Inside the CIA : The Intersection of Intelligence and Independence

Your whole life, you have lived in a building, right? Just picture a building. Picture, like a backyard shed full of cobwebs. It's old and busted. It's been beaten down by the weather. But you're inside this shed, and it's all you've ever known. The vast majority of people look through the window and they're satisfied. What does that look like on the other side of the window? What does it feel like out there? Even if it is colder than it is in here? Even if it is hotter than it is in here. I. I want to know the truth.

All right, Andrew, welcome to the Man Talk Show. How you doing today?

I'm good, man. Thanks for having me, Connor. I'm excited to be here.

Likewise. Likewise. I mean, I've seen you on a bunch of shows, and some of the conversations that you had were super fascinating. And I don't. It's interesting because I don't know if many people are talking about and teaching the things that you are teaching and talking about, and so I'm. I'm really excited for that, for this conversation. I really appreciate your perspective. Not to blow too much smoke up your ass before we even start, but I've really. I really appreciated your voice in the space because it's very intriguing. And I've been a person who. I'm a transplant in the United States, and as somebody who grew up in Canada, politics, geopolitics, they weren't really a part of my upbringing or the conversation. And I found that in the last several years since living in the United States, man, it's just like everywhere, you know, it's at the forefront of the modern conversation here. And so with all that said, with all that said in layman's terms, just in sort of like plain terms, can you describe your role or what your role was at the CIA and what you think some of the most common misconceptions are about the CIA? Because I think that's. I think there's a lot of mysteriousness around what the CIA actually is and does.

Absolutely. And, I mean, you're totally right, Conor. There is not a solid understanding in the world, and especially not with the American public, as to what CIA's true mission and purpose is. And that's where a lot of the misconceptions come from. And then you layer on top of that media and movies and TV and Instagram and everything else, and it just gets warped even worse. Right. So CIA is an acronym that stands for the Central Intelligence Agency. The Central Intelligence Agency really is exactly what Its name says it is the agency charged with centralizing intelligence that's collected across the entire, what's known as the intelligence community or the entire government. So the U.S. navy, the U.S. army, NSA, DoD, FBI, they all have an intelligence collection division. Even IRS has an intelligence collection division. Right. So you've got all these agencies across the United States all collecting intelligence related to their specific requirement. Right. So maybe it's financial intelligence, maybe it's trade intelligence, maybe it's military intelligence. Well, what happened is in the 1950s, the government realized that having 50 different people collecting 50 different types of intelligence and didn't help the President, who is the chief executive officer of the company of the country. All those streams of intelligence made it very difficult for the President to identify what was the most important and what was the least important. And that was when they created the Central Intelligence Agency as a place of taking all the intelligence and then being able to do a step called synthesizing. They synthesize that intelligence and into analysis that is meaningful, prioritized and impactful for the President's consumption. So that's the true mission of CIA. Now, there's a submission inside CIA and then there's a second sub submission inside CIA that is ends up being what makes CIA so famous. Right. So in addition to centralizing intelligence, the second thing CIA does is it also collects a form of intelligence known as human intelligence, or humint. HUMINT is anytime you collect a secret from a person, Right? Not when you steal it off their computer, not when you, you know, make a photocopy or take a picture of a document. Not when you steal something physically and sabotage it. But actually talking to a person and getting them to share a secret with you, that is considered human intelligence. CIA is the United States primary agency charged with human intelligence collection. And then the second submission under that is all of our super top secret covert action paramilitary stuff. The stuff that got us in trouble with MK Ultra, the stuff that got us in trouble with trying to get Castro to lose his beard. The stuff that got us in trouble with the Bay of Pigs invasion. You know that really wacky stuff that we do totally on our own, that is called paramilitary covert action. Also like a tertiary mission of CIA. I don't know if that was your layman's term definition.

That's great.

That's my overlay.

Yeah, I mean, there's a couple things that stood out to me. Number one is imagining Castro without a beard. I don't know if you've seen this. Like new. There was an Instagram filter that I clearly got targeted with because I have such a great beard. And it was like, you have your beard on one side and it's normal, and then you move it across and it deletes your beard, you know, and it just, like, shows you what you would look like without your beard. My wife has never seen me without my beard. And I feel like it's one of those things where you just. It knocks years off your life, you know, you just look like an adolescent. At least I do. I look like such a young.

Young man who has a very distinct receding hairline. Anyway, so I was imagining Fidel Castro without a beard. And then. Would it be accurate to say that it almost sounds like you're the data nerds of the intelligence community?

It's true. And this is what's so fascinating, right? CIA has become this, like, monolith of mystery and power in the eyes of the average American, when in reality, we are super geeks. We are librarians. We are like advanced degree everything, whether you consider advanced degrees in engineering or advanced degrees in politics or advanced degrees in foreign area studies, right? We are awkward, we are unattractive. We are usually in moderate at best health. We are not like your super fit Navy seals or your elite Delta Force operators, right?

We are gray people. That's what we're hired to be, is gray men. So we can go all over the world. We can have a conversation with anyone from heads of state to weapons smugglers, and. And nobody ever in a million years suspects that we are actually CIA spies, right? Think about what that means for someone to sit and have a conversation with a stranger where they're disclosing secrets about their career, their corporation, their government, and never in a million years suspect that the person they're talking to is an undercover CIA officer. How fucking ugly has that person? Like, how awkward must that person have to look? Yeah, they can't. They can't really be eloquent. They can't really be handsome. They can't have a perfect beard like you.

Or you. You got. You got some good. You got some good stuff.

I've got some good scruff, right? It takes a lot of work to make this scruff look good. Which is why I fit into CIA, because I have, like, these wolf patches that go up here. And like, dude, when I go two weeks without trying, I end up looking like a child molester that was smuggled immediately out of Pakistan on his way to, you know, Mogadishu to get a. A parcel of. Of organs to deliver to China.

Well, I Can't. I can't actually shave off my beard and leave the mustache because then it's. I just look like a pervy Frenchman, you know, like my. I have like a.

See that?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, my gosh. I can see it right now.

It's bad. It's bad. There's a photo of me somewhere. A buddy of mine brought me back a T shirt. This. When I was in university and I was singing. I have a degree in music was my initial education. And a buddy of mine had been to China in Beijing. And he came back and I had been to China, but I hadn't. Well, I spent some time in Beijing, but I didn't get the shirt. And he got this T shirt. It just said, I heart bj. And there's a photo of me somewhere just wearing this ridiculous shirt. And it's super tight fitting, right? So I'm like jacked. Like, I'm, you know, in good shape. It says, I heart bj and then I just have this like, terrible mustache. It might be one of the most terrible photos of me in existence, which will never go online. I don't think I'll ever put that one online. Maybe one day, but just. Okay, so. So that kind of addresses the misconceptions. I appreciate that. It sounds to me like what you're saying. Well, let me just ask him maybe a more adjacent question. What. What role does the CIA play in terms of national security for the country and like, the security of the people versus informing the President? Because it almost sounds like what you're saying is that there's this dissemination process that the CIA is doing, gathering all the data, centralizing it, and then being able to, excuse me, present that information to the President. So it sounds like the primary function is to really inform the commander in chief. Is that accurate?

Yes. And that's. It's such an important distinction that you're making, Connor. And it's another one of those misconceptions that people have. Americans believe that the federal government is there to serve them, and they're wrong. The federal government's priority, the number one mission in the federal government, is to preserve the institution that is the United States. In other words, the federal government is there to preserve the federal government. It's not there to protect the people. Within the federal government, there are certain elements that are designed to have a mission that serves the American people. Like the dod, our professional military, is there to protect American interests, of which one of those is security of the homeland. And American citizens are considered the homeland FBI, the federal Bureau of Investigation is there to ensure the rule of law and order. According to the Department of Justice, that means they're there to enforce laws and carry out investigations that ensure that American laws aren't being abused or broken. That protects the American people. Yes, by preserving law and order, which is a function of the federal government. Right. So Housing and Human Services, government accountability, all of these are different agencies, different offices within the federal government that are there to really preserve the government, but they might also have secondary benefit to the people. CIA's job is to collect foreign secrets and then to centralize those secrets and prioritize them for executive level decision making. Our mission has nothing to do with the American people. Right. CIA, we take no oath to the American people. We make no promises to protect the American people. The American people aren't even in our top five priorities. The American people are there to gain the benefits of additional national security through the decisions that are made by the chief executive. Our job is to inform the chief executive. Right. So it's a very difficult pill to swallow. It's especially difficult when you sign up for CIA and then you take the oath and then you go through the training and then you realize that you signed up because you wanted to protect your family and your mom and your parents and your wife. Right. But instead you realize that you're disposable. They're disposable. And the better part of the American population through the eyes of the government is disposable as long as we preserve the institutions that make America America. Because losing 100 million Americans would be sad, but losing the institution of the United States would be earth shattering. Right. The failure of the American democracy would have much more consequential impact now and in the future than losing 100 million Americans. Right. And I'm not saying that I want us to lose 100 million Americans. I'm just saying that that's the kind of cold practicality that we have to accept. When you look at intelligence operations, so.

Many questions come out of there for me. There's a couple threads I'm going to pull on that you mentioned. But first I wanted to ask about why foreign secrets are such an important part of the equation. Like why? Because I, you know, I think the average person, and I've, you know, I've listened to enough of your conversations now and gone down some rabbit holes to know that the way that the CIA is portrayed in movies, you know, you kind of see like, am I like Mission Impossible? You know, you got those movies and the CIA in there. Is always playing this sort of interesting role, of course, collecting secrets and espionage and whatnot. But. But then they're also against the American people and trying to, you know, like the recent one where there's not to give that one away, maybe we'll just get away from that. So I don't have to put like spoiler alerts on the episode. But, but I think what's interesting is that for me, I kind of thought that the CIA was this super high covert operative branch of the government that was more about.

Well, that really didn't. I didn't really understand what the function, the purpose was. And so I, when I heard you talking about this initially, I was like, oh, that makes actually a lot of sense. That one of the primary focuses is to uphold the institution of the federal government itself and that, that we as a democratic country would actually want that in some degree. You know, if you believe in the tenants and the values and the principles of Western society and Western culture, you would want that to be upheld to some capacity. But why is foreign secrets such a big thing? Like what relevance does that have? What importance does that have in terms of maintaining what we're talking about?

So this is one of the things that I find really interesting is when you start to peel the onion on how our Western system, civilization really works, what you're really doing is you're peeling the onion that gets closer and closer to individualism. So let me take your question and turn it back on you, Conor. Right. Are there some secrets that you have that you've never told your wife?

Sure. Yeah, absolutely.

Why? Why would you keep a secret from the woman who's born two children with you, transplanted her life, changed her whole world? Why would you still have some secrets that you keep?

I like the wink. I like the wink there. Well, here's what I'll say. My. She knows pretty much everything. I would say that the things that I have withheld have either never really come up in conversation. So it's not, it's not like I'm actively saying I don't want you to know these things because she knows. She knows arguably like the most like wild crap about my past in my life, but I would say from a place of coherence. And what's the term that I'm looking for? Like maintaining status quo. Yeah, maintaining status quo, I think is, is probably the, the sort of like answer.

So what you just gave me really, in my world were two different types of secrets. There's a secret of omission Y that's the secret that you don't, that you keep but you're not trying to keep, it just never comes out, right? Your secret of omission, and then your. Your secret of intent and your intention is to maintain the status quo. If you explode that, that concept. To a geopolitical level, countries are the exact same way. They have secrets that they keep just because no one's ever thought to ask. And then they have secrets that they keep because they're trying to maintain the current world order, or they have some sort of intention behind that secret. And then there are many other secrets as well, right? There's secrets of deception, there's secrets of disinformation, there's all sorts of other secrets on top of that. But at the end of the day, the reason that countries keep secrets is the same reason that people keep secrets. It's because we feel that the secret has value. And as long as we're the ones that hold the secret, we hold the leverage. We hold the value. As soon as we share that secret with somebody else, somebody else gets either a portion of the value, possibly they get all of the same value, or even worse, they get exponentially more value because they know the secret. So for the United States, foreign secrets are so critical because we understand by collecting those secrets, we are taking power and value away from our competitors, we are taking value away from our enemies. We are taking value away from our allies who would use that value as leverage to gain an advantage over us. Spying is not something we only do against terrorists in Russia, right? We spy against everybody. President Obama got caught spying against Germany. You know, Israel and the United States go back and forth all the time spying against each other. France hates us, Spain hates us. Like the most of Europe hates us. There's only five countries that have that have any kind of formal pact saying that they will not spy on each other. And that's known as the Five Eyes Pact. Inside the five eyes are the United States, Canada, where you came from, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. And even with that pact in place, guess how much any of those five countries believe that the other five aren't spying on them?

Oh, probably close to zero percent.

Yeah, exactly, because you never really know when things are going to change. But when I have a secret that you don't have, I gain some sort of opportunity, some sort of advantage. And when you're the world's only superpower, that's not a throne you're willing to give up easily, right? So you will do whatever you can to get secrets and trust Me, Connor, I have chased some secrets down where I scratch my head and wonder why the hell are we chasing this secret of all secrets? Why are we chasing down the opening bid price for rice in Thailand? Of all the secrets to chase down, why are we chasing down whether or not, you know, the third child to, you know, such and such military general has some kind of heart failure or heart condition? Why are we, why are we risking American lives and spending millions of dollars to get this secret? I have definitely asked myself that question.

I was going to say maybe, maybe I'm the transplant Canadian operative here to spy on you.

That's true. I'd probably be at least two of you.

I'd be. Yeah, right.

Packing maple syru.

I'd probably be a terrible spy.

Although I, I do. Well. Okay, let's, let's touch on that very briefly from, from your perspective from your training. What does make a good spy? Like what actually makes somebody who's competent in this area?

So it's funny that you use the word competence because what CIA taught me is that the vast majority of people who are neurotypical, the vast majority of neurotypical people meaning mentally stable with an average iq, the vast majority of neurotypical people can be trained the competent skills of becoming a spy. Learning how to wear a disguise, run an sdr, shoot a gun while chewing gum, you know, drive a car fast.

Is that actually important? Shooting a gun while chewing, like shooting a gun while chewing gum?

No, I just, I always thought it was funny that James Bond can't hit his target even though he's only shooting a gun. That's all right, so, but my point is the actual technical skills of, of espionage are not difficult to learn. Basically anybody who can, can finish a four year degree can learn the skills. Right. The true magic about what makes a good spy is outside of the actual specific competency skills themselves. So one of the things that CIA looks for, Connor, for a good spy is a history of childhood trauma. Because an individual who has a history of childhood trauma is the kind of individual where when they become an adult, meaning when their cognitive brain has matured past puberty and they are self identifying, that's an individual who seeks external validation. That's a person who looks for approval from an outside source. They look to belong to some kind of group, they look to have some kind of purpose. The individual who comes from a healthy family that's well balanced, who doesn't deal with trauma, ends up becoming an individual who's well balanced, who's healthy, who's independent well, that doesn't make for a very good secret stealer. A good secret stealer lies to everyone in the world except the one organization that they feel like they need validation from. And that's what makes a good spy. Another thing that makes a good spy is an individual who trusts nobody. Right? Somebody who's who, through their history of personal experience, emotional relationships, et cetera, et cetera, has come to the conclusion that they really can't trust anyone. So because they can't trust anyone, there's kind of a twofold.

Issue there. One, they don't carry close relationships, so they don't really show their vulnerability to anyone. But then secondly, they're also always expecting that someone else is going to harm them, so they're always holding back. So there's two different reasons that they have, like a barrier between them and social relationships. When somebody has a barrier with social relationships, it means that they are predictably focused on empirical evidence, predictably focused on objective reality rather than subjective feelings. Right? And those are elements that make for a very good spy. And then I would say if there was a third option on top of that, it would really be discipline. And when I say discipline, what I mean is the ability to intrinsically self motivate, to do the same thing the same way over and over again. Because that's really what keeps us safe in the field. But that's also what makes it so that the Central Intelligence Agency can consume intelligence reports from hundreds or thousands of COVID officers. Because we have to structure those reports in a very specific way to make sure that, that 10,000 or 20,000 reports a day can come into the Central Intelligence Agency and be processed in a timely fashion and then synthesized into what is essentially one folder that gets handed to the President every morning.

Crazy. That's wild as well. Okay, So I probably would have made a good candidate. I'm like, yeah, check, check, check, check, check. Childhood trauma. Yes. Seeking validation.

Yes.

That was great.

Don't trust anyone. Yes, yes.

Yeah, yeah. Don't trust. No, I do now. I do now. Uh, although my wife and I. My wife often jokes that, like, she would have made a great FBI agent. Which I'm like, I don't know if I would have made a great FBI agent, but after hearing it, I was like, maybe I would have made a decent CIA agent.

So, you know, this is what I'll say for, for anybody who's asked themselves like, oh, would I make a good CIA or FBI agent? If, if.

If you are. So if you're sensitive, meaning if you were to See a child with one arm blown off and a drug dealing mother cracked out, standing next to the baby, like holding the arm, confused. If you were, if you're sensitive enough that that would give you nightmares, you should be in CIA. If you could see that and still go to sleep at night, you should be FBI. Because what FBI, what FBI sees is the absolutely most despicable things that Americans do to Americans. Adults to children, adults to seniors, you know, white people to black people, black people to Asian people, whatever it might be. They see the absolute worst and then they have to come back to work the next day. What CIA does is they find the people who are planning to do the worst and then steal their secrets and tell everybody about their plans. But by the time terrible things actually happen, we're gone. Right. Somebody else is in our place.

So I appreciate it. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that distinction because I think again, I think there's just so much folklore and conspiracy around a lot of these topics and that it, you know, really gets influenced by media. You know, just you consume through movies and TV shows and, you know, that's entertainment. So parts of it are dialed up, parts of it are dialed down just to keep people engaged. And the, the sort of reality of it is.

Is oftentimes masked. I want to shift a little bit. You know, obviously I want to talk about something just a little bit larger and we'll come back down because I want to make some of your, your information sort of tactical and practical for people towards the end of this, this conversation. But I wanted to talk about a couple of things because, you know, obviously we're recording this conversation a few days after Iran has taken some pretty substantial military action against Israel. And I've hear talk about some of the global conflicts that are going on, which again, I never really tuned into. Maybe it's just part of becoming 40. I'm in my, my middle age and that's like a hallmark, you know, I'm like checking stocks and tuning into global politics and macroeconomics and that, like, I just didn't give a crap about before and you know, my eyes are bad.

Now and so I'm like, wake up with back pain.

Yeah, not quite. Not that I'm not that far down the old age rabbit hole yet. Yet sometimes I do if I've like deadlifted too much or, you know, I've started doing farmer carries. I heard Peter Attia talk about like, farmer, carry your own body weight. And so, you know, I've been doing that, so trying to farmer carry my own body weight for a minute, which has been. It's actually really taxing. It's super difficult, really hard on your body. Anyway.

So I've heard you talk about some of this stuff. I want to look at a global perspective of like, there seems to be a lot of global unrest, more so than normal. Maybe that's my perspective because I'm just starting to sort of tune in over like the last five, six years. But you've got the war in Ukraine, you know, with Russia, you've got Israel and the Palestinian conflict that now Iran has entered into. And none of those seem to be particularly simple in terms of solutioning. And I'm curious, from your perspective, what, what do you think this means for an already. Let's just talk about Iran specifically and Israel and Palestine. What do you think it means that Iran has now entered into the equation and has attacked Israel? What do you think that's going to do to an already volatile situation? And please feel free to give any context that you feel is necessary, because I'm entering into this conversation a very specific way.

Absolutely. There's, I mean, there's layers of context here that we would have to go into to give people a true understanding. Right, Connor? But I'll say. I'll save that. But I would say that there's at least three additional layers that are really important to contextualize what's happening right now. So to answer your specific question, what does it mean that Iran is getting involved? First of all, it's important to understand Iran has been involved from the get, from the get out, from the start. Hamas, which is the group that invaded Israel on October 7, which is the group that has sworn to destroy Israel, which is classified as a terrorist group by the United States and a handful of other countries, but is also the legitimate government in Gaza Strip. Right. Hamas is funded by Iran. Hamas is a Shia organization, Shia Islam, that, that is backed and funded by Iran and that goes back for centuries because of the way that Iran thinks and the way that Iran kind of views its role in humanity. But can you, can you just speak.

About, just like touch on that a little bit? What, what do you mean by that? Just so people can have context.

So there's two versions of, of Islam. There's Sunni Islam and there's Shia Islam. And the Sunni and Shia groups are in conflict with each other.

Theologically right inside their own religion as well as in the area of the Middle East. So, so Iran, their true number one enemy is actually Saudi Arabia, because Saudi Arabia is a Sunni kingdom. Shia Iran, for A long time was a Shia caliphate, a kingdom. One is hyper religious Shia, one is more secular Sunni. Right. As time has progressed, you know, and the. And the world has become connected, the conflict between those two countries has become. Has become global. And we started to see the rise of Sunni extremism with Al Qaeda. Right. So Shia has let Sunni extremism grow because Sunni extremism essentially was complementary to the growth of the Shia caliphate. And anybody who's killing Sunni is essentially somebody who the Shia caliphate wants to support. Right. That's why what's funny is when ISIS came to be, the United States and Iran coordinated and collaborated to actually kill isis, because ISIS was a threat to both the Western order and the Shia caliphate. So, long story short, Hamas is backed by Iran. Well, Hezbollah. Hezbollah is the legitimate government of Lebanon. Hezbollah is also classified as a terrorist organization by the United States. Hezbollah is also Shia and also supported by Iran. So when you look at the geography of Israel, you've got the Gaza Strip sitting to the west, you've got Lebanon sitting to the north, and then you have Iran itself sitting essentially to the southeast, right? So Israel and the. And through the eyes of the Israeli government, they are surrounded by Shia.

You know, extremists for all intents and purposes. With the attack against Hamas and the expansion into the Gaza Strip, you saw the Shia community and the Sunni community come to the support of the Palestinians, but for two different reasons. Right. And as Israel has continued to kill tens of thousands of Palestinians who are largely Sunni, you have seen a huge shift in the Western world against Israel. Well, that opened a door for. For Iran to continue to oppress Israel or attack Israel using what's known as its proxies, like Hezbollah, like Hamas. And Israel, as it's being increasingly isolated, is weighing its options for what it can do to preserve itself. And that's what allowed. It's essentially what justified its continuing atrocities against the Palestinian people in pursuit of Hamas. It's also what has now forced them to essentially invade Lebanon and attack Hezbollah. Israel thinks that what they're doing is they're fighting extremism. The world thinks that what Israel is doing is oppressing the Palestinian people. Iran knows that Israel is defending itself, but Iran also knows that Iran itself as a country is not considered to be one of the aggressors because Iran, from the eyes of the layperson, isn't connected, when in reality Iran is the. It's the purse for Hezbollah, it's the purse for Hamas, it's the purse for the Iraqi extremism. That's happening still in Iraq. Right. There's Shia militias in Iraq that are attacking American soldiers backed by Iran. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia knows this, the United States knows this, the five eyes all know this. And it's tricky because politically, Israel has to justify its attacks. Militarily, it has to choose how to protect its own people. But geopolitically, with, especially in democratic countries, if you don't win the support of the individual voter, you don't have a chance at a long term conflict.

It sounds very simple to solve.

It's really wild. The more that I've attempted to educate myself on the conflict that's happening over there, the more that I can't help but. Have you ever played Go? The game Go? The more that I feel like I'm entering into a go game. And, and for the people that, that aren't familiar with go, imagine like checkers, but on like just steroids of the nth degree. Right. Or like, you know, chess on the nth degree of steroids. But the more that I feel like I'm entering into a game of Go where it's like, holy crap, this is extremely complex.

Yep.

And it seems to be getting more complicated. And, and so. Yeah, go ahead. I think you wanted to.

Yeah. So here's, here's what happened, Connor. I mean, if I can give one layer of context.

The world outside of the, outside of the United States, here's. I love Americans, I love my country, I love being an American. But the truth is that we are wildly ignorant about what happens in the rest of the world.

I agree.

Because our water is always clean, our electricity is always on. We have, you know, medical equipment and doctors who are trained to the nth degree. We always have reliable WI fi. Our life is really not more difficult than what are we eating for dinner and what are we watching on Netflix. That's essentially, I mean, I'm not saying that there aren't a few million people who are stuck in poverty and there are a few million people who are so fabulously wealthy that they fly on private jets. The other 298 million of us really only worry about whether or not we're eating the right food. What we want to eat and what we want to watch, how we want to entertain ourselves outside of the boundaries of the United States. That's not how most other countries think. Most other countries, when you knock off the list.

Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, France and Germany, when you knock off some of those leading economic powers, you know, power isn't like electricity isn't guaranteed, cleaning water out of a water fountain isn't guaranteed. You know, you get hit by a car on the street, an ambulance isn't guaranteed. Right. That's how the rest of the world operates. So as the world started to globalize in the early 2000s, and we started to have. The things that we buy in the United States are manufactured in China. The things that are manufactured in China, like the clothing that's manufactured in China actually is manufactured and dyed in India. And then, you know, so the cotton in the United States is sent to India where it's spun and dyed into cloth, and then it's sent to China where it's sewn into T shirts that are then sold back in the United States. Just as an example of globalization, as that really started to take off in the. In the early 2000s, so did the war on terror. So the United States became, you know, exponentially more interested in fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than maintaining its economic power as a developed nation in the rest of the world. In the globalized world, well, China didn't participate in the global war on terror. So for the 20 years that the United States was investing trillions of dollars into killing.

Extremists, China was investing trillions of dollars into modernizing and becoming an economic powerhouse modeled after the United States. That's why when Covid happened, Covid was the real tipping point. Not because of the pandemic, not because of, you know, what's the word that they called it? Immunosuppressed or immunocompromised people. That's not why Covid was so important. Covid was so important because when China shut down and the United States shut down and Europe started to shut down to deal with the pandemic, we. We all woke up to the reality that China was at the center of all of our globalization because of logistics and manufacturing. That was a secret that China was keeping. For 20 years, they had spent so much time and effort and money making sure that they were in the middle of the hub and spoke model for everything from shipping to manufacturing to chip development and chip design and, you know, everything. Technology, cellular technology, et cetera, medical technology. They had worked very hard to be there. Well, Covid show, like, shined a light on the fact that China was at the center of everything. And when the United States saw that, when Donald Trump, who was president at the time, saw that, he said, we need to basically start a trade war with China, we need to diversify American investment. The Biden administration, who came after Trump, solved the same problem and actually maintained the same Policy.

So the world woke up to this idea of globalization, and that started this domino effect that led us towards conflict. When China was able to create power in the shadows, it didn't encourage any of its partners to violence. Well, once China could no longer operate in the shadows, it needed its partners to be violent again, to take attention off of China. So that's when you saw Russia invade Ukraine, a close partner to China. You saw North Korea start launching more missiles. Now you're seeing Iran support more aggressive attacks into Israel. Right. I'm not saying China's the mastermind, but what I'm saying is what you have here is a bipolar power bifurcation in the world. The United States is the current superpower. China is the number two largest economy in the world trying to become equal to the United States. China knows that the only way it became it becomes equal is if it can distract and discourage the United States from gaining further ahead in the race. So China is there to support anybody who doesn't support the United States.

Man, there's so many threads I want to pull on this, and I feel like a kid in a candy shop that very much wants, like, you know, to sit and chat with you for four or five hours. Really? Like, truly, truly, truly. So I hope if you enjoy today's conversation, that you come back. Just going to plant that seed right now. Okay, so. So fascinating. I mean, I'm. I asked about Iran, you know, because I think what. What happens. Yeah, this is what I wanted to say. Okay, come back. Come back up the chain. I think when what I've learned, and I'm just projecting some of this out onto the everyday person based off of my own experience. Okay, so might be wrong for some people, but I think it's probably accurate for most. I think when the average person looks out at global conflict and geopolitics and they see these interactions, these wars, these conflicts, et cetera, I think there's a bit of cognitive dissonance that happens, because the biggest challenge for me is, well, I don't engage with people in the way that countries engage with one another. I don't engage with friends in this kind of, you know, warring, trying to take their goods. And it feels a bit archaic in some ways, you know, where there's this ongoing battle and vying for supremacy and, you know, global hegemony and making sure that you're like, the dollar is stationary. And. And so I think for the average person, because we don't interact with our friends and family in that way, there's not this Kind of secrecy that's happening and warring that's happening and trying to get things from people and manipulation and coercion maybe to some degree. I think it's hard for people to understand the global political situation and to understand why that's happening in the first place. And so if we can just go up the stack, maybe one more piece. Can you speak to that? Like the two, two parts. One is the dissonance between the average individual and how they live their life versus how global politics seem to play out. And, and two, speaking to the why is this the sort of mechanism or frame that's at play where all of this, you know, hyper levels of conflict needs to, needs to happen or. Yeah, hopefully that makes sense.

It does make sense. And I love this question because you're, you're asking a layer of question that very few people ask. And I love it because I don't, I don't normally get to talk about it. So.

You'Re correct that what we see playing out on a geopolitical stage is Machiavellian, right? It is pragmatic to a fault, seemingly. But what you're not thinking of is your personal frame of reference, right? So when you say, why is it that this is not how I behave with my friends? Well, first of all, comparing your relationship with your friends is not the same as comparing the United States relationship with China, right? That's more like comparing the US's relationship with Canada. And the US doesn't treat Canada the same way that it treats China. So it's not really equal to say this is how you compete with your friends. Let's talk about how you compete with your competitors, with other people who are in your competitive business space, with other people who are competitive in your neighborhood, with even with the parents of other kids who, when your kids are competitive on the soccer field, that's more of a genuine apples to apples comparison of the United States with most other countries. And then if you have someone that you just don't like, someone that you just don't trust, someone that you know is trying to harm you, maybe it's your mother in law, maybe it's like.

Your wife, it's always the mother in law, it's always the mother in the first go to, she's just trying to sabotage your shit. No, just kidding.

Whoever it might be, right? But when you've got those people that you know you just can't trust, that's a closer relationship to the geopolitical relationship between the United States and China. But nevertheless, what I, what I think is so important to understand, Conor. We live in a Western society. We live in a Western first world society. Right. Which means we have established continuity of government and consistency of. Of utilities. Electric utilities, clean water utilities, sanitation, sewage, utilities. Right. Road utilities, the developing world, what we would call the second world. Right. So you've got first world, that's us. The developing world is what many people call the second world. That means they're developing those utilities, they're developing that continuity of government. And then you've got the third world, which is not in a position of development. Chunks of Africa, chunks of South America, chunks of Southeast Asia. We live in a first world country where we have been established for over 200 years, almost 300 years.

Now.

A big part of what makes us successful is the fact that we condition our children.

To believe and accept a social conditioning that makes us predictable adults. Right. When you're. How old are your children, Connor?

Eight weeks and. Eight weeks old and. Three and a half. So pretty. They're pretty young.

They're still young. But does that three and a half year old go to daycare?

He does not. He just started to go to preschool. So I guess that's kind of. Let's kind of.

So he goes to preschool. So three and a half years old, that means like cognitively, developmentally, they are a total sponge. They absorb everything and they repeat it. Right. Does their daycare make them stand in lines? Does the preschool make them stand in lines?

Imagine that at some point that probably happens to go outside to come back in.

Yep. The preschool makes them wash their hands. The preschool makes them sit at tables. The preschool makes them have lunch at a certain time, makes them have snacks at a certain time, makes them have quiet time at a certain time. The preschool teaches them that when the teacher is talking, you don't talk. When you don't talk to your friends at quiet times, everybody takes a nap. It keeps to their own space. You know, this is your peg where you hang your jacket and where you put your lunchbox. You can visualize the preschool in your own head, right, Connor? What that is doing is it's conditioning your child for what the federal government wants from an adult in the future. And now that's why you and I pay our taxes. That's why you and I are drive the speed limit. That's why you and I park within the lines at the parking lot. Yeah. Congratulations, Connor. You go 10 miles an hour over the speed limit. You are a daring badass. Right? Because you know that once you hit 12 miles an hour, over the speed limit, you're going to get a ticket.

That's right.

That's still the condition. Right. So we live in a society that has carefully crafted a culture that conditions us for a world mindset, a worldview that is predictable as adults. And a big part of our worldview, Conor, is what you just talked about. Oh, I'm 40, and now I'm starting to think about geopolitics. That is a gigantic win for the federal government. It means that for the last 40 years, you've done something else and you've let the government be the government. And now that you're 40, the only fucking thing they need you to do is pay your taxes and vote. And guess what? Because you're over 40 and conditioned, you're going to vote in a predictable way. Once you make over $140,000, you are most likely going to vote conservative. Once you exceed $300,000, you are most likely going to switch and start voting liberal again. But under the age of 30, chances are that you're going to vote liberal. Right. The federal government knows all of this. Not because there's some deep state, but because they understand that in order to maintain a predictable civilized world, they need to create economically viable resources who generate a tax base all the way through the age of about 67 years old. And that's why you see Medicare and Social Security changing. Because as health changes and our lifespans change, the federal government wants to extend the viability of our tax base. Because it is our tax base that pays for the institution that continues to create the stability of the cycle. And it's that exact step, that stable cycle, that the rest of the world is trying to create. China is trying to create that. Iran is trying to create that. Argentina is trying to create that. Germany is struggling with that. Austria just shifted. Right, you got. The whole world has seen how the United States has created a machine that creates very consistent power generation after generation. And that's what everyone's trying to model. And that's just human psychology and sociology at play. Nothing nefarious, nothing hard. It's the same thing every father does with their own children. Go to bed at a certain time, eat this kind of food, watch this kind of show. This is okay screen time. This is not okay screen time. We're just trying to create a sustainable, predictable cycle of life.

So if a lot of these other countries are trying to emulate the structure and the system that the United States has created, why try and dismantle it actively, directly and indirectly?

Because the United States System is a system that. This is another really good question. We are a system that claims to be based on freedom and independence, but we're not.

We actually all walk around all day long, high fiving each other and fist bumping, talking about how much freedom and independence we have. And then we walk on sidewalks and stop at stop signs and pay whatever the posted price is for milk, right? We are not free. We're not independent.

We believe a narrative that we are free and independent. And that is arguably the most convenient way to have a society, right? What it really means is that where we lack freedom, we accept it. Where we lack independence, we accept it. We believe that what we are getting in exchange for our freedom and independence is worth it. We believe that it's worth it. That I can't punch you in the face in exchange for the fact that the police department is there to make sure that nobody else can punch me in the face. That's a fair trade, right? That's how we believe. So we're willing to give up certain freedoms in exchange for gaining certain conveniences. That's what we believe. Well, that narrative, that belief system in other parts of the world is dangerous because if a country like Iran doesn't have rule of law, they have rule of theology, right? They are a sharia state. They believe in the law dictated by the Quran, not the law dictated by the Justice Department. So when they see an institution like ours where we are secular and they are religious, they need to dismantle our secular success because that gives them more validity and credibility and authority to say, hey look everybody, secular doesn't work. What you need is sacred guidance. What you need is theology, not democracy, right? China is doing the same thing. Hey look, everybody. Look at the United States. Look at their democratic process where they have state governors and they have, you know, representatives in multiple levels and they have presidents that change every four years. Look at how that democracy is failing. That's why you need an autocracy with the central Communist Party, the ccp. So they need. Those other countries want to model their system off of ours when it comes to a predictable flywheel of economic power. That's what they're trying to model, the economic flywheel, meaning once it starts, it just keeps on going. What they're trying to dismantle is the system of governance, government and authority. Because as we fail, they become all the more validated.

Okay? So it almost. So correct me on any of these pieces because I think what I'm kind of getting the sense of is that at a global Scale. There is a few types of power that are at odds with one another. Right. So you have the fundamentalist power. Right. You have the theological that, that type of power that says religious law should govern. Then you have the hyper centralized.

Bureaucratic power. Right. That'd be like the CCP of collectivism. And you should all. Everybody should do what they need to do for the greater good. And that will be dictated by the government largely. And then you have the sort of American version which is sort of purporting individualism and, and freedom, but it's still much more centralized than most people would expect. Is, are those three accurate and would you change any of them? And then I think I almost. I'm interpreting something and so I want to get clear on whether or not I'm interpreting it. I'm trying to read through between the lines sometimes with, with you and also just my guests in general.

It sounds and feels to me like what you're saying is that there is not really genuine freedom in any of those and that there's a, almost like a decentralized, because that term is very popular right now, but there's almost like a decentralized way of being that could be outside of those systems of power that would create a little bit more genuine freedom. So I'm, I'm trying to read between the lines of how you like where you stand on that. So I know I just threw a lot at you. I'll, I'll let you tackle some of that.

Yeah, it's fair. So, so I'll start with your first question. Move to your second question. So I would say there are four types of powers that have always, in the, in the existence of human kind. There's four types of powers that continue to vie for supremacy. There's theological power, like you said. I mean, yes, we're talking about Iran. Let's not forget there's a place called Vatican City.

Right, Right. Which is immensely powerful.

Correct. And theological. Right. So yes, there's the whole religious school of power. And then, yes, there is the, essentially the collectivist or communist sort of power that's also known as your socialist power. I would say that when you, when you're really looking at collectivism, you're looking at Europe and you're looking at those countries that are developing countries in Europe. You're looking at the Bulgarians and the Armenias and the Georgias and the Romanias. Right. Where essentially everybody has equal vote. Right. A democracy where everybody has equal vote. From that, that collectivist system, you have a centralized system that's the United States, Canada, the uk In a centralized system, everybody has a vote, but your vote is not equal because what you're voting for is a representative who has more power and more say than you. And that representative represents you at the federal level. So the United States is a representative republic. Right. We are not a true democracy. We vote for representatives. Those representatives represent their constituents and they're the ones that actually go deal with the day to day issues. In a true democracy, you and I vote on day to day issues. So you've got this. So those three again, theological, your collectivist, you've got your centralized and then you have your authoritarian. Authoritarian is when you have huge continuity of power. 12 years, 20 years, 25 years. Just like you're seeing with Xi Jinping who's been elected multiple times, and you're seeing with Putin who's been. Who's been elected multiple times. Elected, I use loosely, of course. Right. But authoritarian powers. Dictatorships like North Korea, where one family has ruled that country for three generations. Right. So those four different versions of power have been vying ever since you and I were rubbing sticks together trying to make fire. I think we're going to make fire if we pray to the gods. You think we're going to make fire if we all throw out our ideas? Somebody else thinks we're going to make fire if we all shut the fuck up and let the guy who makes fire make fire. Right. Everybody has a different opinion. That's just the way we work. Now your second question was whether. Reading between the lines. Thank you for saying that. I am not trying to make anyone read between the lines. The honest to God truth is, no matter what society you live in, the more you participate in the benefits of society, the more you must pay for those benefits in exchanging your freedoms. Whether you're authoritarian, whether you're theological, whether you're centralized. Right. You are going to trade your personal and individual freedoms for the benefits that come with society. So if you want more freedom, by all means, go for it. If you want to carry your guns around and make your own food and collect rainwater, have at it. I don't judge you. But be ready for the fact that you're going to give up the conveniences of whatever country you live in, whether it's first world developing or third world, you're going to trade something to have that kind of freedom. The people who are really stupid, and I'm using that word intentionally, Connor, stupid people think that they can have their cake and eat it too. They think, oh no, I can be whatever. I can vote for whoever I want to vote for, or I cannot vote. I can stash my guns, store my weapons, and homeschool my children. And I don't have to pay taxes because I'm not sending my kids to school. And I don't have to worry about all this other stuff, but the power should still run to my house and somebody should be making sure that other people drive the speed limit. That's ridiculous. It's a ridiculous assumption that that is something that you're going to get.

Yeah, it's like wanting to eject from the society and culture that you live in, but reap the benefits from it. It's almost like in Canada, Quebec has tried to leave the country a number of times. And one of the reasons why it didn't work in the. I can't remember what year it was, but they almost, they almost got to create their own sovereign nation. But the, the kicker was that they wanted to leave the country without taking any of the debt that they had accrued over the years of being in the country. And it was like, well, how the. Does that make any sense? You know, so it just. That didn't pan out because it was like, well, if you're going to leave, and then they wanted to use the Canadian currency. And so it's just an analogy that goes along with that, but please carry on.

No, but it's a great example. And that's the thing that doesn't make sense, Conor, for individuals like, I value my freedom. And when I say freedom, I'm using the word freedom as the freedom to make the choices that I think are in my best interest. I don't think that the American public school system is in my best interest. Well, guess what? Certain states within the United States force you to send your kids to public school or document in the same way as public schools the way that you homeschool them. We call those homeschool unfriendly states. Other states in the United States will let you homeschool your children. And all you have to do is basically sign, like a little document every year that says, I taught my kids this year. So even within the United States, different states have different rules about how you teach your children at home. Well, I'm going to exercise my freedom to live in a state that is homeschool friendly so that I can raise my children with a mindset that is contrary to the public school mindset. I don't want my kids to believe that lines are everywhere and that this is the peg for Their jacket. I want my kids to believe and understand. Sometimes you put your a jacket on a peg because it helps everybody else. Sometimes you put your jacket any damn where you please because your jacket cannot end up on the ground because your jacket could save your life someday in a rainstorm or a weather storm or winter storm, right? So I want to give my children the context to understand either or. Whereas most of the government, like regulated world doesn't give you either or they give you one way, right? This is the amount of taxes you have to pay based on your income. This is the speed that you have to go on the road. This is what time the comp. The business opens. This is the price of the object, right? It's just incredible because when you think about it, you realize it's laughable, right? You go to the gro. You go to a supermarket and they say milk is $3.65, and you're like, oh, well, I'm glad I had $3.65. You go to a corner market in. In Portugal and they have a price that's literally written in pencil. And you go and you say, can I have that milk for $2? And the person at the cash register decides yes or no, right? It's. We're training everybody, like we're training our own people to think in a limited capacity when. Imagine what would be possible for everybody, for all the men listening now, Connor, think what would be possible if they could give themselves permission to think outside of the conditioning that they had as children. If they could think outside of the conditioning that was given to them by their college degrees. If they could think outside of the conditioning that was given to them by their parents or even by their current spouse, right? What could be possible if we just gave ourselves permission to think? This is all just a confine contextually applied over a society that needs me to be predictable. I'm not saying you need to go start shooting your neighbors and, you know, rioting in the streets, rating the Whole foods, but a 2% change for anybody who's ever held a compass and gone for a hike, 2 degrees difference from your current heading in 10 miles becomes a whole different adventure.

So what are. Let's segue. I want to come back to some of these geopolitical questions because I do have a couple more. But let's just segue into.

Into that because that's a huge part of what you teach, which is breaking out of the bias or context that you've held for a long time. So what are some of the tools and Skills or ways in which guys can do that. Right? So if somebody's listening to this podcast and they're like, okay, that resonates with me. I definitely want to have a little bit more freedom in thought or in my life. How? Where do I begin?

It's a great question. So the first thing I would say is to understand that we're all wired. Biologically wired. Not socially conditioned, but biologically wired. We are all biologically wired differently. Some of us accept more risk. Some of us accept more discomfort. Some of us need more data. So we're all a little bit different. My company specializes in teaching people skills, the same skills that CIA taught me. We specialize in teaching people spy education to break barriers. But the first thing you have to know is where you're starting from. So we actually have a really powerful tool at Everyday Spy. It's online. If anybody goes to everydayspy.comquiz everydayspy.com quizquiz, there's a very simple quiz there that helps you understand how you are biologically wired to start the whole transformation, right? Because that's what CIA does to us. They put us through a massive psychological examination so that they can understand us better than we understand ourselves, and then they can start to systematically break through our conditioned barriers. Because if you think about it, CIA recruits us at 27. That means we're wired by society. They have to break through that wiring before they can turn us into essentially criminals everywhere else in the world.

I like your candor. That was good.

That's the way it works, right? So anybody who's listening can start understanding their wiring by going to everydayspy.com quiz from that point, what Everyday Spy does, what my company's been designed to do is teach education based off of your biological wiring to help you understand the processes, the systems, and the frameworks that you need to question those preconceptions that are holding you back. Because there's a lot of preconceptions that are actually helping you grow forward, right? So let's just take that traumatized child. I am a huge advocate for recognizing the positive benefits of childhood trauma. Yes, it sucks. My father was killed before I was born. I was raised by a stepdad who was abusive. I had, you know, I had the police come to my house in elementary school because my gym teacher found belt welts all over my back and was, like, calling the cops about my dad. My mom's been married four times. She's been widowed twice. Like, there's all sorts of issues I've been trying to make my mom notice me as she goes from husband to husband to husband her whole life. I have childhood trauma. Thank God I have childhood trauma because it gave me the focus and the discipline and the courage to believe that there's a better life for me if I just keep breaking the rules.

I've gotten in so much trouble. I went to a military school and barely graduated. I was in the military and barely got out of it, like, because all I do is break rules. I hear a rule, and if it doesn't make sense to me, I'm like, that doesn't make any sense. Why would I listen to this guy just because he's a colonel, he's fat, he's lazy, he's incompetent. I don't care that he has a silver bird on his shoulder. That is not the way to succeed in the military.

Which is why I never joined you. And I have. That's one of the reasons why I was looking forward to speaking with you is that when I've heard you talk about your past, I was like, oh, yeah, check, check.

But I love the fact that I have. If I didn't have that condition, if I didn't have that wiring, if I didn't have that special cocktail, I wouldn't be where I am now. And it breaks my heart when I find other people who have a special cocktail and they're watering it down, trying to fit into academia, trying to fit into a corporate culture, trying to fit into a social norm, Right? And I'm like, don't you understand? You are built for so much better. Like, let the. Let the Joneses keep up with the Joneses. You are a Menendez. The Joneses, let's go party. Right? Like, that's the way I want people to think. Like, I'm not. I don't have to play this game, because I already know there's another game. Because I saw growing up, there's plenty of people who will continue to become the hamsters that run through the economic wheel of the United States. You never have to worry about the United States falling behind. It will have plenty of, you know, hamsters, gerbils, and guinea pigs who do what they're supposed to do every day.

The lemmings.

But what we need, bobbleheads. What we need are people who are willing to embrace the fact that they're different. Those are the people who shatter boundaries. As much as we hate to love these people, we hate to love Elon Musk. We hate to love Mark Zuckerberg. We even hate to love Donald Trump. Right. Like, we hate to love the fact that these people have abandoned all social norms and reached incredible success. And because we hate to love them, we don't want to model our behavior off of them. I agree. Do not try to be like Donald Trump. Do not try to be like Elon Musk. But understand that you have a little bit of rebel in you, and rebellion is what made the United States the United States in the first place.

I remember on a podcast conversation that you were having, you were talking about a perspective shift. Something about, I didn't catch the whole thing. I was working out, admittedly, but I didn't catch the whole thing. But it was something about being in a house, looking out a window, that type of an analogy. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Yes, sir.

Are you able to break that down for us? Because I think that perspective shift could be helpful.

Absolutely. So it was a great interview I was having with a guy named Steven Bartlett. Stephen Bartlett is a centimillionaire investor and businessman from the uk. He has a phenomenal podcast called Diary of a CEO. If you haven't discovered Diary of a CEO and you like podcasts, it's a good one. You've got to give a shout out.

It's really good.

Got to give a shout out to Steve. But what we were talking about is when CIA brings us on board, our very first onboarding meeting happens in a place called the Bubble. The Bubble is a giant conference hall that sits outside the front door of CIA's old headquarters building, or OHB. If you pull it up on Google Maps. If you pull up CIA and Google Maps and you zoom in as much as Google Maps will let you, you'll find this circle in front of the front door. A huge circle in front of the front door. It's actually a giant golf ball. And inside is our auditorium. It's called the Bubble, Right? It literally looks like a bubble. Anyways, we're inside the bubble for our first kind of onboarding session, and one of the speakers comes up and explains to us, hey, your whole life, you have lived in a building, right? Just picture a building. What I call it is a shed. Picture, like a backyard shed full of cobwebs. It's old and busted. It's been beaten down by the weather. You're inside this shed, and it's all you've ever known. It keeps you dry. It keeps you warm against extreme cold. It keeps you cold, cool against extreme heat. But it only has, like, three windows, right? And each of those three windows has Been faded with age. So when you look through the window, you can see that there's a world outside. You can see that there's trees. You can see that there's mountains. You can see that there's a stream. But you don't know the true color because the window has been faded. So what would be a vibrant yellow looks like a faded yellow. And what looks like a bright. What could be a vibrant blue sky looks like a faded blue sky. But you're inside this shed, and it's all you've ever known. The vast majority of people look through the window and they're satisfied. Oh, I get light from this window. I have a new view. I can watch the days turn to night. I can watch the deer walk by. I'm very content in my shed. But for a few of us, we're like, what does that look like on the other side of the window? What does it feel like out there? Even if it is colder than it is in here, Even if it is hotter than it is in here, I want to know the truth. What is it? What does the sky really look like? What does the rain feel like? What does hail do to my skin? And for those people, we want out of the shed. But the problem is that the shed is packed with people. So just because you want out doesn't mean that the other people are going to give you space to get to the door. So if you really want to get out of the shed, you either have to fight your way through all those people to get to the door, fight your way past the people who are trying to keep the door shut, It's a fight to get out the door of the shed because nobody else wants to leave. Your only other option to see the world the way it really is is to shatter the glass, to break that window, let the elements into the shed, ruin everybody's life, ruin everybody's comforts, but it gives you a chance to see what's really out there. And once you see what's really out there, you only have one option. To fight your way back to that door and get out so that you can see the real world. The problem is that so many of us want to get on the outside of the shed, but we don't want to fight to get to the front door. And we know that if we break the window, we're going to piss everybody off. We've been conditioned to let the window be. And don't fight anybody because you're a bad person. If you cause somebody else inconvenience or Discomfort, or if you fight with them too much, you're the problem. So stay in your shed and be happy. That's what ha. And we end up spending our whole life fighting back and forth between these two thoughts. Do I sit here and accept this, or do I fight for the front door? And we never really make a decision, so we end up, by default, doing what's conditioned into us and staying still. But for some of us, we break through the window, we piss everybody off, we fight for the front door. Because what really happens is once you piss everybody off, they want you the fuck out of the shed anyways. So break the window, part the seas, and get outside. And then be ready. Because once you taste what really exists on the other side of the shed, there's no going back in that shed. They will not let you come back. And even if you do go back, you broke a window, so it's better to figure it out. After that, be ready for the ride of a lifetime, because you're going to be colder and wetter than you've ever been, but you're also going to see more than just what you saw through that window, and you're going to have more opportunity to find what really exists in the world.

So you're saying you got kicked out of the CIA?

Yeah, for all intents and purposes, I kicked myself out of CIA. They're not having me back.

That's right. You're like, I broke the windows in that. In that golf ball building, and. And they didn't let me back in.

Okay, I'm. I'm looking at the time here. We have a couple of minutes left. I'm. I want to return back this. Some questions about the geopolitical conversation. What I will say for everybody that's listening is unequivocally go and check out Andrew's work. I've dug into some of your stuff. It's awesome at Everyday Spy. I think it's just innately fascinating and people should definitely go tune in and you can learn a lot about yourself and some of the skills that he's talking about. Maybe we do a separate podcast where we dig into some of those things and it can even be a shorter one, and we just dig into those, like, systematically, because I think that'd be a fascinating conversation and maybe you can, you know, throw some in as we. As we go on this last couple minutes here. I want to return back to this notion of there is a rapidly changing geopolitical climate. You know, how do I want to ask this? I think for a Lot of people. Iran entering into the. The conversation in such a way is alarming and concerning. And I'm curious as to what you think is going to unfold in that area of the world. And I know you probably don't have, like, all the time in the world to break this down, but what you think is going to happen with that conflict, maybe the conflict between Russia and Ukra Brain. And how do you personally.

Prepare yourself for what might come, what might unfold? And that might be from a family perspective, because obviously you have kids, you're married, you have kids, you've got a family. From a financial perspective, you know, are you. Do you stay in the United States? Do you depart the United States? Like, tell me a little bit about that.

I mean, you're. It's a big question for just a few minutes. You're right, Connor. So I'll just be. I'll be. I'll be snappy and kind of hit the key points. Right. So first.

When Russia first invaded Ukraine, I said from the very beginning, and I still stand on it today, Ukraine is going to lose. Ukraine is going to lose. And. And Zelensky can make all the big promises he wants about reconstituting Ukraine's original borders before it lost, you know, Crimea, et cetera, et cetera. He can do it all he wants, but the truth is they're going to lose eventually. They're going to reach a ceasefire. They're going to negotiate the difference between Eastern Ukraine and Western Ukraine and who controls which. And Zelenskyy is most likely going to flee to the United States as a political refugee because Russia will not let him stay in place as the president of whatever remains of Ukraine. We're watching that play out in the headlines now. So if you remember what it looked like back in 2022, and you look at what it looks like now, you've seen how the world has essentially given up on Ukraine, and there's a lot of reasons for that. But what the important lesson for you and me is to understand that if there isn't an economic purpose driving the relationship, then people will stop investing. There's no economic purpose in defending Ukraine. There is an economic purpose for Russia to continue oppressing Ukraine. So it's a question of economics, just like everything else. It's different in Israel because Israel has a huge economic impact on the West. All of our medical technology comes from Israel. Many of our precious metals and precious jewels come from Israel. Plus we have an ideological connection to protect the Jewish faith because of what happened with the Nazis in World War II. So there's economic and ideological reasons why we support Israel. The reason Netanyahu is able to continually spit in the face of the west is because he understands that. He knows that he can push the dial as hard as he wants to push the dial. And the United States has no option. The west has no option. We must continue to help Israel, because to let the Shia Crescent, or to let Iran, or to let, you know, the Middle east destroy Israel is only going to do economic harm to what we have in the West. The question is just how do we play the politics so that it doesn't look like we're helping Netanyahu carry out atrocities? How do we make it so that hopefully Israel itself unseats Netanyahu from within, reaches their own ceasefire, and then we can sweep in and save the day and negotiate some kind of peace? That's why you see China working so hard to negotiate peace in both Ukraine and Israel, because as soon as they negotiate peace, they've done something the west couldn't do, and they. They change the dial. Right? So Israel, Israel, by invading Lebanon and invading Gaza and sending missiles into Iran, Israel is. Is not going to win based on just basic military doctrine. You cannot fight a war on two fronts and win. So they know that we know that. They're gambling on the fact that no one else is going to let them fail. So they're going to push and push and push, knowing that they really do have a safety net, because we can't take the hit of losing Israel. So Israel is going to do whatever it needs to do to basically push back its enemies and throw a fit and show that it's powerful. And when it runs out of weapons or troops or intelligence or technology, it knows the Western world is going to sweep in to help it. So what Israel is doing is they're playing a game where they're just going to kill as many people as possible. They're going to invade as much territory as possible, because when they choose to cease fire, it will look to their people like they're. They're powerful and the rest of the world is asking them to slow down. Right? Which is very similar to the same game that Putin is playing in Russia. He wants to tell his own people, we're so powerful, we're going to slow down because the rest of the world is asking us to. So it's a tricky world, but what I see happening is we will eventually come to a stalemate in Ukraine, just like I've said we were going to do since 2022. It's just a matter of when the money stops flowing from the west. And then in Israel, we will eventually meet some sort of ceasefire. It's just a matter of how many deaths our American President is willing to let happen before they, they call in some sort of power and say, hey, this needs to stop now. Iran's not going to slow down. We're not going to see nuclear weapons, we're not going to see chemical weapons. Right? We're not going to see Israel send a nuclear weapon into Tehran. That kind of stuff isn't going to happen. That's movie stuff. That's not real world geopolitics. To do something like that would transform the face of geopolitics to a place where Israel knows the United States might actually back off. The United States might let Israel fail if Netanyahu sends a nuke into Iran because Iran might send a nuke into Israel and that's going to have secondary effects on Jordan and then that's going to put a major pressure on Saudi and then it's just going to turn nasty. So we're never going to get to that place because we are too educated and civilized for that. But we might get to a place where we see some more nasty, nasty stuff. Don't forget Israel is a nasty fucking place. Right? Mossad abandons the rules. The ICC has already said that there's war atrocities and war crimes happening. Any country that invades across national borders is breaking the law of international peace. The un, the UN is more opposed to Israel than they are opposed to Hamas. And the United nations is a conglomerate of like 160 nations. So we've got to keep in mind objectively, objectively we're looking at the conflict through the lens of our own personal conditioning, through the, our own social conditioning. You have to look at it objectively. And whether you agree with me or disagree with me, your opinion is yours, just like my opinion is mine. But at the end of the day, Israel will continue to push its power, Russia will continue to push its power, and all the other countries are kind of deciding what their level of involvement is going to be before there's some kind of ceasefire or temporary truce.

The big, the, the big thing. Do you have two minutes? You got a hard stop?

Do it, man.

Okay, the, the big question that I have is, is around us, global supremacy. Because it really, that does seem to be a very large conversation. It seems to be in question. You've got China really threatening and like, the, the way that.

I've studied a Lot of Chinese and Asian cultures, love Japanese culture, you know, studied the daos, studied the, you know, Zen, did, went down the Zen rabbit hole for a very long time and studied go and those types of things that make up Asian culture. And it's wildly fascinating because it is fundamentally different than how we think in the west, like day and night, you know. And so the way that China seems to be operating is just very different than we would in the West. Like, we're, we're usually very loud, brash, forward.

I'm sure that's not the way that it operates in CIA or FBI, but like, that's how we present, you know, in the West. And I'm curious, from your perspective of.

Number one, is us sort of global dominance or supremacy really in jeopardy? Because that seems to be a big conversation. Two, what would that actually mean from a global perspective or for people here in the United States? Because I think some people have a very catastrophic notion of what that looks like. And, and maybe lastly, if you can just touch on, like, how do you, how do you approach that? Like what, you know, what do you do? Do you keep your finances in the United States? Do you move out? Like, how does, how does that look from your perspective?

Absolutely. So you're, you're right. Eastern and Western, that's really what it breaks down to. Eastern and Western. Not Chinese versus American, but Eastern and Western. Because east of Germany it becomes Eastern and then west of Germany it becomes Western. Essentially, Western thinking and Eastern thinking are completely different night and day, just like you said, it's so different, we can't even contextualize it with words. The only way to really understand how fundamentally different they are is to do some research yourself. But to your point, Western, one hallmark of Western society is brash, you know, vocal, fast moving change. That's Western. Eastern thinking is slow, methodical, permanent change. So in the west, we're like, hey, we'll change our president every four years. And in the east, they're like, how can we get to another emperor? That's kind of the difference between the two thinking, right? What's important to understand is the United States right now is like, like the horse in a horse race that's in front.

It's great to be in front. It's great to be the winner at the finish line. But throughout the whole race, when you're in first place, all you are is the number one threat to everybody else. Every other horse is trying to beat you, and if another horse gets close to you, to everybody watching the race, it looks like you're losing even if you're still in first place. If you go from being a minute ahead of the first horse to 30 seconds ahead of the first horse, right? If you, if you just close the gap, you're still winning. But to everybody observing you might lose there, nobody's saying that's the winning horse. They're all saying that horse might lose. The United States has been in the that horse might lose category since the end of World War II. Right? What people need to understand is American supremacy is the supremacy that we know. It's the supremacy that has created the current world order. Whether you like it or not, that's the way it is as anybody else, China, Russia, or anyone get closer to being equal.

America loses. You lose, I lose, every American loses. Because with every inch that China becomes closer to equality with the United States, the United States loses leverage. We lose the ability to maintain superiority in price negotiations, we lose economic superiority. We have. All the other countries of the world can choose whether or not they want to buy American goods or Chinese goods. American tech or Chinese tech, American cars or Chinese cars, right? They decide, do they want American doctors or Chinese doctors? And as the. We call it parity. As we approach parity, the closer we get to parity, the faster it arrives because people start to switch over. Remember when Apple was the only smartphone, everybody had an iPhone. Well, then Android created a phone, and then people started to slowly come over. And now as Android continues to, like, reach parity with iPhone, people come over by the millions, tens of thousands, and it's, it's. They're switching back and forth all the time. The same thing happens on a geopolitical scale. So will Nigeria side with the United States or Russia or, I'm sorry, the United States or China? Or will Argentina side with the United States or China? Will. Will you name it any country? Indonesia, Mongolia, you know, Vietnam. Who will they side with? And every time they side with one country, all of their economic power, their military power, their intelligence, their. Their voter base, it all goes to the other side once parity is reached. In reality, when parity is reached, that doesn't mean your children, My children have to learn Chinese. It does mean that they will want to learn Chinese, right? It means that our, our level of being ahead of everybody else is less. So Chinese goods can become more expensive. American goods going to China can be reduced because there'll be more tariffs. Right? All of a sudden, we, we will not necessarily have the technological superiority of American search engines, American cell phones, American tablets, because now there's going to be the pervasiveness of foreign tablets and foreign search engines and foreign technology. That doesn't mean that the movies make you feel like all of a sudden a light switch is going to flip and you're going to have to live in a bunker. That's not what's going to happen. What's going to happen is my kids speak English. They speak only English as their primary language, but they're exploring French and Spanish because it's fun. Their kids might have to learn Chinese. Might be like. It might be a requirement for their adult success to learn that language, not because they want to be successful, but because it is the bare minimum of what they'll need to be equipped for their world. Because maybe the best financial institutions, the best banks in the world, will be Chinese banks. Maybe the instructions inside the vehicle are going to be Chinese. And if anybody thinks I'm fucking crazy.

Do you know what language is the language of aviation all over the world? English. If you're a Russian pilot, guess what? You have to learn English. If you're a German pilot, guess what? You have to learn English. If you want to fly a plane across an international border, guess what language you have to speak. English. Right. If you want to drive a tank, you have to speak English anywhere in the world. Right? People don't understand, like, what I'm saying. Isn't that crazy? It's already. It's already demonstrated to be true. Because the language of at least the language of piloting is English, but so is the language of law. So is the language of health and wealth and health and healthcare. Like, people all over the world are already learning English because they have to in order to have even the remotest hope for success. So it's not crazy to think that as we reach a world where more than one superpower exists, we would be forced to learn more than one language in order to have minimum success. So the last part of your question, Connor, I'm talking too much. I'm sorry. The last part of my question is how do I plan to handle that? I plan to raise my children to speak the top three most common languages in the world, right? And those three most common languages are English, Spanish, and French. I know everybody says that China's, like, spoken by more people. Yes, Chinese is spoken by more people because China is so big. But when it comes to being able to live in different countries, English, Spanish, and French will let you live in pretty much every country in the world. So I plan on letting my children, at their leisure and at their interest, level, learn those three languages. We plan on leaving the United States. We plan on leaving the United States before 2030 because the United States has some growing to do. Let's not forget we're less than 300 years old. China is more than 5,000 years old. We're basically in middle school and I hated middle school. Right. As a country, we're basically in middle school. We're wearing sweatpants, but we have an erection and we don't know how to hide it. We don't want anyone to see it. But it still feels kind of good when we walk. Like everybody hates middle school. I would like to take my children to a nice, safe, neutral third country where being an American gives them super advantages because the American dollar is strong. People believe in the American ideology, people believe in American freedom. I'd rather go to a country like that for four or five years while the United States figures its shit out. Because right now, like we are, we are a chaotic and confused country. We don't know whether we want to be a democracy or whether we want to be an autocracy. Because if you think about it on both liberal and conservative politics, they both basically want to eradicate the other, which would turn us into a one party system which is really an authoritarian country. Right. So people aren't thinking it through yet. They will eventually think it through. I don't plan on letting my children grow up, up in a, in a country that hasn't identified its own self identity yet. So we'll go travel the world, we'll live in Costa Rica, we'll live in, in Portugal, we'll live in, in Spain, we'll visit the Middle east. Right. We'll go travel the world and see how up everyone else is. So that when we come back here, no matter how chaotic we are, we understand the values and importance of American freedom. Right. And American purpose. We can be global citizens and also carry an American passport. And that's my personal goal with my family. Because we've developed the wealth, we've developed the resources, we've developed the capacity to be able to do that because we've broken out of that shed.

Yeah, it's one of the things, I really appreciate everything you're saying. And as you were talking I was like, oh man, it'd be interesting to have a conversation with you again about the skills that individuals could develop. And then, you know, how do you raise children? Because one of the things that I really thought about in the for the future is like, how do I raise my kids to really prepare them for what's coming because it does seem like the, the amount of volatility and chaos and you know, the inundation of information, a lot of people are buckling psychologically underneath that. And in psychological frameworks, you know, there's just really quickly on this front. Am I, am I making you late? Because I can, I can also just pause.

I am late. Okay, let me give you three more minutes, man, because I really enjoy the conversation and I do. I would be happy to talk to you again, but unfortunately, no, no, to be honest, yes, I am, I am running late.

Let's pause that. Let's put. I'll save that part for another one. I love this conversation. Thank you so much for your frames, the ideas, the way that you, the, the way that you come at things. I would love to have you back on and really value your time for people that are out there. Head on over to everyday spy.com he's got the quiz on there like he was talking about Andrew. Anything else you want to stay say or direct people towards?

All I want to say is especially for the people listening to you, Connor. You know, it's, it's so important that we as men especially and women included to understand that there is a social framework that has defined our role, our gender, our place in the world. And that structure is part of what is what forces us to see ourselves the way we see ourselves. Whether we view ourselves as compassionate fathers or hard working fathers, whether we are strong spouses or equal partners, whether we believe our wives are smarter and stronger than us. Whatever conditioning you have, understand that there is a level of conditioning there that keeps you from seeing the objective reality, the objective truth of it all. And there's nothing wrong with understanding that there's a layer of filter that's going through that we're all going through. What's important to understand is that continued education and continued training and continually challenging your existing beliefs, as uncomfortable as it might feel, is the way to really unlock objective reality.

Love it. Love it. Thank you so much everybody out there. Man it forward. Share this episode with your friends, with your partner. Tune into this one. It's a very, very good one. Andrew, thank you so much for joining me, brother. Appreciate you. Until next time, Connor Beaton signing off.