Former CIA Agent Reveals China’s Cold War with The West

part of what china's engaged in is information warfare that it gets out to all those nations whether it's in latin america or africa or anywhere else where the chinese regime has been very busy trying to basically put a variety of nations into debt through their belt and road program how calculating and strategic do you think china is right now compared to us they'll invest decades of time and effort into one potential asset we don't understand how ruthless and how focused they are on their own best interests you heard the whole story about they were pulling out of afghanistan and here's what we're doing it's been a waste of time for 20 years because of 9 11 why have we stayed there where do you stand with that we can't stay there forever we need to understand that when we leave the taliban will take over again jihadism turns our attention to china chinese are going to respond in a very brutal way and they're not going to care what the world thinks about that can another 9 11 happen with the way we're set up today there's always some element of a terrorist group out there trying to come up with a new scenario that will beat the defenses that you've currently got in place we have gotten better at not being reactive we just have to think okay well what do we do if there's a next event [Music] so you know i enjoy interviewing former cia agents but today is a special one michael baker is a former cia covert operations officer president of diligence llc global intelligence firm and the host of black files declassified on the science channel with that being said mike thank you for being a guest on the entertainment sure of course man thank you very much so what what made you become a ci agent i mean would you did you wake up and say you know what i'm gonna go be a ci agent how did that happen for you yeah yeah it was uh i was recruited as a toddler uh i couldn't have been more than four or five uh no you know what i i think uh i would actually believe you they start very early yeah they actually you know what um i actually long story short but uh my daughter was actually one of the first uh kids that went into the nursery that's located there at uh at langley i was back from overseas just for a brief period of time needed a place uh for uh my fantastic daughter when she was very young to be and i'll be damned if they hadn't built while i was uh away they built a child care facility and i used to joke about it i used to say that's a great place to spot and recruit you know new new candidates uh but um it's you know to answer your question uh i don't know i kind of i ended up backing into it a little bit it wasn't something i had planned on uh terminology wise you're an officer as opposed to an agent um you know that an agent would be fbi law enforcement that sort of thing typically if you're in operations uh in the cia then you're an officer as opposed to referring to it as an agent so do you just go apply to get the job or is it is there a recruitment process to it there are it depends nowadays is a lot different when i was uh younger and and you know uh it was it was more of a recruitment process you know there was sort of a spotting effort that was involved i kind of came across the radar i think of some folks and and it was a happy set of circumstances that came about um and i think they were willing to overlook my dismal uh gpa from my university days and and they looked past that and saw maybe i had some some potential in some other areas and so it worked out well in that regard but nowadays uh look it's i don't want to say it's like any other job application but they've got an internet site you know you can apply online um it's much more open than it ever used to be and i think that's a good thing right because you know they they need to get out there and look for for the best and the brightest by the way it wasn't me but they so what'd you do before ci what job did you have before cia uh you know i was uh i was headed down the path i thought i was going to be this is going to sound remarkable but i thought i was going to be a broadcast journalist and i had focused on i've lived all my life overseas basically as a kid i came to the us for last year high school and so yeah i thought uh i did you know the usual political science you know international relations uh national security issues in college i thought that's where you know i was going to go and mix it up with some journalism and thought that seemed like a pretty good path and and um yeah you know obviously i took a left turn somewhere you know you know when you think about cia maybe maybe movies have done this to us and i've asked this you know from other ci agents you think about the profile of a cia agent you know foster kid you know that doesn't have any attachments to anybody you know doesn't uh maybe isn't married doesn't have kids parents relationship wasn't the best you know are those criterias that they take into account today or maybe back in your day or is that just fictional what we see and reading movies and books yeah no that's a good question you know frankly it's it's a little bit fictional what do they want they want they want well-adjusted stable uh individuals confident um some self-discipline uh common sense you know they're looking for kind of exactly what you would think right because you're given a great deal of responsibility depending on again look the agency is made up of a lot of different career paths right there's a lot of different uh requirements in there and so it's a very diverse range of uh capabilities and skill sets everything from finance experts to scientists engineers um and then you've got you know people like me so it's it's an interesting uh organization because it's a lot more uh it's a lot more diverse both in terms of skill sets required and also just the people than uh the movies ever make it out to be so you were there for 17 years what are some of the craziest assignments you had that you can actually tell us about yeah well that's that that is the problem you just kind of your caveat at the end there is sort of the the restriction look i i've got a very good relationship with the organization in part because you know i keep my yap shot about um sort of the important things um and one of those is kind of getting too specific i will say that uh i was in operations and i touched on everything from you know counterterrorism to counter narcotics during the drug wars to um you know sort of insurgency operations um and there's uh there's there's in the operations side of the agency there is always an opportunity to walk away from something uh at the end of the day and think to yourself you know nobody else is doing this nobody else right now on this planet is engaged in this sort of activity and and that is what kind of keeps you fired up because you know those moments can be separated by pretty great distances you know you could spend six weeks sitting in the safe house somewhere waiting for something to to touch off um and then you've got a moment of something really interesting from an operational perspective and then you know you go back to filling out paperwork to explain how you lost some gear and you know uh you know your expenses and uh you know it's so it is it's if they actually made a feature film about what really goes on i think it wouldn't necessarily be as exciting as a jason bourne adventure it wouldn't be yeah so you know i've had i've had a nick mckinley on uh where he did some work in the past i've had jonah mendezon who was the former chief disguise officer who had you know the the head of the skies of i think president bush or somebody else that he should be open it was believable i had piranto on i had jane woolsey on i had shabbat from mossad on it just you know there's a lot of folks from different uh spaces that that i've had on and i've interviewed with jonah mendes said invest i said what makes for a great agent she said somebody who's extremely driven extremely charismatic extremely curious extremely competitive but doesn't need to celebrate his victories i thought it was such a unique way of describing a great agent would you say that sounds pretty right on what a great agent would be yeah her and her husband tony who's passed on great great people um and and she's super smart and and i think she she kind of nailed it there yeah i mean look you're not doing it for the money you're not doing it for the salary what is the salary bug what is the salary i don't know it's it's uh it's in line with the government uh services you know the gs pay scale so which is amazing right if you think about it uh look when i started out and i started out at a very interesting time in sort of agency operations um i believe i was making seventeen thousand and five hundred dollars a year now when i look back on that and i think about what what we were happy to do for seventeen thousand five hundred dollars a year yeah you're not doing it for the salary you're not doing it for the pay you're not what you're worth right yeah you're not doing it for anybody patting you on the back what year was it mike what year was it when you were making 17.5 oh [ __ ] that was uh that was the early 80s right i got started i was in for almost 20 years and uh so you know that's uh you know but but you're happy to do it right because they honestly make you feel by the time you finish up all the training depending on what you're gonna be doing um you know i was ready to walk in front of a bus for you know the director and and uh the president so um but you do uh if you're doing it for the right reasons it's not because you're looking to uh you know get that constant reassurance or constant pat on the back right you're clearly aware that you're doing it for something bigger than that and that's honestly god that's those are the folks that i always worked with and ran across and met and dealt with whether they were my my uh superiors or you know colleagues i mean to do cia the job of a ci agent is one of the requirements for them to help you become a ci investigate to see if you love america is there got to be a like a certain level of patriotism to be an agent or not really i i would hope so i would i would like to think that's the case and i would like to think that that shines out look it's um part of it part of it is is a bit of a self-selecting process right um you know if you're applying to the agency then theoretically um you know you're you're you're kind of already in that camp right unless there's there's something else going on that's that's somewhat unusual so yeah i think patriotism is an important part of it you have and again i i was one of those people who uh never really you know i never imagined myself to have all the information that the the uh the head shed or the top floor you know the seventh floor has and uh and so i never was one of those people that would sit around and question uh tasking or you know uh operational assignments and and uh i think that's a useful thing because you don't have all the detail you don't have all the information you're a tiny little part of the of the machine when you're out in the field working whether it's in paramilitary operations or it's in in you know narcotics carbon narcotics or terrorism operations you're just a small piece of the action right and all that that you're doing is getting put in the same pot as information coming from a variety of other sources or or you know and and and then people that are paid to make those decisions take all that and figure it out but you know so maybe i approached it from a fairly simple perspective i don't know when you got him were you somebody who did love america were you this is the greatest country of all time did you come from that mindset oh yeah yeah look i you know i i uh to this day i you know this this is i've spent a lot of my time in very difficult and in uh unusual and challenging environments and i've seen a lot of uh [ __ ] but um yeah this is this is a unique country and when you say that though nowadays people you know some folks will roll their eyes and you know they think oh yeah what a load of horseshit but i i've been in some very strange places where people will talk to you or if you have an opportunity because of what you're doing you have an opportunity to talk to people folks may not believe it here but overseas in a lot of different parts of the world where there's no opportunity people still believe that if you come here to the us and you work you can accomplish just about anything and it's that opportunity right the up the potential for opportunity the potential for equality of opportunity that is part of the magic of this country i'm a little concerned that we're sort of losing that here at home uh for whatever reason but yeah it still exists overseas yeah it's uh i mean it's what brought us here you know i grew up in iran and the the fantasy was every time somebody would get their green card to come to the states it was a big party everybody would celebrate and you're going to us you know we we'd watch rocky iv a hundred times we'd watch kremlins and we'd fast fantasize i don't care if there is a gremlin just put me in america i'll figure out a way to deal with these ghosts you know i'll be a ghostbuster if i have to i just want to go to america it was a a dream of all of ours to come over here to america but did you see the recent recruitment video of cia i don't know if you caught that or not have you had a chance to see it yeah i did i did what do you think about it um well there's a lot there's a lot to uh to discuss there a i think it's right i think it's a good idea for the agency to try to shine a small light on the the work of the agency and the intel community in general uh and i know that's what they've been trying to do over the past couple of years um and i think that's that's good um to the degree that they they can and that it doesn't uh impact you know sources and methods and all the rest of it and that's not something they would do the ad itself um i think they probably could have field tested it a little bit better and and by that what i mean is it's a it's it's a much more diverse work environment than people give it credit for it's not it's not perfect but then again no institution or business or community in america is right and they uh and they realize that and they're always trying to improve but i think what they should have done is taken some of those folks who don't have cover issues meaning if you're if you have cover you're not going to get in one of these ads um and and have various folks within the agency talking about the challenges and the excitement and the benefits and the career paths available right rather than talking about one individual walking around and saying look i i'm not i'm not ticking boxes but then they proceed to take a bunch of boxes um or they talk about it as if it's me me me and almost in the by the time they finish it's almost like what people been assailing you have people been you know claiming all these things that you say you're not like you you didn't earn this you didn't of course she earned it she's there right the agency doesn't you know that's so let me just play the first 30 seconds if the audience hasn't seen it just for them to get a glimpse of it because they're probably saying what what commercial are we talking about yeah we're going to play the first 30 seconds when i was 17 i quoted zora neale hurston's how it feels to be colored me in my college application essay the line that spoke to me stated simply i am not tragically colored there is no sorrow damned up in my soul nor lurking behind my eyes i do not mind at all at 17 i had no idea what life would bring but sora's sentiment articulated so beautifully how i felt as a daughter of immigrants then and now nothing about me was or is tragic i am perfectly made i can wax eloquent on complex legal issues in english while also belting guayaquil i still wouldn't think this is a cia commercial no i'm still curious what commercial is i'm a crying toddler with the other i'm a woman of color i am a mom i am a cisgender still don't know i did not sneak into cia now i know now you know is not the result of a fluke or slip through the cracks i earned my way in and i earned my way up the ranks of this organization i am educated qualified and competent and sometimes i struggle i struggle feeling like i could do more be more to my two sons and i struggle leaving the office when i feel there's so much more to do i used to struggle with imposter syndrome but at 36 i reflect is this the challenge the cia is having where they have to make a video like this to show that they're diverse and inclusive no i think this is just a uh this is just emblematic of the times that we currently live in right i mean i think that i think they're doing the same thing that you know in a way that coca-cola did by you know uh chastising mlb or or you know uh the all-star game or i i just think it's it's sort of a knee-jerk reaction in a way you know and again not not denigrating look she's you know full marks to her she's you know she's uh in there and she's working and so she's clearly smart capable all those things right it just sounds like from the ad that like i don't think anybody's walking around saying she's occupying space she's not supposed to or or you know claiming all these things it just it just sounds it sounds very defensive and it also sounds a little bit too meist right rather than this is a team this is an organization that works together like and when it works together in in in the right fashion it is an amazing thing of beauty from an operational perspective um it almost looks like the complete opposite of what jonah mendes talked about jonah mendes talked about when you do a when you become a ci agent it's about being ambitious driven competitive smart intellectual charismatic all this stuff but you don't need the recognition versus here it's more like look at me it's about me look how great again i thought maybe they're doing this because there's some internal challenges going on with the cia where you know not enough latinas not not enough women not enough african americans but i would assume that in the cia you almost have to recruit folks from different nationalities and ethnicities because if you're going into different markets you need to kind of blend in i remember one time my dad comes up to me and we have someone in our family that used to be part of the mi6 and eventually we found out years later and it's funny because uh that person took the same murad as you journalistic you know they went through the media route and a boom they got picked up sometimes that's pretty common my dad says hey you you can tell me you can tell me i said what's that that tell me it's okay i i know i already know at this point i sit down honestly i swear to god i have no clue what you're talking about he says how long have you been with the cia i said you think i'm with the cia he says how long have you been with the city can wink if you are said that i'm not part of it you are it took him five years to think that his sons i'm like i'm telling you i'm not part of the cia yeah he uh till today i think he still has a little bit of a skepticism whether i am or not but anyways i see this here i say i don't know i don't know if the ad is uh hey by the way has cia always done commercials or no have they done no no no it's i mean it's not the first one they've done and you know again they've got a twitter page and you know and i i get why they're doing it right i just again i just think it's the wrong path the wrong marketing message right have you know she could have simply by talking about if she if she'd have been the same individual and she had just been walking through the hallways talking about the the challenges the benefits of working for the agency right you're already sending a message by having a deliver that but you're talking about an organizational effort a team effort and all those things so i think the interesting thing about this this particular ad is look they pissed off both sides right they pissed off all the people who are tired of the of the woke-ism and think that it's it's the wrong path to take and it's dividing people and it's also pissed off interestingly all those cats that did talking about uh wokism you know and that are all woke themselves and because now what they're complaining about what they're pissed off about is that the cia has in their minds usurped their language right taken their language of localism and used it for their own benefits so somehow that's wrong so both sides are are irritated by this uh you know you could argue that people are talking about it uh and if that's your metric you know for success then hey fine but it's the cia not pepsi cola so i don't think that should be the metric yeah again if if they're trying to target a certain audience that's what this commercial got but it didn't get instead of doing a little bit more inclusive it would have been better to uh have everyone being there but again behind closed doors you don't really know what's taking place so let me get into my questions i've got a bunch of different topics i want to go through with you that i'm so curious about one of them is this here's a question black classify black files declassified on science channel it's a show that you've been running can you give the audience if they haven't seen an episode what's the show about yeah it's the first season sydney uh available on discovery plus it's a discovery science channel uh production we're just getting ready in two weeks we go out and uh start filming the second season and the idea behind the show originally was that um in a sense in a very simple way it was sort of follow the money if you want to understand interesting operations uh within the us government if you want to understand um clandestine uh services activities uh special forces operations whatever it may be uh latest research and development in warfare uh weapons technology then one of the best ways you can start to identify all that is by following the money looking at the budgets because money has to be spent so it has to sit somewhere in some budget somehow so that was the basic premise of it and then it sort of branched out from there to start looking at a variety of interesting uh military and intel community and government operations and activities and organizations and and people and uh combine all that with some of the latest technology that's being developed uh for some of those uh activities and and just see what we can see so we travel around the country and uh you know it's a great opportunity i you know i love meeting people and and and seeing things that otherwise i wouldn't see having a chance to do things that otherwise i wouldn't have a chance to do and and it's it's so anyway i'm subjective but i think it's the finest show made for television i love i love how humble you are about it but you know so episode number one the secrets of space force number two american ufos number three to catch an alien number four how to stop an assassination number five episode five iron man army six rise of the night stalkers right all the very very interesting episodes but here's a question for you so i'll sit down buddy of mine was delta we were in the army together at fort campbell kentucky and i leave i go into business he goes and becomes a delta force and does great for himself and i said so what do you know what you do all this stuff you know there's only 800 of us and you know we're the same level as navy seal team six and there's everybody else but that's us too and bubba also feel great who's above you will report to this who's above them we report to them okay so you look at fbi you look at cia look at dea you look at lapd any kind of pd you look at the government you look at military you look at politicians who is the ultimate puppet master and what i mean by the ultimate puppet master because i even think about it oh when you become a president you have the key you know you have the key to the nuclear whatever i'm like i don't believe that the president is the ultimate decision maker there's got to be some people who know stuff that nobody else knows that they know stuff and they don't even tell the president i i i have a very hard time believing that you're gonna tell a hundred percent of the intel all the darkest secrets of a nation of the world that we know about the mistakes that we have the skeletons in the closet which is probably a ton of them i don't know if one president that's gonna be there for four years or eight years you'd fully trust so who is the ultimate power at the top well it's it's uh actually it's kind of divided if you're thinking about in terms of who's got all the information so nobody really has all the information and nobody really wants all the information when it comes to um a military element or an intelligence community activity whatever it may be because it's just it's too much you're not going to burden your right you're not going to burden the president with all that detail uh you know so typically a president if you're looking you know like the bin laden right you present options right here are the three options and you present sort of a high level analysis as to why they have been selected as scenarios that he should now have to choose from and you know all that includes risk versus gain calculations and all the rest of it but in terms of just you know specifics um you know there's no one repository there's no one book of secrets that exists that has everything and there's no one you know as george bush used to say no one decider right i mean there is in the sense that the president will you know give a yay or nay on something perhaps but it's not as if he's doing that because he has read into everything nobody could nobody could get through that yeah but there's like i i i i don't know i just wonder you know how much how much uh time out of your free time that you have did you ever commit to studying secret societies did you ever get into the secret society stuff or not really uh you know what not not really um you know of course that's exactly what you would say if you were a member of a secret society you're qualified you're fully qualified because um i've had these conversations before um and people never believe me i i but i'll say i'm not typically a conspiracy theorist right and and black follows the classified that discovery show is not about uh conspiracies necessarily it touches on certain ones but not really and the reason i'm not is because i spent a lot of time kind of behind the curtain you know watching you know i guess how the sausage is made to mix my metaphors and uh what i came away with is oftentimes life is exactly as simple as it appears to be and that may be some sort of um mechanism for dealing with life uh that i've developed but i i always look at things and i and i tell my folks all the time i tell my kids this i tell the people that work for me and you know foreign that you never really have very many options on the decision tree right whether you're out in the middle of nowhere and you've got an operation going on and now you've got to figure out what to happen because it's all headed south and you know oddly enough your plan a and b didn't work um so you never really have a lot of options i just always you know there's very few conspiracies or you know uh ideas that i've i've seen that you know i walked away from and thought yeah maybe there is something to that so so the secret society thing i've never i guess it just never really caught my my attention too much because i don't really believe there's a cabal out there who's directing traffic for the entire world yeah you know it's kind of like uh uh the whole story about where the koch brothers are talking to each other so which president do you want me to get you for your birthday this year you know let's go fund this one and you know on the complete opposite side it's like well look at the stuff that soros is doing and setting up the bricks for protesters and you know oh my gosh it's soros behind everything and he's funny protesting he's funding that one part is for a person to be naive and just say i don't know if that's taking place or not you did a c-span interview years ago and you said nothing is black and white you said you talk about when you're in many countries your choices aren't between good and evil often times your choices between evil and less evil right so that the evil and less evil as citizens who go about their lives you're like man i just got to go pay the bills i got to make some money i got kids i'm going to try to make this practice here hopefully i can make it to the game i hope my son plays and his coach lets him in and church man he's trying to really push to raise money for this new building i hope he doesn't come and want to meet with us to give ten percent i've been doing two percent you know marriage we've been having a lot of fights my mom is sick my dad is sick my brother's going through issues my friend and i got into a fight so i'm just trying to figure this whole thing i don't really have time to think what koch brothers and solos is doing then you have the weird community the weird community is the why community that can't stop asking the flipping question which is why why why you would hope that would stop when you're six seven eight years old as a kid you cannot keep asking that why question at 40 years old right yeah you you cannot tell me like there is not some people behind closed doors of power that are making a lot of these decisions because if i sit and i think about okay let's let's go a different angle if you you know instead of the secret societies let's talk china okay okay if if if we were uh uh if america was a human being and china was a human being there are two people you know america is two years old china's 20 years old okay if america was uh you know 10 years old america is 100 years old if america's five years old china's 50 years old you know where i'm going with this yeah yeah yeah you know so america we're very confident we're very confident you know freedom of speech freedom of this freedom of that but china is also extremely you know quiet calculating strategic long-term thinking they know because of experience of having seen their former rulers and leaders all the flipping mistakes they've made because they got a few thousand years of case studies right they have access to their own case studies right and when you have all these case studies i don't care what university you go to it's personal we read about it we know about it we know our flaws okay so they know the games they're playing i guess i'll let you tell us a little bit on what how how calculating and strategic do you think china is right now compared to us well i don't think they're any it's not that they're any smarter um it's just that they've got a longer view right and it kind of comes down to what you're talking about in terms of just you know we've got the brashness and confidence of youth meaning we're a young country um they you know have walked a very long road you know throughout their history they tend to have a much much longer uh view and that brings patience um and sometimes brings more attention to detail so that gives them an advantage to some degree and that we're always kind of chasing whatever object is out there and it's shiny and you know we seem to have a hard time focusing on more than one or two things at a time but uh yeah it's it's that i would i would say that is probably the biggest difference between us not just from a an intelligence or a operational perspective but that is also important they'll invest decades of time and effort into one potential asset and you know all without any payoff for perhaps 20 or 25 years and then suddenly that asset who you know actually works for the chinese intel ends up at raytheon or or motorola or you know the skunk works or wherever it may be that that i think is is an advantage they have i don't think we're going to be able to you know develop suddenly a longer view you know from our perspective it's an advantage they have um um as far as uh being united even though our country's name is united and you know we are the united states of america and china we don't have a clue what's going on over there because you can never tell the debates they're having internally amongst their politicians because that's never public that's private to them it's their business they don't think it's our business to know what's going on over there so we're like the husband and wife we're our uh we're u.s is more like keeping up the kardashians and china is more like a very private show that only they know about everything we do is publicized right we know everything the world knows our problems our drama everything yeah we have a short attention span and we have a a tendency here in the states to uh you know think i don't want to make this sound too simplistic but we do tend to in this country um think the best right of other nations for the most part right we or maybe it's not even that maybe it's just we imagine that we're all in the same boat together somehow and we mirror our values or the way that we see ourselves or would like to see ourselves onto other nations right so that hampers our negotiations sometimes when you're talking about a country like china or russia um you know the iranian regime the north koreans because we you know we don't sometimes seem to understand how ruthless they are and how uh singularly focused they are on their own best interests while we're not we're the complete opposite so yeah who who can be bought more is is u.s more for sale or is china more for sale well i think we're more easily distracted uh in terms of yeah i i think yeah i mean it's it's a very interesting question it's phrased very interestingly um you know i think the problem with with uh with the way that we approach china is that look the past four years um and i you know didn't have a dog in the hunt in the past you know presidential thing i you know i like i like republican policies i don't necessarily need to like the person who's leading them right um but i think we had a a relatively honest open discussion about china for the first time in quite some time right some of the actions that were done some of the things that were said um i think it actually put the chinese regime on their back foot they weren't expecting sort of that behavior because for decades we've always approached china in the same way and always expect the same sort of result that somehow they're going to gravitate towards a more democratic society that's horseshit you know as long as she's in charge she has set himself up much like much like putin look putin's going to be president until he dies right and she has pretty much done the same thing and he has completely locked down the security services uh he's squashed any hope of any pro-democracy movement in hong kong uh the the genocide with the uyghurs and yet we continue sometimes to act as if you know hey you know these are people that we can understand and work with and we've got aligned interests and you know maybe once in a generation our interests actually align yeah i mean it's it's is uh you you see so much so much of the world relying on this one country china whether it's manufacturing whether it's chips we learned during kovit we kind of need these guys for pharmaceuticals you saw what happened with india 400 000 people a day getting covered and the officials of china send a tweet essentially on their web on a on their own twitter website called weibo making fun of uh india what they're going through versus how look at us we took a you know a a rocket launcher and these guys are blowing up over there and then they took it down because they got heat from their own people that called out the officials in china and uh now india desperately needs 1.2 billion vaccines and who's the only place in the world that can get their 1.2 billion vaccines and all the intel all the negotiations the trade secrets that they picked up is it too late meaning yesterday i think 60 minutes was done what a few days ago with anthony belkin uh uh i'm pronouncing his wrong name wrong blinking and the the lady asked the question saying by 2028 china's poised to be a bigger gdp than u.s right is it is it already are we at the point of no return where china is going to be the largest empire in the world and it's going to be very hard to compete against those guys well that's the narrative that they push and and and part of what china's engaged in is sort of information warfare right so so they've been beating that drum that look it's inevitable china's heading towards the top of the food chain um you know the u.s is a nation in decline those things are talking points that the uh that the chinese propaganda machine has been pushing out for some time and they're very good at it they're very effective at it we talk about russian disinformation all the time but that you know the chinese have far more resource um than uh than the russians do and they've been very aggressive and active and trying to make sure that not just that message gets out here in the u.s but that it gets out to all those nations whether it's in latin america or africa or anywhere else where the chinese regime has been very busy uh trying to uh you know basically put a variety of nations into debt through their belt and road program uh lock up as much of the you know rare earth mineral commodities as possible and and other and look they've got their first overseas port now you know sitting in in djibouti in africa and um that's not by accident that's by design they are pushing out their military aggressiveness in a concerning way a very concerning way there seem to be kind of accelerating their timetable internally when it comes to their thought process towards taiwan um so is it is it inevitable uh no not by any means they've got a lot of problems they've got internally there's a lot more protest that goes on internally in china than more aware of um you know there is corruption that exists within that that that government that you know can at any time cause one of their people to topple right so you know it's a very it's in a way it's it's it's a relatively frail system and that's why xi has been so busy trying to lock it down you know for his own purposes and and uh ensure his his longevity you believe that you you believe it's a frail empire where well no what i mean is i mean parts of the parts of the way the organization and look i mean frankly i you know i maybe i'm just stupid and old school and and you know but um you know socialism communism you know they china's been around a long time communism has not right communist china has not been around a long time so when we think of china you don't you you don't think well this system has been around forever no it hasn't so what i'm saying is there's the frailty built into communism and socialism that eventually i believe uh outs itself right comes out and and then you know we see the decline in whatever nation it happens to be so uh that's what i'm talking about i mean they you know it may not happen you know next year obviously or the next decade or in our lifetime but yeah i don't hold any water and thinking somehow that china is inevitably the next powerhouse yeah who who do you think is afraid of their government more is u.s population you know more afraid of their government or is is china of citizens more afraid of their government well i don't know if it's a fear uh you know the u.s population is more skeptical of their government um it's a moment it's clearly a much more open society and questioning government is kind of part of the fabric of america you know and being skeptical about your leadership and and you know we've got that ability and that right thank god uh in china that's not the case right they struggle to just get any details about what's going on in in within their government um or actual news that's related to any internal domestic events or issues so um i think uh the uyghurs certainly fear the chinese regime uh and the you know elements of pro-democracy in in hong kong that used to exist and are no longer in existence because they've all been banged up and thrown in jail for the most part um they certainly fear the chinese regime it goes back to what you were saying earlier though a lot of the population there is just trying to put food on the table right and you know they're still we we're we're a little bit softer right we don't have to go out and collect water and food every day for the most part so um you know we have that luxury of questioning everything how uh by the way that's a great uh comparison we're you know skeptical americans versus you know a little more afraid about the government what the government could do to them and i think it's even the most wealthiest man in china jack ma is afraid because look at them hey they started their series of trying to break the company apart hey you can't do this you're thinking you're too powerful you're the speech you made you should have never taken a shot at the government shame on you look how much money you've made because of the government if it wasn't for the chinese government you wouldn't be as rich as you are so that's that part how how much how deep is the us as far as how infiltrated are we with our cia agents in the chinese government oh are we getting intel uh you know what i i it's gonna sound like i'm being coy i hope so um uh you know i'm sure we are whether it's through our own assets or through you know liaison work uh with other countries um you know that's kind of gets down to a little bit too close to the bone to sources and methods but look um people here in the states better hope that we are good at it and that we are active because the chinese uh regime the chinese intel service within the pla in particular is very aggressive very in and not just here but with all our allies and they are busy hoovering up every piece of information that they get their hands on on a daily basis whether that's through cyberspace or through old-fashioned human sources you know they have an enormously aggressive uh you know effort underway around the globe so yeah we have to do everything we possibly can to counter that what what is uh okay so what what concerns you the most about them is it you know long-term i mean you know i lived in dallas for five years so when i left dallas the moment i left dallas two weeks later the storm hit and this was just you know 12 weeks ago 13 weeks ago we had to shut down our office pipes were blowing up one of my c-suite executives bedroom master bedroom upstairs living room down here they were out visiting grandma the bed fell to first of all because the knife blew up i mean it's just red cartoons yeah it's like a cartoon and it was happening everywhere one day two days three days five days seven days we had an event going at gaylord and i'm doing a conference call with gaylord with my executives at dealer we're expecting two 000 people there they're in the hotel room lights are off they have beanies on and four sweaters on because the heater doesn't work at gaylord and gaylor is a well-known hotel yeah you know what if that becomes a formula for somebody who's a little bit more divisive in the in asia a country called china saying wow what a great uh what if we could do that to us for eight weeks what if we could do that to us for you know four months what if we do bio warfare what if we do cyber what if we do yeah no it's it's already in there yeah it's that's already in their playbook they've already figured that out in terms of you know what the a major conflict could look like and uh and you know if you get all the you know pentagon and military intel community leaders in dc and put them in a conference room and you know ask them all what they spend most of their time worrying about at night it would be uh you know an attack on the infrastructure here in the u.s right that's that's right up there at the top of the list so that's and that's something that happens every day whether it's the russians or the chinese or any other nation that's got the resources they're out there probing and mapping uh our infrastructure and that's everything from the power grids to understanding how our our water treatment facilities work our transportation routes and hubs uh the banking system and and they're not doing it because they're just curious they're doing it because they're drawing up or have drawn up um scenarios for how that next major conflict if it you know god forbid should happen is going to occur and it's not going to look anything like what you know we were used to from the past and and you're absolutely right you look at yeah look at a place like austin when they went during that storm people were losing their minds right and it was you know three days of power look i used to live in connecticut and you know apparently when you live in connecticut you have to sign some contract that says you're going to lose power you know at least 10 times a winter uh for days on end it's just all the utilities that are above ground and so a power outage for for five or six or seven days was just a standard practice and if you had the wherewithal you'd buy a generator and you know uh so that's that's not really a hardship but if you multiply that by six or seven or eight or nine or ten weeks and they shut down the east or west or texas power grids uh what happens well you you lose power suddenly things start to shut down you don't get food you know delivered to the stores because transportation is shut down because now you're not moving fuel around uh you can't get cash out you know there's no cash in your in your in your atm uh and there's a pharmaceuticals your medicines so that you know that's that's a real problem and our power grid as an example for infrastructure was never designed or built to withstand a terrorist attack or certainly a cyber attack but you know so when when the current administration when the demonstration talks about dumping money into infrastructure hell yeah i'm all about you know if that means if that means improving our our actual infrastructure our power grids our water treatment facilities all the things that that we really do rely on that's infrastructure if you put the money into that and your roads and bridges right great right but let's not do what we always do which is kind of lose sight of the important [ __ ] because we want to make everybody happy by talking about the feel-good stuff right and let's focus on what we really need to focus on from a security perspective first sure all that up and you know maybe we have a couple of dollars left over by the time we spend all that money to uh do other things i don't know what that's why i'm not in charge that's why i'm not in charge yeah so who who concerns you more china or russia or maybe they concern you in a different way yeah they can certainly they concern a different way you know that's that's you can't again it kind of goes to what we were talking about a little bit before in terms of multitasking you know we and look the military the intel community the staff are really smart sharp individuals everybody knows that we can multitask in that regard uh oftentimes when i say we can't i'm referring to politicians uh but uh china has far more resource than russia does russia's got you know basically the equivalent of maybe the fifth largest gdp in in the eu um and when oil heads south right uh in terms of pricing they really suck and win and that's typically when you see putin getting a little bit more aggressive looking for some sort of external you know enemy or target to get the people focused on uh which is another reason why we should be energy independent because every time we're not every time we say we're going to do something like shut down the keystone pipeline and we're going to focus only on green energy guess what well just like people are seeing right now your price of gas goes up and when the price of gas goes up that you know without a doubt benefits putin so if you're you know if you're in favor of of uh of helping out putin great you know let's not be energy independent but anyway so those two those two nations their threats are somewhat different they all want the same thing which is to push us off the top of the food heap and ascend uh it's just that china has you know far more resource than russia does who who's third by the way if you if you were to say china and russia let's just say they're at the top who's third who's fort who do you look at as a third is turkey third is uh you mean in terms of uh threat like who would be right uh we need to have our eyes on yeah i mean i think typically if you ask anybody uh in in washington uh in the intel community of the military they'll they'll say it's china russia iran north korea have and they've occupied those top four spots they sometimes they rotate or switch positions but that's been the case for you know two three four decades you know three decades maybe so that doesn't change much and then you've got up there in the top of the threats you've also got again got this infrastructure issue um and you know terrorism is you know in there somewhere but not you know even during the heyday of isis was it up at the top as an existential threat now so it's but it is uh it is remarkable how those threats have remained somewhat constant for a number of years now so so you you heard you know the whole story about they were pulling out of afghanistan and here's what we're doing it's been a waste of time for 20 years because of 11 why have we stayed there and then i mean to to hear condoleezza rice and hillary clinton come out and be on the same page about the fact that hey this is going to be problematic if you do you're going to face some backlash if you do this where do you stand with that yeah uh well look we do operational missions we do tactical missions really really well you know this year in the military and tora bar is a good example we do we we do things very very well from a tactical perspective we don't necessarily uh nation build in uh that part of the world very well at all uh because in part you know the the local buyers don't know what we're selling right and so my feeling has always been about afghanistan is that look we we did a great job in torabora that was that was a that was a hell of an op right bin laden got out but that wasn't necessarily we weren't that wasn't the priority target was getting them it it was taking down the taliban now we should have explained at that time okay if you do this again meaning if you allow your country to be used as a training base you know to attack the west whether it's us or allies we're going to come back in here and do this again because we do it very well and so we'll come in here and kick your ass every time we need to and that to me would have made more sense than trying to improve the literacy rate or try to sell them on some sort of pseudo federal democratic government concept in an environment where we know from recent history from looking at the example of the soviets occupying afghanistan we had the same exact problems that they had when they were trying to exit right they were trying to get they were trying to okay maybe we got to retreat to the urban centers we can't hold the countryside you know how do we leave a government in place that you know will continue with our agenda once we're out you know that all the problems that they were facing are the problems we are facing we tended to mirror our values we tended to think well you know it'll be different because we're it's america it's you know democracy and it's freedom and you know they don't know i don't know so i think what we uh we just need to be pragmatic we need to understand that when we leave the taliban will take over again they will take over again oh yeah the taliban will be in charge so once we leave the taliban will be in charge and if we can't live with that well then okay then we we shouldn't leave but i guess my point is we can't stay there forever and is it time to have a hard assessment as to whether this is you know one of our key priorities from a national security perspective so i just uh i'm not one of those people that says we need to leave you know five or ten thousand troops there um i think we just at this stage of the game um crazy question as long as we can accept the fact that the taliban's gonna be back in charge crazy question for you do you think china wants us to leave china wants us to be bogged down china wants us to to devote resources in there just like russia does russia was tickled pink when we started you know in there and because they knew i think what was going to happen and so china if it causes us heartburn if it causes us to expend resources if it damages our brand worldwide then china's all in favor of it i don't think they necessarily want us to leave uh because then they'll come rushing in and fill a vacuum um i don't think anybody at least in the rest of our lifetime is going to look at the soviet experience and our experience and thinking themselves you know maybe we can do it next time better my concern is i think china may be sitting there saying look america why don't you waste your resources to stay in afghanistan because as long as you're there the taliban is not going to be waking up because if they do and they find out what we're doing to muslims here in china they may come after us before they come after you at least you're not going out there you know doing to muslims what we're doing out here you know the story about what china yeah well the difference they've got is that the the regime the china regime doesn't have to respond to anybody they don't care right and they understand that i think they look they they get that they've they've already essentially gotten they've gotten away with what they've been doing to the wakers you know we've gotten upset we've we've issued some memos but in reality we haven't done [ __ ] about what china is doing to the uyghurs and so if they have to deal with an insurgency or if if the taliban or or elements of of jihadism turns their attention to china chinese are going to respond in a very brutal way and they're not going to care what the world thinks about that so you so you don't think china cares about what the taliban are going to do to them i think they're prepared to deal with it in a way that we're not and how would they deal with it i mean if you were to use your creative imagination how would they deal with it well i mean i think there would be there would not be concern over over casualties um there would not be you know sort of that concern over how this looks to the world um they again it's not that's not their calculation right if it's in their best interests they'll deal with it and they'll you know clean up whatever mess is left afterwards but they're not gonna sit around and ring their hands and have you know remorse over because the world thinks less of them you know so but i'm curious to know what they would do like would you would you see them saying okay let us attack you directly here's what we're going to do to you uh uh how would they go about you know responding to the taliban that's what i'm curious about because it would depend on what that would look like right i mean the taliban's not going to what are they going to do they're not mounting an invasion um so you know it would be what is it is it is it uh you know efforts to uh engage in terrorist activity on on you know within china sure could be and if that's the case and that's you know i suspect that would be where it would would lie then like i said the chinese would would uh my feeling is the regime would would not agonize over a brutal response and that would not mean that they're going to invade you know afghanistan um because again they don't view that in their own best interests i so i don't know it's all speculation i'm just saying that that uh from our perspective um we've been in afghanistan a long time they're not picking up what putting down you know it's a bit like libya do you think we're gonna create some sort of pseudo-democratic stronghold in libya so you know i think it's time to assess in a much more um direct manner what's in our best national security interests i think we can maintain sufficient insight into what's going on within afghanistan without having a large troop presence there and i think that would then allow us to uh drop back in if we need to and again in a tactical sense uh so but to think that somehow the taliban will be part of a peacemaking deal and share government uh once we're gone is is ridiculous that's crazy i had noam chomsky on yesterday and i'm sure you know who noam chomsky is i'm you know we probably don't agree with a lot of things he says but there's one thing that he did say is he said something that made me think in his book who rules the world okay so in the book he talks about how america was so fascinated with the in the hunt of ben laden right this was a 20-year hunt let's go find this bin laden guy right 15 years whatever like 15 years right we're going to go catch him we're going to get him and he says bin laden won the war and there's been a lot on one he says because america spent 3.2 to 4 trillion dollars to kill one man so if bin laden's vision was to help bankrupt america or get him to spend more of their money guess what he won you mean to tell me one person's life is worth 3.2 trillion dollars so it kind of makes me think on what you're saying is you know uh america seems to be the country that wants to get in the business everybody's war fight breaks hey guys guys guys guys listen i'm here you guys don't need to fight you know hey hey hey hey like we're trying to be that but but sometimes when you do that some people want to fight some people want to have differences some people want to have their disputes scored away and you're not allowing them to do it then you become the enemy because essentially two people turn against you and they're like wait uh oh get out of our business you know why are you mining so much of our business i think sometimes america does that but the taliban i think that like what you said you said is america it's not about whether we should get out or not it's about if you do the taliban's going to come up if they do take over their location are you okay with the repercussions of what could happen what are the potential repercussions could a potential another 9 11 happen if another 9 11 happens are we prepared to prevent it from happening do we have the right controls in place how much is that worth have we spent time in infrastructure and that i don't know but uh then the question becomes are we ready for that if that does take place can another 9 11 happen with the way we're set up today uh well well sure uh you know you know there's always some element of a terrorist group out there trying to come up with a new scenario that will beat the defenses that you've currently got in place we have gotten better at at not being reactive right remember when truck bombs were the rage and so suddenly the answer was bollards you know put up lots of perimeter bollards outside of government buildings and embassies and that'll sort the problem out and that was reacting to the threat that had already occurred rather than thinking what else could happen we've gotten better at gaming out what else could happen and so it's it's it's a different time um but you know the problem is you can't you know you know you you lose if you just let one get by right you always you know just just one just one slip and you kind of lost that effort you know you got to be right all the time in counterterrorism so it's it it is a it's a it's a tough uh it's it's it's a good question i just happen to think that we've got the ability when it comes to afghanistan to obtain sufficient intel and understanding as to what's going on without maintaining five to ten or fifteen thousand troops in country indefinitely um because at that point you're not doing really anything you're just you're afraid to leave uh you're afraid to build up um and it's i'm not quite sure who benefits from a situation like that um but it's you know it's hard to imagine that it's been it's been that long that we've been there three point two to four trillion dollars that's a lot of money and he's right that's what you know bin laden talked about that you know rather famously and and he was very open about it you know he is his part of his wharf against america was on the economic front and so you know uh did you tell me whose life in the history of the world you know garnered the tensions of four trillion dollars of one country's uh you know resources that's that's that's impact right there you know yeah no it wasn't it's it kind of you know was it important to uh to to bag him well yes um did it become an outsized uh focus you can't underestimate the importance of it uh but yeah i mean i guess at the end of the day um you know he was you know he succeeded in that regard right in terms of the from the financial cost of his actions to the us so i never understood why we killed a guy i mean you go to his place no one's there he's by himself why do you kill him why don't you get them and if we spend all this money let's try to get intel out of them let's bring them back and see what we can do with them i mean we brought how much did we learn from what saddam did remember when saddam was going to court and defending himself and everybody could kind of see how he's selling himself and trying to win the the citizens of iraq over and some people are saying he's full of [ __ ] i don't believe anything he's saying but some people are like well i kind of understand look at the man sympathize with him but no matter what we got smarter as a world to know what the guys mode i just didn't understand why we have to take them out yeah well i mean you know in the moment um if you're faced with someone who's got a weapon and they if you're ready to shoot you're gonna you're not you know you're not gonna hear all sorts of things about well you know whether it's uh law enforcement might they should fire a warning shot or they should aim for the leg or something okay well first of all you have never been in a gunfight i i agree i'm not i'm not i'm not i'm not doing that but i mean i think it's and then it's also um you know just from an operational perspective i suspect bin laden actually by that point in his time he had very little in his head of of interest you know so i i don't know what it would have accomplished it would have been a a real dog and pony show of a of a trial and you know there would have been some people saying he needs to be properly tried and you know and so look the guy the guy got what he deserved um there is no doubt that it it at enormous cost um but you know i think now to to your point we just have to think okay well what what do we do if there's a next event like that of that magnitude and are we prepared for it do we respond properly um you know my my speculation is yes we would like this country reacts very well at times to diversity even now when we all seem to be very divided um an outside event you know uh the u.s seems to come together at times like it never ever does in other you know times so i hope you're right hope you go in that direction by the way are we still would you still put us as the best uh intelligence agency in the world i mean i know historically it's been the top three cia you know mossad and you got uh mi6 and now you got the the chinese uh intelligence agency you know what do they call it the ministry of a state uh security of china you know who who do you think has got the most well-trained prepared anticipation type of a group of people that are ready for anything to happen well we do yeah the cia uh hey look hey you saw the ad we started out the show with the ad come on no i'm kidding i'm kidding not not to denigrate the ad but anyway uh but yeah i know the agency and i'm subjective it's exactly what people would expect me to say but uh you know the cia in my opinion anyway is still at the at the top of the heap there um you know it's not that not to say the chinese don't throw an enormous amount of resource at their intel operations they do and they've also got certain advantages in the sense that they've got they lock down their domestic you know population like no other right and they can get those people to work on their behalf um and to so it's you know they've got it's it's like the old russian days during the uh kgb days you know everybody out on the street every rushing out on the street was you know co-opted a sense to be a surveillance in a way for you know the kgb because they had no other choice um but yeah the cia's in terms of resource capabilities personnel uh reach is as far as i'm concerned is at the top of the heap i don't know [Laughter] power to you being diplomatic in your your commercial for your peers to see and say mike's on our side you know but but i you know what's crazy you know how i think about it i asked this from everybody i asked uh shabbat he's like oh it's this i asked woolsey even for the two years he was in i think he was in under clinton yeah yeah you know oh it's cia and i i lost different folks but i think it's not mi6 i don't think it's cia i don't think it's mossad i think it's china right now because you know and and here's what i mean by china look who is right now doing the job of espionage better than anybody else i mean you you think about what is espionage right let me how many people are bought today i don't know you had world health organization being more aligned with china you got political people in office that you have lineage to china you know and china is willing to spend the kind of money to buy people up in different ways and we'll give you this seed and there's so many creative ways oh your kid needs something don't worry about it oh you're this person needs this don't worry you need to go into uh harvard let us buy a building in harvard for 100 million dollars they owe us a bunch of buildings so a bunch of favors so i don't know if anybody's doing a better job it's it's almost this is this is almost how i see it you go to a club you see girls and you see the one guy that's extremely uh uh you know good looking so it's kind of like uh so the girls are attracted to him because of his looks you're like okay that's mi6 good-looking group you know then you got uh you know uh one that maybe they're known for being great and bad and so you have to know his reputation that's mossad let's just say you know you know this guy's gonna that should be the agency what are we good at board games are you gonna get around to the agency then you got wow look at this guy here man you know he's he's so good with words and you know great uh very proud and you know the kind of person i want to bring to my family and introduce him say that cia right u.s but then there's the one that just says look i have one intention with you i want to take you home tonight and that's it that's china they're shameless china is so shameless with their game where all the other agencies are almost a little bit more you know careful in their ways of doing things a little bit more you know where they're just kind of like no we are dark and this is what our intentions are and we're gonna take care and we're shameless about it and i swear to god if you screw with us your life is gonna be held because we know your daughter your distance that i visualize them being that way again i may be wrong i'm just a regular guy here but uh i think quietly everybody's talking about mi6 mossad and cia i think china's like you guys can go get all the recognition on all the websites on who you are but i think we're kicking all your asses combined together well i mean there's no doubt that i mean there's nobody's underestimating uh chinese intel by any means anybody who's in the game and by the way it's good just to know that the cia now we're known for our you know sweet personality um hey what the hell yeah we're the ones that you want to take home to mom you take an agency officer do you disagree do you disagree that we're not the sweetest like look at the ad we just made we don't know i know but i mean but that's not that's that you know that's a that's a public facing side of it i've seen i've seen again i've worked behind the curtain and you know we don't uh we you know the job gets done you know when it needs to uh but i think nobody's underestimating uh chinese intel for sure um and part of it is you know uh professional pride in terms of when you ask who's the best obviously you know but i i i wouldn't expect you to say anything else you you ask and you play they ask kobe who's the greatest of all time he says i'm first i don't know anything else but that's that's part of the debate no i'm right i only ask because i think some are willing to get way more dirty than you guys are well look you face the chinese intel service and the russians uh and a variety of others uh don't face the same restrictions and people don't believe that i mean the sort of the progressive side the the far left all those people who actually believe everything they see in a feature film or reading a beach book you know they won't believe it but there's an enormous checks and balances placed on the agency right and it's a it's the most transparent frankly intel service in the world so is that a detriment well sure it is when you're talking about you know uh operational um effectiveness maybe uh because you have to you have to work within those checks and balances and those restrictions and the legalities that exist the chinese don't have to do that so i take your point in that regard but you know um you know with creativity and and uh you know i i know i you can overcome that i guess what i'm saying again i have to respect your experience and and just tell you that you've seen things i haven't seen and i hope you're right i hope you're right but your opponent can is is willing to go to very very ugly places that i think america is willing to it's like you know you fight somebody right right and you fight this guy you're like okay there's a knife there you're not ready to stab the guy okay you want to beat the hell out of them and just you know let's just say but yeah the other guy's willing to take the knife you're not going to kick this guy doesn't no matter how big you are he's going to stab you right so then you're like i'm willing to stab the guy but the other guy is willing to you know take out his gun okay then look i don't mind taking out my gun okay but then the other guys we're going to go after your family oh draw their line i'm not going but there is somebody that's willing to go to levels that you're not willing to go to yeah um well i mean first of all never never reach for a knife if you've already got a gun so don't yeah don't make that mistake uh but no it's you know what it is and and that is something that's used against us right by whether it's china or any other nation that doesn't have our best interests at heart uh is our our openness um sort of our mentality uh our you know again and and people sometimes scoff but you know our desire to do the right thing look we engage in a lot of activities overseas as a nation for the right reason because we genuinely sort of want to do the right thing do we make mistakes sure we do and then we try to course correct and all those things but yeah other nations just like terrorist organizations they use our openness and our freedoms against us right no no secret there um but you know i would much rather having spent bulk of my life overseas i would much rather live in an environment like this than you know whatever china's selling i i i don't disagree don't don't don't take my messaging as that at all i believe no no america is the greatest country in the world that's not where i'm going the place where i'm going is look things are getting darker and china's making it very clear that they don't care to negotiate on your terms the only way they negotiate is on their terms no american negotiate the only person that's ever pushed these guys that's pissed them off is one guy and it was the most hated guy in america in the history of america in a four-year period to the point where anybody was willing to do anything for this guy tonight get elected on the opposite side and the person that got elected is probably the least qualified not quote maybe the not least qualified because his resume in the world of politics 43 years the least aspirational excitement 20 people would show up to makes no sense and i don't even think kamala harris today i don't know if she maybe she did a press conference or two but i don't don't recall her doing anything there yeah so i i don't know when i think about that i've interviewed mobsters sammy double garvano you know michael francis all these different names that maybe you've heard about phil leonetti from philadelphia yeah the mop system was what hey you got a liquor store here joey i do who's bothering you well such and such moving forward tell them i'm on you you tell them sammy's over here really yes guy comes to try to bully joey hey joey give me your money i'm not giving you [ __ ] excuse what'd you say you want me to call sammy oh you oh you call sammy yeah no no no no no no listen joe i got no problem with you no to me again i'm not saying that's the direction to go but what i am saying is i almost expect you know the movie uh what was the movie with uh tom cruise where you can't handle the truth with uh oh yeah uh it was uh yeah uh up on the wall in guantanamo yeah with that you good man right where the guy said you can't handle the truth right and the movie he goes because of code red let's set aside code red forget about code red but i do think the job of cia or delta or navy seal team six or some of this what you guys have to do i do believe 99 of america cannot handle the truth i believe that yeah yeah i know that most most folks really don't want to know how the sausage is made you know it's just not something they want to get involved in and like you said at the very beginning it's not something they have time for right everybody's worried about rightly so you know taking care of their family doing all those things people want national security they want to feel protected you know and so you know look i guess all i would say is um within the confines of of how uh you know we operate as a military and intel community um i still maintain we are the best out there we're the most effective efficient group out there uh that doesn't undermine the seriousness or the challenges from an organization like you know the chinese ministry so um but it does uh yeah that that does present problems right the and i think the problem that we're facing right now is exactly what you said with biden and harris is you know are they up to the task are they up to the task of standing up against china and and dealing with them in a way that you know um they'll take seriously and i i don't know the answer that question i i don't either but you know yesterday when i'm uh talking to noam chomsky here's a guy that's been a professor at mit for 60-plus years right that's a long time and i asked him i said do you love america he says how do you love a country you can't love a country i love my kids i love my family but you can't love a country what do you mean love a country i said i can say i love america he says i don't understand the concept of loving a country right i i ask you the question at the beginning is one of the priorities to be a cia agent to have the love of the country you know they say love of the game clause like you know michael jordan in his contract that's something with the bulls called the love of the game clause like you can never let me stop me from playing a small little pickup game in new york you can't stop me because it's the love of the game claus and all of his contracts it concerns me if the ci agents that they get in today some of them actually don't like the ideas america was founded on that scares the hell out of me because that's where you're not uh protecting the values that you value that america was founded on you're willing to fight for the values that maybe your mom your dad a professor at uc berkeley sold you on that you've been convinced that's the way to go and other countries are a little bit more loyal to the values that that country sold them on i hope i'm wrong i hope our agents are more loyal to what america found was founded on but uh again who am i i'm just the guy well but i think you're right i think you're on to something i think if you if all you do is hire for the individual and the show that you are hiring you know all the various elements of society out there um and those people you know that you hire you know aren't coming to the table because of you know love of the team love of the the values love of the the ideas the ideals then yeah then eventually you're gonna have a problem because you're gonna have a group of individuals and look i don't care you could have a conference room full of uh uh you know diversity and all you've got is you know maybe you've got a conference room with diverse idiots you could have a homogenous conference room and you gotta have a conference room full of homogenous idiots right doesn't matter you hire the smartest the most confident the most capable skill sets you've got and it doesn't matter what they look like right and so that to me seems like it shouldn't be that hard to understand uh but no i i disagree with gnome i i love america i love the ideals i love the ideas yeah and you know some people will say well you know you know your ideas are wrong or whatever i don't i don't care right i you know i'm i don't see anything i don't see any contradiction in saying you love america and and you want it to be as best as it can be uh look i i don't i i don't care what anybody thinks or believes or looks like or or wants to be right i don't need to celebrate your ideas you don't need to celebrate mine just get on with it be a good honest decent person be kind to people uh and be a productive member of society but you know get that [ __ ] out of my wheelhouse right i don't i i don't need you know to all i care about is the character in the content of your your you know self as a human i thought we were honestly there and that's one of the few times i've been disappointed uh in in the recent past is when i realized that we weren't there anymore and then we're back to focusing on you know slicing and dicing up the population and the into you know people with it doesn't make any sense to me and i thought we were past it we're on the same page i i again i saw the commercial yesterday i'm like wait what is this is this walmart trying to say they're inclusive no no it's not walmart that's cia yeah i thought it's a walmart community i thought it was walmart or an amazon commercial that we hire everybody that's my background all this stuff anyways mike i've had a blast with you having you on appreciate your time appreciate your insight no thank you man i've really enjoyed it uh hopefully i wasn't too long with it no i i uh if i didn't have an appointment here right now i would have stayed with you long i really enjoy talking to you to hear your point of view on how things are and i salute you for being a patriot and defending your country and standing up for what your country's values and principles are thank you man i appreciate that very much and hopefully we'll get a chance to do this again somewhere down the road i definitely hopefully next time i'm going to be face to face take care buddy thank you thank you man bye-bye so after watching this video do you like china anymore do you trust him do you want to go there do you want to go maybe there for vacation do you want to be in business with them i'm curious comment below if you enjoyed this interview i got two other videos i want you to watch one is with the chief disguise officer jonah mendez her job as a ci agent i think 28 years was to go out there and help you have a disguise where people cannot tell who you are was you're kind of changing your look and the other one is nick mckinley who was the modern day jack ryan if you've seen the movie jack ryan it's based on his life if you haven't seen it click over here take care everybody bye-bye [Music] you

Channel: Valuetainment

Views: 471,494

Keywords: Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneur Motivation, Entrepreneur Advice, Startup Entrepreneurs, valuetainment, patrick bet david, jonna mendez, former cia agent, cia spy opens up, cia spy talks double life, Mike Baker, Understanding CIA, CIA Agent opens up, Mike Baker CIA, CIA on China, CIA on National Security risks

Id: 1KAGBGKQipY

Length: 83min 37sec (5017 seconds)

Published: Thu May 27 2021