CIA Spy On WW3, Jeffrey Epstein, Israel-Hamas, AI & Social Media Brainwashing | Andrew Bustamante

let me ask the movie Leave the World Behind which was produced by the Obamas paints a pretty distressing picture of how you could turn America against itself in Three Easy Steps step three being civil war how easy do you think it is in reality to destabilize the us or any other major country I love that you start with this question and I love that you didn't give me any hints that you were going to start with this question cuz I recently watched Leave the World Behind and I thought it was just a brilliant piece of The Human Experience right first of all to answer your question directly destabilizing the United States would be very difficult because at the end of the day the US is a we are a strong unifying culture when we are attacked it supersedes all other things that's that we saw that with 911 we saw it in the Vietnam War we saw it time and time again right when we are attack it unifies us that's not like it's not the same cultural response every country has so if we were to see a large scale hack if TVs were to suddenly go down radios were to suddenly go down if the whole network and infrastructure started to fall apart if Tesla started self-driving themselves and blocking roads the last thing we would do is start killing each other if anything we would all unify because at our core we are a fighting culture it's one of our biggest flaws and one of our biggest strengths we are a Waring culture here in the United States now that said the the part of the of the movie that to me was so precient was that instead of us having one enemy we faced a Unity a Unity force of enemies that were all collaborating and coordinating the attack together so that's what the movie's premise was right what if it wasn't one bad guy what if it was an amalgam of people who don't like you essentially what if 10 bullies attacked you instead of one bully I think that is getting to the heart of What conflict really looks like now and What conflict will look like for the United States for the Next Generation tell me more about that I've heard you talk about this you've said something that unfortunately uh Rings a little too true to me which is that World War III has already begun uh if that's true it certainly doesn't feel like it so um what do you mean by that what does world what do you think World War II will or does look like so it's interesting that you say that because when when I hear people say it doesn't feel like World War I has started World War II when it started also didn't feel like World War II had started for America if you recall America didn't get involved in World War II until after all of Europe had basically been ingested by the Nazi party Only After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor did World War II start being felt by Americans World War II is very similar what we're seeing right now is a a whol scale attack on American resources the US dollar uh American influence American dominance and any war is really about bringing your bringing your opponent down in terms of influence and power and at the same time increasing your own influence and power what World War I where World War II looks different than World War II is that World War II is being fought through these proxy wars Third Country battles often times poor or impoverished battles that are being bankrolled by large world leaders if you look at Libya if you look at Syria if you look at Afghanistan if you look at Yemen all these fit the proxy war model and those are just major conflicts there are minor conflicts happening all over Asia Latin America and South America or Latin America and uh and Africa that show even more active involvement by the United States the Russians the Chinese uh North and South Koreans uh Turks Germans waging conflict through third countries all over the planet and what are they fighting for what makes it worthwhile for the United States to engage in a in a conflict against the houthis and Yemen what makes it worth it for Iran to invest in the same conflict the reason it's a good investment is because they are increasing their own influence and power without risking their own Nationals or without risking their own military successes or failures it's it's easier to fund a civil war from outside than it is to uh engage in what's known as interstate War which is when your nation state invades another nation state like we're seeing with Russia and Ukraine okay Civil War uh this is a it's the idea that really stood out to me in the movie Leave the World Behind uh it's something I've thought a lot about my audience has heard me talk at nauseum about Ray Delio's growing um percentage prediction of Civil War here in the US it's interesting that you call us a Waring culture that we're very good at uniting because we are also proving that we're very good at splitting almost exactly right down the middle which I have a whole thesis about which maybe we'll get into um but while I agree with you that I think the movie Leave the World Behind is just exceptionally unrealistic in terms of it's like oh first isolation and just oh just take out all their Communications no big deal uh that would be brutally difficult and of course if somebody could they would have already but it it's one of those where from a movie perspective the suspension of disbelief to point out a human truth I think is really precious I don't think it is accidental that the Obamas are behind this somebody that's been in the War Room somebody that really understands uh what the darker side of human nature can look like when when um nudged in the right direction and the it's it's very theatrical I do not want anybody to think I'm saying hey that's a documentary on how this will go very much not but once you grant them that then you can look at okay when a country is divided when people turn on themselves it's the ultimate um destabilizing factor and when I look at less so honestly with Russia and Ukraine which may be my ignorance but I don't think so very much so with Israel and or Israel and Palestine depending on how you want to think about it that one to me feels like they have an anchoring ideology which makes it effectively impossible for them to get along and by leveraging that you get some really dire consequences and so we're seeing that play out in real life and that to me is what they're playing with in the movie Leave the World Behind is okay just grant me that they are divided and now what does it look like once people begin turning on each other tapping into the tribalism tapping into this sense of wanting to protect you and yours and that is an algorithm running in the human animal and so when you for people that haven't seen you before which would be shocking at this point uh but with your background as a CIA agent um how do you tap into that like when I think about the velocity of information created by social media my original intro for this episode that I wrote was that the internet really changed everything because it it allows human psychology to play out in a different way and the way that the internet allows human psychology to play out is is it is so easy to confuse people it is so easy to confuse people and if I'm looking at forget the movie if I'm looking at what's really happening I'm not even saying it's coordinated I'm just saying that the velocity of information that comes across your social feed where you have the algorithm from an AI perspective colliding with the AI that runs the human any individual human yours is going to be different than the next person but there's enough similarity that we can really get some flywheels going but the velocity of information makes it very easy to confuse people because people are extraordinarily bad at understanding a position from a nuanced place and so if you were going to analyze the situation that we're in now where you've got someone like reelio who has a lot of credibility in my opinion saying okay uh likelihood of civil war is going up you've got your own take the World War III is potentially already happening that this is a proxy battle we've got things popping off in the Middle East we've got things popping off in Russia um how do we pour fuel on a fire that's already burning by confusing people with fast information so what's really interesting is is you're exactly right that people get confused easily and you're exactly right that velocity of information is a factor in that confusion where I would Challenge and I don't think you were saying this outright but I I want to make sure that nobody misunderstands that velocity of information and confusion existed long before the internet long before social media you don't I I will potentially take exception to that and I will say that the velocity of information that you could get before would come from a narrow band of sources correct and now the velocity of information not only is a 100 times a thousand times faster it is coming from a thousand times more sources and so it does feel unique this moment I don't disagree with you yeah I agree with you in terms of volume I it's velocity that I'm focusing on right volume absolutely we have more information now in more channels in more Avenues than ever before but think about you think about our parents our parents used to wait every day for the morning newspaper and for the 5:00 news I remember my dad rushing home for the 5 o'clock news why because those two touch points were essentially the only time they had in an entire day to find out what was going on anywhere else so when that 60-page newspaper landed on the doorstep on Sunday morning that was that was everything that was the Holy Grail for news for the week so if you think about it in terms of velocity as fast as you could read through those 60 Pages you got all your new information everything challenged what you previously knew and everything set the stage for what you were going to assume until until the next Sunday paper or until the next Monday local paper same thing with the 5:00 or 6:00 news you you waited for that moment and whatever update came in that 30 minute or 1 hour cycle became your foundation of Truth for the next 24 hours we live in a world now where the volume and the velocity combine so now what you learn this second literally changes when your feed refreshes half a second later right so the the volume is so different and the velocity and the volume combined exacerbate the what what I think you correctly call the confusion of information this is another element when you ask me how I see this as a CIA officer one of the core things that people don't understand is that in an in in a uh covert influence campaign I mean that's for a CIA officer covert influence is a tactical rule book it's a it's a recipe here's how you make it you crack two eggs you take two cups of sugar and you have and you melt some butter that's how you make a Cake cover influence campaign has three parts one of those parts is simply creating information that that contradicts other information that exists not by creating something new but by exacerbating something that's already believed so you just take two existing narratives and you pour fuel on one of those narratives just to make it burn and then as conflict erupts between these two narratives then you pour fuel on the other narrative just to keep the fire going and that's how you start a covert influence campaign the goal of covert influence is not to get people to believe in something it's to get them to get confused by everything so that you can create General chaos because chaos degrades the ability for unification that's the real goal behind cobber influence how real is the threat of covert influence it's not even a it's not even a threat it's a guarantee it's happening all the time it's happening everywhere around us all the time organized organized disorganized intentional unintentional statun transnational government sponsored us sponsored cover influence is happening everywhere all the time in 2016 I wasn't paying attention to it I'll be honest I was just building building building building and uh I was very sort of caught off guard in that moment of a sense of oh wow like even whether or not Russia was actually engaging in trying to influence the election I had never considered that somebody would try to influence the election and so it made me go wait a second like that's actually again whether true or not it's a plausible it it might even be smart to think about how government agencies are using PR or propaganda however you want to look at it to influence what people think uh and then on the back of all this I start reading about history and the more I read about history the more I get really concerned about how things can and do go off the rails in the most violent horrifying ways possible and all of a sudden it felt important to pay attention yeah not necessarily to be overly paranoid and the last thing I want to do is beat the drum of like hey everybody need to panic no one should Panic right but as you will have heard in my intro to this episode if you want to win the game of life you're going to need to pay attention to the players and the pieces and the the real essence of the game that's being played what I would love is for you to walk out using this moment that we're in where we're building towards an election M and there's at a minimum going to be um just very straightforward simple desire to influence the voting public to voting for a given candidate let's even just assume it's all above board it's no one's trying to be um it's not a foreign government it's just people are going to try to sway your way of thinking how can people anchor themselves to something so that they can think through this problem well you and I talked about this last time we were together that to me is is the whole shtick whether you want to be a good parent whether you want to be a good uh partner in a relationship whether you want to be a a great entrepreneur you must be able to Think Through novel problems well how so one of the things I I always get excited about and discouraged by is that your questions are so good and there's so many elements inside each question that we could pick apart so like with what you just said with with what you just asked about how do we handle this well prior to that you started talking about kind of becoming aware of influence in 2016 um prior to that you mentioned uh Palestine and Hamas interchangeably right what I see is in the question you actually start to show how difficult it is to splice these things apart Hamas and Palestine are two totally different things the government of Hamas and the terrorist militant group group of the alasm Brigade within Hamas is completely different than the Palestinian people the Palestinian Authority the fata government right those are all but all of those are part of Palestine so just to put in in the context of where I'm steering us uh so trying to understand how to think through a problem well which we are all faced with you you have two options put your head down you will be used as a pawn pick your head up pay attention you can hopefully navigate this well what I hear you saying is you have to accurately map out what is really happening so in this case it's and I wasn't trying to say that they're indistinguishable what I was trying to say is some people will talk about Hamas other people will talk about Palestine so however you want to think about that right um but getting getting an understanding of what what is actually happening or an accurate assessment of the players the pieces is how I typically refer to it is that where you're going like you just have to really map the terrain yeah well that's where I'm starting from that's where I'm starting from for sure because even when you talk about the 2016 elections and how the whole world woke up to the fact that influence was happening in 2016 but nobody seems to ask the question of if we caught it in 2016 how many previous elections were it happened that we didn't catch it and why would we ever think that any of our elections were ever safe from cover influence just because we didn't have social media just because Facebook wasn't a giant in 2008 why do we think it we didn't also experience something then too so the the starting point to your answer your question the starting point is to understand that emotional decision- making is what the human brain wants to do it wants to make emotional decisions because emotional decisions require less cognitive ability less like less calories less time it's so much easier to just fall back on what you were conditioned as a kid to believe what you have experienced as an adult what your opinions are what your friends say it's just the easiest fastest way to make a decision the brain is inherently very conservative of its energy we often joke that the brain is lazy so the brain just jumps to conclusions and when you give it a way of jumping to a conclusion it likes that it's like muscle memory I'm a Christian therefore I'm pro-life so anytime you bring up anything Christian I'm going to say pro-life the brain loves that because it saves all this analysis and contextualizing and synthesis and synthesis and information vetting it SA itself all that trouble by just jumping to a conclusion so you see information is presented to you in what form in a way that triggers an emotional response even to your point about the whole like Palestine and hamasa presented in a way where it's hard to distinguish the difference between the two I completely agree the reason they are presented that way is to make it easy for the human brain in the target audience to LEAP to the conclusion that Palestine is Hamas Hamas is Palestine sign they are the same which makes everything happening in Israel right now under the rubric of terrorism it's if that's the narrative you want to portray it's easy to get there when you don't differentiate when you don't use subtlety and Nuance to explain your information as soon as you start to dig into the information as soon as you start to map the battlefield you start to see all the changes in the terrain you start to see the tree line you start to see the sand pits you start to see the the areas that are high ground and highest ground and how they're different from the low ground and the lowest ground right so it takes that level of awareness to be able to really land on a meaningful decision so the first thing to understand is that we decide you me the smartest people the dumbest people it's it's irrelevant of your your race age Creed or education level we all Pink Matter brain matter decide first and easily through emotions through an emotional lens it's sometimes called emotional reasoning emotion and reasoning are two different things but when you reason through a lens of emotion it's a cognitive distortion that we call emotional reasoning understanding that is kind of the first step yeah no doubt uh so I have a big bumper sticker that I try to get people to take in for this very reason so I agree uh you have to map the train you have to understand what's actually going on you have to distrust yourself that's bumper sticker that's a great bumper sticker because um you can't make decisions without emotions so literally if you selectively damage the area of the brain that's in charge of emotions people can give you all the reasons why fish is better than beef and then they still in the end they can't make a decision because without the ability to process emotion to push in One Direction or another you you literally I don't mean this like as an analogy you literally can't make a decision without emotion the bad news is that your emotions are influenced by your frame of reference so everything that happened to you from the time you were a little kid whatever until today like all of it creates the context that will trigger an emotion now the problem is the emotion to your point makes a decision feel obvious and so you context plus the whatever happens creates emotion emotion makes one decision obvious over the other but that doesn't mean it's the quote unquote right decision um okay so you have map the terrain you have understand the way the Pink Matter uh is working that you're going to be making these decisions emotionally what what else goes into this remember I'm trying to get people to your 2024 for sure is going to be brutal uh because this is an election year here in the US because there are multiple Wars going on but just in general if you can anchor yourself and think well through problems that you haven't seen before you're going to do far better in life um so that is the umbrella under under which I asked the question after you map the battlefield I mean to use a military parallel after you map the battlefield the next thing you need to do is take in all Source intelligence all Source intelligence means you're accepting information from all sources how do you make sure you're not taking in biased sources since every source is probably biased so because every source is biased that's the Assumption you have to have about every source so the important thing is we're all accustomed to taking in certain trusted sources Mom Dad wife husband sisters brothers co-workers whatever it might be maybe your trusted source of CNN maybe your trusted source is Fox News maybe your trusted Source BBC maybe your trusted source is AP we all have our trusted sources but those trusted sources are all biased in some way whether it's a lean or a full-blown Wing we don't know but everything's biased in some way so the only way to offset the bias is to take in information from the opposite opposite bias now if you've ever been a Boy Scout if you've ever done anything like Land Navigation you can always identify where you are located by doing something called a reverse asmith casting a reverse asouth have you ever heard this hell is that so when you look on a compass and you point the compass at where you're trying to go you're creating an aouth a direction in Reverse if you're trying to find out where you are you can find a landmark a tall mountain uh a building a cathedral a city whatever else it might be aim your compass at the Landmark and now casting the reverse Direction you know where you are in comparison to The Landmark if you do that with two landmarks those two landmarks have an intersection point and now you know your true location so a reverse asmith in the information space means you listen to left leaning news but then you also listen to right leaning news where they say the same thing thing you have a high confidence that it's accurate where they say everything else doesn't necessarily mean either side is wrong it's just starting to show you their bias but what you have confidence in is where they agree if you do that enough times you start to have a foundation of truth I know this to be true I have high confidence that this is true because left leaning and right-leaning news sources are saying this is happening but then everything around it what we would call the fog of War everything around it is UN known it's wrapped in fog it hasn't been discovered yet it hasn't been reported yet it hasn't been stress tested or vetted yet so it's a foggier area it's an area of of missing information Vice your small pond or your small island of known information and as it's it's difficult for most people to actually put it into practice because it slows the world down why does it slow the world down because your two biggest enemies are Velocity and volume velocity and volume of information lead to confusion so if you can decrease the volume and slow down the speed to identify the true facts guess what you're fighting against the very same confusion you're trying to overcome right a big part of the reason that Intel failures happen a big part of the reason why Intel flaps and Intel mistakes happen is because professional Intelligence Officers try to slow things down and reduce the volume volume in terms of noise but also volume in terms of Mass to find the true facts that we can make something meaningful out of well sometimes in all the volume and all the speed nuggets of intelligence that are super relevant find their way in but you don't see them because they're hidden in the noise that's how 9/11 happened in many ways that's how October 7th happened in Israel right nuggets were hidden in the noise and unfortunately we didn't learn about that until after we had the time to do a post analysis and look back on what happened M you can reboot your life your health even your career anything you want all you need is discipline I can teach you the tactics that I learned while growing a billion- Dollar business that will allow you to see your goals through whether you want better health stronger relationships a more successful career any of that is possible with the mindset and business programs in Impact Theory University join the thousands of students who have already accomplished amazing things tap now for a free trial and get started today day I think it was sunzu that said um all of war is deception so I also have to imagine that within the noise there are a lot of um nuggets that are placed erroneously on purpose trying to point you in a completely different direction okay one thing is that the recipe for you or is there more it's a great so I would say the recipe is to to get a sense of the battlefield take in all sorts intelligence and then actually synthesize in addition to analyze the information analyzing me yeah okay I think you're about to do what I was going to ask analyzing the information means you take it in and you start to cross reference it to see where it aligns y That's analyzing the disagreeing things where they overlap right and then are you seeing Trends right that's all part of analysis synthesis then means that you take open gaps open question marks and you start to actively take steps to fill in those questions to fill in those missing spots so if you think of it an analysis is passive analysis is just taking what you find taking what you get and then creating a a document or a a grid that has gaps in it and then you pass it to somebody and say Here's my analysis we know these three things we don't know these three things synthesis is we know these three things we don't know these three things but here's how we will find the answer to these other these other missing spots when you and I start to synthesize the information that we have it starts to give us us a active tool that we can use to collect information we can go to people that we trust people that that we like talking to people that we know are bigger thinkers or look beyond the noise and we can start asking them their opinions you get to do this every day on your show you get to ask big questions of of people that are Advanced thinkers and you get to inform your own opinion every step of the way you are synthesizing every step of the way every time you have one of these interviews people who watch you are doing the same thing they're synthesizing through you they have gaps they want those gaps filled they trust you to help them fill those gaps but you're not the only source they have other people that they also learn from other people that they also follow the problem with our world the problem with the United States in many ways in my opinion is a lack not of analysis it's a lack of synthesis people accept the gaps and they assume what's happening in the Gap instead of actively trying to solve the question of what's happening in the Gap that's really interesting and I think super important and again abstracting it for people it does not matter what problem you were trying to think through whether it's Israel Hamas whether it is uh Ukraine Russia correct being a better parent getting a promotion starting a business whatever uh it's all going to run the same thing the the important part for me so I use slightly different vernacular to describe exactly the same thing so for me it's frame of reference getting people to understand that you have a frame of reference you see the world in a certain way you are a wash in biases you're a wash in certain emotions that you have to things so the way I explain to an entrepreneur is your job as a CEO is the world is a bunch of dots to your point it's data analysis you're getting a bunch of data in but it doesn't actually tell the story by itself you have to connect those dots now much like when we look up into the night sky for Millennia people saw animals and humans and all kinds of things in the shapes of the Stars it's not really there right those are just dots but we cannot help but from our frame of reference of being a human and the things that we know overlay things onto those patterns in the same way that you'll see a dog in the clouds or the shape of England which has happened to me many times because my wife happens to be from the UK so uh we will begin to see patterns in the dots and as a thinker again regardless of what you're aiming at thinking at that's your job your job is to connect the dots but you have to be hyper aware that emotions will make dots feel like they connect that don't actually con and if you don't distrust yourself you'll be like oh yeah that's a dog face oh yeah that's whatever Aries pulling back bow and arrow in the sky and people just yeah 100% that's what it is I I see the picture in the dots and to think through a novel problem well what you have to do is really step back and go cool I see a picture in this I really have a strong take on what this is but I know better I cannot trust my emotions they are probably making dos feel like they connect that don't actually connect I need to step back because you have to have that certainty to move forward right otherwise you just be forever analysis paralysis so I need a narrative that allows me to move forward but I need to also occasionally check in and be like I need to welcome disconfirming evidence because and this is a part we haven't talked about yet that I think is insanely important and dear anybody listening that wants to think well through a problem you must have a goal first yeah like for me the the way I think about when I get invited to be on a podcast is no one can make me say something I don't believe is true and so M go on any podcast like the only thing they can hope to do is like really like snip snip snip and like rearrange things in an order um I am admittedly easy to make sound crazy out of context but if somebody watches the whole thing like it's gonna it's going to be there so understanding that okay um I can go listen to things that I think are outright lunacy that you know whether it's far right far left whatever I it's not going to poison my mind to hear it to your point it's going to help me triangulate when I understand where people disagree what they're fighting over and then that helps me refine the way that I'm connecting the dots so that I can hopefully get closer and closer to the truth but the truth is my goal now why the truth how did the truth become my norstar when I'm looking at something like this because to me the truth has utility which completely reveals who I am and what I'm about I'm about something being useful now then it begs a question useful in what way and I think it is important to Define that and I think people should have goals that are honorable to me the best I can do and if somebody has a better answer I'm super here for it but the best I can do so far is to say all humans ought value judgment entirely all humans ought to strive to maximize human flourishing and minimize human suffering as much as possible I don't have a better one than that that's clearly not perfect The Human Experience does not seem to be perfect but at least if you're doing that like your real aim is hey as much as I can I'm going to try to alleviate human suffering I'm going to try to elevate people we can get into definitions of what that stuff is about I think it's beyond the scope of what we're saying now but what I'm trying to get people to understand is you have to have a goal there needs to be a thing that you can state that you are steering towards so that as you redraw your dots you're constantly asking what is more true in that when I look at this problem with this particular connection of dots it allows me to more accurately predict the outcome of my action once you can predict the outcome of your actions if I do this I will get this outcome that to me tells me that you're closer to ground truth that's why as we learn more about physics we're able to do more things so Newtonian physics first gave us the ability to land on the moon but it didn't give us the ability to do GPS for that we needed einan physics so it's understanding that o as we get closer to truth and even Einstein said well we still don't fully understand it and as we do we'll be able to do more things whether that's harnessing the power of an entire sun or an entire our galaxy whatever like as we understand physics better we will be able to do those things so that's that is a very tangible example of the modern world was born out of us getting closer to ground truth now when you were one step removed at Newtonian physics you still could do amazing things because you getting close enough to something true that you were able to do certain things but there will be a wall and so as your ability to predict the outcome of your actions breaks down you should immediately go ah interesting the way I have drawn these dots is not accurate enough for me to get to that next stage and so what piece of this is broken and this is where I find people don't even realize they have a frame of reference so I never think to like recheck like hey what's wrong with my way of thinking because things are not I'm not making progress towards my goal and therefore by definition I'm doing something quote unquote wrong which people are going to get hung up on that word but I'm doing something wrong and therefore I have to update my set of beliefs in order to make additional progress so I love that you again in in the way that I love sitting with you you bring up a million like I mean at least five different ways of looking at this question so what I'm going to focus in on is is this idea of truth because what you call truth I associate with fact and fact and Truth seem like they should be the same thing but they're different things because truth includes facts and beliefs whereas facts excludes beliefs and that I think was what you were getting at with the end of your question when you said that everybody looks through a lens of what they believe so for example I mean to go back to physics as an example right cernus was the one who suggested for the first time that maybe the Earth revolves around the Sun everything before that was that everything revolved around the earth right that was the facts that were known at the time even the world's astronomers at the time were able to map out the night sky and sunrises and sunsets and seasons back to the Earth and then the Roman Catholic Church also aligned with the same belief system everything revolves around the earth so the truth and the predominant set of facts at the time pointed to the to the idea that everything revolved around the earth cernus proposed something different that wasn't actually a provable fact until Newton right whatever that was 100 years later 50 years later so here you have what you're getting at facts are constantly being Unearthed wored and proven to be true because prior to it being a fact it's a hypothesis it's an idea but belief systems don't change as quickly as facts and belief systems play into the idea of what is a truth right uh some people believe that we should be making the world a better place by removing human suffering the Buddha believe that you it seems like that's something that's very important to you other people believe that you can make the world a better place by increasing the amount of success in the world that suffering will always be there so you can't really like don't try to stop the suffering Instead try to account for more success because the more success in the world the more the suffering will be raised right there will be suffering always there will be poor always that's a very Christian principle right so you've you've got these different belief sets that inform the truth that people then move from for me the utility is less about trying to get people to align on a singular truth and it's more about understanding each individual each individual's perceived truth and then using that position as your temporary frame of reference in order to have a productive conversation or productive exchange with that individual Why argue with a Muslim Why argue with a Buddhist Why argue with a Christian Why argue with a rabbi Why argue at all if you can just adopt temporarily and understand their frame of reference and then get them to do the produ thing that you're there to get them to do that's the utility part for me but do you think that's different than the way I see it I don't know that it's different but I wanted to call it out specifically because if it's different I want to learn from you where you where you see it similar where you see it differently but I also like one of the places where people quickly learn to agree or disagree with me is that I take a very binary approach to relationships I see all relationships as being transactional it doesn't mean that you're transacting money or transacting time or transacting favors but there has to be something of value that you're offering in exchange for something that you value from the other person when a relationship is not transactional there's no reason to invest in the relationship so for me I find that the way I maximize the transactional value of relationships is not by trying to get other people to see my point of view it's by me adopting and adapting to their point of view first and then if they're the kind of person that I assess as being open to a different point of view I'll present it but there are plenty of people who are not open to a different point of view and if you want to have a productive transactional exchange with that kind of person you just roll with their frame of reference yeah I think that's very wise um that to me it's interesting so all of these are linguistic traps that I think eat up so much of the planet and so many times when I hear people arguing on podcasts I'm like oh man I wish I could be the Arbiter because there there is an idea that I use a lot which is um I want to know if I accurately understand this person's base assumption and what I have found in my life is when two intelligent well-meaning people think that the other person is crazy it is because they either have different values or different base assumptions values have to do with what the world ought to be in their opinion and B assumptions have to do with a Mis uh a disagreement over what is true and I'm not a believer in posttruth world or Posta world but I think anybody who thinks that the truth is self-evident is a fool and the truth is brutally difficult to get to and for evidence of that we still don't understand physics not all the way so it's like we understand it well enough to do some amazing things but we don't understand it all the way and so if we can all agree to Max Plank's quote that science does not Advance one Insight at a time but rather one funeral at a time it's because people can't to your point adjust what they think is true that's crazy and you said I think beliefs don't update as quickly as facts it's like yeah okay so people end up getting trapped by their frame of reference which has a whole host of baggage but also people just get lost in work words they don't take the time to define the words and even if they do oh my God it is so hard to get somebody to like really understand what we mean by this one of the most important things my wife and I ever did to make our relationship last was Define a small set of key words that were like this is what this word means now and forever for us and so it became easier to navigate a relationship so I think people get lost in that probably more effective than people getting lost and defining every term would be to say what's your goal I think that's incredibly important and when people can say what their goal is in a single sentence with no parentheticals and run-ons just like a really tight concise 25 to 35W sentence it's like this is what I'm trying to achieve okay word so if I know that's what you're trying to achieve and you're telling me to do this thing which sounds absolutely crazy now this is where I come in as a writer and I say huh if I were writing this person as a character because they think they're the hero right no one thinks they're the villain ever right so they think they're the hero what would they need to believe is true in order for the hero to want to do this thing in order to accomplish that goal and then I'm doing what you advise which is I'm now stepping inside their frame of reference and I'm saying oh my God okay cool and so I'll just ask people is the following base assumption how you view the world and they either say yes and I'm like okay wow I I me not agree with you but now I understand you and now I can actually steal man your argument I can say this is what you believe and I can say where we're colliding is this you have this base assumption and I have that base assumption or you have this goal which is hey don't worry about suffering everyone's going to suffer suffering is fine and I'm all about trying to alleviate human suffering and so now at least we actually know where we're colliding and man if I could give that gift to people again regardless of what you're trying to accomplish and so one thing I really want to put a fine point on that you said because I think it's really brilliant is not trying to persuade people instead trying to understand them once you understand them then it's like oh wow okay now I have a rough approximation of at least the caricature of that's the wrong word because that has too much baggage I have at least a low Fidelity sense of your world view and so now you become a lot more predictable to me which means I'm a lot closer to ground truth of who you are and at least I can my predictive engine doesn't break anymore so there's two things I want to I want to present in that accompany what your what your statement is right there right the first is that you present to people the idea like here is what I understand your base assumption to be there's a concept in Espionage that we call priming or analytical overlay to go back to your conversation about seeing dogs and the Stars very similar things right analytical overlay is when someone's predominant understanding through life experience in education overlays how they view all new information right so they have a a set of Base assumptions you can in a low Fidelity way identify what those base assumptions are because they went to a private school in London or because they grew up in Boston or because they grew up with a military family you can start to create an assessment of what their base assumptions might be and then you can test those base assumptions to verify and confirm that your assessment is accurate or inaccurate ultimately leading to a point where you understand why they see a German Shepherd in the Sky versus an English terrier in the sky right because of their analytical overlay combine that with this idea of priming priming is when you present an idea and by presenting the idea they have no option but to have that idea essentially incept into their brain it's like when I look at you and I say Tom whatever you do right now don't think of the color orange I've already thought of the color orange of course right and you thought of color and you thought of thoughts right so you've been primed in multiple areas so now when I follow up in that question I say Tom real quick tell me what your favorite juice is you have to fight not to say orange juice right even if it's not true even if it's not true you've been primed so what jumps to mind is what you were just primed to believe what you were just primed to say so when it comes to this world of information this world of fast moving High Velocity high volume information you can be primed and then immediately be confirmed because they'll Prime you with information ask you a follow-up question how do you feel about this and now we're going to Jane on camera 2 and Jane what do the what does the audience think about this right well the audience just got primed to think exactly what you just told them to think so when you put them on the spot and you and you force them in a high velocity situation you're going to have a high likelihood of the primed thought being what comes right back so when you ask somebody I is your my understanding that your base assumption is this you're doing two things one you're priming them of what you believe their base assumption to be so even if you're 80% accurate 10 20% inaccurate they've now been primed with what you told them you understand their base assumption to be so they're their natural inclination is going to be to agree with things that maybe aren't fully accurate but they feel on the spot to answer and they've been primed and it's it's within easy grasp for them to just regurgitate it and say it out loud that's part of priming if you then Prime them about a base assumption that you've assumed through an analysis of their own background you also have this idea of analytical overlay on top of that so you you run the risk of getting a confirmation that isn't fully accurate if um how do you avoid that like if you really want to know what's true you're not trying to paint somebody in a corner however people usually don't know what's driving their own thinking correct and so you have to help them by saying here's what it sounds like you're saying and that's I think you nailed you nailed a fact right there and then a truth which like I said facts and truths for me aren't the same thing the fact is people don't know what they're thinking absolute fact even though you and I as much time as we spend thinking think we know what we're thinking we still don't really know what we're thinking that's why I'm sure that you spend time just thinking and you jot down notes and you review your notes and then you're like that's not quite right you've done it on this podcast already where you're like that that caricature is not the right word I have to pick that apart even more here in real time even as I say it you are able to think about thinking in real time when most people can't so then you have to understand that most people don't know what they're thinking and don't realize they don't know what they're thinking so for sure they are they don't know what they're saying because they can't even think at the speed that they can talk you have to build that into your assessment of people always going back to the idea that if you are trying to win in life if you are trying to win in business and in entrepreneurialism if you're trying to succeed it's not about trying to get other people to learn that's your truth your truth is I have to help them that's your truth I have to help them think I have to help them say what they're thinking the fact is they don't know what they're thinking how could you possibly help somebody to say what they're thinking if they don't even know what they're thinking instead you're helping them to say something so that they can get off the because this is really uncomfortable to them to think about thinking that was a big Whirlpool of malstrom ideas did it did it make sense to you it does but I still have the follow-up question which is um I don't I'm not trying to plant an idea in their mind I I will say this there are times where I am trying to plant an idea in their mind it's what I call trapping somebody with their own value system which is very effective and I should do like a whole class on that because oh my God however in this case I'm I'm trying to refine my own toolkit and help anybody listening develop their toolkit around thinking through a novel problem well and for that I need to be able to actually really just understand the situation I'm really imagine I'm not trying to plant anything in anybody's mind I'm really just trying to figure out where are you at but people will talk in circles they will be and run on sentences I get into this all the time where I will finally just have to say to people hey like that is the world's longest S I asked you for a single sentence on this you've been talking for three minutes so um then I'll start saying what I think I hear you saying is this is that accurate and so we have a thing here at impact Theory where I'll say I want to get to the point where you say the exact words you understand my position perfectly and you'll usually get to like yeah you've got the Essence no no no so I'm missing something what part am I missing so anyway how do you without planting something in somebody's mind or priming them how do you unearth what they're thinking I the utility of information for me is to never disclose the full extent of the information I understand it's something we call in in Espionage terms we call it information superiority even in your marriage so my marriage is is a different animal because in my marriage my wife and I we try to operate a level of transparency y mainly because we can both we've both been trained to see non-transparency all right so give me both angles so one where first give me the I'm trying to conceal okay but then I'll want to go through when you're in transparency mode with your wife or anybody else what does that look like so when I'm trying to conceal I'm in receive mode and I'm I'm I'm I validate I authenticate I confirm right this is what you believe internally you're like okay I think he believes this how do you verify it I I ask a follow-up related question let's say something that's 10% different to see if I get what I the answer I expect to get and then I'll push myself another 10% and another 10% until I find the boundary and I'm getting it wrong right so when somebody says something like you know uh I think it's so crazy that Dunkin' Donuts puts you know uh makes donut sandwiches right I also think it's crazy that Dunkin Donuts makes donut sandwiches but are they saying it's crazy cool or are they saying it's crazy sick and gross so I've got to ask a question that's 10% off right like oh do you do you think that it's just too sweet or do you think that like do you think this the sweetness goes well with the Savory and then eventually you'll get to the place where they're just like oh it's just so gross why would you put meat between two Donuts ah now I know where you're at rather than coming out and saying are you saying that you think it's gross or are you saying that you think it's cool because as soon as I ask that direct question they now know that I don't know what they're thinking up until that they assumed that what they communicated was crystal clear I don't want to give them the advantage of knowing what I do and don't understand instead I can create a whole conversation which means I can create a whole relationship a whole series of transactions I can build what we call called social capital or social currency by engaging in a conversation about something as low stakes as doughnut sandwiches and that's what's really valuable when if you think about somebody who's trying to build relationship someone who's trying to build a develop a business relationship for a client someone who's trying to uh uh build a a promotional uh argument with their boss the thing that you need the most is to just have some sort of capital transactional exchange with the person in control of that fate the client the customer the Romantic partner the boss the way that you build that is through a series of transactions where they feel validated authenticated and heard if you can make them feel like you understand them they just have to feel it it doesn't have to be true and we know that the brain accepts emotional decisions before factual decisions so if you can make someone feel like you agree with them even if you don't you're actually giving them more value than they're giving you you have control of that relationship so in in my approach to to business in my approach to relationships in my business in my approach to most Elements of Life I'm trying to understand where the other person is coming from without disclosing where I stand on that topic until I get to a place where I have enough information that validates that that where I stand is close to where they stand and then I will disclose that and in an effort to bring that relationship even closer together right that's how I handle it in general all right what about when you're in full transparency mode in full transparency mode with my wife what I'll do is I'll overe explain right I will tell her here's what I'm thinking here's what I'm feeling here's where I'm coming from and not only will I tell her what I understand about my position I will also tell her about what I don't understand about my position right so as an example uh I'm I do a TV show I'm on a TV show with History Channel it's my second season I've been traveling for about 5 months now I've got one more month of travel I travel somewhere between 25 and 35 days at a time oh my God and then I'm home for 5 days or 10 days right so I'm missing out on these core months of my children my 10-year-old son my six-year-old daughter and at the beginning of the season they they had a high tolerance for me being gone they're accustomed to me traveling they're even accustomed to be traveling for months at a time but they're not accustomed to be traveling for six months months at a time it's half a year so when I for Christmas I was home with my wife and I'm walking her through my feelings about missing these elements of my children's lives and I'm I'm telling her like here's what I know I feel I know I feel guilty I know I feel sad I know I miss them I know that I'm doing it to help build the business and to help build the brand and to help you know it's we live in a world where the best currency is eyeballs and awareness and I know I'm building all that and I know I'm building that for them but it still hurts and I don't know what to do with the hurt and I feel like I'm letting you down and I don't even know why I feel like I'm letting you down because I'm bringing you a good paycheck and I'm giving you a good life and I talk to you as often as I can but I know you're still suffering because you have anxiety and because you have you know you you didn't sign up to be a mom without a dad there to help you and no matter how many nannies and cooks and cleaners I hire it's not the same thing as having a husband and I just kind of put it in full transparency mode I frontend load what I know and what I don't know and then I let her respond and in that response what I often find is that some of the things I don't know become known because a lot of what I don't know is tied to how she perceives something but also when you have somebody that you're so close to that you can give that level of transparency their inputs connect dots that you couldn't connect previously or they highlight places where you connected dots incorrectly and you can push back on that and you can you can confirm that and you can find great comfort and relief when you have those few people that you can open that level of transparency too yeah I uh want that for everyone when you have somebody like that that you can trust that is your equal uh that helps you think through things that can see things in yourself that you can't see going back to trying to more accurately connect the dots even just from a utilitarian standpoint it's amazingly helpful um but even just from a oh my god it feels nice to be seen and to share a life and all that stuff it it really is incredible but yeah I find most people struggle there one they probably don't know their own edges of what they understand and what they don't understand um they don't know how to process out loud and begin to map out their own thinking yeah it's uh this goes back to one of the first things I said which is people are way too easy to confuse it's just people have a really hard time with nuanced positions and then even if they can sort of touch it for a second it then goes away and they need a caricature accurately use this time uh to hold on to and that's the fun thing about an impression or an actual caricature drawing is with you know very little detail I can convince you that that is who you think it is like if I'm doing a caricature of you if I get the hair right like you know yeah people G be like oh yeah got it um so it's really interesting how you can with very little information however it's not super accurate and so yeah if people can't get to the nuanced part of it they in real trouble so here's here's where I would love your input for sure so I was just telling you that everyday spy crossed the million dollar Mark yes and I'm very excited congratulations thank very much amazing man I'm very excited to run top 9% of all businesses it's an incredible feeling it's amazing and it's incredible to know that we're we're really just starting facts and it's it's so I'm beyond the moon in terms of excitement but at the same time a a part of how we got there is not by trying to create truths for people it's not like we were trying to uh push against the predominant way of thinking instead what we were doing was presenting what we believed to be facts here's factual systems here's factual processes here's factual information that we have seen work for us that I've have seen work for me that may work for you or may work for your business or may work for your relationship or may work for your health and your Fitness right but we always presented it we always targeted and marketed to people where they were according to their own existing current beliefs their own existing current truths their own existing current analytical overlay we primed them with thoughts in our marketing campaigns we we essentially reached out to use a a spy a spy concept we reached out to them where they were we didn't try to reach out to them aspirationally to where they were going we tried to reach out to them where they were and the reason I say that is because you know as you seek to share truth I I admire that I I value that I honor that I don't intend to build a business that's trying to share truth as much as I have found the success of listening and adapting to where people are and then entrepreneurially marketing to them where they are mhm and building that connection with them where they are so that you can essentially get into their head into their mind into their heart and gain that transactional exchange that turns into a relationship that becomes a long-term Customer because the customer will do what you ask them to do to get the outcomes that are predictable only if they do the work that you've asked them to do is there a flaw in that is it is it is there a layer of evolution that you can add to that I I'm I am now asking completely selfishly um well it's interesting so you I don't know that there is a layer to that that isn't individual so uh when I look at companies that are perfectly happy to sell people what they want rather than what they need I get very jealous because I can't do it and there's something about my wiring where I'm only interested in selling you what I know you actually need because otherwise I feel like a fake and I [ __ ] hate that and so I I understand about myself and this is why I tell people and and this is self-revelatory maybe more than it is universally accurate but it is so true of me I cannot say anything else and that is all that matters in life is how you feel about yourself when you're by yourself again that's a confession so all I care about is how I feel about myself I do I won't say I don't care about what other people think but if I feel like I've really honored my values and I've showed up and I fought for the things that I believe are right if the world were to um at some point misunderstand me and try to malign me or whatever that wouldn't damage me I would be very sad because it will disrupt my ability to build my business but I would think of it like that like oh this is really messing up my ability to build a business because people have the wrong idea about who I am and what I'm trying to accomplish and I believe in what I'm trying to do and trying to accomplish or if the world suddenly was like um help helping to eliminate human suffering and uh increasing human flourishing that's ass bro and like why are you pursuing that then I'd be like all right you guys are out of your [ __ ] minds so I have such an internal anchor on that is that just being objectively what all say is true I know we use that word very differently um but that to me is the intersection of ought and is ought being a value judgment and is being I actually think that's how the world works that if you Empower people to navigate novel problems well they will based on the evolutionary algorithms that run in all of our minds they will have a neurological state that I'll call fulfillment that is the thing people should be aiming for it's the only Pleasant feeling that can survive grief as an example so if you're in grief like that's going to suck no matter what but a bowl of ice cream does not give you happiness in the middle of grief in the way that fulfillment still gives you an anchor of I'm proud of who I am even though right now the loss of my wife or my mother or whatever is just it's grueling so that that's is an not to me and that's what I'm aiming for I'm trying to help as many people exist in that neurological State as often as possible now where that gets complicated is where because of frame of reference the thing that makes you feel good about yourself is something that creates like atrocity and hey welcome back to the the Israel Hamas conversation so it it's that is really fascinating but I don't think there's a way to escape that because such is the nature of the algorithms running in the human mind which is why these problems have no sort of absolute solution but I think that there are Ways to Think through these problems well so we'll get to that in a second but to to just officially answer your question you will Thrive so if you can do that from a business perspective and sell people what they want you will do very well because people will pay for what they want all day long um what I fear is that at some point the money won't solve the problem you will start looking to but are we actually helping people if you're at all wired the way that I am that question is going to occur to you aggressively but I look at people I'll let them remain namess but I look at some of the big names and this will often happen with sales guys and they make a ton of money a ton of money but I cringe I could not do it no matter how much money you told me I could make the way that would make me feel about myself I couldn't do it and that holds me back but since I believe the only thing that really matters is how I feel about myself that's been my life that all the money in the world if I don't like who I am that's a one-way path to Suicide so uh I don't want to be rich and killing myself that that just doesn't strike me as interesting in the slightest and yet people take that life path so anyway that that for me would be the only thing and I don't know if you're wired like I'm so maybe that's just like no I'll be fine I don't know know what's funny is uh is one of the things and I find that entrepreneurialism has been the best teacher possibly ever because the the market teaches you lessons oh yes my friend customers teach you lessons experimentation teaches you lessons and one of the big lessons that I feel like I've learned is the the the truth behind the 8020 rule right and and how powerful that 8020 rule really is and when I think of it specifically what I've seen it play out in my audience base is that when I try to when I try really hard to Market what people need I have of 100% of of buyers 80% won't complete it correct 20% will well 80% probably more won't even buy it yeah that's for sure that's the first level right 80% won't buy it 20% will of the 20% that does buy it 80% won't finish it 20% will now there I have solutions for you and then and then but second that at the same time when I AB test that against an 8020 rule what they want the same mathematical principle RS out of the 100% of people that buy it 80% don't complete it 20% do so I bring it up not as a as a lesson for me as much as something that I have found to be absolutely critical to reaching the point where I am in my business is understanding the mathematical principles the the datadriven facts that exist behind sales in marketing that whether you Market to what they want or whether you Market to what they need there may be different conversions at first but then when it comes to the actual adopters human behavior Reigns out 80% don't complete it 20% will so you have to have a plan for recapturing the 80% that don't complete it because if they don't complete it they don't get the outcome if they don't get the outcome you're not changing any lives so I mean the mission of our company is to use spy education to break barriers so just like you I am very much in the business of breaking barriers if we're not breaking barriers we're not doing business sales sales a sales right money is just a way of counting the number of lives that we're touching because it's very hard to get people to raise their hand and say you changed my life you changed my life it's much easier to be like we changed a million dollars worth in lives this year we're going to try to change $3 million in lives next year it's something you can actually measure but what's fascinating to me is that the the moral quandry of how you Market what you Market what you sell is often times uh less relevant than how you drive people towards the outcome that you're trying to get them to achieve because once they taste outcome they become lifetime customers but you got to get them to outcome first yeah you have to get them to outcome and very quickly yes yeah getting people to outcome quickly is the name of the game that that when I said oh I have a solution for you there that's exactly the solution is you have to figure out how to class something how to get them to feel something as a win very quickly um You probably have 60 minutes if you don't get somebody to feel something directionally obviously you're not going to get them to the final outcome but if you can get them directionally to feel like oh wow I had a little victory in the right way pointed in the right direction uh if you can't get that to them quickly then they just won't stick with it much to my dismay but such as human nature now we could really derail on that but um I want to come back to Israel and Hamas so this is um this is going to be a really good case test for I think we did a pretty good job of laying out how to Think Through very difficult problems um and this is a maybe the intractable problem of our times and so I seriously doubt that you and I will come to a a three-step plan that they can Implement and look we saw World Peace everybody and get the the Nobel Peace Prize for this podcast though that will be the aim let's try it yes right so uh but I do want to deploy this now as as we go through this so this is not a topic that I'm deeply familiar with um but I really believe it's important for people to um show their work what I mean by that is on this podcast what I'm constantly doing is showing people how I think through problems and all the success that I've had is this thing that I do live on the podcast this is how I encounter a difficult problem in my marriage this is how I encounter a difficult problem in business and I go through this thing um and so it is what we laid out earlier all right so we know that step one is mapping the terrain so walk me through what is going on so when you take a look at the battlefield here not the not the literal battlefield but the the landscape of Israel and Palestine what you have is something that in many ways goes all the way back to biblical days Abraham who's the father of all Nations had two sons Ishmael and Isaac Ishmael became the father of Islam Isaac became the father of Judaism and on to become the father of Christianity so the conflict that exists between Palestine a Muslim country or m a Muslim uh group and Israel a Jewish largely predominantly Jewish group essentially is the the generational ongoing conflict between Isaac and ishma and is there so forgive me dear listeners but I think of this is a story uh and a very powerful story but one designed to convey things at each branch so between the brothers I have to imagine there was a tale that we learn about each brother each brother represents something what do the brothers represent so I I don't I am not creative enough I think to speak to the literary Jordan Peterson no for real like this is his whole shtick like showing how basically modern Humanity can be read through the lens of religious traditions and what those sto tell you most people haven't read his book maps of meaning it is unbelievably good uh anyway so okay so that part we don't have that's we have a DOT point that has a gap maybe we won't be able to fill it in here but I get your point so we've got the two brothers they create two different traditions and they both lay they both have valid claim all the way back to the biblical a valid claim of what a valid claim all the way back to biblical and or chonic tradition to being tied to the father of all Nations okay what does that matter because for both of them what they're what they're really trying to say is that they have a right to survive in in equality that they are tied to the father of all Nations but does this come down to hey we're tied to the father of all Nations and that manifests as dirt and so this dirt and rock is rightfully mine uh I think that's the oversimplified way that the Western world has is it oversimplified or is that really what like at some point this manifests as something either ideological or tangible so the the place where it becomes tangible and ideological is in the end of World War II at the end of World War II the Jewish diaspora that had been hunted and killed by the Nazi party needed a a a country of their own and because other countries in the world didn't want to take on the refugees they essentially took them all to the Palestinian state that is now known as Israel and was and the West the Western allies granted the boundaries of Israel and said this is where the Jews should live this is where Jerusalem exists this is where the this is this is their Homeland where they were born where they came from going back to the brothers going back to the brothers but the Palestinian Muslims were already there they had never been displaced from their Homeland so by having the West create a nation state create boundaries and everything for a group of religious people Jews that were persecuted during World War I now all of a sudden the West defined the organizational uh National structure of Israel and that's where the conflict really started because now you had Western allies saying this is the Jewish State the Jewish State defining itself as Israel the Palestinian diaspora who were now being forced from their own Homeland land saying but we were already here like this is this is Jerusalem is the city where a where uh Muhammad ascended into heaven like this is a holy place for us too and so the West was just like well then you can both share it we're going home right we got we got a party after VE day we're done here and that's where everything started from there you also then had Western Powers funding and fueling the economic success of Israel and by the way I just want people listening at home uh you are providing a very fast painting I know enough to know that there's you know God only knows how much history of conflict before 1948 where these boundaries are laid and all that stuff this I I just want people to understand this is an exercise on how to think through a difficult problem this is not a um a one for one accurate representation of everything you will need a far longer video from experts in this field we we go into this conversation fully understanding that um but I do think to the initial framing of this episode I think it's very important to understand what I'm trying to do uh I think putting your head down is the wrong move at this particular moment in history there are probably times that come and go throughout history where it is okay to put your head down and for the first 40 years of my life I had my head down and it worked out wonderfully uh but this moment feels different now that could be a mirage maybe it's just my age and everybody sort of pokes their head up at this point in their age and starts thinking the way that I'm thinking I don't know but this moment really does feel different to me and we'll get into Ai and some other things later I think there are a lot of threats on the board right now um certainly AI technology social media all of that we talked about velocity and volume of information earlier all of that's a play so anyway I just want to set that stage so the comment doesn't waste time with like the boring [ __ ] like because yes simplistic Viewpoint here from the setting of the table we'll talk okay but what do you do now right um and what I really hope because I I think that the comments are going to end up being a big part of what makes this episode um useful to a larger audience so I hope that we can eliminate some of the more I don't want people to get bogged down in the wrong thing so yes many details to talk about we just need to set a quick table so that then we can talk about things like hey when humans have a historical conflict over who has a right to the land without getting lost in the minutia of that how do you move forward and that just again so we're setting the table sorry no so it's fair so I'll I'll set the table faster too no no no I don't need you to set it faster because I know no matter how much you do we're we're not going to get there the more detail you have give it to me for sure okay fair enough so so then what ended up happening was now we have uh as as the West places uh the Jewish diaspora into Israel and and and supports the establishment of of a Jewish State we then also have the responsibility of the West in fueling the economy for the Jewish State because you can't I mean we did the same thing in Japan we're going to rebuild there's economic benefits to the United States in rebuilding foreign countries there's economic benefits in having allies that you help economically rebuild so fast forward till today and now you have Israel had this massive boost economically from Western partners and Western allies when they were placed in Israel those the Palestinian counterparts did not have access to that Financial benefit that the Israelis did so there's like you said Decades of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and there's everything's documented out there and there's a thousand ways that you can look at it interpret it and whatever else but in the end what what happened was the the Palestinians through the lens of most Muslim countries became oppressed became ostracized from their own like their own land their own Nation where they could Thrive and to build an economy and build a political establishment and build a legacy for their future because that land was being supported and developed by the Jewish State and the Jewish State and the Muslim State just didn't want to get along for a number of reasons that that we don't really have a say in because we didn't live there at the time right and that's how that's how interpret uh the many years of historical conflict between Palestinians and Israelis in that country the place where we have to fast forward this to is till 1997 in 1987 Hamas became a political group that was supporting Palestinians in their fight to resist what was perceived to be Israeli oppression Hamas became the more aggressive group versus the Palestinian Authority which became what's known as a secular group or a non-religious group and those became the two the two political powers vying for support from the Palestinian people and at the time in 1987 the vast majority of that support went to the Palestinian Authority not to Hamas hamas's promise at the time was we will destroy the Israeli country and we will return the entire country back to the Muslim people not a religious War they weren't going after killing Jews they were trying to destroy Israel not that it makes it that much better but at least to clarify what their Ambitions were in 1987 nobody determined that Hamas was a terrorist organization in 1987 despite their claim despite their promise to eradicate Israel in 1997 following major terrorist attacks inside the United States the peak being the Timothy McVey bombing uh of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City the United States became very focused on terrorism and counterterrorism and in 19 1987 they created the terrorist watch list or the foreign terrorist organization list and in that list they listed every Muslim extremist group as a terrorist organization on that list Hamas was included so at that moment in time in 1997 based on what was happening in the United States in their struggle with extremism they targeted Muslim extremism as one of the other one of the many extremisms that they would list as terrorist organizations that's why even today the United States lists Hamas as a terrorist group where most of the rest of the world does not there's even country like there's only 12 countries total that that list Hamas as a terrorist organization and in many ways it's because those 12 countries there's 11 countries Take the Lead they follow the lead of the United States the UN as an organization does not list Hamas as terrorist so in 1997 Hamas becomes a terrorist group but there this terrorist group that also has a political arm that's supporting and taking care of the Palestinian people within Gaza that's already kind of a mess that becomes complicated right Palestine can't create a standing army they can't create their own standing economy they can't create foreign trade they can't create anything significant because they don't have they're not recognized as a nation so a few Muslim countries like Qatar and and Saudi Arabia and Egypt recognize the Palestinian people but not the Palestinian State and everybody recognizes the right of the Palestinians to a state but nobody wants to say what that state is going to be so that becomes a mess that most of the first world doesn't even follow doesn't really care about until things start blowing up in Israel and Palestine October 7th 2023 this group known as Hamas based out of Gaza conducts this massive incursion the the most doctrinally correct word is it was an incursion across a border within one country closest to a civil war much closer to a civil war than an attack from a foreign Nation right they carry out this incursion that uses terrorist tactics terrorist tools but also targets military targets for a political goal that has been stated and consistent since 1987 now we live in this world where what is this thing that's happening the United States labels the group as a terrorist group however all humanitarian Aid that we send to Palestine has to go through Hamas like they control the politics they control the governance they control the hospitals not terrorist Al-Qaeda never controlled hospitals right that's it's it's not as clear as we think it is but it's hard to get that Nuance across with the velocity and volume of information so now we live in this world where velocity and volume of information make it so that we all see the dead B and the the crying children and the dying women on the Palestinian side but we also read about the atrocities that were executed against these Israelis in a surprise attack on October 7th we're faced with all the information and there's no clarity as to what's really the Nuance what's really the the battlefield what are we really looking at here so you've got Israel trying to counter what they know is a is a threat to their National sovereignty but they've also got a problem with group that was created because of the oppression they put on the Palestinian people and that's that is what the group States is their whole their whole core purpose the reason they exist at all is because of that oppression so you've got this this absolute mess that the world is watching play out dayto day but at the same time the world isn't invested enough to actually try to resolve the conflict how often are you checking your credit score afraid rate of identity theft or account breaches we all use the internet every single day for important things like Personal Banking and remote work so why not protect yourself with our sponsor Aura Aura is an all-in-one cyber security service that keeps you safe online AA identifies data Brokers exposing your info and submits opt out requests on your behalf Ora also monitors your credit tracks your passwords for data breaches and secures your online activity with VPN and anti malware protection you can try Aura for free for 2 weeks by clicking the link in the description or scanning the QR [Music] code okay um so one I want to acknowledge that that is a sketch from a perspective um again speaking to the comment section right now um of course there are going to be different perspectives on that I don't know this well enough to feel like I have a perspective Ive but I will lay out a few things that I am aware of um as a way of filling in additional color to your point about um trying to triangulate based on opposing viewpoints and I think yours is a from the different voices that I've heard yours is relatively sedate there are people that are far sort of harder on the Palestinian side though I'd say you lean Pro Palestinian I don't know if that feels right to you um but that seems reasonable you're pretty middle of the road but if you have a lean it's that way um so some of the other ships that I've heard by way of putting dots that that people will have to connect as they try to build a narrative that creates the emotion that allows them to have a way of thinking how to move forward would be okay you mentioned the Jews are coming out of the Holocaust you've just had six million people in the diaspora literally at an industrial level um killed in unimaginably horrific ways and I can only imagine you started this by saying like they're able to trace all of this back to the brothers and the split and and the way that that sort of goes and you mentioned compasses earlier and if you get off by three degrees in the beginning doesn't seem like much but you know a thousand years later uh there's a huge Gulf between you which is very much what this feels like I bring that up to say that um you really can go back and back and back on who owns the land you can go back and back and back on who did who wrong and so I'm trying to find like where it all started is probably not super fruitful um but there if you're the Israelis or if you're a Jew post World War II uh never again we're going to be strong this time we're going to build a nation state that nation state has to be somewhere we go back to the region of Judea which is where they derive their name from so to your point they were um removed from their Homeland but still very much um spiritually that probably is is the right word but there's a thing there where they still have a massive identity in that region that they're tied to even all these years later um also it's my understanding that there was no official Palestinian state so it's not like the Jews went in and took over a state so the West I'm now guessing I want to be very clear about sort of where I'm teleporting myself into the mind of somebody and when I'm offering what I think are facts now I am very much speaking like a writer would speak but if I'm the west and I'm like me there's no State here anyway I don't really fully understand the conflict I can see bad things coming cuz I'm smart and I understand humans well enough there's probably going to be some drama here which is why the US actually pulls their support at one point of this whole idea um but nonetheless it's like well we'll do it we'll bone out to your point we want to go celebrate we've just won World War II um and I don't see a better solution so let's see what happens um through all of that there are times where um a two-state solution has been proposed the Palestinians reject it there's the whole notion of from The River To The Sea they don't believe that there's any amount of Israel that can exist I'm using the word Israel very intentionally as opposed to Jews um this is where I don't know it well enough to know if that accur accurately captures the spirit it certainly accurately captures the pr that is very much how it is presented no no no this isn't about religious difference this is not a racist thing this is just purely Israel has occupied our land that is rightfully ours and we want to get rid of the nation state of Israel of course functionally the way that you do that is by killing people ripping them tearing them from their land because they will of course fight back if they were all just willing to up and leave then sure but we know that that's not going to happen so uh multiple times that's offered and rejected for the reasons that I just laid out um and you end up in a position now where um you gave me a piece that I had not heard before so it's very interesting because I looked at this and was like okay uh Israel ends up thriving economically and Palestine has not now of course um I'm aware of the positioning of it's an open air prison how could they ever hope to you have these people that um have just subjugated them and of course the economy is never going to grow uh what I had never heard before and it's very interesting is well the West really helped them when they were in that nent fragile place the West helped them get their feet under them I think it begs a question what have been doing with the aid that they've gotten because it's billions of dollars and so one would hope that they would be spending that on infrastructure so anyway this is where I now start going okay I don't know how many more pieces it makes sense to put on the table because I have a base assumption that now we're just getting into who's right and who's wrong I have a base assumption that this will continue to be an intractable problem if you are approaching this from right and wrong which is why again as a headline reader the Abraham Accords strike me as very um positive because it was just human greed to use a terrible word for something that maybe isn't bad at all which is when people are thriving economically the people feel good you feel like you have a future you have hope that your kids lives will be better than yours and when you get people in that kind of momentum now they're pointed in a positive direction so again I'm leaking my base assumptions here so my base assumption is you have to give the Palestinian people a sense of a future uh that their kids lives would be better than theirs that you want to fill them with hope and optimism and all of that now you're not going to do that with the who's right and who's wrong now I happen to have a weird sort of thing in my life that makes me maybe look at things a little bit differently again frame of reference this is bias now but my wife's family is from Cyprus and for people that don't know the history of Cyprus it is freakishly similar to the Israel Palestine conflict you had Greeks and Turks living on the same Little Island if You' never looked it up like this is not a big place uh living on the same island and one day in the 70s I think late 60s early 70s uh the Turks invade and they cut the island in half and the people on North side of the island my wife's family included they're just stripped of everything this house isn't yours it was yours Monday morning when you woke up Monday night it's not your house we've seen these videos play out in Israel Palestine so we know this drama and I mean gut-wrenching as you can imagine you literally lose everything in an instant man like I I can't imagine like if if tonight this house and everything that I own ceased to be mine that would be obviously the most traumatic thing that ever happened to me in my life so brutal the crazy thing is that you don't have the same ongoing Bloodshed between the Greeks and the Turks and so it makes me ask what is different because you have the same sense of the Greeks like that's not their land to take they have no right to that land that was our land we were kicked out of it it's rightfully ours you can trace it back so much you know history of Greeks occupying the island raising it you know from nothingness taming it all that like I mean the Greeks have a very long history and so and I'm sure the Turks would say the same thing right so even though you have all of that you have not got the same s like they've managed to reach stability so the question becomes what what is different and this is where it seems to me that you have to at least be exploring the ideologies and what's happening and again you're never going to get either side to give up their religion so I for me as I think through this difficult problem I'm just saying whatever solution you're going to propose has to take that off the table you cannot ask them to go oh the other person's right their religion is correct they're not going to do that you can't ask them to go uh you're right we're we're just going to move out of Israel and hand it over they're never going to do that and given that in 2005 the Jews pulled out of the West Bank and out of the Gaza Strip and it didn't solve the conflict so they even if another was like hey but if you just leave this area then everything really will be fine they don't a reason to believe like historically just the way the humans are they're going to be like no we tried that and it didn't work so you got to take that off the table so now it when I think about okay as I tell entrepreneurs all the time if you have a difficult problem to solve ask yourself has anybody solved this problem in the past and if you want to look at it from a paride cool look at South Africa what what did they get right um or look at some of the countries where a new nation state was born and is that the right way to handle this and then you can start at least mapping out why those would or wouldn't work and from what I hear because the first time I heard of a two-state solution I was like that makes sense to me do a two yeah perfect I can't believe I didn't think of that right and uh and then everyone's like yeah no nobody considers that realistic anymore but that feels like the thing we have to find out that that is a gap that we'll never be able to resolve this until we find out why why having a two-state solution won't work do you think I'm crazy about that or because that to me feels like you have to put your finger on that and say why doesn't the two-state solution exist the first argument I think is going to be Israel has no right to exist they they occupied this territory and then I'm like I get it Cyprus again horrible [ __ ] if you want to get the the people that I know and love in tears all you need to do is talk about that day so I I have seen a similar heartache up close but it that it's just that's going to be militaristic right that's that's guns death Bloodshed and is that really a game you want to play when Israel is a way more accomplished military probably not do you want it spreading wider in the region speaking as a guy in America so discount my opinion because I'm not in it that sounds horrible to me um and again let me leak my bias I'm making the base assumption that we should be trying to avoid death if if that isn't on somebody's bingo card that's where we'll disconnect we'll be two ships passing night anyway so I put my finger on that that feels like the thing that has to be addressed and if the punchline is from The River To The Sea all this left is military so yeah what where where does any of that thinking go wrong in terms of just finding the thing that we have to say we have to understand this thing I don't know that I would label any of that thinking as wrong there's a couple of places where I would I think it's worth clarifying so like I mentioned earlier I I tend to look at everything through a lens of practicality right value fact vast versus truth right and you made a base assumption about me earlier you tried to verify it that I'm Pro Palestine I've never I I pull heavy from my Espionage background and one of the key things that was taught to me by the director of CIA by General Petraeus was you don't disclose your position because if you just as soon as you disclose your position you've disclosed your position I was mentioning that to you earlier about information superiority right I've never disclosed my position I should have asked you 10% questions I will I will disclose my position for you oh word right so impact Theory exclusive for anybody who cares I am actually pro Israel I am actually pro-israel but the reason I'm pro-israel is not what I think people will understand I am pro-israel because I am very matter of factly pro-america I Am pro United States the country that I think should remain the dominant superpower in the world is the United States to Aid the United States in that objective we must ensure the survival of Israel and the Israeli States practically speaking not ideologically not based on history and and Justice and everything else what's happening to the Palestinian people is an atrocity it's it's a it's a terrible sad thing that has forced them into a path of revolutionary terrorism very similar to what we saw when when the United States was rejecting the Civil Rights Movement when women weren't allowed to vote and they turned to violence like we've seen this before and it is it is a sad tragic thing what's happened to Palestine what has happened to Palestine what is yet to happen to Palestine all of that being acknowledged as an American who wants to see American Primacy in the future we have to stand up and support the Israeli State having a strategic economic and Military partner like Israel sit next to our strategic and Military partner that is Jordan in the Middle East gives us an incredible economic and Military advantage over the entire globe that we cannot sacrifice ideology aside if we want to protect American lives we have to ensure the long-term longevity support and close relationships with the Israeli people and with the country of Israel that's that is my official position what I find is so sad is that there are so few pro-israel voices that are giving any kind of validation to the Palestinian plight so I want to be one of those voices that can say we must partner and support Israel and the way that we partner and support them is by finding a way for them to like protect and and defend themselves without turning to this kind of Destruction because as long as they turn down this path of Destruction they're isolating themselves from everyone else in the world and that makes it so that we have a very hard time standing next to them as the beacon of freedom in the world we have a hard time supporting Israel in the face of everybody else including all the countries of the United Nation and NATO who look at us and say h how can you stand by and let this happen how can you support this how can you fund this how can you encourage this not to mention the corruption challenges that Israel has that's so closely aligned with the corruption challenges of our own past presidential you know hopefuls and presidents that we're trying to work through ourselves between netanyahu's corruption and Trump's corruption right it's a mess and it's it's a sad mess but the but the bottom line practical element here is that Israel encourages and expands National Security objectives for the United States that doesn't mean we should call Hamas terrorists just because we don't want to call them revolutionary terrorists which is really more akin to what Malcolm X was revolutionary terrorism right we don't want to go down that road because it's too nuanced for the American people instead we're going to put big Billboards up in major cities that say Hamas is not just Israel's problem right Hamas is your problem too so I say all that because my conclusion is the same as your conclusion the world the globe needs to broker a two-state solution and in and in order to incentivize that two-state solution we need to rally and give the Palestinians that economic boost that the Israelis got post World War II let's let find a way to massively expedite their infrastructure their their technology their their ability to self-govern let's give them everything they need if that means that they want to have close ties with the Arab world that's exactly what the Arab world has wanted forever that's why Saudi Arabia and Qatar and the UAE rush to the aid of the Palestinians so let's make that happen and when when we negotiate land let's find a way to make sure that they're neighboring a Arab Ally like Jordan or Egypt let's find a way to make that happen let's make it a world problem instead of saying it's their problem because every pair of brothers who has ever had an argument over business they've needed an arbitrator to help them they've needed the help of others to come to a meaningful way of resolving their conflict I'm not trying to oversimplify it but I am saying like a strong Israel is in America's best interest a strong peaceful Middle East is in America's best interest a strong Muslim world that counterbalances Iran is in America's best interest so we need to find a way to let people know that this is a more complex issue than what they're hearing and we're not afraid of the complexity let's lean into the complexity and let's solve it together because the more that America can influence peace around the world the more that Erica the more that America is an influential power in the world and when we don't step into our influence we leave a vacuum that allows our largest adversaries Russia China Iran to step into that vacuum instead and that's exactly what we're seeing in the global world right now we're seeing not only are those countries stepping into the vacuum that we're leaving behind but they're allying together so much so that even Hollywood movies like Leave the World Behind is literally showing what would happen if North Korea and Iran worked together to cut off the United States that's why there were elements of both languages in the movie itself right spoiler alert but my point is if even modern media if even Hollywood is showing this division from east to west that goes to show how much it's real because art reflects reality okay so one thing I think we have to acknowledge if if we're going to at least put all the pieces on the table and I just want to reiterate I don't have the huus to think I'm the man to turn to to solve this problem trust me um I would turn to you I thought that was a really good solution man that was a good solution I don't think we have a real one yet uh because of something you taught me which is that you really have to get in the mind of your enemy and every assumption I have I know is coming from my own frame of reference which could not be more Western could not be more American um and they don't want the same things I want so I'll ask the arguably the hardest question of all how much does the cultural mindset of um the Palestinians or uh the Israelis is this a a cultural Collision from just the way that they view how things ought to be that you're just never going to be able to deal with that or is this um well Iran is throwing so much money around they're just doing their bidding like what what is the point of like if I'm Iran and I want to um destabilize Israel and get the world to turn on them what's the lever that I pull to get the Palestinian people to do what I want them to do is it a religious lever that I pull is it something else so in the in the radicalization process one of the things that we're taught at CIA is that there's a there's a ladder of radicalization an actual process for how you radicalize an extremist and that's an extremist whether they're a Christian extremist or an ethnic extremist or a Muslim extremist there's a ladder of extremism and the first step is validating an injustice it's the first step because when people believe that there's a perceived Injustice and nobody validates that Injustice then they are conditioned they are they are primed to believe that there was no Injustice and they're just angry about nothing so the first step in a radicalization process is to validate an injustice it's independent of religion right this was done to you it should have never been done to you and then the next step in the radicalization ladder is to create the aggressor who's guilty of the Injustice this should have never happened to you it happened to you because of this villain it's a story and now your un your Injustice has been validated and there is a group that executed that Injustice on you the next step in the ladder is to say there are others like you who have been equally treated in this unjust way by the same group so now the person who's walking up this ladder is like I do have a reason to be angry they are the enemy and there's this group that I can join against the same enemy and you can see how this ladder just keeps on going until it ends with you strap a bomb to yourself and you run into their church and you run into their synagogue and you blow yourself up and now you win you can see how the latter plays out right the way that you defeat extremism is by taking out the first step in the ladder you have to take away the Injustice unfortunately what's happened since October 7th has created generational repercussions there will not be a Palestinian for the next three generations who does not have a visceral memory a dead brother a dead sister a dead child a dead mother a dead grandmother a dead grandfather Aunts Uncles there have been so many killed in this attack in this counter attack since October 7th that it's it's left a generational scar that is going to be 50 years worth of work for everybody who gets in on the action to try to resolve this problem we will have to face and accept that there was an injustice that was carried out and that we can resolve it so that instead of taking people up a ladder of radicalization we can take them through a ladder of healing a ladder of of resolution right what happened here what is continuing to happen every day is fixable we can't fix what's happened already but we can fix what we do moving forward we can give people an option we can give people Solutions give them outcomes 60 Minutes can change a life if you give them an outcome so what outcomes can we reach that that changes the whole trajectory of what's happening in the Middle East we have to be willing to ask ourselves that question and with the rubber really meets the road where it gets really uncomfortable for us is that we have to be willing to accept that mistakes were made policy mistakes narrative mist mistakes military mistakes and that we are going to pay the reputational and financial penalty of those mistakes that were made we just we have to do that if we're going to really invest in a solution to what's happening in the Middle East unfortunately it is just easier when your neighbors are fighting to just stay out of the fight but if we really want to stand as the leader of the Free World we have to find a way to create freedom for both peoples in the Middle East we have to be invested in both peoples in the Middle East not to mention the fact that the closer we get to the Muslim world the more secure we will be against Islamic extremism because we won't be isolated we won't stand opposite Islam and and Muslim Evolution and Muslim development we will find a way to partner with it and and and not be a world divided by boundaries and faith and religion but world that's connected by a common belief in humanity and connection we can do that it will be expensive it will be timec consuming it will be a lot of eating crow and Humble Pie but if we can do it for 50 years that doesn't seem like a long time consider the fact that Israel didn't even exist before 1948 in the in the annals of time they're less than 100 years old they're still a young country we're still a young country right if we can evolve and change and come to our adolescence then certainly they can evolve and change before they even reach their adolescence again maybe that's too IDE ideological but um I think that it is probably too um it's too idealistic maybe it's too paana so but it it begs the next question which is okay um and using enemy is is not probably ideal language which again is a step in this whole process of thinking through something well understanding how you have to change your own frame of reference which I think is going to be a big part of this but um if I were Consulting on this project uh I would be really trying to understand okay what what is the mindset of the people that I'm dealing with what are the things that I know I'm not going to be able to alter so like the religious angle I'm going to have to find a way for them to see like a connection or to ignore it I'm not going to be able to get them to adopt each other's way of thinking okay so um I still come back to we have to have a goal I think the go the the goal has to be um that the Palestinians feel they are in control of their own destiny I just really look that is a western notion that that not everybody in the world agrees with so I'm very open to if that's my fundament flaw in my thinking but my thinking is built upon that that for them to really have hope in their future and to believe that their children's lives will be better that they have to feel a sense that they own their own destiny they control their own lives they can build the nation the way that they want to and uh so I need to understand given that the you're not you have to remove the idea of we're just going to get rid of the Jewish people you are inviting them to fight tooth and nail uh and they're currently so much better at that than you that it's just a death nail uh so I would take that off the table in terms of it's not going to lead to the outcome I'm going for anyway uh so if we take that off the table then I need to understand why the two-state solution continues to be rejected because if it's for religious reasons then we have to we have to either confront that directly and create a new narrative one thing that I think people underestimate is the need for off-ramps and this was something I heard people very wisely talk about with Russia and Ukraine people were very angry with Putin for invading a Sovereign Nation and rightly so but if you don't give him an off-ramp yep where he can sa face and look good to his people you are guaranteeing an escalation correct and so while it's gross and it's icky and [ __ ] hateful and nobody wants to do it it's certainly going to save lives again what's your goal and if your goal is I'm perfectly happy for every single Ukrainian to Die Trying to to um push back Russia okay then uh if that's your goal then you're making choices that make sense with that if that isn't your goal then putting on the table an offramp for Putin um would be wise because both zalinski and Putin need off-ramps to be able to go to their people and say see we got a victory right and so if I were helping advise or negotiate I'd just be thinking about that like how do I help them each say face even if I think one or both of them are horrendous I'm still going to give them are off ramps here sides face and feel like okay um we quote unquote won this thing and that there's an empowering narrative for both of them so that that has to be found so whether that is um I'm reading a book right now called Silk Roads really interesting book a pretty and I don't know how accurate is so full disclosure but uh a really interesting take on history about how um East and West have sort of bumped into each other over and over throughout time and that the author was painting this really fascinating picture where uh there were a time where there wasn't seen to be a big gap between Muslims and uh Jews and I found that very interesting and they weren't really bothered by the differences in each other's Faith so anyway I would look into that to see is there really something there where we can paint a a far more United Vision married to an economic it because if we can make their lives better quickly then suddenly that becomes very interesting and so marrying it to your idea of okay how do we uh get real infrastructure built so that their lives really are better whether that's education better hospitals better roads I I don't know there I have nothing but ignorance to offer but there is a thing you can do that builds a um a stable entity where you can get food shelter water education uh and Life starts moving in the right direction so what are those things how do you avoid corruption all that of course would be hyper complicated um and I don't know enough about the Abraham Accords again I'm I'm very much a headline reader there but given how much enthusiasm was going into that and its economic in nature can you get that back on track but you have to do something where they you really are giving them a a super tangible win yeah the the thing that's missing I feel like in a lot of the conversations is to understand that what's happening in Israel is a proxy conflict between Iran and the United States and what does Iran want Iran wants ultimately what Iran wants is a Shia Crescent something they've been after for a long time is it ideological in nature is it power in nature it's it's power and land mass it really is a caliphate I don't know what a caliphate is a Islamic uh Homeland that's stretching is beyond Iran right and and is Shia Islam in nature not Sunni Islam which is the predominant Islam throughout the the Kian Arabic State speaking States so that's really what Iran wants and they they struggle to get that and the largest counterbalance to Iran isn't the United States it's Saudi Arabia so when you actually hone in on the Middle East the two big powers like counterbalancing each other are Saudi Arabia and Iran the United States is just an outside player saudi's a lot bigger than Iran though by GDP a lot bigger by GDP a lot bigger by land mass however the Bread Basket of the Middle East is Iran the Bread Basket of that that's so significant it means that UAE and Oman and Jordan and Saudi Arabia all list Iran as an enemy but they all get their agriculture from Iran the Cucumbers the fresh fruit the vegetables it's a carve out so that we can continue they can continue to have uh agricultural trade with Iran another thing that people don't realize is that there's carve outs all the time that's that is the power of Economics That's The Power of Economics because Iran then could just choke them all off correct but they want the money correct Iran wants some some form of income and revenue yeah and they've been sanctioned in so many ways so it's just to your point about needing an economic and a religious solution I don't fully disagree but I would prioritize economics first because if you can incentivize people economically economics runs the world oh for sure if you can incentivize people economically to cooperate they will find a way for their religions to also cooperate right they will find a way to say hey you know what we all come from the same Papa Bear we all came from everybody all the nations they come from us like let's get along let's do that right that's something that France can't say that's something the United States can't say United States definitely can't say that we come from anybody we're the bastard children of everybody we just flocked here right so there's there's absolutely a solution there ideologically what isn't there is a solution economically and it's not just about economically incentivizing the Palestinians it's also about economically incentivizing the Israelis it takes two sets of economic stimulus two sets of economic benefits and even better if they can be economic benefits that are comingled right so the the more success in Israel the more success in Palestine the more success in Palestine the more success in Israel right create in a sense of Independence among them unfortunately creating independent Partners is something the United States is very bad at we since World War II have specialized in creating dependent Partners that's why NATO doesn't really like us very much anymore that's why France and Spain and Germany are actively opponents of the United States in NATO because they realize that what we've really done is made all of Europe dependent on the United States for their technology for their trade for their financial uh soleny and now the same thing is it's difficult for the United States to adopt a different sort of policy than essentially economic bullying uh and that's something we're going to have to learn how to do right it's it's something that I think a pre an old generation of capitalists believed that you had to be the biggest in order to be safe what I think the new era of capitalists is learning is that we can be Innovative successful financially uh independent financially Soul like solvent we can be a lot of things and still be totally safe because it's only when you're competing for the top space that you're really at risk nobody really cares about everybody else who's just even people who are thriving people over Overlook all the people who are thriving they focus on the very poor and they focus on the very rich so I mean running a I I hope to one day run a $50 million business and in the eyes of business that's still small I think the actual cut off for small business is $45 million a year think about that you can run a $35 million business and still be classified as a small business I'm not trying to compete with hundred billion dollar businesses or not trying to compete up I want to make an impact I want to build wealth I want to make a difference in the world I want to leave a legacy for my children much like many entrepreneurs we want to make a splash but we don't need to make the biggest splash the United States wants I believe that the United States is still the best option of all the bad options we're the best bad option for how the world should lean through superpower dominance until a better solution presents itself I'm going to continue investing in American Primacy it's why my company is an American company and I couldn't be prder to pay American taxes right because my business is helping to fund a stronger America that makes me very proud it makes me very happy but there's plenty of Indians and singaporeans and and ties who are also very proud that their business is running is building their country proxy wars uh how serious is this there is there are days where I wake up and I feel like no for real for real like we are a couple errant missiles from this escalating and World War III like kicks off in Earnest and the way that I see that playing out is if if Iran comes out of the shadows and says you've gone too far like we have to step in and do something and then America has to step in to protect Israel to make good on their promises and then China uh starts watching that and goes ah the US is drained it surpluses in Ukraine and now in uh Israel now is the time for us to move on Taiwan they move on Taiwan and now all hell has broken loose and you legitimately have a World War and this is one where man I'm a lay person that can draw a pretty believable path to how we get there and I can only imagine somebody that actually is uh forget what you call it like red in or whatever like they're they're getting like the intelligent be like yeah yeah that's that's one of the 17 ways that this could escalate and really pop off um am I falling into conspiracy uh or are we really at a tenuous moment we are really at a tenuous moment that is that is a yes hard yes we are at a tenuous moment however what I would say is that what you're falling into is not conspiracy it's something we called catastrophizing you're you're Paving the road catastrophic step by catastrophic step meaning that everybody turns to the most destructive of all solutions before taking a previous step right so uh for example for someone for another country to attack The Sovereign for another state actor to attack the sovereignty of the United States is something nobody wants to do the deterrence that the United States has through their military through their economic power through their reach that that is Inc that what we call a deterrent is so powerful it prevents people from taking that catastrophic step the other thing you have to account for is that not every culture approaches conflict the way that America approaches conflict we are a Waring culture so we're like blow the [ __ ] out of them we're going to bomb we're going to kill we're going to shoot we're going to get boots on the ground we need tanks we need rifles we need everything right sunsu does not operate that way the the entire Chinese poit Bureau the whole Chinese pla doesn't operate that way they're not a boots on the ground kick them in whatever else they are a long slow death by a Thousand Cuts we are a hacksaw chainsaw shoot them up cut them up country right so you've also got Iran in there you've got Russia in there you've got Israel in there you've got Saudi Arabia in there you've got France Germany UK all these other big players they're all in there with their own take on how conflict should escalate and how conflict should be carried out out so when you catastrophize you take the presumptive path that everybody leaps to the most catastrophic decision whereas you have to bake into that some level of probability the highest probability is that no country will attack the sovereignty of the United States highest probability right nobody will attack the sovereignty of the United States so you and me are safe inside American borders that does not mean that Americans are safe outside of American borders but then you start getting into the realm of extremism and targeted violence against Americans because of ideological or other purposes that becomes proxy right so now when Americans are attacked in kinasa uh Democratic Republic of Congo simply because they're American and they're attacked by congales who are funded by you name the the country you name Russia uh South North Korea like whatever Iran now that becomes murky murky is exactly what the world wants when it comes to conflict with the United States because if it's murky the United States has a hard time justifying any kind of response that goes state to state because it's There's No Smoking Gun right it's becomes just difficult enough there's plausible deniability and that's that's exactly what you're seeing play out here so again going back to the whole idea you when you reference World War II happening when most people reference World War III happening what they're actually talking about is a nuclear nulear War similar to how World War II ended Wars evolve like people evolve and if anything if you've seen the evolution of Technology you can imagine how much more advanced World War II will be than World War II all wars from civil to World War II were all fought Vietnam and Beyond were all fought over economics so if there's a more economically viable way to execute Warfare that is how people will execute Warfare proxy wars are a very economically viable way to execute Wars economic Wars are a very economically viable way to execute Wars when the United States cut off Russian bank accounts as part of their sanctions against Russia and they cut off access to Russian funds that were denominated in euros and dollars that was an economic Warfare move when China floods the market with US Dollars and buys un or runman B off the market to change their valuation that is an that's an act of economic Warfare that is conflict that is so much more cheaper and viable and creates less uh less stress and uh public response than actually sending your citizens to die at the end of a at the end of a bullet or a rocket launch right so we have to accept that the probability is much higher that we will continue to see increasing proxy conflict increasing economic conflict and solutions other than what we call Interstate conflict or conflict between two Sovereign Nation States it's very surprising what Russia did in Ukraine very surprising because inra Interstate War like that has almost been like eradicated the the last time that a country invaded another sovereign country was when the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2003 right there's 20 something years where no country had invaded another country lots of Civil War but no interstate so lots of intrastate war Civil War but no Interstate War so it was a a huge turn away from popular military Doctrine but you know Putin was playing certain odds and and I think what we're all discovering now is what he really cares about is eastern Ukraine where you know the predominance of their energy flow goes through and and that's what he's got right now so I would say that if you take the catastrophizing off the table and you look at probabilities we will continue to see more proxy wars and more third world countries where the United States has to fund one side and China or Russia or or Iran have to fund the opposite side and they'll keep vying for influence because the economically speaking the country with the most markets to expand into will be the future economic Powerhouse of the world and economic power is what becomes the investment for military power and that's why the United States is dominant we've had the economic power to invest in a modern large military only country who's competing with us is China and the only reason they even have a chance to compete with us is because for 20 years we were head down focusing on the global war on terror China didn't participate in the global war on terror they spent 20 years with their heads up stealing secrets and building infrastructure so that when we finally looked up we realized oh [ __ ] like they're growing fast and we got to change something Elon mus says over the last I think 20 years that the architecture in China has become far more impressive than what's happening in the US what do you think the US would look like had we taken all that foreign aid that we've been sending to Wars and not just foreign aid but to fight the wars but also to proxy war um would it look dramatically different yeah I think the United States would look very very different I think we would see I'm not saying that I think it would look necessarily better but I am saying it would look very different keep in mind that a lot of the investment that went into Chinese infrastructure excuse me was investment into uh State surveillance systems tracking populations um tracking State IDs making sure people stayed in their Lane and were only given the opportunities that the state just thought they deserved I don't think that that's the direction we as Americans would want to go I hope not but if we were to have taken the hundreds of billions that we spent in our Wars abroad and put them into National Security and other uh devices here in the US for all we know that that could have been one of the options that we pursued was a large scale Statewide security system that uh that on the piggyback of that is a state surveillance system very similar to what you see actually in UAE and Saudi Arabia that's really interesting when you first said that it would look different but you're not sure it would look better I was like where is he going with this that is very interesting and yes right now people seem to be way more interested in safety than they do Freedom which it's funny cuz as a kid I mean we have a state New Hampshire if I'm not mistaken Live Free or Die is the state motto and people now are like what do you mean like of course safety is more important than Freedom like it it's it's flipped so hard from what it was like when I was a kid when I was a kid man it was like it was all about that like Give Me Freedom or give me death like I remember uh I think that's the line that uh oh no uh in Braveheart when you said you can take my life but you can't take our freedom or something like that um man it's different VI did I uh and correct tell me if if I'm repeating myself but did I walk you through the civilization pyramid the last time I was here o I've heard you in so many different places I can't tell you if it was here or not but please give us a refresher so I feel like what's happening is we're seeing the civilization pyramid actually play out and and the civilization pyramid is a pyramid that talks about exactly what you're what you're describing the exchange of freedom and security the bottom of the pyramid is all of our individualism right you hunt and gather for you I hunt and gather for me you live in your cave I live in my cave and I don't I don't have any say in what you do you don't have any say on what I do and if we need to fight then let's fight to the death individualism at the bottom end of that pyramid where we all started where some countries still very much are right moving up the pyramid the next tier is tribalism which is like hey our caves are next to each other you're really good at hunting and gather at hunting I'm really good at Gathering let's team up and now we'll capture efficiencies because if you're ever sick I can make sure I collect enough food for both of us and if I'm ever sick you can make sure there's enough food for both of us so now as a tribe we're safer and to hell with the other tribes if they come across the river if they come if they start hunting our buffalo we'll kill them so it's a step above individualism it gives us some efficiency because we have scalability it gives us some security because we have each other and we're United under the banner of a tribe the next and final peer uh uh level of the pyramid is the state and as you move up from individualism to the state you start to give up your independent freedoms but in exchange the state is able to push down scalable efficiencies and solutions so now there's a standing military that keeps you safe now there's there's Public Utilities that bring you water now there's hospitals that bring you medicine now there's insurance now there'ss businesses now there's bakeries now there's all this stuff that the state helps to facilitate so that you don't have to depend on your tribe in fact if you want to live in California or in Austin Texas or in Florida or in New York you can pick your tribe you can pick where you want to go because you're all part of the state if you take the state off the top of the pyramid and you move the rest of the pyramid aside you have another pyramid and that's different levels of the state right so at the bottom tier of the state you basically have your your uh organized State that's very the government's very small and it gives people maximum freedom and you know it's your it's your uh uh political parties that don't want to interfere or interfere with anybody else's political party and then as you move up you have what we consider to be like uh conservative State Management which is you know we have enough government but not too much government it creates guidelines but not heavily regulate not heavily regulated we focus on maximizing efficiency we minimize uh policing our people right and then you have the highest level of the state which is very much your kind of socialist or authoritarian state where everything is regulated everything is heavily managed everything is heavily policed so when you put this smaller pyramid back on top of the original pyramid you have six levels of civilization basically right the theme with all of it is that as you climb the pyramid you are giving up freedoms in exchange for efficiencies the beautiful thing about the United United States is that we are a country where we slow down our political processes because we have two parties that are always fighting and vying right so that forces us to slow down which usually results in a more popular more wellth thought out solution even though we haven't quite seen it play out that way recently but we slow down the velocity so we make better stronger decisions that are more time time tested but we also give individuals the right to move up and down the pyramid as they choose so if you want to be a prepper in Kentucky that lives off the grid you go right down the pyramid and there you go you can if you want to be a hyper you know socialist you know publicly declared communist that lives in whatever New York you can and both people are protected by the laws of the land but they live at different parts of the pyramid so to your point I feel like we are absolutely at this precipice in world events where we have to kind of decide what we want to do as individuals but the larger question is as individuals we all also have a say in what we do as a nation and that is going to be the larger impact on what we leave behind yeah and I'm super I'm interested to be sure I am a little worried about what's going to happen in 2024 I won't lie um if it ends up being a trump Biden runoff what do you think happens especially if Trump wins I think that if you're not preparing for that eventuality it would be wise to prepare for that eventuality highest the highest two probabilities are that either Trump wins the presidency or Biden wins the presidency so just speaking practically again mentally as a business owner as a father as a husband I'm preparing for one of these two things there's a 90% chance that one of these two things is going to happen so let me be ready for that and then the last 10% I'll let surprise me right but I mean who knows it's it's difficult it's also important to understand that we all focus on the president the president what powers the president has are granted to them by the Legislative Branch we've gone through about a 30-year period where our legislative branch has been giving more power to the executive branch specifically because the legislative branch is trying to cover their own ass they want to be lifetime legislators they don't want to be responsible for the people and they don't want to be accountable to the people so instead they want to be able to say you voted me into office and the president doesn't let me do my job because I gave him all of my authority so part of what we need to do is see the legislative branch take back the power from the president which they can do with a vote the president doesn't need to give them power back they can take power back but they do need to give the president power he can't take power from the legislative branch so in both cases whether it's Biden or whether it's Trump the real impact there is just how the world sees the United States and then the fact that both presidents presidents have the right to build their cabinet however they choose to build their cabinet so they both are going to bring in their cronies they're both going to bring in their yes people they're both going to bring in people who are who are uh biased towards their own political Futures they're not nobody really at the top is thinking about what's in the best interest of the American people because we've created this self-licking ice cream cone where where politics is about rewarding the politician with politics instead of there's there's no incentive to serve the American people especially not when the American people are split like we're split right now so it's it's tough man it's tough and I I will say that what my wife and I keep an eye on is less it's less about whether or not Donald Trump becomes president and it's more about how will individuals exercise their legal Powers how will individuals exercise their civic responsibilities when the outcome is announced will that's a fancy way of saying something yeah will they will they Revolt there we go or will they go to the [ __ ] table and vote every two years on the lowest levels of government so that you can actually affect the change in the government I it's it's don't I it breaks my heart when I see Americans [ __ ] complain and pick it let alone when I see them shoot and raid and invade right all of that stuff is something that we should be passed what what we should be doing now is exercising our Civic rights our Civic duties our Civic Powers because we have the power to affect everything up the chain if we just exercise it if we're willing to let things slow down and if we're willing to cut out some of the volume and actually do things the way that has always made America great we've always been stronger because we have a bureaucratic process that allows us to slow things down allows us all the time in the space to learn and ingest and accept and internalize what we believe to be true when we move at lightning speed we can be duped we can be confused we can be tricked let ourselves slow down embrace the fact that we slow down if we didn't slow down we'd be [ __ ] an authoritarian rule where literally things change at the drop of one person's Public Announcement we don't want that we don't want that we want something different yeah I mean I'm 100% on board with that so as you look at this with your analyst eyes um what do you think will be the reaction to let's say a trump getting elected because my concern is uh when watching the Sam Harris Thing Happened on the internet I don't know how closely you paid attention to that but basically the entire internet turned on what I think is one of the smartest most thoughtful people I think he's wrong but to your point about you want to triangulate anyway you're not just going to listen to one person Sam is right about so many things um but he I I believe I understand Sam maybe better than a lot of people in that the thing that Sam believes is that Donald Trump is an existential threat and when someone becomes an existential threat meaning it could wipe out Humanity I want to be very clear about what an existential threat is uh that it's a whole new set of rules baby and you do whatever you have to do and that if Sam who is incredibly smart and extremely thoughtful and I think a hyperoral person um but I also think he's wrong about this so my thing is okay I think the real problem we have is we don't agree on what constitutes an existential threat I actually don't know that we disagree about what to do in the face of a true existential threat but like when I look at Trump getting elected I'm like please Jesus no but at the same time I don't see it as an existential threat so and I look at like we we had four years with them it what the world didn't end everybody like but at the same time other people look at him like we we dodged a nuclear weapon like what are you talking like it could be the end of humanity if he gets elected again that freaks me out the fact that people think hey him getting elected could end the world now if this were like Fringe crazies I'd be like whatever yeah this is coming from some of the smartest people I know that are there're very good at thinking through problems so of course Part of Me Goes is he an existential threat like I don't think I'm the Arbiter right so I'm captain distrust yourself but as so the only thing I'm saying is when I analyze the situation there are enough people that believe that he is an actual existential threat that if he gets elected I think you have a problem I don't think uh look I'm a big believer that America's freakishly resilient I don't think it collapses but do I think that at a minimum we take another step towards the Civil War yes I really do that that one really freaks me out like I I can buy into the proxy wars that World War III is going to be fought very surreptitiously there won't be as much hot to the war okay don't love it still very high stakes still makes me very tense but that's a lot better than say a World War II um but dude in the summer of 2020 I sat on my balcony and watched La burn and that wasn't even around existential threats right so yeah I don't know and I don't know what's worse and again I'll ask you with your your CIA analyst haton what's worse Trump getting elected or Trump not getting elected so I'll start by saying that I disagree with all the smart people that you're referencing right now and I would gladly who think he's an existential threat yes I would gladly sit in front of anybody who believes that Trump is an existential threat and have a healthy debate on any topic they want to talk about because I have actually seen existential threats and Trump is not that can you paint an existential threat picture an existential threat is is imminent it means that it is the last step before the holistic destruction the existence destroying from existence the the Target that it is threatening right so let's consider a battleship right a Hypersonic cruise missile will destroy a battleship right it is not an existential threat to the battleship even though it will destroy the battleship it is not an existential threat to the battleship because if even one soldier survives the memory of that battleship in current memory still exists not to mention all of the documentation about the battleship existing and then they rebuild a new one they give it the same moniker and it's right back in service again right it is a perilous threat it is not an existential threat truly existential threats are things that will wipe you off the face of the Earth right Iran wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth that is an existential threat and when they say that when they announced that they were talking about Israel the state and Jews they want to destroy them Nazi Germany posed an existential threat to the Jewish faith literally a systematic commitment to destroying an entire generation like the entire existence of it forever taking it off the world the world stage forever that is an existential threat what happens is that we have become spoiled in our terminology catastrophizing has become so common that now to get people emotional to get people to move on their on their beliefs you have to ramp everything up to get past the volume and the velocity of data you have to say the next most extreme thing when you say the most extreme thing long enough if you call yourself stupid enough times guess what you start to believe you start to believe you're stupid right so when you tell people enough times it's an existential threat it's an existential threat it's an existential threat you start to actually believe wow maybe it really is an existential threat without stopping to think in one presidency no president Trump or anybody no president can disband two of the three branches the only thing the president can really do is write an executive order about the Executive Branch if our Congress exists We Exist if our judicial branch exists we exist right and the other two branches are there to keep the executive branch in power so one four-year presidency one eight-year presidency two eight-year presidencies with President Trump is not with a future president Trump is not going to be the end of America could it do significant damage absolutely but it's not an existential threat it just isn't it doesn't threaten to end the United States it threatens to make life difficult but lots of things threaten to make life difficult we can't guarantee that Trump comes into office and somehow everything changes for the better who knows we don't we don't actually know there's there's a term that we use in in uh intelligence operations called The Cone of uncertainty and if you imagine like a funnel or a cone or you know a pennant whatever it's a it's a certain shape the timeline of known reality goes right up to the beginning of the cone and then where you see the actual cone that becomes an area of predictable confidence that you can guess within but where that cone ends everything past the cone is totally unpredictable you have no confidence about what will happen one way or the other so unless there is an existential threat the threatening the existence and future existence something within that cone then you can't really take it as a as a level of confidence one way or the other so my recommendation to those people catastrophizing and everybody who's feeling that pressure that anxiety have a plan for When Donald Trump is announced as the winner of the presidency have a plan for it hope and vote against it all you want but don't let it happen without a plan for what to do next we have a plan for what to do next our plan takes us out of the United States if Donald Trump becomes the president and our country takes a turn for the worst we're leaving the United States we already have the plan if if Joseph Biden wins the presidency and the United States takes a turn for the worst we're leaving the United States that's our plan doesn't mean that we're not proud to be Americans it just means that where we are in our lives with our children with our business with what we're trying to do in our personal mission it is not to fix the United States right now we'll let other people who are passionate about that fix the United States right now we're going to go grow our family and take care of our family grow our business grow our impact pay our taxes and make sure the United States has the resources that needs to get through its adolescence but other people are very dedicated to being part of the solution right now and I applaud those people and I want to give them the resources they need to be that level of impact it's interesting when you said earlier that um you were you really believed in the supremacy of the US I knew that you plan to leave I thought it was a longer timeline than that um that's very interesting so that tells me that you think that uh well let me not put words in your mouth are you saying that if one of those two gets elected that there is a distressingly high probability of a bad turn yes I would agree with that statement completely okay wa regardless of which two we're picking between two bad options and that's just where we are right now unfortunately I think there are good options on the table who one of the options that I would actually personally love to see take the presidency is Nikki Haley I don't even know who that is I hear her and that's why she's not going to win so I hear her name all the time I I'm gonna have to watch something I don't know what she looks like never heard her voice I think of all the things that the country could really benefit from right now it's a female levelheaded Centrist and even though she runs on the Republican ticket she is very much a her her narrative is a very Centrist narrative and I really like the idea of our country kind of coming out of this 8-year Disaster by showing that one of the things that makes us so powerful is our diversity and I think we are at a time now where a strong female leader would be welcomed here unfortunately I think that that Hillary Clinton in many of the years that she was running wasn't the right fit at the right time I think Nikki Haley might be different than that but that doesn't mean she's got any traction that doesn't mean it's going to happen but it is one of those 10% outcomes where all of a sudden I see like sunlight instead of more rain and and snow did she run last cycle no it's the first time she's run and unfortunately she's showing a lot of the a lot of the uh um neopit making classic mistakes yeah arguing over petty stuff and debates and blah blah blah blah blah and not really showing that she's above all that and to be president you got to be above all that frivolity either you've got to do the Obama approach and just not address it or you've got to do the Trump approach and address it jovially and make light of it jovially I love that yeah I got the best words I've got the best words I'm the best no one's ever had words this good I cannot do an impression to save my life but uh yeah the way he talks is hilarious yeah yeah uh okay what do you think of vivec ramaswami I wanted to like Vic a lot but you don't I wanted to like him a lot I still think that he's got he's he's made so many positive Impressions on me but at the same time he just he's not been consistent in terms of the positive Impressions right picking fights with Nikki Haley over silly things like Tik Tock and personal attacks on her family come on man You' got to act presidential I loved when he came out of the gates he's prepared he's a minority he's young so many things there that that you could that anybody could rally behind in love but then there's these behavioral challenges where you're like dude the last thing I want to do is have you be negotiating with the prince of Saudi Arabia and you're gonna jab him on one of his wives like no that's not a good idea for us no thank you right again neoy beginner kind of error that he's going to try to fix up but that's just that's where we are right now and again going back to the original question there's a there is a very solid chance that a trump or a Biden presidency is going to change its course even 15 or 30 degrees change its course focus on American needs focus on American economy maybe even apologize for bad calls in the past who knows good luck with that one but they can they can change the course and make significant benefits but if they stay their course then it's just more pain for all of us and we can't we we can't stand by idly and let that happen this this the pyramid the civilization pyramid is not worth just sitting by and being silent we have a chance to impact our state we should yeah no doubt I think a lot of people are going to try to have impact during this election cycle I want to know we talked about this a little bit earlier but how much do you think manipulative tactics will be used on social media to sway I'm not even worried about necessarily foreign influence just like the Twitter files in fact have a a quote that I want to read um about the time we're living in now it's from Eric Weinstein um shout out to Eric who I love dearly I think he's an incredible human uh his quote is we now know post Elon musk's $44 billion Adventure at Twitter that there are these coordinating groups coordinating social media with the intelligence Community or with the Department of Homeland Security or the state department we now know that we're living in an orchestrated curated choreographed world World we've always known that we just haven't admitted it and let's keep this in mind too as much as people want to say that that's a bad thing that social media and which again social media is not media social media what I mean by that is social media is not journalism social media is entertainment that's socially generated it's essentially just like a jukebox right it's it's a business we of course want the intelligence Community the National Security infrastructure of the United States hip and hiip with American businesses because that's how we will most like that's our vulner our most vulnerable place to foreign threats is through our economics so when you take away the fact that Facebook and Twitter are massive social voices because everybody uses them and you just consider the fact that they're a business it makes perfect sense that you would want a business hip and hip with the national security sector so that they can counter any foreign efforts to impact American economics we don't think of it that way we think of it like no free speech and and freedom of choice and they shouldn't have a say in what gets published and what doesn't get published at the same time when Russia uses Facebook to create influence campaigns who do we blame we blame Facebook and we blame the intelligence infrastructure for not protecting us again we want to Americans are a Waring culture and we want to believe that we are entitled to everyone else's [ __ ] secrets but nobody's entitled to our secrets and it's a it's a dichotomy that we can't seem to fuse together right either there are no secrets or there are secrets you don't get you don't get to choose which secrets you get and which secrets you don't uh that's if anybody gets to make that choice it really should be a organization of insti Ed legislative judicial and executive powers because we voted those powers to be in control of our secrets if you don't like that change your vote right so uh for sure we will be influenced by these these sectors into our social life absolutely we already are we will continue to be and it will continue forever we it's not different from what we've seen in the past what were hate ads on TV what are Flyers that come in the mail what is people knocking on your door and getting you to sign petitions all those are all forms of influence and an effort to sway public opinion and an effort to get top of mind for some politician it's always been there it just changed media format it just makes us pissy that it happens by Foreign actors and domestic actors on social media because we forget the fact that social media is not [ __ ] news it's not journalism it's not vetted it's not reviewed there's no professional criteria it is entertainment that's what it was always meant to be it was always meant to be dancing babies and kitten videos and stunts on motorcycles that's what it was meant to be it's just turned into the fact that people don't do enough interesting [ __ ] that now what they do instead is they forward articles that they only read the headline and it makes them emotional so they forward more and more of them and people like it and thumbs up it comment on it without actually reading the article they just read the headline you took time out of this interview to speak to the people before they made comments because you care about making sure that people understand what we're talking about not just read a headline kneejerk reaction create virality that's not what we're going for but that is what ends up happening on social media that going back to our conversation about cover influence that's exactly what cover influence wants it wants to find two existing causes that all they need is a little bit of extra gasoline and they light up social media is the perfect place light up the left light up the right light up the left light up the right and all of a sudden people don't know what's true and what's false and they're fighting against each other I don't believe that we'll turn into Civil War fighting I think it takes a lot more before we start pulling guns on each other but it does cause enough chaos and delay and it hampers our progress enough that we will lose influence on the global stage not ideal uh what do you think is going to happen with AI because all of that feels like uh it it gets supercharged to a level that that is unimaginable when you have ai you talk about volume you can now put out you could put out 150,000 Trump Clips a day that aren't him but look and sound like him and even if they're meant as parody people will start believing them I can't tell you the number of times I made the mistake of Actually I don't even think I follow it but um I probably liked something at one point the Elon Musk parody account and I will routinely forget to check whether it's him or the parody account and even though it's right there I'm just like oh [ __ ] like I can't believe he just said that's C oh wait it's the parody account and so I think how often did I not notice that that was the parody account and so when you've got you know take someone like my mom God bless her cotton socks she won't notice that something because I can tell when something is AI generated it's off just enough my mom won't I'm optimistic about a I'll be one of the few people that say it because I think that our greatest breakthroughs are still ahead of us because of AI I think that all of the fatalistic thinking all the catastrophizing about AI is from our analytical overlay and what we've been conditioned to believe from videos and books and sci-fi right sentient AI that determines that that human beings are the worst thing for human beings so they eradicate us do I believe that AI will be used for influence for politic for local government do I think it'll be abused absolutely it'll be abused just like TV was abused just like radio was abused just like newspaper articles were abused I mean just like the internet's abused for sure it'll go in that way and then it'll be regulated back or the market will prove that it's not profitable to create that much junk that among amidst all the junk that you're creating your real value can't shine through so people will stop creating junk and they'll start creating more meaningful stuff so if AI just imagine if AI could be used to expand the reach of nonprofits trying to solve cancer so that instead of their minimal media team creating five posts a week they could create 150 posts a week and that 150 posts turn into a 200% increase in funding for cancer research yeah I'm super pro AI like I am U stamped on on the accelerator I love it the most yep uh but I am also aware of just based on the things we've been able to create in house not not in the vein that I'm talking about but you see how real it is and how quickly you can confuse people um that it's just going back to the volume velocity problem it will be used to have a clip of Biden falling down stumbling and sounding ridiculous it will be used to have Trump spout crazy lies and outrageous [ __ ] and then what I think will happen is people are going to have to end up using the blockchain as way to Watermark these so that you can prove which ones are legit not legit and so the old thing um you know I'm Tom Bilu and I approve this message kind of thing at the end will be replaced with that's really just their um mark on the um on the blockchain and so people in embedded in Twitter now X whatever it will just automatically say yes this is an official message no it's not whatever um I think it will end up having to be something like that but I think this is the year where it becomes a big enough problem that then those Solutions have to be put in place bad timing for that to happen because now you can really sway public perception and so this gets one of the reasons I want to have you back on not only do I just absolutely I haven't even looked at the clock and I know we're [ __ ] deep in uh just beyond fun um but when I think about having a perspective on some of these just like grueling difficult things you've got such an interesting take on the different ways that these could go and probabilities and all that um but yeah I think 2024 has a probability of um being squirly and that people need to um not allow themselves this this is me talking to my past self for anybody wondering why I changed the show I started changing my show about four years ago now uh and it was because realized I had been so heads down on an entrepreneurial Journey that I didn't even understand the World At Large I only UND understood it in as much as I needed to build a business and then when Co hit just like whoa this is not the world I thought I was living in and so all of a sudden I was like okay my prediction engine is completely broken and that means I've connected dots in an erroneous way I now need to completely remap the territory um and that sent me down a journey of like oh I need to understand how the world Works what is the essence of the game who are the players what are the pieces that are on the chessboard so that I can understand this and so as I look at 2024 make predictions they will mostly be wrong but they'll be directionally useful at a minimum and so this is one of those things that I really think people need to um load up into their working memory about what do they need to be aware of how can AI be used as a tool in your business as a tool in your life how can it be used to manipulate you um how do you encounter a problem you've never seen before and think well through it so that you're not just primed by the person you're sitting across and now they've trapped you in an answer and you're stuck and you're like wait how did I end I don't even believe that what what just happened right but you've said this a lot and I really agree with this that um if you understand the tools and tactics you're way less likely to be used by them Y and so you can begin to escape that stuff so speaking of there's one thing that um by way of stories I think has really captured people's imagination and becomes a bit of a litmus test of what the hell is going on on and that's Epstein so this is somebody I'm very curious to get your take as a a former spy Eric Weinstein he never comes out and says the exact words but he's basically saying that the his the literal words he uses are this guy is a construct of someone else someone else created this guy that we call Jeffrey Epstein and so my question becomes then the internet runs with that I don't know what Eric thinks beyond that exact statement but the internet certainly runs with all right this guy's a CIA CIA operative designed to get Intelligence on people like Bill Clinton which is why you have a painting of Bill Clinton wearing a dress in the man's foyer which is weird and I'll admit I try not to jump to conclusions but that's a bad look man uh and so is he a real guy is he a CIA plant like what what what do you see what does the data say uh my I don't have enough data to say what the data says what I do have is enough information to pull on assessments that I think have a reasonable probability CIA does not operate the way most people think that CIA operates and CIA would never have the legal jur jurisdiction or the incentive to spy on an American president but do they have the legal jurisdiction to sell drugs which they do we know that you know I mean do you know who the ultimate power is over CIA which branch government the executive branch so so if he says it's cool to sell drugs then it's cool s drugs yo dude we do things that are classified for a reason wow and we do it all in the best interest of protecting Americans and I mean I am the kind of person that's practical to a fault right so if you tell me that I can either sell cocaine to impoverished Latin American countries or watch a 100 Americans die I'm a cocaine dealer wow I'm just just the way I work dude like just like you you are honest I appreciate that the the lives here are more valuable to me than the lives here that's just I know that makes me sound however that makes me sound but that's just the way I was that's that's the way I'm wired that's my analytical overlay yeah so I have zero reason to believe and zero evidence to believe zero experience to believe that Epstein is not a real person or was some kind of CIA manufactured plant or was a CIA asset or a CIA resource zero reason to believe any of those things about foreign however here we go however I have lots of reasons and lots of experience to make me believe that he was a intelligence resource for someone else he may have been a resource for FBI because that's a whole different Authority that's granted on investigating criminal activity inside the United States and they work with Shady people they work with criminals they work with sources of all kinds so he may have had a relationship with FBI I can't speak to that but definitely not CIA however if I was an intelligence officer in any of the leading intelligence Services the French the Israelis the Russians the Chinese the uh Iranians if I was an intelligence Source in for Germany if I was an intelligence officer in any country that was interested in what's happening in the United States I would 100% have devoted time and energy into tracking and trying to recruit Epstein into my asset of reporting sources because he had access such privileged access and he was so malleable in terms of what he needed and what he wanted so that he could be controlled those two things are exactly what you're looking for in the dream boat asset you want someone who can be controlled by simple levers and someone who has incredible access those two things together make a Dreamboat case and and I mean even for an unsophisticated service right like your unsophisticated services being Ecuador or Panama or you know uh Romania those are basic Services basic intelligence Services you're really refined really talented services like Cuba like uh MSS and China like like the svr and Russia those Services could absolutely make someone like that sing and keep him well fed and well versed in the things that they that he needed and and get incredible access back from him and then when the natural course of American judicial process takes place they can distance themselves from him as much as they need to right because he's definitely not going to come out and be like actually guys don't convict me because I'm a really I'm reporting to the Russians no he's never going to say it so it's it's all the Hallmarks of a very good intelligence carried out by a foreign country doesn't mean it is it just has all those Hallmarks but a misinformed American public who is UN un uh un irrationally focused on CIA conspiracies they see something that does look and feel like an intelligence operation but they attribute it to CIA because their analy analytical overlay from movies and TV instead of attributing it to a truly adversarial service that could execute an operation like that what are the Hallmarks that you see that really make you go uh can't guarantee it but damn the the access the fact that he was so close to so many people on both sides of the political debate right conservatives and liberals and he participated in extremely compromising behaviors with both sides that doesn't happen unless either you are so uh disconnected from the American experience that you really do see everybody as just a tool or you've been directed to build those relationships and incentivized to build those relationships and rewarded for building those relationships because it takes a lot of effort it takes effort to find Common Ground between very far- leaning people and then it takes effort to build your life around being available to them when they're available and then orchestrating these compromising activities that that takes so much time and effort it's just not something that normal people participate in even the very wealthy come to a point where they're like I could spend an hour with this guy or I could spend an hour doing this other thing that's even more productive and they will rationalize their way away against socializing and into business or something other more productive Venture right so the access is the big thing and then the second biggest thing is the incredible amount of compromising behavior that he participated in like even your your kinkiest craziest people who who don't follow any kind of moral or ethical Compass right even those folks have a hard time functioning at that level and also participating in that much compromising activity that's documented right like like often times to get to a place where you're that morally and ethically flexible you're not functional in other ways he was somehow both so he could have just been a very unique human being I'm not going to say he wasn't but probability wise he was probably helped or directed in that way not necessarily magically gifted but there's still a chance now it's interesting that's one of the things Eric speaks to is that when he so Eric was heavily involved in finance and trading and he met him and he was like there's no way that guy knew the first thing about trading he was like there's no way like you talk to him for 30 seconds and you're like what is happening how this guy doesn't know anything about what he's talking about he's like he basically word salads his way through stuff he uh Likens him to uh if you've ever seen that Meme with Steve Bushi who walks in hello fellow kids and he's you know whatever 46 years old with a skateboard over his back uh he said it was like that with um trading which I found hilarious that's a so that what you're explaining to me now makes a third Hallmark CU a third Hallmark of an intelligence asset that's that's aided in their intelligence uh success is that they don't know what they're talking about they end up in positions where they Thrive and survive just off of their con game their confidence So eventually people just rationalize that this person doesn't know what the hell they're talking about but I don't really care because they're a good time so let's have a good time and let's not have any meaningful conversation perfect opportunity because guess what that intelligence asset has to do all they have to do is listen to the intelligent conversations between two people and provide that intelligence to someone else or get them to participate in compromising behavior that they can use for either blackmail or some sort of documentation for the potential future or you know grab a phone or grab a laptop or you know let somebody into the part who's a trained intelligence operative to meet the other cases like there's so many ways an intelligence officer can use an access agent and or a foreign reporting agent who has the kind of access and control levers that Epstein had how often is sex used to get people in compromising positions in the United States often we are a sexually repressed culture you you have to consider that have I mean you've traveled the world yeah but I mean damn I don't it's not like I see people dry humping on the couch in Europe it's like but you do see nude ads in Europe I guess a little bit yeah I mean bro I got some sites if you want to see porn in the US like you can find porn everywhere you you can't find it everywhere that's what's so interesting you can find it but you can't find it everywhere right just think about social media you can't post Nudes on social media at least not easily and at least not for very long I don't know if x you can X is a whole different world right now right but that just goes to show like we believe in monogamy we believe in in traditional marriage we struggle to accept gay marriage we struggle to accept non-traditional relationships like we have a long fat history of of conservative sexual values maybe that's changing but it's still very much something that we struggle with right now whereas in Latin America in Europe in Asia prostitution is legal uh sexual escorts is legal three-way relationships are common like old and young relationships like sugar daddies and sugar mamas all very common if not if not culturally preferable where here we don't have any of that so that the end result of that is that we have such a uh such a confined sexual culture that when people have strong Sexual Energy that they can't exerc excise when they're given an opportunity to exercise that Vice they take it and they jump at it which is part of the reason that we have the the issues that we have with porn addiction here and the issues that we have with adultery here and the issues that we have with human trafficking in the United States right because people are looking for a way to exercise this Vice that everywhere else in the world is acceptable that's interesting yeah I have not thought of us as sexually repressed but I hear what you're saying compared to the Middle East though oh yeah but you're talking about Sharia law and most of the Middle East still that gets pretty hardcore uh you have said speaking of sex that spies have the best sex tell me more uh a big part of a big part of being a spy is learning to accept your vices right and there are predominantly in our in our lexicon there are really three vices there's drugs and alcohol that's Vice number one which is essentially a dampening of of anxiety and a dampening of stress and whatever else that's that's the first vice the second Vice is greed or fame right wanting something material to enhance yourself and then the third vice is sex and really sex is a vice that's connected to intimacy and individual connection right we just we categorize them as as sex so these are three human vices that are international that we all learn about all people so that when we come to break down what people how people tick you also want to break down what their what Vice they lean towards and sometimes their Vice changes as you as you age but usually your Vice is pretty consistent for your entire life and everybody listening right now is immediately saying that's my vice that's my vice that's my vice that's my vice at CIA Fame and greed can't be one of your vices so they kind of rule that out out early on in the in the because you'd be too easy to like flip because you that's not a job that lends itself to fame or greed there are people who are flipped on Greed later on but it's because they they believe that they're worth more than what they're making right that's your aldri am's of the world and your Richard Hansen of the world your your people who compromise themselves to a foreign power in exchange for a paycheck but in every case in every case of a converted American asset there was also an element of sex because what happens is the people that are attracted to the kind of dangerous work that happens at CIA are people who are attracted to high stress and they don't have a lot of personal connections that's why they like operating solo right if you had to flip a female asset would you rather have sex or money in your back pockety money yeah money and and you're also talking about a female asset would only be a non-american asset because CIA doesn't recruit Americans right right so when I think of a foreign asset the vast majority of what foreigners are looking for is solutions that can be reached with money more so than solutions that can be reached with sex even then let me just give you a real world example even when an American intelligence officer is developing or engaging in an operation against a foreign Target of the opposite sex when that Target shows a sexual or romantic interest in the officer it is critical that we don't reciprocate that romance or sexuality that instead we find a way to confront them in a carrying loving like in a caring meaningful transactional way and paint the way for how their their their needs for connection will be solved with money with financial stability you can find a reliable partner with financial stability you can afford to buy a wife or buy a husband with financial like tools you'll be able to gain enough notoriety Fame that everybody will want to be with you right rather than engaging in any kind of romantic relationship that compromises the officer to the case why does why is it considered that sex compromises the officer and two reasons one because American culture is a culture of sexual repression so when we engage in sexual desires it is usually because we feel guilty about exercising those same Desires in our normal life so we have to understand and part of our part of our training helps us understand our own vices so when you understand your own vices and you see your own vies a play you're like oh if I if I go down this road it's what we call a slippery slope if I go down this road I'm just going to slip further down the slope and slip further towards compromise and then only bad things happen so that's one part of the reason why we do it the second part of the reason why we don't engage in sex or why we see sex as something that's compromising is because it doesn't allow us to institutionalize the case itself it makes the case dependent on the person because it's a romantic transaction rather than creating a Reliance between the Target and the institution that is Cia or that is American uh National Security as long as you can institutionalize the case it means that case has longevity because one day I will leave this country and you will come into this country and I need to make it so that the loyalty is to the institution so that when you take my place the asset keeps working with you that's really interesting um if somebody were trying to an external agent we're trying to flip an American woman money sex or love that's that's connection we replace love with connection the reason that the to go back to your original question the reason that spies have the best sex is because spies actually understand the value of connection true connection connecting sexually is just the most basic physical representation of connection transparent conversation being able to demonstrate vulnerability true vulnerability being able to invest fully in the hopes and dreams of each other right these are all ways that we're taught to understand human beings and then we just bring that into sexual relationships um one of the things that's the saddest thing to see is when CIA officers have a hard time ending up in a loving and meaningful relationship because the partners that they pick become intimidated or scared Away by the level to which that CIA officer is able to engage in a relationship because they're able to get so deep so quickly if they choose to or they're able to to make it feel like they're so approachable and so accessible and so whatever else that the other person becomes inherently distrustful so it's very very difficult and it's very sad to see you know some of my closest friends have have been just so talented in everything about their career and they've struggled in love and it just creates a very lonely existence for them um but yeah so when it comes to a foreign asset converting an American female I don't know that it's fair to create a a swath a generalization of American females um but what I would say is that American females are far less susceptible to sexual um honey traps or what call sex spionage than American Target American male targets American male targets are far more susceptible than American female targets there's always going to be exceptions but probability wise if you're going to use a Honeypot it's very easy to test a Honeypot against an American Target that's a male versus test it against an American female Target uh have you heard of the book um rise and kill first no but I will write that down brother like I'm shocked that you weren't consulted on it or so it's about the mad and um it comes from a proverb in the Bible that if a man is coming to kill you you should rise early and kill him first and uh it it just tracks her whole thing and anyway in the book they talk about the three PS which I'm now forgetting but one of the P's in terms of how you get an agent to flip and give you information uh one of the P's is another the name for a cat or how you call a cat a kitten which I think everybody will immediately understand what I'm talking about uh so yeah I was not surprised by that like mad are one of the best in the world at honey traps really against American targets specifically interesting why would they be working against American targets so we go after allies yeah and and allies all go after the United States that's the problem with being the biggest right we had a major we had major Flaps in France and Germany I mean just in our in our adult lives right remember when an Hill Merkel discovered that Obama's uh NSA was spying on Germany and it caused a huge riff yeah right like it it happens one of the biggest most public cases of of American Espionage was a naval officer that was recruited by Israel and giving away nuclear secrets about submarines it was it sex bage nope that in that case really in that case it was he was Jewish and they targeted him because he was Jewish ah interesting so that's not to say again it's not to say anybody's wrong wrong it's just to say that there is a leverage there that can be exploited in some cases it's ideology about your faith or about your community or about your uh your value system in other cases it's ideology about who what you believe is right or wrong or who you believe is more powerful or less powerful right we have a saying at CIA that you are either in control or under control there's no third option so you are either in control of a situation in control of your behavior in control of your thoughts in control of your outcomes or you are under control of someone else's thoughts someone else's Behavior someone else's plans someone else's outcomes it's up to you to ask yourself the question which am I at any given time and what steps am I taking to test that I am accurate in my assessment of my current status I like that a lot are there people that are unflippable uh yes I'm going to say yes and when I say yes what I mean is that Pro the probability of them being converted is so small that it's not worth the investment of time and energy to try to convert them but the truth is that we all go through points of Our Lives where we are more susceptible to being flipped than we would care to realize and that's often times what we're trained to do is Target those individuals who are going through that phase of life where they have the right access and the right life conditions where compromising behavior is something that you can rapidly develop in them what are the right conditions for that switch to be rapid so there's um there's major points in the typical life where you can anticipate financial needs relationship needs and uh uh Health needs those are the major points that you want to look at so think about your senior Diplomat your senior executive your senior military officer who's a few years away from retirement a few years away from no longer being relevant and no longer being paid by the state even better if they are working for like a third country or a a competitor First Nation country where they aren't going to be taken care of financially very well in their retirement Sunset years right but they're still two or three years out it's a fantastic Target because they have tons of monetary need same thing is true with the opposite end of the spectrum where people are just starting out but they don't have any Financial but they they want to rush to their financial success but they're not there yet so they'll engage in compromising Behavior trading their information or their access in exchange for extra money right so there's you've got to always be looking for that those points in a life where Financial need becomes relevant children uh aging parents changes in career uh hitting ceilings of careers like these are all points that exist worldwide for all people right then you have relationship issues people who are uh old enough that they should be married but they're not married or they believe that they should be married but they're not married or they've been divorced or they've been Outcast or they've been whatever else they pick their career over their relationship right these are all people who are very susceptible to approaches that solve the relationship problem similarly you've got the same thing that exists in the business world people who are struggling in business people who are trying to make a business people who are trying to make a business that's super lucrative they're missing certain elements in relationships they don't know the right people they're not connected to the right buyers whatever else it might be so it's a perfect place to step in and connect two points and this person becomes wealthy because of an official business deal but their loyalty is to you because you become their lead Source essentially right and then you've got health issues and health issues are they apply to the individual but they also apply to the individual's family and friends and everything else so if you are an Iranian you have no access to Western medicine so if you're an Iranian nuclear scientist and there's a rare eye condition in your mother it's the perfect time for a western power to come in and say you know we have a hospital that can take care of your mother if you have a nuclear secret that you're willing to trade and that's really how it all works that same nuclear scientist 10 years earlier would have never talked to you but today right now they will there's so much marketing parallel between Espionage recruitment operations and just standard business marketing you've just got to give them the right message at the right time to get them to take the right action and then deliver the outcome no doubt no doubt Andrew Buon where where can people follow you uh you can find me on my homepage everydays spy.com you can find me on social media at everyday spy and then if you want to find my podcast I'm on all the major platforms and on YouTube thanks to Mr Tom Bilu for recommending that last time I was here and that's the everyday spy podcast love it thank you for coming on everybody remember if you're not in control you're under control and speaking of things that will put you in control if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care peace check out my conversation with Constantin kissen he is one of my favorite people to talk to and you guys will really enjoy this episode if you want to be successful in life it really will come down to the rules that you play by for most people Society hands us a set of rules and we just accept them that works fine in periods of stability and prosperity but it becomes disastrous in moment

Channel: Tom Bilyeu

Views: 2,402,189

Keywords: Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, ImpactTheory, TomBilyeu, Inside Quest, InsideQuest, Tom Bilyou, Theory Impact, motivation, inspiration, talk show, interview, motivational speech

Id: l46oWMu3b9M

Length: 190min 57sec (11457 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 05 2024