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.
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So you get a bigger guard dog.
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And then your neighbor gets a fence.
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So you're just constantly outdoing each other.
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It's called the security paradigm.
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People just, they just one up each other
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because it's never worth it to just get to the same level.
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You're always trying to outdo each other.
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Yeah, then maybe like banks have to fight that fight,
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but not everybody can.
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So you're saying I operated at the state of the art
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with the trip wires.
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This is good to know.
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And also just not using anybody else's services,
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doing everything myself.
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So that's harder to figure out what the heck
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this person is doing.
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Because if I'm using somebody else's service,
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like I did with QNAP,
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I have a QNAP NAS I use for cold storage
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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.
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And everybody that didn't update as of a week ago
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from the point of the zero day hack, everybody got hacked.
link |
It's several thousand machines, and they asked,
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you can get your data back if you pay,
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I forget what it was, but it was,
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it was about a couple thousand dollars.
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And QNAP can get all the data back for their customers
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if they pay, I think, two million dollars.
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But that came from me relying on the systems
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of others for security.
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I assumed this company would have their security handled,
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but then that was a very valuable lesson to me.
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I now have layers of security and also an understanding
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which data is really important, which is somewhat important,
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which is not that important, and layering that all together.
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So just so you know, the US government, the military,
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woke up to that exact same thing about two years ago.
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It's still very new.
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I mean, they were sourcing,
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take night vision goggles, for example.
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They were sourcing components and engineering
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and blueprints for night vision goggles
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from three, four, five different subcontractors
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all over the country, but they never asked themselves
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what the security status was of those subcontractors.
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So fast forward a few years, and all of a sudden,
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they start getting faulty components.
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They start having night vision goggles that don't work.
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They start having supply chain issues
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where they have to change their provider,
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and the army doesn't know that the provider is changing.
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I mean, this is a strategy.
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The idea of going through third party systems
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is identifying the vulnerability in the supply chain.
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That's a savvy offensive practice
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for more than just cyber hackers.
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Let me ask you about physical hacking.
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So I'm now, like I'm an introvert,
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so I'm paranoid about all social interaction,
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but how much truth is there?
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It's kind of a funny question.
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How suspicious should I be when I'm traveling in Ukraine
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or different parts of the world
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when an attractive female walks up to me
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and shows any kind of attention?
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Is that like this kind of James Bond spy movie stuff,
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or is that kind of stuff used by intelligence agencies?
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I don't think it's used.
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It's absolutely used.
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It's called sexpionage.
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That's the term that we jokingly call it, is sexpionage.
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But yeah, the art of attraction, appeal,
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the manifestation of feelings through sexual manipulation,
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all of that is a super powerful tool.
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The Chinese use it extremely well.
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The Russians use it extremely well.
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In the United States,
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we actively train our officers not to use it
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because in the end it leads to complications
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in how you professionally run a case.
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So we train our officers not to use it.
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However, you can't control what other people think.
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So if you're an attractive male
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or an attractive female officer,
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and you're trying to talk to an older general
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who just happens to be gay or happens to be straight
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and is attracted to you,
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of course they're gonna be that much more willing
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to talk to an American who is also attractive.
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So it's hard to walk that back.
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In all definitions.
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So it could be all elements of charisma.
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So attractiveness in a dynamic sense of the word.
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So it's visual attractiveness,
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but the smile, the humor, the wit, the flirting,
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all that kind of stuff that could be used
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to the art of conversation.
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There's also elements of sexuality
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that people underestimate, right?
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So physical sexuality, physical attraction
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is the most obvious one.
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It's the one that everybody talks about and thinks about.
link |
But then there's also sapiosexuality,
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which is being sexually attracted to thoughts,
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And then you've got all the various varieties
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of personal preferences.
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Some people like people of a certain color skin,
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or they like big noses, they like small noses,
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they like big butts, they like small butts,
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they like tall guys, they like bald guys,
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whatever it might be.
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You can't ever predict what someone's preferences,
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sexual arousal preferences are going to be.
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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.
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That's exactly what you're there to do.
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Your mission is to have intelligent conversation
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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,
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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.
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She's also trained.
link |
And I think my wife and I also.
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Actually you think.
link |
My wife and I also have the benefit
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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,
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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.
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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?
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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?
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Internet of Things style,
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you put it in their underwear or whatever, right?
link |
Some chip that just reads everything.
link |
How heavy are they walking?
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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