is it to commit yourself to a career
link |
if the career is always going to challenge
link |
the thing that you value most?
link |
And that was the calculation that we made to leave CIA.
link |
Not everybody makes that calculation.
link |
And a big part of why I am so vocal about my time in CIA
link |
is because I am immensely appreciative of the men and women
link |
who to this day have failed marriages
link |
and poor relationships with their children
link |
because they chose national security.
link |
They chose protecting America over their own family.
link |
And they've done it even though it's made them
link |
abuse alcohol and abuse substances
link |
and they've gotten themselves,
link |
they've got permanent diseases and issues
link |
from living and working abroad.
link |
It's just insane the sacrifice that officers make
link |
to keep America free.
link |
And I'm just not one of those people.
link |
You said that your wife misses it.
link |
We miss it for different reasons.
link |
We miss it for similar reasons, I guess,
link |
but we miss it in different ways.
link |
The people, the people at CIA are just amazing.
link |
They're everyday people like the guy and the gal next door,
link |
but so smart and so dedicated and so courageous
link |
about what they do and how they do it.
link |
I mean, the sacrifices they make are massive,
link |
more massive than the sacrifices I made.
link |
So I was always inspired
link |
and impressed by the people around me.
link |
So both my wife and I absolutely miss the people.
link |
My wife misses the work because you know everything.
link |
When you're inside, it's all, I mean, we had top secret.
link |
We had TS SCI clearances at the time.
link |
I had a cat six, cat 12, which makes me nuclear cleared.
link |
My wife had other privy clearances
link |
that allowed her to look into areas that were specialized,
link |
but there wasn't a headline that went out
link |
that we couldn't fact check with a click of a few buttons.
link |
And she misses that because she loved that kind of knowledge.
link |
And now you're just one of us living
link |
in the cloud of mystery.
link |
Not really knowing anything about what's going on.
link |
Exactly, but for me,
link |
I've always been the person that likes operating.
link |
And you know what you still get to do when you leave CIA?
link |
You still get to operate.
link |
Operating is just working with people.
link |
It's understanding how people think,
link |
predicting their actions,
link |
driving their direction of their thoughts, persuading them,
link |
winning negotiations.
link |
You still get to do that.
link |
You do that every day.
link |
And you can apply that in all kinds of domains.
link |
Well, let me ask you on that.
link |
You're a covert CIA intelligence officer for several years.
link |
Maybe can you tell me the story of how it all began?
link |
How were you recruited?
link |
And what did the job entail
link |
to the degree you can speak about it?
link |
Feel free to direct me if I'm getting too boring
link |
Every aspect of this is super exciting.
link |
So I was leaving the United States Air Force in 2007.
link |
I was a lieutenant getting ready to pin on captain.
link |
My five years was up.
link |
And I was a very bad fit for the US Air Force.
link |
I was an Air Force Academy graduate, not by choice,
link |
but by lack of opportunity, lack of options otherwise.
link |
So I forced myself through the Academy,
link |
barely graduated with a 2.4 GPA.
link |
And then went on the Air Force taught me how to fly.
link |
And then the Air Force taught me about nuclear weapons.
link |
And I ended up as a nuclear missile commander in Montana.
link |
And I chose to leave the Air Force
link |
because I didn't like shaving my face.
link |
I didn't like having short hair.
link |
And I most definitely didn't like shining my shoes.
link |
And I did not wanna be one of the people
link |
in charge of nuclear weapons.
link |
So when I found myself as a person
link |
in charge of 200 nuclear weapons,
link |
I knew that I was going down the wrong road.
link |
I have questions about this.
link |
And more importantly, I have questions about your hair.
link |
So you had short hair at the time?
link |
I had, yeah, you have to.
link |
Military regulations, you can't have hair
link |
longer than one inch.
link |
And this, the beautiful hair you have now,
link |
that came to be in the CIA or after?
link |
This, so I discovered I had messy hair in CIA
link |
because I used to go muge, we called it muge.
link |
I used to go Mujahideen style,
link |
big burly beard and crazy wacky hair.
link |
Because an ambiguously brown guy with a big beard
link |
and long hair can go anywhere in the world
link |
without anyone even noticing him.
link |
They either think that he's a janitor
link |
or they think that he's like some forgotten part of history
link |
but nobody ever thinks that that guy is a spy.
link |
So it was the perfect, for me,
link |
it was one of my favorite disguises.
link |
It's what's known as a level two disguise.
link |
One of my favorite disguises to Don
link |
was just dilapidated brown guy.
link |
Can you actually, we'll just take a million tangents.
link |
What's a level two disguise?
link |
What are the different levels of disguise?
link |
What are the disguises?
link |
Yeah, there's three levels of disguise by and large.
link |
Level one is what we also know,
link |
what we also call light disguise.
link |
So that's essentially, you put on sunglasses
link |
and a ball cap and that's a disguise.
link |
You look different than you normally look.
link |
So it's just different enough
link |
that someone who's never seen you before,
link |
someone who literally has to see you
link |
just from a picture on the internet,
link |
they may not recognize you.
link |
It's why you see celebrities walk around
link |
with ball caps and oversized jackets and baseball hats
link |
because they just need to not look
link |
like they look in the tabloid
link |
or not look like they look in TV.
link |
Let me jump from level one to level three.
link |
Level three is all of your prosthetics,
link |
all the stuff you see in Mission Impossible,
link |
your fake ears, your fake faces, your fat suits,
link |
your stilts inside your feet, all that's level three.
link |
Whenever they make any kind of prosthetic disguise,
link |
that's a level three disguise
link |
because prosthetics are very damning
link |
if you are caught with a prosthetic.
link |
If you're caught wearing a sudden,
link |
wearing a baseball hat and sunglasses,
link |
nobody's gonna say you're a spy.
link |
But when you're caught with a custom made nose prosthetic
link |
that changes the way your face looks
link |
or when someone pops out a fake jaw
link |
and they see that your top teeth don't look like they did
link |
in this prosthetic, then all of a sudden
link |
you've got some very difficult questions to ask
link |
So level three is extremely dangerous.
link |
Level one is not dangerous.
link |
Level two is longterm disguise.
link |
Level two is all the things that you can do
link |
to permanently change the way you look
link |
for a long period of time
link |
so that whether you're aggressed in the street
link |
or whether someone breaks into your hotel room or whatever,
link |
So maybe that's, maybe you get a tattoo.
link |
Maybe you cut your hair short.
link |
Maybe you grow your hair long.
link |
Maybe you go bald.
link |
Maybe you start wearing glasses.
link |
Well, glasses are technically a prosthetic,
link |
but you can, if you have teeth pulled,
link |
if you gain 20 pounds, really gain 20 pounds
link |
or lose 15 pounds, whatever you might do,
link |
all of that's considered level two.
link |
It's designed for a longterm mission
link |
so that people believe you are who you say you are
link |
A lot of that is physical characteristics.
link |
What about what actors do,
link |
Yeah, the method acting,
link |
sort of developing a backstory in your own mind,
link |
and then you start pretending
link |
that you host a podcast and teach at a university
link |
and then do research and so on
link |
just so that people can believe
link |
that you're not actually an agent.
link |
Is that part of the disguise levels or no?
link |
So yes, disguise has to do with physical character traits.
link |
That's what a disguise is.
link |
What you're talking about is known as a cover legend.
link |
When you go undercover,
link |
what you claim to be, who you claim to be,
link |
that's called your legend, your cover legend.
link |
Every disguise would theoretically have
link |
its own cover legend.
link |
Even if it's just to describe
link |
why you're wearing what you're wearing,
link |
So the method acting,
link |
this is a fantastic point
link |
that I don't get to make very often,
link |
so I'm glad you asked.
link |
The difference between CIA officers in the field
link |
is that method actors try to become the character.
link |
They try to shed all vestiges of who they really are
link |
and become the character,
link |
and that's part of what makes them so amazing,
link |
but it's also part of what makes them mentally unstable
link |
over long periods of time.
link |
It's part of what feeds their depression,
link |
their anxiety, their personal issues,
link |
because they lose sight of who they really are.
link |
Field officers don't get that luxury.
link |
We have to always, always remember
link |
we are a covert CIA intelligence officer
link |
collecting secrets in the field.
link |
We have to remember that.
link |
So we're taught a very specific skill
link |
to compartmentalize our true self separately,
link |
but make that true self the true identity.
link |
So then we can still live and act
link |
and effectively carry out our cover legend
link |
without ever losing sight,
link |
without ever losing that compass true north
link |
of who we actually are.
link |
And then we can compartmentalize
link |
and secure all the information that we need,
link |
retain it, remember it,
link |
but then return to our true self
link |
when we get back to a position of safety.
link |
Is it possible to do that?
link |
So I just have kind of anecdotal evidence for myself.
link |
I really try to be the exact same person in all conditions,
link |
which makes it very easy.
link |
Like if you're not lying,
link |
it makes it very easy to, first of all, to exist,
link |
but also to communicate a kind of authenticity
link |
and a genuineness, which I think is really important.
link |
Like trust and integrity around trust
link |
is extremely important to me.
link |
It's the thing that opens doors
link |
and maintains relationships.
link |
And I tend to think, like when I was in Ukraine,
link |
so many doors just opened to the very high security areas
link |
and everywhere else too.
link |
Like I've just interacted with some incredible people
link |
without any kind of concerns.
link |
You know, who is this guy?
link |
Is he gonna spread it?
link |
You know, all that kind of stuff.
link |
And I tend to believe that you're able
link |
to communicate a trustworthiness somehow
link |
if you just are who you are.
link |
And I think, I suppose method actors
link |
are trying to achieve that by becoming something
link |
and they can, I just feel like there is very subtle cues
link |
that are extremely difficult to fake.
link |
Like you really have to become that person, be that person.
link |
But you're saying as a CIA agent,
link |
you have to remember that you are there
link |
to collect information.
link |
Do you think that gives you away?
link |
So one of the flaws in your argument
link |
is that you keep referring to how you feel.
link |
I feel this, I feel that, I feel like this,
link |
That feeling is a predictable character trait
link |
of all human beings.
link |
It's a pink matter, we call it pink matter.
link |
It's a cognitive trait.
link |
You are not alone in trusting your feelings.
link |
All people trust their feelings.
link |
But because what CIA teaches us
link |
is how to systematically create artificial relationships
link |
where we're the one in control of the source
link |
that is giving us intelligence.
link |
And the core element to being able to control
link |
a relationship is understanding
link |
the pink matter truth of feelings.
link |
What all people feel becomes their point of view
link |
on what reality is.
link |
So when you understand and you learn how to manipulate
link |
what people feel, then you can essentially direct them
link |
to feel any way you want them to feel.
link |
So if you want them to feel like they can trust you,
link |
you can make them feel that way.
link |
If you want them to feel like you're a good guy
link |
or a bad guy, if you want them to feel like
link |
they should give you secrets even though their government
link |
tells them not to, you can do that.
link |
There are men who make women feel like they love them
link |
and just so that the woman will sleep with them.
link |
There are women who make men feel like they love them
link |
just so the men will give them their money.
link |
Manipulation is a core behavioral trait
link |
of all the human species because we all understand
link |
to some level how powerful feelings are,
link |
but feelings are not the same thing
link |
as logical, rational thought.
link |
They're two different sides of the brain.
link |
What CIA teaches us how to do is systematically tap into
link |
the right side, emotional side of the brain
link |
so that we can quickly get past all of the stuff
link |
you were just saying, all of the,
link |
well, don't you have to be convincing
link |
and don't you have to really know your story
link |
and don't you have to be able to defend it?
link |
Don't you have to have authenticity
link |
and don't you have to have genuine feelings?
link |
Yes, all of those things are true
link |
if you're having a genuine relationship,
link |
but in an artificial relationship,
link |
there's ways to bypass all of that
link |
and get right to the heart of making someone
link |
feel comfortable and safe.
link |
I guess the question I'm asking
link |
and the thing I was implying is that creating
link |
an artificial relationship is an extremely difficult skill
link |
to accomplish the level, like how good I am at being me
link |
and creating a feeling in another person that I create.
link |
For you to do that artificially,
link |
that's gotta be, you gotta be,
link |
my sense is you gotta be really damn good at that kind of thing.
link |
I would venture to say, I mean,
link |
I don't know how to measure how difficult the thing is,
link |
but especially when you're communicating with people
link |
whose job depends on forming trusting relationships,
link |
they're gonna smell bullshit.
link |
And to get past that bullshit detector is tough.
link |
It's a tough skill.
link |
Well, it's interesting.
link |
So I would say that.
link |
Or maybe I'm wrong actually on that.
link |
I would say that once you understand the system,
link |
it's not that hard.
link |
It makes a lot of sense.
link |
But I would also say that to your exact point,
link |
you are right that people smell bullshit.
link |
People smell bullshit.
link |
But here's the thing.
link |
If you come in smelling like goat shit,
link |
you still smell like shit, but you don't smell like bullshit.
link |
So they don't count you out right away.
link |
And if you come in smelling like rotten tomatoes
link |
or if you come in smelling like lavender
link |
or if you come in smelling like vanilla
link |
or if you come in without any smell at all,
link |
all that matters is that you don't smell like bullshit.
link |
Here's the thing that's one of the secret sauces of CIA.
link |
When you look and act like a spy, people think you're a spy.
link |
If you look and act in any other way,
link |
you know what they never ever think you are?
link |
They might think you're an idiot.
link |
They might think you're trailer trash.
link |
They might think that you're a migrant worker,
link |
but they never think you're a spy.
link |
And that lesson in everyday life is immensely powerful.
link |
If you're trying to take your boss's job,
link |
as long as you don't ever look like the employee
link |
who's trying to take the boss's job,
link |
the boss is focused on all the employees
link |
who are trying to take his job.
link |
Everybody's prioritizing whether they know it or not.
link |
The goal is to just not be the one that they're targeting.
link |
Target them without them knowing you're targeting them.
link |
So people just, when they meet you, they put you in a bin.
link |
And if you want to avoid being put in a particular bin,
link |
just don't act like the person that would be,
link |
just show some kind of characteristics
link |
that bin you in some other way.
link |
You have to be in a bin.
link |
Just choose the bin.
link |
So you, knowing these methods,
link |
when you talk to people, especially in civilian life,
link |
how do you know who's lying to you and not?
link |
That gets to be more into the trained skill side of things.
link |
There's body cues, there's micro expressions.
link |
I'm not a big fan of,
link |
I don't believe that micro expressions alone do anything.
link |
I also don't believe that micro expressions
link |
without an effective baseline do anything.
link |
So don't for a second think that I'm,
link |
all the people out there pitching
link |
that you can tell if someone's lying to you
link |
just by looking at their face, it's all baloney.
link |
In my world, that's baloney.
link |
Like the way you move your eyes or something like that.
link |
Without knowing a baseline, without knowing.
link |
For that individual. For that individual.
link |
Then you actually don't know.
link |
And an individual's baseline is based on education,
link |
culture, life experience, you name it, right?
link |
But when you combine facial expressions
link |
with body movements, body language, nonverbal cues,
link |
and you add on top of that effective elicitation techniques
link |
that you are in control of,
link |
now you have a more robust platform
link |
to tell if someone's lying to you.
link |
So there's like a set of like interrogation trajectories
link |
you can go down that can help you figure out a person.
link |
Technically they're interview, interview concepts.
link |
Because an interrogation,
link |
an interrogation is something very different
link |
than an interview.
link |
And in the world of professionals,
link |
an interrogation is very different.
link |
What's the difference?
link |
The nature of how relaxed the thing is or what?
link |
So in an interrogation, there's a clear pattern of dominance.
link |
There's no equality.
link |
Also, there's no escape.
link |
You are there until the interrogator is done with you.
link |
Anybody who's ever been reprimanded by mom and dad
link |
knows what an interrogation feels like.
link |
Anybody who's ever been called into the principal's office
link |
or the boss's office,
link |
that's what interrogation feels like.
link |
You don't leave until the boss says you can leave.
link |
And you're there to say,
link |
it's to answer questions the boss asks questions.
link |
An interview is an equal exchange of ideas.
link |
You are in control of this interview, for sure.
link |
But if we were having coffee,
link |
I could take control if I wanted to take control.
link |
If I wanted to ask you personal questions, I would.
link |
If I wanted to talk to you about your background, I could.
link |
Why am I in control of this interview exactly?
link |
Because the person in control
link |
is the person asking questions.
link |
I'm sitting here, as you've spoken about,
link |
my power here is I'm the quiet one listening.
link |
You're exactly right.
link |
Guess where this conversation goes?
link |
Anywhere you choose to take it,
link |
because you're the one asking questions.
link |
Every time I answer a question,
link |
I am creating a pattern of obedience to you,
link |
which subliminally, subconsciously,
link |
makes me that much more apt to answer your questions.
link |
Of course, you can always turn and start asking me questions.
link |
But you're saying that through conversation,
link |
you can call it interviewing,
link |
you can start to see cracks
link |
in the story of the person
link |
and the degree to which they exaggerate or lie
link |
or to see how much they can be trusted, that kind of stuff.
link |
What I'm saying is that through a conversation,
link |
you develop a baseline.
link |
Even just in the first part of our conversation,
link |
I've been able to create some baseline elements about you.
link |
You've been able to create baseline elements about me.
link |
Maybe they're just not a friend of mine.
link |
From those baselines,
link |
now we can push through more intentional questions
link |
to test whether or not the person is being truthful
link |
because they're operating within their baseline,
link |
or if you are triggering sensitivities
link |
outside of their baseline,
link |
and then you can start to see their tells.
link |
That's fascinating.
link |
Yeah, baseline, even the tells, right?
link |
You've probably already formed a baseline
link |
that I have trouble making eye contact.
link |
And so if you ask me difficult questions
link |
and I'm not making eye contact,
link |
maybe that's not a good signal of me lying or whatever.
link |
Because I always have trouble making eye contact,
link |
That's really fascinating.
link |
The majority of your eye movement is to the right?
link |
Your right, my left, right?
link |
Which is usually someone who's,
link |
if you ask micro expressionists,
link |
that's someone who's referencing fact.
link |
That's not necessarily what's happening for you
link |
because you're pulling concepts out of the air.
link |
So it's also a place
link |
where you reference something other than fact.
link |
It's a place for you to find creativity.
link |
So if I just thought that you were lying
link |
because you look up and to the right, I would be wrong.
link |
That's so fascinating.
link |
And a lot of that has to do with like habits
link |
that are formed and all those kinds of things,
link |
or maybe some right hand, left hand type of situation.
link |
Right eye dominance.
link |
Yeah, right eye dominance.
link |
It's gonna make you look to the right.
link |
Is this a science or an art?
link |
It's a bit of both.
link |
I would say that like all good art,
link |
art is taught from a foundation of skills.
link |
And those skills are played,
link |
are taught in a very structured manner.
link |
And then the way that you use the skills after that,
link |
that's more of the artistic grace.
link |
So I've always called espionage an art.
link |
Being able to hack human beings is an art,
link |
but it's all based in a foundation of science.
link |
You still have to learn how to mix the color palette
link |
and use certain brushes.
link |
Do you think of that as a kind of the study
link |
of human psychology?
link |
Is that what a psychologist does or a psychiatrist?
link |
What from this process have you learned about human nature?
link |
I mean, I suppose the answer to that could be a book,
link |
but it probably will be a book.
link |
I'll save you that, yeah.
link |
But is there things that are surprising about human nature,
link |
surprising to us civilians that you could speak to?
link |
Yes, one thing is extremely surprising about human nature,
link |
which is funny, because that's not the answer
link |
I would have said.
link |
So I'm glad that you clarified this specific question.
link |
The thing that's surprising about human nature
link |
is that human beings long, like in their soul,
link |
there's like a painful longing to be with other people.
link |
And that's really surprising,
link |
because we all wanna pretend like we're strong.
link |
We all wanna pretend like we're independent.
link |
We all wanna pretend like we are the masters of our destiny.
link |
But what's truly consistent in all people
link |
is this longing to commune with others like us.
link |
My more practical answer about what I've learned
link |
to be the truth is that human nature is predictable.
link |
And that predictability is what gives people
link |
an incredible advantage over other people.
link |
But that's not the surprising piece.
link |
I mean, even when CIA taught me
link |
that human nature is predictable, it just made sense.
link |
I was like, oh yeah, that makes sense.
link |
But what I never ever anticipated was
link |
no matter where I've been in the world,
link |
no matter who I've talked to,
link |
no matter what socioeconomic bracket is that longing,
link |
Loneliness sucks, and togetherness feels good,
link |
even if you're together with someone
link |
you know isn't the right person.
link |
It still feels better than being alone.
link |
I mean, that's such a deep truth you speak to,
link |
and I could talk about that for a long time.
link |
There is, I mean, through these conversations in general,
link |
whether it's being recorded or not,
link |
I hunger to discover in the other person that longing.
link |
You strip away the other things,
link |
and then you share in the longing for that connection.
link |
And I particularly also have detected that in people
link |
from all walks of life, including people
link |
that others might identify as evil or hard,
link |
as completely cold, it's there.
link |
They've hardened themselves in their search,
link |
and who knows what dark place their brain is in,
link |
their heart is in, but that longing is still there.
link |
Even if it's an ember, it's there.
link |
It's the reason why in World War I and World War II,
link |
you know, enemy combatants still shared cigarettes
link |
on the front lines during periods of holidays
link |
or bad weather or whatever else,
link |
because that human connection, man, it triumphs over all.
link |
See, that's in part of what I refer to when I say love,
link |
because I feel like if political leaders
link |
and people in conflict at the small scale
link |
and the large scale were able to tune into that longing,
link |
to seek in each other that basic longing
link |
for human connection, a lot of problems could be solved.
link |
But of course, it's difficult,
link |
because it's a game of chicken.
link |
It's if you open yourself up to reveal
link |
that longing for connection with others,
link |
people can hurt you.
link |
Well, I would go a step farther,
link |
and I would say that taking the connection away,
link |
punishing, penalizing people by removing the connection
link |
is a powerful tool, and that's what we see.
link |
That's why we send people to jail.
link |
That's why we put economic sanctions on countries.
link |
That's why we ground our children
link |
and send them to their rooms.
link |
We are penalizing them.
link |
Whether we know it or not, we're using punitive damage
link |
by taking away that basic human connection,
link |
that longing for community.
link |
What was your recruitment process and training process
link |
and things you could speak to in the CIA?
link |
As I was leaving the Air Force, all that was on my mind,
link |
I don't know what you were like at 27,
link |
but I was a total tip shit at 27.
link |
I'm not much better now at 42, but.
link |
Yeah, but I was like, I just wanted to be anything
link |
other than a military officer,
link |
so I was actually in the process of applying
link |
to the Peace Corps through this thing called the internet,
link |
which was still fairly rudimentary in 2007.
link |
I had a computer lab that we went to,
link |
and it had 10 computers in it,
link |
and you had to log in and log out,
link |
and slow internet and everything else,
link |
but anyways, I was filling out an online application
link |
to go work in the US Peace Corps.
link |
I wanted to grow my hair out.
link |
I wanted to stop wearing shoes that were shiny.
link |
I wanted to meet a hippie chick
link |
and have hippie babies in the wild
link |
teaching Nigerian children how to read,
link |
so that was the path I was going down,
link |
and as I filled in all of my details,
link |
there came this page that popped up,
link |
and it was this blinking red page,
link |
and it said, stop here.
link |
You may qualify for other government positions.
link |
If you're willing to put your application
link |
on hold for 72 hours,
link |
that gives us a chance to reach out to you,
link |
so again, 27 year old dipshit.
link |
I was like, sure, I'll put myself on hold
link |
if I might qualify for other government opportunities,
link |
and then about a day later, I got a phone call
link |
from an almost unlisted number.
link |
It just said 703, which was very strange to see
link |
on my flip phone at the time, just one 703 area code,
link |
and I picked it up, and it was a person
link |
from Northern Virginia asking me
link |
if I would be telling me that I was qualified
link |
for a position in national security,
link |
and if I would be interested, they'll pay for my ticket
link |
and fly me up to Langley, Virginia.
link |
They didn't say CIA.
link |
They said Langley.
link |
I put one on one together, and I was like,
link |
maybe this is CIA, like, how cool is this?
link |
Or maybe this is all make believe,
link |
and this is totally fake, so either way,
link |
it doesn't hurt me at all to say yes.
link |
They already have my phone number, so yes, yes, yes,
link |
and then I remember thinking,
link |
there's no way that happened, and this isn't real,
link |
and then a day later, I got FedEx
link |
or an overnight delivery of an airplane ticket
link |
and a hotel reservation and a rental car reservation,
link |
and then I just kept doing the next thing,
link |
which I found out later on is a form of control.
link |
You just do the next thing that they tell you to do,
link |
and then before I knew it, I was interviewing
link |
in a nondescript building with a person
link |
who only told me their first name for a position
link |
with the National Clandestine Service.
link |
So you never really got a chance to think about it
link |
because there's small steps along the way,
link |
and it kind of just leads you,
link |
and maybe your personality is such that.
link |
That's an adventure.
link |
It's an adventure, and because it's one step at a time,
link |
you don't necessarily see the negative consequences
link |
You don't think about any of that.
link |
You're just stepping into the adventure.
link |
There's no work involved.
link |
Somebody else is doing all the work,
link |
telling me where to be and when.
link |
It's a lot like basic training in the military.
link |
Anybody who's ever been through basic training
link |
will tell you they hated the first few days,
link |
and then by the end, it was really comforting
link |
because you just did what you were told.
link |
They told you when to eat.
link |
They made the decision of what to eat,
link |
and then you just, you marched when they told you to march,
link |
shined your shoes when they told you to shine your shoes.
link |
Human beings love being told what to do.
link |
What about the training process
link |
for becoming a covert CIA agent?
link |
Yeah, so the interview process is.
link |
Yeah, the interview process, too.
link |
How rigorous was that?
link |
It was very rigorous.
link |
That was where it became difficult.
link |
Everything up to the first interview was easy,
link |
but there's three interviews,
link |
and some people are lucky enough
link |
to have four or five interviews if something goes wrong
link |
or something goes awry with the first few interviews.
link |
And again, this might be dated from what I went through,
link |
but during the interview process is when they start,
link |
they do your psychological evaluations.
link |
They do your, they do personality assessments.
link |
They do skills assessments.
link |
They'll start sending you back to wherever you're living
link |
with assignments, not intel assignments,
link |
but actual homework assignments.
link |
Write an essay about three parts of the world
link |
that you think will be most impacted
link |
in the next three to five years,
link |
or prioritize the top three strategic priorities
link |
for the United States and put it into 250 words
link |
or 2,500 words and whatever else,
link |
double spaced in this font, yada, yada, yada,
link |
like super specific stuff.
link |
It's kind of stressful,
link |
but it's just like going back to college again.
link |
So you go through all of those acts,
link |
and then you submit this stuff to some PO box
link |
that doesn't have anybody that's ever gonna respond to you,
link |
and then you hope.
link |
You just send it into the ether,
link |
and you hope that you sent it right.
link |
You hope that you wrote well enough.
link |
You hope that your assessment was right,
link |
whatever else it might be,
link |
and then eventually get another phone call that says,
link |
hey, we received your package.
link |
You've been moved to the next level of interview,
link |
and now we need you to go to this other nondescript building
link |
in this other nondescript city,
link |
and then you start meeting.
link |
You start sitting in waiting rooms
link |
with other groups of people
link |
who are at the same phase of interview with you,
link |
which were some of the coolest experiences
link |
that I remember still.
link |
One of my best friends to this day,
link |
who I don't get to talk to because he's still undercover,
link |
is a guy I met during those interview processes,
link |
and I was like, oh, we met.
link |
I saw what he was wearing.
link |
He saw what I was wearing.
link |
So you immediately connected,
link |
and you liked the people there.
link |
More like we immediately judge each other,
link |
because we're all untrained.
link |
So he looked at me, and he was like,
link |
brown dude with crazy hair, and I was wearing,
link |
dude, I was dressed like a total ass.
link |
I was dressed in a clubbing shirt.
link |
I don't know why I thought it would be a good idea
link |
to go to a CIA interview in a clubbing shirt
link |
with my buttons unbuttoned down to here.
link |
And he was like, yeah, you were really,
link |
after we got in, he was like,
link |
yeah, dude, you were always really cool to talk to,
link |
but I was like, there's no way that idiot's getting in.
link |
And I remember looking at him and being like,
link |
dude, you were just another white guy in a black suit.
link |
They're not looking for you, but here you are.
link |
So it was just, those kinds of things were so interesting,
link |
because we were totally wrong
link |
about what CIA was looking for.
link |
Until you're in, you have no idea what they're looking for.
link |
And you're just shooting in the dark.
link |
Did they have you do like a lie detector test?
link |
Yes, it's called a polygraph.
link |
How effective, just interesting,
link |
or our previous discussion, how effective are those?
link |
Polygraphs are really interesting.
link |
So one of the things that people don't understand
link |
about polygraphs is that polygraphs
link |
aren't meant to detect a lie.
link |
Like they're called a lie detector,
link |
but they're not actually meant to detect a lie.
link |
They're built to detect variants
link |
from your physiological baseline.
link |
So they're essentially meant to identify sensitivities
link |
to certain types of questions.
link |
And then as they identify a sensitivity to a question,
link |
it gives the interviewer an additional piece of information
link |
to direct the next round of questions.
link |
So then from there, they can kind of see
link |
how sensitive you are to a certain level of questions.
link |
And your sensitivity could be a sign of dishonesty,
link |
but it could also be a sign of vulnerability.
link |
So the interrogator themselves, the interviewer themselves,
link |
they're the one that have to make the judgment call
link |
as to which one it is,
link |
which is why you might see multiple interviewers
link |
over the course of multiple polygraphs.
link |
But that's really what they're all about.
link |
So, I mean, outside of, they're extremely uncomfortable,
link |
like they're mentally uncomfortable,
link |
but then there's also, you sit on a pad
link |
because the pad is supposed to be able to tell
link |
like your body movements, but also like your sphincter
link |
contractions or whatever.
link |
So you're sitting on this pad, you're plugged in,
link |
you're strapped in, you're tied up,
link |
and it takes so much time to get in there.
link |
And then they start asking you questions,
link |
baseline questions at first,
link |
and then other questions from there.
link |
And you're just answering the best you can.
link |
And you never know what they're seeing
link |
and you don't know what they're doing.
link |
And it's really hard not to get anxious of that anyways.
link |
Are they the whole time monitoring the readings?
link |
Yeah, from like a big, they've got multiple screens
link |
and they've got just, it's all information superiority.
link |
They have information superiority.
link |
You're the idiot looking away from them
link |
or looking sideways of them and trying not to move
link |
because you're afraid that if you like have gas
link |
or if you move a little bit,
link |
it's gonna bury you from your baseline.
link |
And the whole time you're worried, your heart's racing
link |
and your blood pressure's increasing,
link |
which is a variance from baseline.
link |
So yeah, that means it's an interesting art.
link |
Maybe there's some people that are just chilling
link |
the whole time and that's their baseline.
link |
But that's what they're doing.
link |
They're establishing a baseline.
link |
I mean, I guess that means the polygraph
link |
is a skill that you develop to do it well.
link |
So when people talk about beating a lie detector,
link |
it's not that they're telling an effective lie.
link |
It's not hard to tell a lie to an interviewer.
link |
And the interviewer doesn't care
link |
if you're being honest or not honest about a topic.
link |
What they're looking for is sensitivity.
link |
If they see no sensitivity, that's a big sign for them.
link |
That's a big sign that you're probably a pathological liar.
link |
If you show sensitivity to many things,
link |
then that's a sign that you're probably an anxious person
link |
and they can still reset their baseline
link |
because they can tell how your anxiety
link |
is increasing in 15 minute increments.
link |
It's a unique skill.
link |
I mean, a really good polygrapher is immensely valuable.
link |
But yeah, it's the misnomers,
link |
the misconceptions about polygraphs are vast.
link |
You also mentioned personality tests.
link |
That's really interesting.
link |
So how effective are personality tests?
link |
One for the hiring process,
link |
but also for understanding a human being.
link |
So personality is extremely important
link |
for understanding human being.
link |
And I would say that there's a thousand different ways
link |
of looking at personality.
link |
The only one that I count with any significance is the MBTI.
link |
And the MBTI is what all the leading spy agencies
link |
around the world use as well.
link |
Well, that's kind of interesting to hear.
link |
So there's been criticisms of that kind of test.
link |
There have been criticisms for a long time.
link |
Yeah, and you think there's value.
link |
Absolutely, absolutely.
link |
And there's a few reasons why, right?
link |
So first, MBTI makes the claim
link |
that your core personality doesn't change over time.
link |
And that's how it's calibrated.
link |
And one of the big arguments is that people say
link |
that your personality can change over time.
link |
Now, in my experience, the MBTI is exactly correct.
link |
Your core personality does not change
link |
because your core personality is defined
link |
as your personality when all resources are removed.
link |
So essentially, your emergency mode, your dire conditions,
link |
that is your core personality.
link |
We can all act a little more extroverted.
link |
We can all be a little more empathetic
link |
when we have tons of time and money and patience.
link |
When you strip away all that time, money, and patience,
link |
how empathetic are you?
link |
How much do you like being around other people?
link |
How much do you like being alone?
link |
Do you make judgments or do you analyze information?
link |
That's what's so powerful about MBTI
link |
is it's talking about what people are like
link |
when you strip away resources.
link |
And then because it's so consistent,
link |
it's also only four codes.
link |
It's super easy to be able to assess a human being
link |
through a dialogue, through a series of conversations,
link |
to be able to hone in with high accuracy
link |
what is there for letter code.
link |
There's only 16 options and it becomes extremely valuable.
link |
Is it perfectly precise and does everybody do it the same?
link |
I mean, those things are, the answers to those are no,
link |
but is it operationally useful in a short period of time?
link |
That is a resoundingly powerful yes.
link |
Yeah, I just, I only know, I think the first letter,
link |
it's introverted and extroverted, right?
link |
I've taken the test before,
link |
just like a crude version of the test
link |
and that's the same problem you have with IQ tests.
link |
There's the right thorough way of doing it
link |
and there's like fun internet way.
link |
And do you mind sharing what your personality?
link |
I'm an ENTP, that's an extrovert,
link |
intuitive, perceiver, thinker, ENT, thinker, P, perceiver.
link |
My wife is an ISFJ, which is the polar opposite of me.
link |
E, I'm extroverted, she's introverted,
link |
I'm an intuitor, she's a sensor, I'm a thinker,
link |
she's a feeler, I'm a perceiver, she's a judger.
link |
Is there good science on like longterm
link |
successful relationships in terms of the dynamics of that,
link |
the 16, I wonder if there's good data on this.
link |
I don't think there's a lot of good data
link |
in personalities writ large because there's not a lot
link |
of money to be made in personality testing,
link |
but I would say that with experience,
link |
with a good MBTI test, with a good paid test,
link |
a 400, 500 question test,
link |
once you understand your own code
link |
and then you're taught how to assess the code of others,
link |
with those two things kind of combined
link |
because then you have experience and learning,
link |
it becomes very useful and you can have high confidence
link |
in the conclusions that you reach about
link |
people's professions, about people's relationships
link |
with family, about people's relationships professionally,
link |
people's capabilities to deal with stress,
link |
how people will perform when pushed outside
link |
of their comfort zones, really, really powerful,
link |
useful stuff in corporate world and in the espionage world.
link |
So in terms of compressed representation
link |
of another human being, you can't do much better
link |
than those four letters.
link |
I don't believe you can do much better.
link |
In my experience, I have not seen anything better.
link |
Yeah, it is kind of, it's difficult to realize
link |
that there is a core personality
link |
or to the degree that's true, it seems to be true.
link |
It's even more difficult to realize
link |
that there is a stable, at least the science says so,
link |
a stable, consistent intelligence, unfortunately,
link |
you know, the G factor that they call,
link |
that if you do a barrage of IQ tests,
link |
that's going to consistently represent that G factor.
link |
And we're all born with that, we can't fix it.
link |
And that defines so much of who we are.
link |
I don't see it as sad, because it's, for me,
link |
the faster you learn it, the faster you learn
link |
what your own sort of natural strengths and weaknesses are,
link |
the faster you get to stop wasting time
link |
on things that you're never gonna be good at,
link |
and you get to double down on the things
link |
that you're already naturally skilled or interested in.
link |
So there's always a silver lining to a cloud.
link |
But I know now that I will never be a ballerina
link |
or a ballerino, I know that I'll never be an artist,
link |
I'll never be a musician, I'll never be any of those things.
link |
And when I was 18, that might've made me sad,
link |
but now at 42, I'm like, well, shit, awesome.
link |
I can go be something else good instead of always being bad.
link |
You're not gonna be a ballerina, ballerino.
link |
Because I'm not graceful.
link |
And you've learned this through years of experience.
link |
Well, I don't know if there's an MBTI equivalent
link |
for grace of movement.
link |
I think it's called S sensor.
link |
Yeah, because a sensor is someone who's able
link |
to interact with the world around them
link |
through their five senses very effectively.
link |
Like if you talk to dancers, dancers can actually feel
link |
the grace in all of their muscles.
link |
They know what position their finger is in.
link |
I don't have any idea.
link |
I don't know what position my feet are in right now.
link |
I had to look to make sure I actually feel the floor right.
link |
Yeah, I definitely have.
link |
Oh, that's good to know.
link |
So I don't, I'm not a dancer, but I do have that.
link |
You're a musician, man.
link |
Well, the music, I don't know if that's for sure.
link |
Yeah, that's true that there is that physical component,
link |
but I think deeper,
link |
cause there's a technical aspect to that.
link |
That's just like, it's less about feel,
link |
but I do know jujitsu and grappling I've done all my life.
link |
I don't, you know, there's some people who are clumsy
link |
and they drop stuff all the time.
link |
They run into stuff.
link |
I don't, I don't, first of all, I don't know how that happens,
link |
but to me, I just have an awareness of stuff.
link |
Like if there's a little orientation.
link |
Yeah, like, like I know that there's a small object
link |
I have to step over and I have a good sense of that.
link |
It's so, it's so interesting.
link |
Yeah, you're just like born with that or something.
link |
My wife is brilliant and she still walks into doors.
link |
I mean, she'll walk in a doorway.
link |
She'll bang her knee on the same wall that's been there
link |
for the last 50 years.
link |
It's for some reason, really hilarious.
link |
That's good for me.
link |
You've been asked, I think on Reddit,
link |
are there big secrets that you know that could lend you
link |
and our country in terrible trouble
link |
if you came out to the public and you answered,
link |
yes, I wish I could forget them.
link |
So let me ask you just about secrecy in general.
link |
Are these secrets or just other secrets,
link |
ones that the public will never know
link |
or will it come out in 10, 20, 50 years?
link |
I guess the deeper question is,
link |
what is the value of secrecy and transparency?
link |
The standard classification
link |
for all human intelligence operations
link |
is something called two five X two, 25 by two.
link |
So 50 years, 25 years times two years or times two rounds.
link |
So in essence, anything that I've seen
link |
has the first chance of becoming public domain,
link |
declassified after 50 years,
link |
unless there's some congressional requirement
link |
for it to be reviewed and assessed earlier.
link |
So by then, I'll be 80 something years old
link |
or potentially dead, which is either way.
link |
That's when it can come out
link |
according to its typical classification.
link |
The value of secrets I have seen
link |
is that secrets create space.
link |
Secrets give opportunity for security.
link |
They give opportunity for thinking.
link |
and space is an incredibly advantageous thing to have.
link |
If you know something somebody else doesn't know,
link |
even if it's just 15 or 20 minutes different,
link |
you can direct, you can change the course of fate.
link |
So I find secrets to be extremely valuable,
link |
Even at the place where secrets
link |
are being kept from a large mass,
link |
part of what all Americans need to understand
link |
is that one of the trade offs
link |
to building a system of government
link |
that allows us to be first world and wealthy
link |
and secure and successful,
link |
one of the trade offs is that we have given up
link |
a great deal of personal freedom.
link |
And one of the personal freedoms that we give up
link |
is the freedom of knowing what we wanna know.
link |
You get to know what the government tells you,
link |
you get to know what you need to know
link |
or what you've learned yourself,
link |
but you don't get to know secrets.
link |
People who do get to know secrets know them for a reason.
link |
That's why it's called a need to know.
link |
How difficult is it to maintain secrecy?
link |
It's surprisingly difficult as technology changes.
link |
It's also surprisingly difficult
link |
as our culture becomes one where people want notoriety.
link |
People wanna be the person who breaks the secret.
link |
25 years ago, 40 years ago, that wasn't the case.
link |
There was a time in the United States
link |
where if someone gave you a secret,
link |
it was a point of personal honor not to share the secret.
link |
Now we're in a place where someone tells you a secret,
link |
like that could turn into a Twitter post
link |
that gets you a bunch of thumbs up
link |
and a bunch of likes or whatever else.
link |
An opportunity. Right.
link |
So the value of secrets has changed.
link |
And now there's almost a greater value on exposing secrets
link |
than there is on keeping secrets.
link |
That makes it difficult to keep secrets,
link |
especially when technology is going in the same direction.
link |
Yeah, where is the line?
link |
And by the way, I'm one of those old school people
link |
I think it's a karma thing.
link |
Again, back to the trust.
link |
I think in the short term you can benefit
link |
by sharing a secret.
link |
But in the long term, if people know they can trust you,
link |
like the juicy of the secret, it's a test of sorts.
link |
If they know you can keep that secret,
link |
that means you're somebody that could be trusted.
link |
And I believe that not just effectiveness in this life,
link |
but happiness in this life is informing a circle
link |
of people you can trust.
link |
Right, we're taught that secrets and lies are similar
link |
in that they have a limited shelf life.
link |
If you treat them like food,
link |
secrets and lies have a very limited shelf life.
link |
So if you cash in on them while they're still fresh,
link |
you beat them before they spoil.
link |
You get to take advantage of them before they spoil.
link |
However, trust has no limit to its shelf life.
link |
So it's almost like you're trading a short term victory
link |
and losing a long term victory.
link |
It's always better to keep the secret.
link |
It's always better to let the lie live
link |
because it will eventually come to light
link |
from somebody else, not from you,
link |
because it already has a limited shelf life.
link |
But what you win in exchange
link |
for not being the one that cashed in on the secret
link |
Let me ask you about lying and trust and so on.
link |
So I don't believe I've been contacted by
link |
or interacted with the CIA, the MI6, the FSB,
link |
Mossad or any other intelligence agency.
link |
I'm kind of offended, but would I know if I was?
link |
So from your perspective.
link |
No, you would not know if you were.
link |
For sure you've been on their radar.
link |
Absolutely, you've got a file.
link |
You've got a dossier somewhere.
link |
Why would I be on their radar?
link |
Who's interesting?
link |
It's not necessarily that you are interesting
link |
to someone as a foreign asset
link |
or an intelligence collection source,
link |
but your network is extremely interesting.
link |
The networks are important too.
link |
Correct, if someone had access to,
link |
if someone was able to clone your phone,
link |
every time you cross a border,
link |
you go through some sort of security.
link |
If you've ever been pulled into secondary
link |
and separated from your bag,
link |
that's exactly when and how people clone computers.
link |
They clone phones, they make whatever,
link |
photocopies of your old school planner,
link |
whatever it might be.
link |
But for sure you are an intelligence target.
link |
It just may be that you're not suitable
link |
to be a person who reports foreign intelligence.
link |
We've got to understand that all people
link |
are potential sources of valuable information
link |
to the national security infrastructure
link |
of our host country and any country that we visit.
link |
Someone like you with your public footprint,
link |
with your notoriety, with your educational background,
link |
with your national identifications
link |
becomes a viable and valuable target of information.
link |
Yeah, so to speak to that,
link |
I take security pretty seriously,
link |
but not to the degree that it runs my life,
link |
which I'm very careful about.
link |
That's good, I'm glad to hear that.
link |
So the moment you start to think about germs, right?
link |
Like you start to freak out
link |
and you become sort of paralyzed by the stress of it.
link |
So you have to balance those two things.
link |
If you think about all the things
link |
that could hurt you in this world
link |
and all the risk you could take,
link |
it can overwhelm your life.
link |
That said, the cyber world is a weird world
link |
because it doesn't have the same.
link |
I know not to cross the street without looking each way
link |
because there's a physical intuition about it.
link |
I'm not sure, I'm a computer science guy,
link |
so I have some intuition,
link |
but the cyber world, it's really hard
link |
to build up an intuition of what is safe and not.
link |
I've seen a lot of people just logging out
link |
of your devices all the time, like regularly.
link |
Just like that physical access step
link |
is a lot of people don't take.
link |
I can just like walk in into the offices of a lot of CEOs
link |
and it's like everything's wide open
link |
for physical access of those systems,
link |
which is kind of incredible for somebody,
link |
that sounds really shady, but it's not.
link |
I've written key loggers,
link |
like things that record everything you type
link |
in the mouse you move.
link |
And like I did that for, during my PhD,
link |
I was recording everything you do on your device
link |
and everything you do on your computer.
link |
People sign up to the study, they willingly do this
link |
to understand behavior.
link |
I was trying to use machine learning
link |
to identify who you are based on different biometric
link |
and behavioral things, which allows me
link |
to study human behavior and to see
link |
which is uniquely identifiable.
link |
And the goal there was to remove the need for a password.
link |
But how easy it is to write a thing
link |
that logs everything you type.
link |
I was like, wait a minute, like I can probably get
link |
a lot of people in the world to run this for me.
link |
I can then get all of their passwords.
link |
I mean, you could do so much,
link |
like I can run the entirety of the CIA from just myself.
link |
If I was, and I imagine there's a lot
link |
of really good hackers like that out there,
link |
much better than me.
link |
So I tried to prevent myself from being
link |
all the different low hanging fruit attack vectors
link |
I try to make it difficult to be that.
link |
But then I'm also aware that there's probably people
link |
that are like five steps ahead.
link |
You're doing the right thing.
link |
What I always advocate is the low hanging fruit
link |
is what keeps you from being a target of opportunity.
link |
Because you're half assed hackers,
link |
you're lazy hackers, you're unskilled hackers.
link |
They're looking for low hanging fruit.
link |
They're looking for the person who gets the Nigeria email
link |
about how you could be getting $5 million
link |
if you just give me your bank account.
link |
That's what they're looking for.
link |
The thing that's scary is that if you're not
link |
a target of opportunity,
link |
if you become a intentional target,
link |
then there's almost nothing you can do.
link |
Because once you become an intentional target,
link |
then your security apparatus,
link |
they will create a dedicated customized way vector
link |
of attacking your specific security apparatus.
link |
And because security is always after, right?
link |
There's always, there's the leading advantage
link |
and the trailing advantage.
link |
When it comes to attacks,
link |
the leader always has the advantage
link |
because they have to create the attack
link |
before anybody else can create a way
link |
to protect against the attack.
link |
So the attack always comes first
link |
and that means they always have the advantage.
link |
You are always stuck just leaning on,
link |
this is the best security that I know of.
link |
Meanwhile, there's always somebody who can create a way
link |
of attacking the best security out there.
link |
And once they win, they have a monopoly.
link |
They have all that time until a new defensive countermeasure
link |
Yeah, I tend to think exactly as you said,
link |
that the long hanging fruit protects against like,
link |
yeah, crimes of opportunity.
link |
And then I assume that people can just hack in
link |
if they really want.
link |
Think about how much anxiety we would be able to solve
link |
if everybody just accepted that.
link |
Well, there's several things you do.
link |
First of all, to be honest, it just makes me,
link |
it keeps me honest.
link |
Not to be a douchebag or like, not, yeah,
link |
to assume everything could be public.
link |
And so don't trade information that could hurt people
link |
if it was made public.
link |
So I try to do that.
link |
And the thing I try to make sure is I,
link |
like Home Alone style, try to.
link |
I really would like to know if I was hacked.
link |
And so I try to assume that I will be hacked and detect it.
link |
Have a tripwire or something.
link |
Yeah, a tripwire through everything.
link |
And not paranoid tripwise, just like open door.
link |
But I think that's probably the future of life on this earth
link |
is you're going, like everybody of interest
link |
is going to be hacked.
link |
That hopefully inspires, now this is outside of company.
link |
These are individuals.
link |
I mean, there is, of course, if you're actually operating,
link |
like I'm just a, who am I?
link |
I'm just a scientist person, podcasting person.
link |
So if I was actually running a company
link |
or was an integral part of some kind of military operation,
link |
then you probably have to have an entire team that's now
link |
doing that battle of trying to be ahead of the best hackers
link |
in the world that are attacking.
link |
But that requires a team that full time is their focus.
link |
And then you still get in trouble.
link |
So what I've seen as the norm, well, what I've seen
link |
is the cutting edge standard for corporations
link |
and the ultra wealthy and even intelligence organizations
link |
is that we have tripwires.
link |
It's better if you can't prevent from being hacked.
link |
The next best thing is to know as soon as you get hacked
link |
because then you can essentially terminate all the information.
link |
If you know it fast enough, you can just
link |
destroy the information.
link |
This is what the ultra wealthy do.
link |
They have multiple phones.
link |
So as soon as one phone gets hacked, the tripwire goes off.
link |
The operating system is totally deleted along
link |
with all data on the phone.
link |
And a second phone is turned on with a whole new separate set
link |
And now for them, there's no break in service.
link |
It's just, oh, this phone went black.
link |
It's got a warning on it that says it was hacked.
link |
So trash it because they don't care
link |
about the price of the phone.
link |
Pick up the next phone, and we move on.
link |
That's the best thing that you can do essentially outside
link |
of trying to out hack the hackers.
link |
And then even in your intelligence and military
link |
worlds where cyber warfare is active,
link |
the people who are aggressing are not
link |
trying to create aggression that beats security.
link |
They're trying to find aggressive techniques,
link |
offensive techniques that have no security built around them
link |
Because it's too cost and time intensive
link |
to protect against what you know is coming,
link |
it's so much more efficient and cost effective
link |
to go after new vectors.
link |
So it just becomes like, it becomes almost a silly game
link |
of your neighbor gets a guard dog.
link |
So you get a bigger guard dog.
link |
And then your neighbor gets a fence.
link |
So you're just constantly outdoing each other.
link |
It's called the security paradigm.
link |
People just, they just one up each other
link |
because it's never worth it to just get to the same level.
link |
You're always trying to outdo each other.
link |
Yeah, then maybe like banks have to fight that fight,
link |
but not everybody can.
link |
So you're saying I operated at the state of the art
link |
with the trip wires.
link |
This is good to know.
link |
And also just not using anybody else's services,
link |
doing everything myself.
link |
So that's harder to figure out what the heck
link |
this person is doing.
link |
Because if I'm using somebody else's service,
link |
like I did with QNAP,
link |
I have a QNAP NAS I use for cold storage
link |
of unimportant things, but a large videos.
link |
And I don't know if you know, but QNAP is a company
link |
that does NAS storage devices, and they got hacked.
link |
And everybody that didn't update as of a week ago
link |
from the point of the zero day hack, everybody got hacked.
link |
It's several thousand machines, and they asked,
link |
you can get your data back if you pay,
link |
I forget what it was, but it was,
link |
it was about a couple thousand dollars.
link |
And QNAP can get all the data back for their customers
link |
if they pay, I think, two million dollars.
link |
But that came from me relying on the systems
link |
of others for security.
link |
I assumed this company would have their security handled,
link |
but then that was a very valuable lesson to me.
link |
I now have layers of security and also an understanding
link |
which data is really important, which is somewhat important,
link |
which is not that important, and layering that all together.
link |
So just so you know, the US government, the military,
link |
woke up to that exact same thing about two years ago.
link |
It's still very new.
link |
I mean, they were sourcing,
link |
take night vision goggles, for example.
link |
They were sourcing components and engineering
link |
and blueprints for night vision goggles
link |
from three, four, five different subcontractors
link |
all over the country, but they never asked themselves
link |
what the security status was of those subcontractors.
link |
So fast forward a few years, and all of a sudden,
link |
they start getting faulty components.
link |
They start having night vision goggles that don't work.
link |
They start having supply chain issues
link |
where they have to change their provider,
link |
and the army doesn't know that the provider is changing.
link |
I mean, this is a strategy.
link |
The idea of going through third party systems
link |
is identifying the vulnerability in the supply chain.
link |
That's a savvy offensive practice
link |
for more than just cyber hackers.
link |
Let me ask you about physical hacking.
link |
So I'm now, like I'm an introvert,
link |
so I'm paranoid about all social interaction,
link |
but how much truth is there?
link |
It's kind of a funny question.
link |
How suspicious should I be when I'm traveling in Ukraine
link |
or different parts of the world
link |
when an attractive female walks up to me
link |
and shows any kind of attention?
link |
Is that like this kind of James Bond spy movie stuff,
link |
or is that kind of stuff used by intelligence agencies?
link |
I don't think it's used.
link |
It's absolutely used.
link |
It's called sexpionage.
link |
That's the term that we jokingly call it, is sexpionage.
link |
But yeah, the art of attraction, appeal,
link |
the manifestation of feelings through sexual manipulation,
link |
all of that is a super powerful tool.
link |
The Chinese use it extremely well.
link |
The Russians use it extremely well.
link |
In the United States,
link |
we actively train our officers not to use it
link |
because in the end it leads to complications
link |
in how you professionally run a case.
link |
So we train our officers not to use it.
link |
However, you can't control what other people think.
link |
So if you're an attractive male
link |
or an attractive female officer,
link |
and you're trying to talk to an older general
link |
who just happens to be gay or happens to be straight
link |
and is attracted to you,
link |
of course they're gonna be that much more willing
link |
to talk to an American who is also attractive.
link |
So it's hard to walk that back.
link |
In all definitions.
link |
So it could be all elements of charisma.
link |
So attractiveness in a dynamic sense of the word.
link |
So it's visual attractiveness,
link |
but the smile, the humor, the wit, the flirting,
link |
all that kind of stuff that could be used
link |
to the art of conversation.
link |
There's also elements of sexuality
link |
that people underestimate, right?
link |
So physical sexuality, physical attraction
link |
is the most obvious one.
link |
It's the one that everybody talks about and thinks about.
link |
But then there's also sapiosexuality,
link |
which is being sexually attracted to thoughts,
link |
And then you've got all the various varieties
link |
of personal preferences.
link |
Some people like people of a certain color skin,
link |
or they like big noses, they like small noses,
link |
they like big butts, they like small butts,
link |
they like tall guys, they like bald guys,
link |
whatever it might be.
link |
You can't ever predict what someone's preferences,
link |
sexual arousal preferences are going to be.
link |
So then you end up walking into a situation
link |
where then you discover, and just imagine,
link |
imagine being an unattractive, overweight, married guy,
link |
and you're walking into an asset or a target meeting
link |
with like a middle aged female
link |
who is also not very attractive and also married.
link |
But then it turns out that that person is a sapiosexual
link |
and gets extremely turned on by intelligent conversation.
link |
That's exactly what you're there to do.
link |
Your mission is to have intelligent conversation
link |
with this person to find out if they have access to secrets.
link |
And by virtue of you carrying out your mission,
link |
they become extremely aroused and attracted to you.
link |
That is a very complicated situation.
link |
It's hard to know who to trust.
link |
Like, how do you know your wife,
link |
or how does your wife know
link |
that you're not a double agent from Russia?
link |
There's a large element of experience and time
link |
that goes into that.
link |
She's also trained.
link |
And I think my wife and I also.
link |
Actually you think.
link |
My wife and I also have the benefit
link |
of being recruited young and together where.
link |
So over time you can start to figure out things
link |
that are very difficult to.
link |
So you form the baseline,
link |
you start to understand the person's very,
link |
it becomes very difficult to lie.
link |
The most difficult thing in the world is consistency.
link |
It's the most difficult thing in the world.
link |
Some people say that discipline or self discipline,
link |
what they're really talking about is consistency.
link |
When you have someone who performs consistently
link |
over long periods of time, under various levels of stress,
link |
you have high, high confidence
link |
that that is the person that you can trust.
link |
You can trust, again,
link |
you can trust them to behave within a certain pattern.
link |
You can trust an asshole to be an asshole
link |
without trusting the asshole
link |
to take care of your kids, right?
link |
So I don't ever wanna mix up the idea of personal trust
link |
versus trusting the outcome.
link |
You can always trust a person
link |
to operate within their pattern of behavior.
link |
It just takes time for you to get a consistent,
link |
to get consistent feedback
link |
as to what that baseline is for them.
link |
To form a good model, predictive model
link |
of what their behavior is going to be like.
link |
Right, and you know, it's fascinating is I think
link |
the challenge is building that model quickly.
link |
So technology is one of those tools
link |
that will be able in the future
link |
to very quickly create a model of behavior
link |
because technology can pull in multiple data points
link |
in a very short period of time
link |
that the human brain simply can't pull in
link |
at the same space, at the same speed.
link |
That's actually what I did my PhD on.
link |
That's what I did at Google
link |
is forming a good representation,
link |
unique representation in the entire world
link |
based on the behavior of the person.
link |
The specific task there is
link |
so that you don't have to type in the password.
link |
The idea was to replace the password.
link |
But it also allows you to actually study human behavior
link |
and to think, all right,
link |
what is the unique representation of a person?
link |
How, because we have very specific patterns
link |
and a lot of humans are very similar in those patterns,
link |
what are the unique identifiers
link |
within those patterns of behavior?
link |
And I think that's, from a psychology perspective,
link |
a super fascinating question.
link |
And from a machine learning perspective,
link |
it's something that you can,
link |
as the systems get better and better and better,
link |
and as we get more and more digital data
link |
about each individual, you start to get,
link |
you start to be able to do that kind of thing effectively.
link |
And it's, I mean, when I think of the fact
link |
that you could create a dossier on somebody
link |
in a matter of 24 or 48 hours,
link |
if you could wire them for two days, right?
link |
Internet of Things style,
link |
you put it in their underwear or whatever, right?
link |
Some chip that just reads everything.
link |
How heavy are they walking?
link |
How much time do they sleep?
link |
How many times do they open the refrigerator?
link |
When they log into their computer, how do they do it?
link |
Like, which hand do they use when they log in?
link |
What's their most common swipe?
link |
What's their most visited website?
link |
You could collect an enormous amount of normative data
link |
in a short period of time where otherwise we're stuck.
link |
The way that we do it now, once or twice a week,
link |
we go out for a coffee for two hours.
link |
And two hours at a time over the course of six,
link |
eight weeks, 12 weeks, you're coming up with a 50%
link |
assessment on how you think this person is going to behave.
link |
Just that time savings is immense.
link |
Something you've also spoken about is private intelligence
link |
and the power and the reach and the scale
link |
and the importance of private intelligence
link |
versus government intelligence.
link |
Can you elaborate on the role of what is private intelligence
link |
and what's the role of private intelligence
link |
in the scope of all the intelligence
link |
that is gathered and used in the United States?
link |
It's something that so few people know about.
link |
And it became a more mainstream topic
link |
with the Trump administration.
link |
Because Trump made it no secret that he was going to hire
link |
private intelligence organizations
link |
to run his intelligence operations.
link |
So that really brought it to the mainstream.
link |
But going all the way back to 9 11,
link |
going all the way back to 2001,
link |
when the 9 11 attacks happened,
link |
there was a commission that was formed
link |
to determine the reasons that 9 11 happened.
link |
And among the lists that they determined,
link |
of course they found out that the intelligence community
link |
wasn't coordinating well with each other.
link |
There were fiefdoms and there was infighting
link |
and there wasn't good intel sharing.
link |
But more than that, they identified
link |
that we were operating at Cold War levels,
link |
even though we were living in a time
link |
when terrorism was the new biggest threat
link |
to national security.
link |
So the big recommendation coming out of the 9 11 commission
link |
was that the intelligence organizations,
link |
the intelligence community significantly increased
link |
the presence of intelligence operators overseas
link |
and in terms of analytical capacity
link |
here in the United States.
link |
When they made that decision,
link |
it completely destroyed, it totally was incongruent
link |
with the existing hiring process
link |
because the existing hiring process for CIA or NSA
link |
is a six to nine month process.
link |
The only way they could plus up their sizes fast enough
link |
was to bypass their own hiring
link |
and instead go direct to private organizations.
link |
So naturally the government contracted with the companies
link |
that they already had secure contracts with,
link |
Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Khaki, you name it.
link |
And then over time from 2001 to now,
link |
or I guess that started really in 2004
link |
when they started significantly increasing
link |
the presence of private intelligence officers.
link |
From then until now, it's become a budgetary thing.
link |
It's become a continuity of operations thing.
link |
And now the reason Northern Virginia
link |
has become one of the wealthiest zip codes in America
link |
is because of the incredible concentration
link |
of private intelligence that is supporting CIA, NSA,
link |
DIA, FBI, and all the slew of IC partners.
link |
By the way, does Palantir play a role in this?
link |
Palantir is one of those organizations
link |
that was trying to pitch their product
link |
to an intelligence community because they have,
link |
it's a fantastic product on paper.
link |
But the challenge was the proprietary services,
link |
the proprietary systems that we current that we used
link |
in CIA prior to Palantir continued to outperform Palantir.
link |
So just like any other business decision,
link |
if you've got homegrown systems
link |
that outperform external systems,
link |
then it's not worth it to share the internal information.
link |
So what the close connection between Peter Thiel
link |
and Donald Trump, did that have a role to play
link |
in Donald Trump's leveraging of private intelligence
link |
or is that completely disjoint?
link |
I think that they're related but only circumstantially.
link |
Because remember, Donald Trump
link |
wasn't really investing in CIA.
link |
So the last thing he wanted to do
link |
was spend his network, WASTA,
link |
WASTA is a term that we call influence,
link |
it's an Arabic term for influence.
link |
Trump didn't wanna use his WASTA putting Thiel into CIA
link |
only to lose Thiel's contract
link |
as soon as Trump left office.
link |
So instead, it was more valuable to put Peter Thiel's tool
link |
to use in private intelligence.
link |
And then of course, I think he nominated Peter Thiel
link |
to be his Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State.
link |
At some point in time, he tried to present,
link |
like presidentially appoint Peter Thiel
link |
into a position of government authority.
link |
What do you think of figures like Peter Thiel?
link |
Do they wield, and I'm sure there's figures
link |
of similar scale and reach and power
link |
in private intelligence.
link |
What do you think about their role and power
link |
in this whole, like without public accountability
link |
that you would think directors of CIA perhaps have?
link |
So this is where private intelligence
link |
has both a strength and a weakness.
link |
The ultimate law overriding,
link |
that's overseeing private intelligence
link |
is not government legislation.
link |
It's the law of economics.
link |
If they produce a superior product,
link |
then they will have a buyer.
link |
If they do not produce a superior product,
link |
they will not have a buyer.
link |
And that's a very simple business principle.
link |
Whereas in the current national security infrastructure,
link |
you can create a crap product,
link |
but the taxpayer dollars are always going to be spent.
link |
So it's really thrown things for a loop.
link |
Especially during the Trump administration.
link |
And this is one of the things that I will always say
link |
I liked about the Trump administration.
link |
It shown, it put a big blazing bright light
link |
on all of the flaws within our system.
link |
One of those flaws being this executive power
link |
over the intelligence organizations
link |
and the lack of accountability
link |
for intelligence organizations to produce a superior product.
link |
When that light got shown down,
link |
that's when you also saw Trump start to go after,
link |
if you remember, there was a period
link |
where he was taking security clearances away
link |
from retiring officers.
link |
That became a big hot issue.
link |
That became something that people were very opposed to
link |
when they didn't realize that that process
link |
of taking security clearances away,
link |
that incentivized seasoned senior officers
link |
to stay in service.
link |
Because with private intelligence
link |
paying a premium during the Trump administration,
link |
because Trump was paying a premium
link |
to the private intelligence world,
link |
when senior officers found that it was more profitable
link |
to retire early, keep their clearance,
link |
and go work for Raytheon, Trump saw that
link |
as bypassing service to the American people.
link |
You've made a career in CIA, you've made a career in NSA,
link |
you should stay there.
link |
If you leave, you lose your clearance
link |
because you no longer have a need to know.
link |
He upset the apple cart with that.
link |
And unfortunately, the narrative that came out
link |
in many ways was a negative narrative against Trump,
link |
when in fact, he was actually doing quite a service
link |
to the American people, trying to take away
link |
the incentive of senior officials leaving their service
link |
in order to just profiteer in the private intelligence.
link |
So in that way, he was kind of supporting the CIA
link |
in making sure that competent people
link |
and experienced people stay in CIA,
link |
are incentivized to stay there.
link |
Correct, I think that there was definitely,
link |
he understood incentives.
link |
I mean, Donald Trump understands incentives.
link |
So he was trying to incentivize them to stay,
link |
but I think he was also playing a safety card
link |
because he didn't want former CIA officials
link |
who were not listening to him
link |
to then move into private intel organizations
link |
that he may be hiring, only to then have them undermine him
link |
from both sides of the coin.
link |
So there was a little bit of offensive calculation
link |
But do the dynamics and the incentives of economics
link |
that you referred to that the private intelligence
link |
operates under, is that more or less ethical
link |
than the forces that maybe government agencies operate under?
link |
What's your intuition?
link |
Is capitalism lead, so you mentioned it leads
link |
to maximizations of efficiency and performance,
link |
but is that correlated with ethical behavior
link |
when we're talking about such hairy activities
link |
like collection of intelligence?
link |
The question of ethics is a great question.
link |
So let me start this whole thing out by saying,
link |
CIA hires people on a spectrum
link |
of our ability to be morally flexible, ethically flexible.
link |
All people at their heart are ethically flexible.
link |
I would never punch somebody in the face, right?
link |
Some people out there would say,
link |
I would never hurt another human being.
link |
But as soon as a human being posed a direct threat
link |
to their daughter or their son or their mother,
link |
now all of a sudden they're gonna change
link |
their ethical stance in self defense, right?
link |
But at the end of the day,
link |
it's still hurting another person.
link |
So what CIA looks for is people who are able
link |
to swing across that spectrum for lesser offenses, right?
link |
I do not believe that private intelligence
link |
and the laws of economics lend themselves
link |
to increased ethics or increased ethical behavior
link |
in the short term.
link |
But what ends up happening is that in the long term,
link |
in order to scale economic benefits,
link |
you are forced to act within norms of your customer base.
link |
So as the norms of that customer base
link |
dictate certain requirements,
link |
the company has to adapt to those requirements
link |
in order to continue to scale.
link |
So if a company tries to ostracize LGBTQ
link |
or if they try to ostracize men or ostracize women,
link |
they're limiting their ability to grow economically.
link |
They have to adapt to whatever is the prevailing
link |
ethical requirement of their customer base.
link |
That's such an interesting question
link |
because you look at big pharma and pharmaceutical companies,
link |
and they have quite a poor reputation in the public eye.
link |
And some of it, maybe much of it is deserved,
link |
at least historically speaking.
link |
And so you start to wonder, well,
link |
can intelligence agencies use some of the same methods
link |
or can these use some of the same technique
link |
to manipulate the public,
link |
like what they believe about those agencies
link |
in order to maximize profit as well?
link |
Sort of finding shortcuts or unethical paths
link |
that allow you to not be ultimately
link |
responsible to the customer.
link |
And I would go a step further to say that
link |
the covert nature of intelligence operations
link |
is really attractive when it comes to the private sector,
link |
because now they have all the same money
link |
with none of the oversight,
link |
and all they have to do is deliver.
link |
So without the oversight, what's holding you back?
link |
And for anybody who's ever run a business,
link |
anybody who's ever started a startup
link |
or tried to make something succeed,
link |
we all know that there come those times
link |
where you have to skirt the boundaries
link |
of propriety or morality or commitments
link |
or promises to other people,
link |
because at the end of the day,
link |
if your business fails, it's on you.
link |
So if you promise to deliver something to a client,
link |
you've got to deliver it to the client,
link |
even if that means you stay up late
link |
or if you lie on your taxes, whatever it might be,
link |
there's a certain level of do or die.
link |
Yeah, I personally have a sort of optimistic view
link |
that ultimately the best way is to stay
link |
within the ethical bounds, kind of like what you suggested.
link |
If you want to be a company that's extremely successful,
link |
is win with competence, not with cheating,
link |
because cheating won't, I believe, win in the long term.
link |
But in terms of being publicly responsible
link |
to your decisions, I mean, I've already been supposed
link |
to talk to Peter Thiel twice on this podcast,
link |
and it's just been complicated.
link |
If I were to put myself into his shoes,
link |
The risk is too high to be a public person at all.
link |
And so I totally understand that.
link |
At the same time, I think if you're doing things
link |
by the book and you're the best in the world at your job,
link |
then you have nothing to worry about.
link |
And you can advertise that and you recruit,
link |
you help recruit, I mean, that's the work of capitalism
link |
is you want to advertise that this is the place
link |
where the best people in the world at this thing work.
link |
True, I think that your point of view is accurate.
link |
I would also say that the complexities
link |
of what makes somebody make a decision
link |
can only really be properly calculated with a baseline.
link |
So because there is no baseline
link |
that you or I have on Peter Thiel,
link |
it's difficult to really ascertain why he does
link |
or doesn't accept invites or why he does or doesn't appear.
link |
Well, let me ask your opinion on the NSA,
link |
and then maybe you could mention
link |
about bulk collection in general in the CIA,
link |
but let's look at some history with the NSA and Snowden.
link |
What's your opinion on the mass surveillance
link |
that is reported to have been conducted by the NSA?
link |
We've talked about ethics.
link |
Are you troubled by the, from a public perception,
link |
the unethical nature of mass surveillance
link |
of especially American citizens?
link |
This is a topic that I never get tired of talking about,
link |
but it's very rare that anyone ever really agrees with me,
link |
I see where you're, well, I think there's a nuance thing
link |
here and maybe we'll find some agreement.
link |
The truth is that the American experience after 9 11
link |
is nothing like the American experience now.
link |
So all the terminology, all the talk about privacy
link |
and privacy laws and mass surveillance
link |
and all this other stuff,
link |
it was a completely different time then.
link |
And that's not to say it was an excuse,
link |
because to this day, I will still say mass collection,
link |
bulk collection of data that allows
link |
for an expedient identification of a threat
link |
to national security benefits all of us,
link |
but people don't understand what they want.
link |
Like people don't understand what the value
link |
of their own privacy is.
link |
First of all, the fact that people think
link |
they have personal privacy is laughable.
link |
You have no privacy.
link |
The cell phone that you carry in your pocket,
link |
you're giving permission to those apps constantly.
link |
You're giving commercial organizations,
link |
what you and I have already said,
link |
are less tied to ethical responsibility.
link |
You're giving them permission to collect enormous amounts
link |
of private data from you all the time.
link |
And do you know what happens if AT&T or Verizon
link |
sees some nefarious activity on your account?
link |
They might send a note to FBI because they have to,
link |
according to some checklist.
link |
But when NSA was collecting intelligence
link |
on metadata from around the United States,
link |
they were very specifically looking for terrorist threats
link |
that would harm American lives.
link |
Man, NSA can clone my phone.
link |
I will give them my children's phone.
link |
I will give them the passwords to every one of my accounts
link |
if it means that there's a likelihood
link |
that my family will be safer from a nefarious actor
link |
who's intent on hurting us.
link |
NSA doesn't care about your affair.
link |
NSA doesn't care if you're cheating on your taxes.
link |
NSA doesn't care if you talk shit about your boss
link |
or if you hate the US president.
link |
Nobody cares about that.
link |
Your intelligence community is there
link |
to find threats to national security.
link |
That's what they're there to do.
link |
What Snowden did when he outed that whole program,
link |
the fact that the court, the justice system,
link |
the civilian justice system went back
link |
and essentially overruled the ruling
link |
of the intelligence courts before them
link |
just goes to show how the general mass community
link |
really shouldn't have a say
link |
in what happens in the intelligence community.
link |
They really shouldn't.
link |
You have politicians and you have the opportunity
link |
to elect people to a position and then you trust them.
link |
That's what a representative republic is.
link |
You vote the people in,
link |
you trust them to work on your behalf.
link |
They make decisions without running them by you.
link |
They make decisions that they believe
link |
are in the best interest of their constituency
link |
and that's how our form of democracy works.
link |
It worked, we were safer.
link |
Now that we don't have that information
link |
and now that there's this giant looming question
link |
of whether or not NSA is there to serve people
link |
or is collecting mass surveillance
link |
against all American people,
link |
that's not really a true accurate representation
link |
of what they were ever doing.
link |
They were looking for the needle in a haystack
link |
of the series of transactions in metadata
link |
that was going to lead to American deaths.
link |
We are now less secure because they can't do that
link |
and that bothers me.
link |
So you said a few really interesting things there.
link |
So because you are kind of an insider,
link |
or were for a time an insider, meaning you were able
link |
to build up an intuition about the good, the bad,
link |
and the ugly of these institutions, specifically the good.
link |
A lot of people don't have a good sense of the good.
link |
They know the bad and the ugly
link |
or can infer the bad and the ugly.
link |
You mentioned that the one little key little thing there
link |
at the end saying the NSA doesn't care
link |
about whether you hate the president or not.
link |
Now that's what people really worry about
link |
is they're not sure they can trust the government
link |
to not go into full dictatorial mode
link |
and basing your political preference, your oppositions,
link |
your, basically one of the essential powers,
link |
the freedom of speech in the United States
link |
is the ability to criticize your government.
link |
And that, they worry, well, can't the government
link |
get a hold of the NSA and start to ask the basic question,
link |
well, can you give me a list of people
link |
that are criticizing the government?
link |
Think about, so let's just walk through that exact example,
link |
right, because this is, it's a preponderance,
link |
it's a preponderance fear, it's a ridiculous fear
link |
because you would have to tap on multiple elements
link |
of government for anything to happen.
link |
So for example, let's just say that somebody goes
link |
to the NSA and says, hey, can you give us a readout
link |
on all the people who are tweeting terrible things
link |
about the president?
link |
Okay, cool, here's your hundred million people,
link |
whatever it is, right?
link |
Here's all the people saying negative things
link |
about the government.
link |
So now they have a list, what do they do next?
link |
Well, let's just make it simple.
link |
They stay with NSA and they say, surveil them even more,
link |
tap their phones, tap their computers,
link |
I wanna know even more.
link |
So then they get this preponderance of evidence.
link |
What do you do with evidence?
link |
You take it to a court.
link |
Well, guess what no court is going to support?
link |
Anything that goes against the freedom of speech.
link |
So the court is not going to support
link |
what the executive is asking them to do.
link |
Even before you take somebody to court,
link |
you have to involve law enforcement.
link |
Essentially, you have to send some sort of police force
link |
to go apprehend the individual who's in question.
link |
Well, guess what doesn't meet criteria
link |
for any police force anywhere in the United States?
link |
Arresting people who say negative things
link |
about the president.
link |
Now, if somebody poses a threat to the life
link |
of a public figure or the threat to life of a politician,
link |
that's a completely different case,
link |
which means the standards of evidence are much higher
link |
for them to arrest that person.
link |
So unless you create a secret police force,
link |
then your actual public police force
link |
is never gonna take action.
link |
So all these people who are afraid of this exact situation
link |
that you're outlying,
link |
they need the creation of a secret police force,
link |
the creation of a secret court
link |
that operates outside the judicial system,
link |
the creation of a secret intelligence service
link |
that operates outside of foreign intelligence collection,
link |
all so that a handful of people
link |
who don't like the president get what?
link |
Whisked away, assassinated, put in prison, who knows what?
link |
Think about the resources that would be,
link |
the amount of money and time
link |
and how hard would it be to keep that secret,
link |
to have all of those things in motion.
link |
The reason it worked in Russia and Soviet Germany
link |
or Russia and communist Germany
link |
was because everybody knew there was a secret police.
link |
Everybody knew that there was a threat
link |
to work to speaking out against the government.
link |
It's completely different here.
link |
Well, so there's a lot to say.
link |
So one is yes, if I was a dictator
link |
and I wanted to, and just looking at history,
link |
let me take myself out of it,
link |
but I think one of the more effective ways
link |
is you don't need the surveillance.
link |
You can pick out a random person
link |
and in a public display, semi public display,
link |
basically put them in jail for opposing the government,
link |
whether they oppose it or not,
link |
and the fear, that sends a message to a lot of people.
link |
That's exactly what you see happening in China.
link |
That's what you just light out.
link |
It's genius, and that is the standard.
link |
You don't need the surveillance for that.
link |
But that said, if you did do the surveillance,
link |
so that's the support, the sort of,
link |
the incentives aren't aligned.
link |
It seems like a lot of work to do
link |
for the thing you could do without the surveillance.
link |
But yes, the courts wouldn't,
link |
if you were to be able to get a list of people,
link |
which I think that part you could do.
link |
That oppose the government.
link |
You could do that just like you said on Twitter publicly.
link |
You could make a list.
link |
And with that, you can start to,
link |
especially if you have a lot of data on those people,
link |
find ways in which they did violate the law.
link |
Not because they oppose the government,
link |
but because in some other way.
link |
They'll park your tickets or didn't pay the taxes.
link |
That's probably a common one,
link |
or like screwed up something about the taxes.
link |
I just happen to know Russia and Ukraine,
link |
they're very good at this kind of stuff.
link |
Knowing how the citizens screwed everything up,
link |
because especially in those countries,
link |
everybody's breaking the law.
link |
Because in a corrupt nation,
link |
you have to bend the law to operate the war.
link |
The number of people that pay taxes fully
link |
in those nations is just very low, not zero.
link |
And so they then use that breaking of the law
link |
to come up with an excuse to actually put you in jail
link |
So it's possible to imagine.
link |
I think that's the ugly part of surveillance.
link |
But I do think, just like you said,
link |
the incentives aren't correct.
link |
Like you really don't need to get all of the secret police
link |
and all of these kinds of organizations working.
link |
If you do have a charismatic, powerful leader
link |
that built up a network that's able to control
link |
a lot of organizations to a level of authoritarianism
link |
in a government, they're just able to do the usual thing.
link |
One, have propaganda machine to tell narratives.
link |
Two, pick out people that they can put in jail
link |
for opposing the state.
link |
And maybe loud members of the press
link |
start silencing the press.
link |
There's a playbook to this thing.
link |
It doesn't require the surveillance.
link |
The surveillance, you know what is useful
link |
for the surveillance is the thing you mentioned in China,
link |
which is encourage everybody in the citizenry
link |
to watch each other,
link |
to say there's enemies of the state everywhere.
link |
And then you start having children reporting
link |
on their appearance and that kind of stuff.
link |
Again, don't need a surveillance state for that.
link |
Now the good of a surveillance system,
link |
if it's operating within ethical bounds,
link |
is that yes, it could protect the populace.
link |
So you're saying like the good given on your understanding
link |
of these institutions, the good outweighs the bad.
link |
Absolutely, so let me give you just a practical example.
link |
So people don't realize this,
link |
but there's multiple surveillance states that are out there.
link |
There are surveillance states that are close allies
link |
with the United States.
link |
One of those surveillance states
link |
is the United Arab Emirates, the UAE.
link |
Now I lived in the UAE from 2019 to 2020,
link |
came back on a repatriation flight after COVID broke out.
link |
And, but we were there for a full year.
link |
We were residents, we had IDs, we had everything.
link |
Now, when you get your national ID in the Emirates,
link |
you get a chip and that chip connects you to everything.
link |
It connects you to cameras,
link |
it connects you to your license plate on your car,
link |
to your passport, to your credit card, everything.
link |
Everything is intertwined, everything is interlinked.
link |
When you drive, there are no police.
link |
There are no police on the roads.
link |
Every 50 to 100 meters, you cross a camera
link |
that reads your license plate, measures your speed.
link |
And if you're breaking the speed limit,
link |
it just immediately charges your credit card
link |
because it's tied, it's all tied together.
link |
Totally surveillance.
link |
That technology was invented by the Israelis
link |
who use it in Israel.
link |
When I was in Abu Dhabi and I was rear ended at high speed
link |
by what turned out to be an Emirati official,
link |
a senior ranking official of one of the Emirates.
link |
It was caught on camera.
link |
His ID was registered, my ID was registered.
link |
Everything was tied back to our IDs.
link |
The proof and the evidence was crystal clear.
link |
Even still, he was Emirati, I was not.
link |
So when I went to the police station to file the complaints,
link |
it was something that nobody was comfortable with
link |
because generally speaking,
link |
Emiratis don't accept legal claims
link |
against their own from foreigners.
link |
But the difference was that I was an American
link |
and I was there on a contract
link |
supporting the Emirati government.
link |
So I had these different variances, right?
link |
Long story short, in the end,
link |
the surveillance state is what made sure
link |
that justice was played
link |
because the proof was incontrovertible.
link |
There was so much evidence collected
link |
because of the surveillance nature of their state.
link |
Now, why do they have a surveillance state?
link |
It's not for people like me.
link |
It's because they're constantly afraid
link |
of extremist terrorist activity happening inside Abu Dhabi
link |
because they're under constant threat from Islam
link |
and they're from extremists
link |
and they're under constant threat from Iran.
link |
So that's what drives the people to want a police state,
link |
to want a surveillance state.
link |
For them, their survival is paramount
link |
and they need the surveillance to have that survival.
link |
For us, we haven't tasted that level of desperation and fear
link |
yet or hopefully never,
link |
but that's what makes us feel
link |
like there's something wrong with surveillance.
link |
Surveillance is all about the purpose.
link |
It's all about the intent.
link |
Well, and like you said,
link |
companies do a significant amount of surveillance
link |
to provide us with services that we take for granted.
link |
For example, just one of the things to give props
link |
to the digital efforts
link |
of the Zelensky administration in Ukraine.
link |
I don't know if you're aware,
link |
but they have this digital transformation efforts
link |
where you could put, there's an, it's laughable to say
link |
in the United States,
link |
but they actually did a really good job
link |
by having a government app that has your passport on it.
link |
It's all the digital information.
link |
You can get a doctor.
link |
It's like everything that you would think America
link |
would be doing, like license, like all that kind of stuff,
link |
You could pay, there's payment to each other.
link |
And that's all coming, I mean,
link |
there's probably contractors somehow connected
link |
to the whole thing,
link |
but that's like under the flag of government.
link |
And so that's an incredible technology.
link |
And I didn't, I guess, hear anybody talk about surveillance
link |
in that context, even though it is, but they all love it.
link |
And it's super easy.
link |
And they, frankly already, it's so easy and convenient.
link |
They've already taken for granted that,
link |
of course, this is what you do.
link |
Of course, your passport is on your phone.
link |
For everybody to have housed in a server
link |
that you have no idea where it's at,
link |
that could be hacked at any time by a third party.
link |
They don't ask these kinds of questions
link |
because it's so convenient,
link |
as we do for Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple,
link |
Microsoft products we use.
link |
Security and convenience are on two opposite sides
link |
of another spectrum.
link |
The more convenient something is, the less secure.
link |
And the more secure something is, the less convenient.
link |
And that's a battle that we're always working
link |
with as individuals, and then we're trying
link |
to outsource that battle to our politicians.
link |
And our politicians are, frankly,
link |
just more interested in being politicians.
link |
Yeah, that said, I mean, people are really worried
link |
about giving any one institution a large amount of power,
link |
especially when it's a federal government institution,
link |
given some history.
link |
First of all, just history of the corruption,
link |
of power corrupting individuals and institutions.
link |
And second of all, myth or reality of certain institutions
link |
like the CIA misbehaving.
link |
Well, let me actually ask you about the Edward Snowden.
link |
So you, outside of the utility that you're arguing for
link |
of the NSA surveillance program,
link |
do you think Edward Snowden is a criminal or a hero?
link |
In terms, in the eyes of the law, he's a criminal.
link |
He broke the law, he broke the confidence,
link |
he made us, he was under security obligation.
link |
And then when he ran away, he ran away
link |
to all of the worst villains in the world
link |
from the US perspective to basically seek protection.
link |
That's how you act in the face of accusation
link |
is in essence part of the case that you build for yourself.
link |
So running away to China, Russia, Cuba,
link |
there was a Latin Ecuador, I think,
link |
that just paints a very negative picture
link |
that does not suggest that you were doing anything
link |
that was ethical and upright
link |
and in favor of the American people
link |
if you're gonna run to American enemies to support yourself.
link |
So for sure, in the eyes of law, he's a criminal.
link |
In the eyes of a group of people
link |
who are largely ignorant to what they lost,
link |
to them, he's a hero.
link |
To me, he's just kind of a sad case.
link |
I personally look at Snowden as a sad, unfortunate case.
link |
His life is ruined, his family name is tarnished.
link |
He's forever going to be a desperate pawn.
link |
And that's all because of the decisions that he made
link |
and the order that he made them.
link |
I'm not sure his name is tarnished.
link |
I think the case you're making is a difficult case to make.
link |
And so I think his name represents fighting one man,
link |
it's like Tiananmen Square standing before the tank,
link |
is like one man fighting the government.
link |
And I think that there is some aspect
link |
which, taking that case aside,
link |
that is the American spirit,
link |
which is hold the powerful accountable.
link |
So whenever there's somebody in power,
link |
one individual can change.
link |
One man can make a difference.
link |
Can make a difference, yeah.
link |
Very Knight Rider of you.
link |
I mean, that's the American individualism.
link |
And so he represents that.
link |
And I think there's a huge skepticism
link |
against large federal institutions.
link |
And I think if you look at the long arc of history,
link |
that actually is a forcing function
link |
for the institutions to behave their best.
link |
So basically hold them accountable.
link |
What's nice about this is that we can agree to disagree
link |
and history will be the one that decides.
link |
But there's a reason that Edward Snowden
link |
needs to do something new every 16 or 18 months
link |
to remain relevant, right?
link |
Because if he didn't, he would just be forgotten.
link |
Because he was not a maverick
link |
who changed history for the better.
link |
He was a man who broke a law and now he's on the run.
link |
And to some people, he is a hero.
link |
To other people, he is a criminal.
link |
But to the vast majority, he's just a blip
link |
on a radar of their everyday life
link |
that really makes no difference to them at all.
link |
So actually let's linger on that.
link |
So just to clarify, do you think,
link |
are you making the difficult case
link |
that the NSA mass surveillance program
link |
was one, ethical and two, made a better world for Americans?
link |
I am making the case that at the time,
link |
it was exactly what we needed to feel safe in our own homes.
link |
But what about to be safe, actually be safe?
link |
So this is what's difficult because any proof
link |
that was that they collected
link |
that actually prevented an attack from happening
link |
is proof we'll never know about.
link |
This is the really unfortunate side
link |
of intelligence operations.
link |
And I've been at the front end of this.
link |
You work your ass off.
link |
You take personal risk.
link |
You make personal sacrifice to make sure
link |
that something terrible doesn't happen.
link |
Nobody knows that that ever happens.
link |
Does that have to be that way?
link |
Does it have to remain secret
link |
every time the NSA or the CIA saves the lives of Americans?
link |
It does for two reasons.
link |
It has to be secret.
link |
First, the mythos.
link |
The same thing we were talking about with General Petraeus.
link |
You can't brag about your victories
link |
if you want to let the myth shape itself.
link |
You can't do that.
link |
The second thing is once a victory is claimed,
link |
the danger comes from letting your enemy know
link |
that you claimed the victory
link |
because they can reverse engineer
link |
and they can start to change how they did things.
link |
If a terrorist act, if a terrorist cell tries
link |
to execute an operation and the operation fails,
link |
from their point of view, they don't know why it failed.
link |
They just know that it failed.
link |
But then if the US or if the American government comes in
link |
and says, we took apart this amazing attack,
link |
now they have more information, right?
link |
The whole power of secrets, like we talked about before,
link |
the power of secrets is in knowing
link |
that not everybody has them.
link |
There's only a shelf life.
link |
So take advantage of the shelf life.
link |
So you gotta keep it a secret.
link |
There is no tactical advantage from sharing a secret
link |
unless you are specifically trying to achieve
link |
a certain tactical advantage from sharing that secret,
link |
which is what we've seen so much of
link |
with US intel sharing with Ukraine.
link |
There's a tactical advantage from sharing a secret
link |
about Russian military movements or weaknesses in tanks
link |
or supply chain challenges, whatever it might be.
link |
Well, let me argue that there might be an advantage
link |
to share information with the American public
link |
when a terrorist attack or is averted
link |
or the lives of Americans are saved,
link |
because what that does.
link |
Is make every American think that they're not that safe.
link |
There is no tactical advantage there.
link |
If the Austin PD started telling you every day
link |
about these crazy crimes that they prevented,
link |
would that make you feel more safe?
link |
It would make you feel like they're doing their job.
link |
Is that obvious to you, make us feel less safe?
link |
Because if we see competence,
link |
that there is extremely competent defenders
link |
of this territory of these people,
link |
wouldn't that make us feel more safe or no?
link |
The human nature is not to assign competence.
link |
So empirically, humans overvalue losses
link |
and undervalue gains.
link |
That's something that we've seen from finance
link |
to betting and beyond.
link |
If the Austin Police Department starts telling you
link |
about all these heinous crimes that were avoided
link |
because of their hard work,
link |
the way that your brain is actually going
link |
to process that information is you are going to say,
link |
if this is all the stuff that they've stopped,
link |
how bad must this place be?
link |
How much more haven't they stopped?
link |
I take your point, it's a powerful psychological point,
link |
but looking at the other picture of it,
link |
looking at the police force, looking at the CIA, the NSA,
link |
those people, now with the police,
link |
they're seeing, there's such a negative feeling
link |
amongst Americans towards these institutions.
link |
Who the hell wants to work for the CIA now
link |
and the police force?
link |
Like, you're gonna be criticized,
link |
like that's a, I mean, that's really bad for the CIA.
link |
Like, as opposed to being seen as a hero,
link |
like for example, currently soldiers are for the most part
link |
seen as heroes that are protecting this nation.
link |
That's not the case for the CIA.
link |
Soldiers weren't seen as heroes in the Vietnam War, right?
link |
You've got to remember that when you,
link |
so first of all, public service is a sacrifice.
link |
We oftentimes forget that.
link |
We start to think, oh, government jobs are cushy
link |
and they're easy, and it must be so easy
link |
to be the president,
link |
because then you're basically a celebrity overnight.
link |
Public service is a sacrifice, it's a grind.
link |
For all of the soldiers, the submariners,
link |
the missileers, the police officers,
link |
intelligence specialists,
link |
they all know what it's like to give things up,
link |
to serve a public that can turn its opinion
link |
at any given time.
link |
And history is what defines it.
link |
The more important thing is to understand that
link |
if you want a true open and fair democracy,
link |
you cannot control a narrative.
link |
And starting to share all of your victories
link |
or starting to share your biggest victories
link |
with the intent of shaping public opinion
link |
to be supportive of the police force or supportive of CIA
link |
or supportive of you name it, is shaping a narrative
link |
that is intentional operational use of influence
link |
to drive public opinion.
link |
That is something nobody wants to get into.
link |
It is much more professional to be a silent sentinel,
link |
a silent servant, humbly carrying the burden
link |
of public service in the United States
link |
where we are a fair and open democracy.
link |
Why, why not celebrate the killing of Bin Laden?
link |
The search, discovery, and the capture
link |
and the killing of Bin Laden.
link |
Wasn't that, actually the details of that,
link |
how much of the details of that,
link |
how he was discovered were made public?
link |
I think some of it was made public enough.
link |
Doesn't that make heroes out of the people
link |
that are servants?
link |
Or do people who serve to do service for this nation,
link |
do they always have to operate
link |
in a thankless manner in the shadows?
link |
I think that's a very good question.
link |
The folks who I left behind when I left CIA,
link |
who continue to serve as faceless,
link |
nameless heroes every day, I am grateful to them.
link |
The truth is that if they were motivated by something else,
link |
they wouldn't be as good as they are at doing what they do.
link |
And I see your point about,
link |
shouldn't we be celebrating our victories?
link |
But when celebrating our victories
link |
runs the risk of informing our enemies how we operate,
link |
giving away our informational advantage,
link |
giving away our tactical battlefield advantage,
link |
and running the risk of shaping a narrative intentionally
link |
among our own American people,
link |
now all of a sudden we're turning into exactly the thing
link |
that the American people trust us not to become.
link |
Yeah, but then you operate in the secrecy,
link |
and then there's corrupt and douchebag people everywhere.
link |
So when they, even inside the CIA and criminals,
link |
inside the CIA there's criminals in all organizations,
link |
in all walks of life, human nature as such,
link |
that this is always the case,
link |
then it breeds conspiracy theories.
link |
And sometimes those conspiracy theories
link |
turn out to be true.
link |
But most times they don't.
link |
That's just part of the risk of being a myth.
link |
Can you speak to some of the myths?
link |
So this is a fascinating human experimentation program
link |
undertaken by the CIA to develop procedures
link |
for using drugs like LSD to interrogate people
link |
through, let's say, psychological manipulation
link |
and maybe even torture.
link |
The scale of the program is perhaps not known.
link |
How do you make sense that this program existed?
link |
Again, you've gotta look through the lens of time.
link |
You've gotta look at where we were historically
link |
There was the peak of the Cold War.
link |
Our enemies were doing the same kind of experimentation.
link |
It was essentially another space race.
link |
What if they broke through a new weapon technology
link |
faster than we did?
link |
What would that mean for the safety and security
link |
of the American people?
link |
So right decision or wrong decision,
link |
it was guided by and informed
link |
by national security priorities.
link |
So from this program that was designed to use drugs
link |
to drive interrogation and torture people
link |
was born something very productive, Operation Stargate,
link |
which was a chance to use remote viewing and metaphysics
link |
to try to collect intelligence.
link |
Now, even though in the end, the outcome of MKUltra
link |
and the outcome of Stargate were mixed,
link |
nobody really knows if they did or didn't do
link |
what they were supposed to do,
link |
we still know that to this day,
link |
there's still a demand in the US government and in CIA
link |
for people who have sensitivities to ethereal energies.
link |
By the way, is there any proof
link |
that that kind of stuff works?
link |
Or it just shows that there's interest.
link |
It shows that there's openness
link |
to consider those kinds of things.
link |
But is there any evidence that that kind of stuff works?
link |
If there's evidence, I haven't seen it.
link |
Speaking from a science based point of view only,
link |
if energy and matter can always be exchanged,
link |
then a person who can understand
link |
and become sensitive to energy
link |
is a person who could become sensitive
link |
to what does become matter.
link |
Yeah, I mean, the basics of the physics might be there,
link |
but a lot of people probably are skeptical.
link |
I'm skeptical too, but I'm just trying to look at it.
link |
You should be open minded, right?
link |
I mean, that's actually, you know,
link |
that's what science is about, is remain open minded,
link |
even for the things that are long shots,
link |
because those are the things
link |
that actually define scientific revolutions.
link |
What about Operation Northwoods?
link |
It was a proposed 1962 false flag operation
link |
by the DOD and the CIA to be carried out by the CIA
link |
to commit acts of terrorism on Americans
link |
and blame them on Cuba.
link |
So JFK, the president, rejected the proposal.
link |
What do you make that this was on the table,
link |
Operation Northwoods?
link |
So it's interesting.
link |
First, I'm glad that JFK rejected it.
link |
That's a good sign.
link |
So we have to understand that good ideas
link |
are oftentimes born from bad ideas.
link |
I had a really good friend of mine
link |
who actually went on to become a pastor,
link |
and he used to say all the time
link |
that he wanted all the bad ideas on the table.
link |
Like, give me all your bad ideas
link |
every time we had any kind of conversation.
link |
And I was always one of those people who was like,
link |
isn't a bad idea just a waste of time?
link |
And he was like, no,
link |
because the best ideas oftentimes come from bad ideas.
link |
So again, Cuban missile crisis,
link |
mass hysteria in the United States
link |
about nuclear war from Cuba,
link |
missiles blowing up American cities faster
link |
than we could even see them coming.
link |
It makes sense to me that a president would go to,
link |
especially the part of CIA,
link |
which is the Special Activities Division,
link |
it makes perfect sense to me
link |
that the president would go to a division
link |
called Special Activities,
link |
whose job it is to create crazy ideas
link |
that have presidential approval,
link |
but nobody knows they exist.
link |
So it makes sense that he would challenge a group like that
link |
to come up with any wacky idea, right?
link |
Come up with anything.
link |
Just let's start with something,
link |
because we can't bring nothing to the table.
link |
We have to do something about this Cuban issue.
link |
And then that's how an operation like that
link |
could reasonably be born.
link |
Not because anybody wants to do it,
link |
but because they were tasked by the president
link |
to come up with five ideas.
link |
And it was one of the ideas.
link |
That still happens to this day.
link |
The president will still come in,
link |
but it'll basically send out a notice
link |
to his covert action arm.
link |
And he will say, I need this.
link |
And I need it on Wednesday.
link |
And people have to come back with options
link |
for the thing he asked for, a finding.
link |
He will issue a presidential finding.
link |
And then his covert action arms have to come back and say,
link |
here's how we would do this
link |
and hide the hands of the Americans.
link |
How gangster was it of JFK to reject it though?
link |
His baller, right?
link |
That's like, that is a mic drop right there.
link |
Nope, not doing that.
link |
A thing that crosses an ethical line,
link |
even in a time where the human,
link |
the entirety of human civilization hangs in a balance,
link |
still forfeit that power.
link |
That's a beautiful thing about the American experiment.
link |
That's a few times throughout the history
link |
that this has happened,
link |
including with our first president, George Washington.
link |
Well, let me ask about JFK.
link |
25 times two, and they still keep that stuff classified.
link |
So do you think the CIA had a hand
link |
in the assassination of JFK?
link |
I cannot imagine in any reasonable point of view
link |
that the organization of CIA had anything to do
link |
with the assassination of JFK.
link |
So it's not possible to infiltrate the CIA,
link |
a small part of the CIA in order to attain political
link |
or criminal gains, or financial.
link |
Yeah, absolutely it's possible to infiltrate CIA.
link |
There's a long history of foreign intelligence services
link |
infiltrating CIA, from Aldrich Ames
link |
to Jerry Lee recently with China.
link |
So we know CIA can be infiltrated,
link |
even if they are infiltrated,
link |
and even if that's interlocutor execution
link |
that interlocutor executes on their own agenda
link |
or the agenda as directed by their foreign adversary,
link |
their foreign handler,
link |
that's different than organizational support for an event.
link |
So I do think it's possible
link |
they could have been infiltrated at the time,
link |
especially it was a major priority
link |
for the Cubans and the Russians
link |
to infiltrate some aspect of US intelligence,
link |
multiple moles were caught in the years following.
link |
So it's not surprising
link |
that there would be a priority for that.
link |
But to say that the organization of CIA
link |
was somehow in cahoots with,
link |
to independently assassinate their own executive,
link |
that's a significant stretch.
link |
I've seen no evidence to support that.
link |
And it goes contrary to everything I learned
link |
from my time at CIA.
link |
Well, let me ask you,
link |
do you think CIA played a part in enabling drug cartels
link |
and drug trafficking,
link |
which is another big kind of
link |
shadow that hangs over the CIA?
link |
At the beginning of the drug war,
link |
I would imagine the answer is yes.
link |
CIA has its own counter narcotics division,
link |
a division that's dedicated to fighting
link |
and preventing narcotics
link |
from coming into the United States.
link |
So when you paint a picture for me,
link |
like do you think the CIA was complicit
link |
in helping drug trafficking or drug use?
link |
my exception is I don't think they did that
link |
for Americans inside the United States.
link |
If the CIA can basically set it up
link |
so that two different drug cartels shoot each other
link |
by assisting in the transaction
link |
of a sale to a third country
link |
and then leaking that that sale happened
link |
to a competing cartel,
link |
that's just letting cartels do what they do.
link |
That's them doing the dirty work for us.
link |
So especially at the beginning of the drug war,
link |
I think there was tons of space,
link |
lots of room for CIA to get involved
link |
in the economics of drugs
link |
and then let the inevitable happen.
link |
And that was way more efficient,
link |
way more productive than us trying to send our own troops
link |
in to kill a bunch of cartel warlords.
link |
So that makes a ton of sense to me.
link |
It just seems efficient.
link |
It seems very practical.
link |
I do not believe that CIA would like,
link |
I don't think all the accusations out there
link |
about how they would buy drugs and sell drugs
link |
and somehow make money on the side from it.
link |
That's not how it works.
link |
So do you think there's, on that point,
link |
a connection between Barry Seal,
link |
the great governor and then President Bill Clinton,
link |
Oliver North and Vice President and former CIA Director
link |
George H.W. Bush and the little town
link |
with a little airport called Mena, Arkansas?
link |
So I am out of my element now.
link |
This is one I haven't heard many details about.
link |
Okay, so your sense is any of the drug trafficking
link |
has to do with criminal operations
link |
outside of the United States and the CIA
link |
just leveraging that to achieve its ends
link |
but nothing to do with American citizens
link |
and American politicians.
link |
With American citizens, again, speaking organizationally.
link |
So that would be my sense, yes.
link |
Let me ask you about, so back to Operation Northwoods
link |
because it's such a powerful tool,
link |
sadly powerful tool used by dictators throughout history,
link |
the false flag operation.
link |
So I think there's, and you said the terrorist attacks
link |
in 9 11 were, it changed a lot for us,
link |
for the United States, for Americans.
link |
It changed the way we see the world.
link |
It woke us up to the harshness of the world.
link |
I think there's, to my eyes at least,
link |
there's nothing that shows evidence
link |
that 9 11 was a quote inside job.
link |
But is the CIA or the intelligence agencies
link |
or the US government capable of something like that?
link |
But that's the question.
link |
So there's a bunch of shadiness
link |
about how it was reported on.
link |
I just can't, that's the thing I struggle with.
link |
While there's no evidence that there was an inside job,
link |
it raises the question to me,
link |
well, could something like this be an inside job?
link |
Because it sure as heck, now looking back 20 years,
link |
the amount of money that was spent on these wars,
link |
the military industrial complex,
link |
the amount of interest in terms of power and money involved,
link |
organizationally, can something like that happen?
link |
You know Occam's razor.
link |
So the harem's razor is that you can never prescribe
link |
to conspiracy what could be explained through incompetence.
link |
That is one of, those are two fundamental guidelines
link |
that we follow all the time.
link |
The simplest answer is oftentimes the best
link |
and never prescribe to conspiracy
link |
what can be explained through incompetence.
link |
Can you elaborate what you mean by we?
link |
We as intelligence professionals.
link |
So you think there's a deep truth to that second razor?
link |
There is more than a deep truth.
link |
There's ages of experience for me and for others.
link |
So in general, people are incompetent.
link |
If left to their own means they're more incompetent
link |
than they are malevolent at a large organizational scale.
link |
People are more incompetent of executing a conspiracy
link |
than they are of competently, yeah,
link |
than they are of competently executing a conspiracy.
link |
That's really what it means is that it's so difficult
link |
to carry out a complex lie
link |
that most people don't have the competency to do it.
link |
So it doesn't make any sense to lead thinking of conspiracy.
link |
It makes more sense to lead assuming incompetence.
link |
When you look at all of the outcomes,
link |
all the findings from 9 11, it speaks to incompetence.
link |
It speaks brashly and openly to incompetence
link |
and nobody likes talking about it.
link |
FBI and CIA to this day hate hearing about it.
link |
The 9 11 commission is gonna go down in history
link |
as this painful example of the incompetence
link |
of the American intelligence community.
link |
And it's going to come back again and again.
link |
Every time there's an intel flap,
link |
it's gonna come back again and again.
link |
What are you seeing?
link |
Even right now, we miss the US intelligence infrastructure,
link |
misjudged Afghanistan, misjudged Hong Kong,
link |
misjudged Ukraine's and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
link |
Those were three massive misjudgments in a few years.
link |
That speaks, it's just embarrassing.
link |
So all the sort of cover up looking things around 9 11
link |
is just people being embarrassed by their failures.
link |
If they're taking steps to cover anything up,
link |
it's just their own, it's a painful reminder
link |
of their lack of competency at the time.
link |
Now, I understand that conspiracy theorists
link |
want to take inklings of information
link |
and put them together in a way that is the most damning,
link |
but that goes back to our point about overvaluing losses
link |
and undervaluing gains.
link |
It's just predictable human behavior.
link |
Let me ask you about this because it comes up often.
link |
So I'm from MIT and there's a guy by the name
link |
of Jeffrey Epstein that still troubles me to this day
link |
that some of the people I respect
link |
were interacted with this individual
link |
and fell into his influence.
link |
The charm, charisma, whatever the hell he used
link |
to delude these people, he did so successfully.
link |
I'm very open minded about this thing.
link |
I just, I would love to learn more,
link |
but a lot of people tell me, a lot of people I respect,
link |
that there's intelligence agencies behind this individual.
link |
So they were using Jeffrey Epstein
link |
for getting access to powerful people
link |
and then to control and manipulate those powerful people.
link |
The CIA, I believe, is not brought up as often as Mossad.
link |
And so this goes back to the original aspect
link |
of our conversation is how much each individual
link |
intelligence agency is willing to go to control,
link |
to manipulate, to achieve its means.
link |
Do you think there is, can you educate me?
link |
If, obviously you don't know, but you can bet,
link |
what are the chances the intelligence agencies
link |
are involved with the character of Jeffrey Epstein?
link |
In some way, shape, or form with the character of Epstein,
link |
it's 100% guaranteed that some intelligence organization
link |
was involved, but let's talk about why.
link |
Let's talk about why, okay?
link |
There's multiple types of intelligence assets,
link |
just like we were talking earlier.
link |
There's foreign intelligence reporting assets,
link |
there's access agents,
link |
and then there's agents of influence.
link |
Three different categories of intelligence, right?
link |
One is when you talk about foreign intelligence reporters,
link |
these are people who have access to secrets
link |
and their job is to give you their secrets
link |
in exchange for gold or money or alcohol or prostitution
link |
or whatever else, right?
link |
Their job is to give you secrets
link |
and then you pay them for the secrets.
link |
Access agents, their job is to give you physical access
link |
or digital access to something of interest to you.
link |
So maybe they're the ones that open a door
link |
that should have been locked and let you come in
link |
and stick your thumb drive in the computer.
link |
Or maybe they're the ones that share a phone number
link |
with somebody and then they're just like,
link |
just don't tell them you got the phone number from me.
link |
Their job is to give you access.
link |
Then you have these agents of influence.
link |
An agent of influence's job is to be part of your effort
link |
to influence the outcomes in some way
link |
that benefits your intelligence requirements, right?
link |
Of these three types of people,
link |
the least scrupulous and the most shady
link |
is your agent of influence.
link |
Because your agent of influence
link |
understands exactly what they're doing.
link |
They know they're working with one guy
link |
and they know they're using the influence
link |
to manipulate some other guy.
link |
When it comes to powerful people,
link |
especially wealthy, powerful people,
link |
the only thing that interests them is power.
link |
Money is not a challenge anymore.
link |
Prestige, notoriety, none of those things are a challenge.
link |
The rest of us, we're busy trying to make money.
link |
We're busy trying to build a reputation.
link |
We're busy trying to build a career, keep a family afloat.
link |
At the highest levels, they're bored.
link |
They don't need any of that.
link |
The only thing that they care about
link |
is being able to wield power.
link |
So a character like Jeffrey Epstein
link |
is exactly the kind of character
link |
that the Chinese would want, the Russians would want,
link |
Mossad would want, the French would want.
link |
It's too easy because the man had access
link |
to a wide range of American influential people.
link |
For corporate espionage uses,
link |
for economic espionage uses,
link |
for national security espionage uses,
link |
it doesn't make any sense
link |
that a person like that wouldn't be targeted.
link |
So the question is.
link |
Who, and whether, I think the really important distinction
link |
here is was this person, was Jeffrey Epstein created,
link |
or once he's achieved and built his network,
link |
was he then infiltrated?
link |
And that's a really sort of important difference.
link |
Like at which stage do you connect a person like that?
link |
You start to notice maybe they're effective
link |
at building a network, and then you start making,
link |
building a relationship to where at some point
link |
it's a job, they're working for you.
link |
Or do you literally create a person like that?
link |
Yeah, so intelligence organizations
link |
have different strategies here.
link |
In the United States, we never create.
link |
We don't have a budget cycle that allows us to create.
link |
I mean, the maximum budget cycle
link |
in the United States is five years.
link |
So even if we were to try to invest in some seed operation
link |
or create some character of influence,
link |
essentially every year you have to justify
link |
why you're spending budget.
link |
And that becomes very difficult in a democracy like ours.
link |
However, Russia and China are extremely adept
link |
at seed operations, longterm operations.
link |
They are willing to invest and develop
link |
and create an agent that serves their purposes.
link |
Now, to create someone from scratch like Jeffrey Epstein,
link |
the probabilities are extremely low.
link |
They would have had to start
link |
with like a thousand different targets
link |
and try to grow a thousand different,
link |
if you will, influencers, and then hope
link |
that one of them hits,
link |
kind of like a venture capital firm, right?
link |
Invest in many, hope that a few hits.
link |
More likely, they observed him at some point
link |
in his own natural rise.
link |
They identified his personal vulnerability,
link |
very classic espionage technique.
link |
And then they stepped in, introduced themselves mid career
link |
and said, hey, we know you have this thing that you like
link |
that isn't really frowned upon by your own people,
link |
but we don't frown upon it.
link |
And we can help you both succeed
link |
and have an endless supply of ladies along the way.
link |
I recently talked to Ryan Graves, who's a lieutenant.
link |
Ryan Graves, who's a fighter jet pilot,
link |
about many things.
link |
He also does work on autonomous weapon systems,
link |
drones, and that kind of thing,
link |
including quantum computing.
link |
But he also happens to be one of the very few pilots
link |
that were willing to go on record
link |
and talk about UFO sightings.
link |
Does the CIA and the federal government
link |
have interest in UFOs?
link |
In my experience at CIA, that is,
link |
an area that remains very compartmented.
link |
And that could be one of two reasons.
link |
It could be because there is significant interest
link |
and that's why it's so heavily compartmented.
link |
Or it could be because it's an area that's non,
link |
that's just not important.
link |
It's a distraction.
link |
So they compartment it so it doesn't distract
link |
from other operations.
link |
One of the areas that I've been quite interested in
link |
and where I've done a lot of research and I've done some work
link |
in the private intelligence and private investigation side
link |
The place where UFOs really connect
link |
with the federal government is when it comes
link |
to aviation safety and predominance of power.
link |
So FAA and the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. military
link |
are very invested in knowing what's happening
link |
in the skies above the United States.
link |
And that's of primary interest to them.
link |
When they can rule out the direct threat to national security
link |
of UFOs, then they become less interested.
link |
That said, when you have unexplained aerial phenomenon
link |
that are unexplained, that can't directly be tied
link |
to anything that is known of the terrestrial world,
link |
then they're left without an answer to their question.
link |
They don't know if it's a threat or not a threat.
link |
But I think that's a very important question.
link |
But I think the scarier concern
link |
for the U.S. national government
link |
or for the U.S. federal government,
link |
the scarier concern that nobody talks about
link |
is what if the UFO isn't alien?
link |
What if it is actually a cutting edge war machine
link |
that we are eons behind ever being able to replicate?
link |
Or the other concern is that it's a system,
link |
it's a machine from a foreign power
link |
that's doing intelligence collection.
link |
Not just military purposes, it's actually collecting data.
link |
Well, they fall, a lot of times the federal government
link |
will see the two as the same.
link |
It's a hostile tool from a foreign government.
link |
So collection of information is a hostile act.
link |
Absolutely, that's why the Espionage Act exists.
link |
That's why it's a criminal offense
link |
if you're committing espionage in the United States
link |
as a U.S. citizen or a foreign citizen.
link |
So I guess they keep digging
link |
until they can confirm it's not a threat.
link |
But it just, and you're saying that there's not,
link |
from your understanding, much evidence that they're doing.
link |
So it could be because they're compartmentalized.
link |
But you're saying private intelligence institutions
link |
are trying to make progress on this.
link |
Yeah, it's really difficult to know the scale.
link |
Yeah, there's an economic interest
link |
in the private intelligence world.
link |
Because, for example, if you understand
link |
why certain aerial phenomenon are happening over a location,
link |
then you can use that to inform investors,
link |
whether to invest in that location
link |
or avoid investment in that location.
link |
But that's not a national security concern.
link |
So it doesn't matter to the federal government.
link |
Could these UFOs be aliens?
link |
Now I'm going into a territory of you as a human being
link |
wondering about all the alien civilizations
link |
that are out there.
link |
The humbling question.
link |
You think we're not alone.
link |
It's an improbability that we are alone.
link |
If by virtue of the fact that sentient human life exists,
link |
intelligent human life exists,
link |
all the probabilities that would have to be destroyed
link |
for that to be true simply speak over the galaxies
link |
that exist that there's no possible way we're alone.
link |
It's a mathematical equation.
link |
It's a one or a zero, right?
link |
And for me, it has to exist.
link |
It's impossible otherwise rationally for me to think
link |
that we are truly the only intelligent life form
link |
in all of the universe.
link |
But to think that an alien life form
link |
is anything like us at all is equally as inconceivable.
link |
To think that they're carbon based bipedal humanoid
link |
alien species that just happened to fly around
link |
in metal machines and visit alien planets
link |
in a way that they become observed
link |
is, it's just silly, it's the world of sci fi.
link |
Well, let me push.
link |
Every good scientist,
link |
because we always assume that they're superior
link |
to us in intelligence.
link |
When any scientist carries out an experiment,
link |
the whole objective of the experiment is to observe
link |
without being disclosed or being discovered.
link |
So why on earth would we think that the superior species
link |
makes the mistake of being discovered over and over again?
link |
So to push back on that idea,
link |
if we were to think about us humans trying to communicate
link |
with ants, first we observe for a while.
link |
There'll be a bunch of PhDs written,
link |
a bunch of people just sort of collecting data,
link |
taking notes, trying to understand about this thing
link |
that you detected that seems to be a living thing,
link |
which is a very difficult thing to define
link |
from an alien perspective or from our perspective
link |
if we find life on Mars or something like that.
link |
Okay, so you observe for a while.
link |
But then if you want to actually interact with it,
link |
how would you interact with the ants?
link |
If I were to interact with the ants,
link |
I would try to infiltrate.
link |
I would try to figure out what is the language
link |
they use to communicate with each other.
link |
I would try to operate at their physical scale,
link |
like in terms of the physics of their interaction,
link |
in terms of the information, methods, mediums
link |
of information exchange with pheromones or whatever,
link |
however the heck, ants.
link |
So I would try to mimic them in some way.
link |
So in that sense, it makes sense
link |
that the objects we would see, you mentioned bipedal.
link |
Yes, of course it's ridiculous that aliens
link |
would actually be very similar to us,
link |
but maybe they create forms in order to be like,
link |
here, the humans will understand it.
link |
And this needs to be sufficiently different from humans
link |
to know that there's something weird.
link |
I don't know, I think it's actually
link |
an incredibly difficult problem of figuring out
link |
how to communicate with a thing way dumber than you.
link |
People assume if you're smart,
link |
it's easier to talk to the dumb thing.
link |
But I think it's actually extremely difficult
link |
when the gap in intelligence is just orders of magnitude.
link |
And so of course you can observe,
link |
but once you notice the thing is sufficiently interesting,
link |
how do you communicate with that thing?
link |
So this is where, one of the things
link |
I always try to highlight is how conspiracies are born.
link |
Because many people don't understand how easy it is
link |
to fall into the conspiratorial cycle.
link |
So the first step to a conspiracy being born
link |
is to have a piece of evidence that is true.
link |
And then immediately following the true evidence
link |
is a gap in information.
link |
And then to fill in the gap of information,
link |
people create an idea and then the next logical outcome
link |
is based on the idea that they just created,
link |
which is an idea that's based on something
link |
that was imagined in the first place.
link |
So the idea, the factual thing is now two steps away
link |
and then three steps away, four steps away
link |
as the things go on.
link |
And then all of a sudden you have this kernel of truth
link |
that turned into this wild conspiracy.
link |
So in our example, you talked about humans
link |
trying to communicate with ants.
link |
Ants are not intelligent.
link |
There's no, ants are not intelligent species.
link |
They're a drone species that's somehow commanded
link |
through whatever technology, whatever.
link |
Spoken like a typical human, but yes.
link |
Whatever biological thing is in the queen, right?
link |
But they're not, it's not a fair equivalent.
link |
But let's look at gorillas
link |
or let's look at something in the monkey family, right?
link |
Where largely we agree that there is some sort
link |
of intelligence there or dolphins,
link |
some sort of intelligence, right?
link |
It is a human thing, a human thing to want to observe
link |
and then communicate and integrate.
link |
That's a human thing, not an intelligent life thing.
link |
So for us to even think that a foreign
link |
and intelligent alien species would want to engage
link |
and communicate at all is an extremely human assumption.
link |
And then from that assumption,
link |
then we started going into all the other things you said.
link |
If they wanted to communicate,
link |
wouldn't they want to mimic?
link |
If they wanted to mimic,
link |
wouldn't they create devices like ours?
link |
So now we're three steps removed from the true fact
link |
of there's something unexplainable in the skies.
link |
Yeah, so the fact is there's something unexplainable
link |
in the skies and then we're filling in the gaps
link |
with all our basic human biases and assumptions.
link |
Now we're getting right back to Project Northwood.
link |
We need some plan.
link |
I don't care how crazy the idea is, guys.
link |
Give me some plan.
link |
So that's where we come up with.
link |
Maybe it's an alien species trying to communicate
link |
or maybe it's an alien, a hostile threat
link |
that's trying to take over the world or who knows what.
link |
But you have to somehow construct hypotheses
link |
and theories for anomalies.
link |
And then from that, amidst giant pile of the ridiculous,
link |
emerges perhaps a deeper truth over a period of decades.
link |
And at first, that truth is ridiculed
link |
and then it's accepted, that whole process.
link |
The Earth revolving around the sun?
link |
Yeah, the Earth revolving around the sun.
link |
But to me, it's interesting because it asks us
link |
looking out there with SETI, just looking for alien life,
link |
is forcing us to really ask questions about ourselves,
link |
about what is life, how special.
link |
First of all, what is intelligence?
link |
How special is intelligence in the cosmos?
link |
And I think it's inspiring and challenging
link |
to us as human beings,
link |
both on a scientific and engineering level,
link |
but also on a philosophical level.
link |
I mean, all of those questions that are laid before us
link |
when you start to think about alien life.
link |
So you interviewed Joe Rogan recently.
link |
And he said something that I thought was really,
link |
really brilliant during the podcast interview.
link |
He's gonna love hearing that.
link |
But go ahead, sorry.
link |
But he said that he realized at some point
link |
that the turn in his opinion about UFOs happened
link |
when he realized how desperately he wanted it to be true.
link |
This is the human condition.
link |
We are pink matter works the same way
link |
as everybody's pink matter.
link |
And one of the ways that our pink matter works
link |
is with this thing, with what's known as a cognitive bias.
link |
It's a mental shortcut.
link |
Essentially, your brain doesn't want to process
link |
through facts over and over again.
link |
Instead, it wants to assume certain facts are in place
link |
and just jump right to the conclusion.
link |
It saves energy, it saves megabytes.
link |
So what Joe or Joe Rogan,
link |
I feel weird calling him Joe, I don't know him,
link |
but what Joe identified on his own.
link |
What Mr. Rogan identified on his own.
link |
Was his own cognitive loop.
link |
And then he immediately grew suspicious of that loop.
link |
That is a super powerful tool.
link |
That is something that most people
link |
never become self actualized enough to realize
link |
that they have a cognitive loop,
link |
let alone questioning their own cognitive loop.
link |
So that was, when it came to this topic specifically,
link |
that was just something that I thought was really powerful
link |
because you learn to not trust your own mind.
link |
Just for the record, after he drinks one whiskey,
link |
all that goes out.
link |
I think that was just in that moment in time, like, you know.
link |
A moment of brilliance.
link |
A moment of brilliance is, I think he still is, you know,
link |
he's definitely, one of the things that inspires me about Joe
link |
is how open minded he is, how curious he is.
link |
He refuses to let sort of the conformity
link |
and the conventions of any one community,
link |
including the scientific community,
link |
be a kind of thing that limits his curiosity,
link |
of asking what if, like the whole, it's entirely possible.
link |
I think that's a beautiful thing.
link |
And it actually represents what the best of science is,
link |
that childlike curiosity.
link |
But, so it's good to sort of balance those two things,
link |
but then you have to wake up to it, like,
link |
is this, is there a chance this is true,
link |
or do I just really want it to be true?
link |
Like that hot girl that talks to you overseas?
link |
For a brief moment.
link |
There's actually a deeper explanation for it
link |
that I'll tell you off the mic that perhaps
link |
a lot of people can kind of figure out.
link |
Just to take it one step further,
link |
cause I love this stuff.
link |
Personally, I love pink matter stuff.
link |
In your interview with Jack Barsky,
link |
Jack's a good friend of mine, a good dude.
link |
An incredible person.
link |
In your conversation with Jack Barsky,
link |
you guys, he started talking to you about
link |
how his recruiters were feeding back to him his own beliefs,
link |
his own opinions about himself, how smart he was,
link |
how good he was, how uniquely qualified he was.
link |
That's all pink matter manipulation.
link |
Feeding right back to the person
link |
what they already think of themselves
link |
is a way to get them to invest and trust you faster
link |
because obviously you value them for all the right reasons
link |
because that's how they see themselves.
link |
So that loop that the KGB was using with Jack,
link |
Jack did not wake up to that loop at the time.
link |
He woke up to it later.
link |
So it happens to all of us.
link |
We're all in a loop.
link |
It's just whether it's about oat milk
link |
or whether it's about aliens
link |
or whether it's about the Democrats trying to take your guns,
link |
whatever it is, everybody's in a loop
link |
and we've got to wake up to ask ourselves,
link |
just like you said, is it true
link |
or do we just really want it to be true?
link |
And until you ask yourself that question,
link |
you're just one of the masses trapped in the loop.
link |
Yeah, that's the really, the Nietzsche gaze into the abyss.
link |
It's a dangerous thing.
link |
That's the path to insanity is to ask that question.
link |
You want to be doing it carefully,
link |
but it's also the place where you can truly discover
link |
something fundamental about this world
link |
that people don't understand
link |
and then that and lay the groundwork for progress,
link |
scientific, cultural, all that kind of stuff.
link |
What is one spy trick?
link |
This is from a Reddit that I really enjoy.
link |
What's one spy trick and you're full of a million spy tricks.
link |
People should follow you.
link |
You did an amazing podcast.
link |
You're just an amazing person.
link |
What is the one spy trick you would teach everyone
link |
that they can use to improve their life instantly?
link |
Now you already mentioned quite a few,
link |
but what else could jump to mind?
link |
My go to answer for this has not really changed much
link |
over the last few years.
link |
So the first, the most important spy trick
link |
to change everything immediately
link |
is something called perception versus perspective.
link |
We all look at the world through our own perception.
link |
My dad used to tell me,
link |
my stepdad used to tell me that perception is reality.
link |
And I was arguing this with him when I was 14 years old.
link |
I told you so dad, you're still wrong.
link |
But perception is your interpretation
link |
of the world around you, but it's unique only to you.
link |
There's no advantage in your perception.
link |
That's why so many people find themselves
link |
arguing all the time,
link |
trying to convince other people of their own perception.
link |
The way that you win any argument,
link |
the way that you get ahead in your career,
link |
the way that you outsell or out race anybody
link |
is when you move off of perception
link |
and move into perspective.
link |
Perspective is the act or the art
link |
of observing the world from outside of yourself,
link |
whether that's outside of yourself as like an entity,
link |
just observing in a third from a different point of view,
link |
or even more powerful, you sit in the shoes,
link |
you sit in the seat of the person opposite you.
link |
And you think to yourself, what is their life like?
link |
What do they feel right now?
link |
Are they comfortable?
link |
Are they uncomfortable?
link |
What's the stressor that they woke up to this morning?
link |
What's the stressor that they're gonna go to sleep
link |
When you shift places and get out of your own perception
link |
and into someone else's perspective,
link |
now you're thinking like them,
link |
which is giving you an informational advantage.
link |
But you know what they're all doing?
link |
Everyone else out there is trapped in their own perception,
link |
not thinking about a different perspective.
link |
So immediately you have superior information,
link |
superior positioning,
link |
you have an advantage that they don't have.
link |
And if you do that to your boss,
link |
it's gonna change your career.
link |
If you do that to your spouse,
link |
it's gonna change your marriage.
link |
If you do that to your kids,
link |
it's gonna change your family legacy
link |
because nobody else out there is doing it.
link |
It's so interesting how difficult empathy is for people
link |
and how powerful it is,
link |
especially for, like you said,
link |
with spouse, like intimacy.
link |
Like stepping outside of yourself
link |
and really putting yourself in the shoes of the other person
link |
considering how they see the world.
link |
And that's, I really enjoy that
link |
because how does that exactly lead to connection?
link |
I think when you start to understand
link |
the way the other person sees the world,
link |
you start to enjoy the world through their eyes
link |
and you start to be able to share,
link |
in terms of intimacy,
link |
share the beauty that they see together
link |
because you understand their perspective.
link |
And somehow you converge as well.
link |
Of course, that allows you to gather information better
link |
and all that kind of stuff.
link |
And that allows you to work together better,
link |
to share in all different kinds of ways.
link |
But for intimacy, that's a really powerful thing.
link |
And also for, actually,
link |
like people you really disagree with
link |
or people on the internet you disagree with and so on,
link |
I find empathy is such a powerful way
link |
to resolve any tensions there.
link |
Even like people like trolls or all that kind of stuff,
link |
I don't deride them.
link |
I just kind of put myself in their shoes
link |
and it becomes like an enjoyable comradery with that person.
link |
So I wanna draw a pretty hard line
link |
between perspective and empathy.
link |
Because empathy is, frankly, an overused term
link |
by people who don't really know
link |
what they're saying sometimes.
link |
I think you know what you're saying,
link |
but the vast majority of people listening.
link |
I would argue that, but that's fine.
link |
As soon as you say empathy,
link |
they're gonna just be like,
link |
oh, yeah, I've heard this a thousand times.
link |
Empathy is about feeling what other people feel.
link |
It's more about feeling, would you say?
link |
Yeah, it's about feelings.
link |
It's about understanding someone else's feelings.
link |
Feeling, it's not the same as sympathy
link |
where you feel their feelings.
link |
Empathy is about recognizing that they have feelings
link |
and recognizing that their feelings are valid.
link |
Perspective is more than just feelings.
link |
It's about the brain.
link |
It's about the pink matter on the left side
link |
and the right side of the brain.
link |
Yes, I care about feelings,
link |
and this goes directly to your point about connection.
link |
Yes, I care about feelings,
link |
but I also care about objectives.
link |
What is your life, what is your aspirational goal?
link |
What was it like to grow up as you?
link |
What was it like to experience this
link |
and how did this shape your opinion on that?
link |
And what is it that you're going to do next?
link |
More than just feelings, actual tactical actions.
link |
And that becomes extremely valuable
link |
in the operational world
link |
because if you can get into someone's head,
link |
left brain and right brain, feelings and logic,
link |
you can start anticipating
link |
what actions they're gonna take next.
link |
You can direct the actions that they're going to take next
link |
because you're basically telling them the story
link |
that's in their own head.
link |
When it comes to relationships and personal connection,
link |
we talked about it earlier,
link |
the thing that people want the most is community.
link |
They want someone else who understands them.
link |
They want to be with people.
link |
They don't want to be alone.
link |
The more you practice perspective, empathy or no empathy,
link |
the more you just validate that a person is there.
link |
I am in this time and space with you in this moment.
link |
Feelings aside, that is powerful.
link |
And whether you're talking about lovers
link |
or whether you're talking about a business exchange
link |
or whether you're talking about collaborators in a crime,
link |
I'm here with you ride or die, let's do it.
link |
How much of what you've learned in your role at the CIA
link |
transfer over to relationships,
link |
the business relationship to other aspects of life?
link |
This is something you work closely with powerful people
link |
What have you learned about the commonalities,
link |
about the problems that people face?
link |
Man, I would say about a solid 95% of what I learned
link |
at CIA carries over to the civilian world.
link |
That 5% that doesn't is,
link |
it would carry over in a disaster, right?
link |
There's knowing how to shoot on target
link |
with my non dominant hand really only has one purpose.
link |
It's not gonna happen day to day, right?
link |
Knowing how to do a dead drop that isn't discoverable
link |
by the local police force isn't gonna be useful right now,
link |
but it could be useful in disaster.
link |
But the 95% of stuff that's useful,
link |
it's all tied to the human condition.
link |
It's all tied to being able to
link |
understand what someone's thinking,
link |
understand what someone's feeling,
link |
direct their thoughts, direct their emotions,
link |
direct their thought process, win their attention,
link |
win their loyalty, win influence with them,
link |
grow your network, grow your own circle of influence.
link |
I mean, all of that is immensely, immensely valuable.
link |
As an example, the disguise,
link |
the disguise thing that we talked about earlier,
link |
disguise in and of itself has mixed utility.
link |
If you're Brad Pitt and you don't want anybody
link |
to know you're Brad Pitt, you put on a level one disguise
link |
Or maybe you call me and I walk you through
link |
a level two disguise so that you can go to Aruba
link |
and nobody's gonna know you're in Aruba, right?
link |
But even there with the 5%
link |
that doesn't apply to everyday life,
link |
there's still elements that do.
link |
For example, when a person looks at a human being's face,
link |
the first place they look is the same part of the face
link |
as if they were reading a piece of paper.
link |
So in English, we start from the top left
link |
and we read left to right, top to bottom.
link |
So when an English speaking person
link |
interacts with another person,
link |
the first thing they look at isn't their eyes.
link |
It's the upper left from their point of view,
link |
corner of their face, right?
link |
They look there and the information they get
link |
is hair color, hair pattern, skin color, right?
link |
Before they know anything else about the face.
link |
This is one of the reasons why somebody can look at you
link |
and then you ask them, what color are my eyes?
link |
I don't really remember.
link |
Because the way they read the face,
link |
they read it from left to right, top to bottom.
link |
So they're paying a lot of attention
link |
to the first few things they see
link |
and then they're paying less attention
link |
as they go down the face.
link |
The same scrolling behavior that you see
link |
on the internet, right?
link |
So when you understand that through the lens of disguise,
link |
it allows you to make a very powerful disguise.
link |
The most important part of your disguise
link |
is here if you're English speaking, right?
link |
Here if you're speaking some foreign languages
link |
that read right to left, right?
link |
If you're, if it's Chinese,
link |
you know that they're gonna look from here down
link |
because they read left down.
link |
So yeah, knowing that really helps you
link |
sort of configure the things
link |
in terms of physical appearance.
link |
That's interesting.
link |
So when it comes to how to make a disguise,
link |
not so useful to the ultra wealthy usually.
link |
But when it comes to how to read a face
link |
or more importantly, how people are going to read your face,
link |
that's extremely important because now you know
link |
where to find the first signs of deception
link |
in a baseline or anything else.
link |
You mentioned that the idea of having privacy
link |
is one that we kind of, we think we can,
link |
but we really don't.
link |
Is it possible for maybe somebody like me
link |
or a regular person to disappear from the grid?
link |
Yeah, and it's not as hard as you might think.
link |
It's not convenient.
link |
Again, convenience and security.
link |
You can disappear tomorrow, right?
link |
I can walk you through three steps right now
link |
that are gonna help you disappear tomorrow,
link |
but none of them are convenient.
link |
They're all extremely secure, right?
link |
The first thing you do is every piece
link |
of digital technology you have
link |
that is connected to you in any way is now dead.
link |
You just let the battery run out.
link |
You never touch it again, starting at this moment.
link |
What you have to do is go out and acquire a new one.
link |
Realistically, you will not be able to acquire a new one
link |
in the United States by buying it
link |
because to do so, you would tie it to your credit card.
link |
You would tie it to a location, a time, a place,
link |
a registered name, whatever else.
link |
So you would have to acquire it essentially by theft
link |
or through the black market.
link |
So you would want something
link |
because you're gonna need the advantage of technology
link |
without it being in your name.
link |
So you go out and you steal a phone or you steal a laptop.
link |
You do whatever you have to do to make sure
link |
that you can get on with the password
link |
and whatever else that might be.
link |
As dirty or as clean as you want that to be,
link |
we're all morally flexible here,
link |
but now you have a technological device
link |
that you can work with.
link |
And then from there on,
link |
you're just doing whatever you have to do,
link |
whether you're stealing every step of the way
link |
or whether you run a massive con.
link |
Keep in mind that we often talk about con men and cons.
link |
Do you know what the root,
link |
the word that con is a root word for?
link |
That's what a con man is.
link |
A con man is a confidence man.
link |
Just somebody who is so brazenly confident
link |
that the people around them
link |
living in their own perception, not perspective,
link |
and their perception, they're like,
link |
well, this guy really knows what he's talking about,
link |
so I'm gonna do what he says.
link |
So you can run a massive con
link |
and that can take care of your finances,
link |
that can take care of your lodging,
link |
whatever else it is.
link |
You are whoever you present yourself to be.
link |
So if you wanna go be Bill for the afternoon,
link |
just go tell people your name is Bill.
link |
They're not gonna question you.
link |
So the intelligence,
link |
the natural web of intelligence gathering systems
link |
we have in the United States and in the world,
link |
are they going to believe for long that you're Bill?
link |
Until you do something that makes them think otherwise.
link |
If you are consistent,
link |
we talked about consistency being the superpower.
link |
If you are consistent, they will think you're Bill forever.
link |
How difficult is that to do?
link |
It's not convenient.
link |
It's quite difficult.
link |
Does that require training?
link |
It does require training.
link |
Because why do criminals always get caught?
link |
Because they stop being consistent.
link |
Criminals, I've...
link |
I never hesitate to admit this,
link |
but people tell me I should hesitate to admit it.
link |
So now I hesitate because of the guidance
link |
I've gotten to hesitate, right?
link |
I'm friends with a number of criminals
link |
because the only people who get me,
link |
like right away who get me, are criminals.
link |
Because we know what it's like
link |
to basically abandon all the rules,
link |
do our own thing our own way,
link |
and watch the world just keep turning.
link |
Most people are so stuck in the trap
link |
of normal thought and behavior
link |
that when I tell them, they just don't...
link |
Just go tell people your name is Bill.
link |
Most people are going to say,
link |
psh, that's not going to work.
link |
But a criminal will be like, oh yeah, I did that once.
link |
I just told everybody my name is Nancy,
link |
you know, dude, and they still believe me.
link |
Criminals just get it, right?
link |
So what happens with criminals
link |
is they go to the school of hard knocks.
link |
They learn criminal behavior on the job.
link |
Spies go to school.
link |
We go to the best spy school in the world.
link |
We go to Langley's, the farm, right?
link |
What's known as Field Tradecraft Course, FTC,
link |
in a covert location for a covert period of time
link |
and covert, covert, covert.
link |
So if anybody from CIA is watching,
link |
I'm not breaking any rules.
link |
It's all on Wikipedia, but it's not coming from me.
link |
That's how we do it.
link |
They train us from a hundred years of experience
link |
and the best ways to carry out covert operations,
link |
which are all just criminal activities overseas.
link |
We learn how to do it the right way
link |
so that we don't get caught.
link |
We learn how to be consistent.
link |
More importantly, we learn how to create an operation
link |
that has a limited lifespan
link |
because the longer it lives, the more at risk you are.
link |
So you want operations to be short, concise,
link |
on the X, off the X.
link |
Limit your room for mistakes.
link |
Criminals want the default
link |
to wanting these longterm operations
link |
because they don't want to have to recreate a new way
link |
to make money every 15 days.
link |
You mentioned, if anybody from the CIA is watching,
link |
so I've seen you talk about the fact
link |
that sort of people that are currently working at the CIA
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would kind of look down on the people who've left the CIA
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and they divide them, especially if you go public,
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especially if there's a book and all that kind of stuff.
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Do you feel the pressure of that to be quiet,
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to not do something like this conversation
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that we're doing today?
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I feel the silent judgment.
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I feel it for myself and I feel it for my wife
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who doesn't appear on camera very often,
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but who's also former CIA.
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We both feel the judgment.
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We know that right now, three days after this is released,
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somebody's gonna send an email on a closed network system
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inside CIA headquarters and there's a bunch of people
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who are gonna laugh at it,
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a bunch of people who are gonna say that who knows what.
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It's not gonna be good stuff.
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A bunch of people you respect probably.
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A bunch of people who I'm trying to bring honor to.
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Whether I know them or respect them is irrelevant.
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These are people who are out there doing the deed every day
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and I wanna bring them honor and I wanna do that in a way
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that I get to share what they can't share
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and what they won't share when they leave
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because they will also feel the silent pressure,
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the pressure to the shame, the judgment, right?
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But the truth is that I've done this now long enough.
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The first few times that I spoke out publicly,
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the response to being a positive voice
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for what the sacrifice is that people are making,
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it's so refreshing to be an honest voice
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that people don't normally hear that it's too important.
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One day I'm gonna be gone
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and my kids are gonna look back on all this
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and they're gonna see their dad
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trying to do the right thing for the right reasons
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and even if my son or daughter ends up at CIA
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and even if they get ridiculed for being,
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oh, you're the Bustamante kid, right?
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Your dad's a total sellout, whatever it might be.
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Like I want them to know dad was doing what he could
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to bring honor to the organization
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even when he couldn't stay in the organization anymore.
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So you said when you were 27,
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I think you didn't know what the hell you're doing.
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So now that you're a few years older and wiser,
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let me ask you to put on your wise sage hat
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and give advice to other 27 year olds
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or even younger 17, 18 year olds
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that are just out of high school, maybe going to college,
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trying to figure out this life,
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this career thing that they're on.
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What advice would you give them
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about how to have a career
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or how to have a life they can be proud of?
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What's a powerful question, man?
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Have you figured it out yet yourself?
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No, I think I'm a grand total of seven days smarter
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It's not a good average.
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There's still time.
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There's still time.
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So for all the young people out there deciding what to do,
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I would just say the same thing that I do say
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and I will say to my own kids.
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You only have one life.
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You only have one chance.
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If you spend it doing what other people expect you to do,
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you will wake up to your regret at some point.
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I woke up when I was 38 years old.
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My wife in many ways is still waking up to it
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as she watches her grandparents pass
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and an older generation pass away.
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The folks that really have a blessed life
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are the people who learn early on
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to live with their own rules, live their own way
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and live every day as if it's the last day.
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Not necessarily to waste it by being wasteful or silly,
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but to recognize that today is a day
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to be productive and constructive for yourself.
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If you don't want a career,
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today's not the day to start pursuing a career
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just because someone else told you to do it.
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If you wanna learn a language,
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today's a day to find a way to buy a ticket
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to another country and learn through immersion.
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If you want a date, if you wanna get married,
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if you want a business,
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today is the day to just go out
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and take one step in that direction.
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And as long as you, every day you just make one new step,
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just like CIA recruited me, just do the next thing.
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If the step seems like it's too big,
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then there's probably two other steps
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that you can do before that.
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Just make constant progress, build momentum,
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move forward and live on your own terms.
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That way you don't ever wake up to the regret.
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And it'll be over before you know it.
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Whether you regret it or not, it's true.
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What do you think is the meaning of this whole thing?
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What's the meaning of life?
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Self respect, that's a fast answer.
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There's a story behind it if you want the story.
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I would love to have the story.
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There's a covert training base in Alabama in the south,
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far south and like the armpit of America
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where elite tier one operators
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go to learn human intelligence stuff.
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And there's a bar inside this base.
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And on the wall is just, it's scribbles of opinions.
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And the question in the middle of the wall
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says what's the meaning of life?
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And all these elite operators over the last 25 or 30 years,
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they all go, they get drunk and they scribble their answer
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and they circle it with a Sharpie, right?
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Love, family, America, freedom, right, whatever.
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And then the only thing they have to do
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is if they're gonna write something on there,
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they have to connect it with something else on the wall,
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at least one other thing.
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So if they write love, they can't just leave it
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floating there, they have to write love in a little bubble
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and connect it to something else, connect it to family,
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When you look at that wall,
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the word self respect is on the wall
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and it's got a circle around it.
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And then you can't see any other word
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because of all the things that connect to self respect.
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Just dozens of people have written over,
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have written their words down and been drawn
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and scribbled over because of all the lines
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that connect to self respect.
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So what's the meaning of life?
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From my point of view,
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I've never seen a better answer.
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It's all self respect.
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If you don't respect yourself, how can you do anything else?
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How can you love someone else
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if you don't have self respect?
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How can you build a business you're proud of
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if you don't have self respect?
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How can you raise kids?
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How can you make a difference?
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How can you pioneer anything?
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How can you just wake up and have a good day
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if you don't have self respect?
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The power of the individual,
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that's what makes this country great.
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I have to say, after I was born,
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I have to say after traveling quite a bit in Europe
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and especially in a place of war,
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coming back to the United States
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makes me really appreciate
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about the better angels of this nation,
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the ideals it stands for, the values it stands for.
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And I'd like to thank you for serving this nation for time
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and humanity for time
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and for being brave enough and bold enough
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to still talk about it and to inspire others,
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to educate others for having many amazing conversations
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and for honoring me by having this conversation today.
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You're an amazing human.
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Thanks so much for talking today.
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Lex, I appreciate the invite, man.
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Thanks for listening to this conversation
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with Andrew Bustamante.
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To support this podcast,
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please check out our sponsors in the description.
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And now let me leave you with some words
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from Sun Tzu in The Art of War.
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Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night.
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And when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.
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Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.