CIA Spy: "Leave The USA Before 2030!" Why You Shouldn't Trust Your Gut! - Andrew Bustamante

Andrew Bustamante, a former CIA officer, shares insights on how his spy skills can be applied to everyday life and business. He emphasizes the importance of understanding human psychology, particularly the core motivations of reward, ideology, coercion, and ego, to influence and motivate others. Bustamante also discusses the concepts of perception versus perspective, advocating for rational over emotional thinking. He reveals the CIA's rigorous training methods, including stress inoculation and the use of disguises, and highlights the value of taking action despite fear. Bustamante's company, Everyday Spy, aims to help individuals break personal and professional barriers using these espionage techniques.

• Andrew Bustamante worked undercover as a spy for seven years.
• He learned to manipulate, operate undetected, and collect secrets.
• Post-CIA, he uses spy skills to help people master their minds, talents, and potential in business and daily life.

"When I left CIA, I realized that I could use CIA skills to succeed in business."

• CIA skills can be repurposed for business success.

• One of the first skills to learn is identifying lies.
• Bad liars have noticeable tells.

"One of the biggest tells of an unskilled liar."

• Recognizing unskilled liars can help in various interactions.

• People have four basic motivations: reward, ideology, coercion, and ego.
• Speaking through someone’s ideological lens can achieve incredible results.

"If you can speak to somebody through the lens of their ideology, you can get them to do incredible things."

• Understanding motivations can enhance influence over others.

• Most people are trapped in their own perceptions and emotions, which are often incorrect.
• CIA trains to distrust personal perceptions.

"90% of the people out there, they're all trapped in their own perception in thinking emotionally, and emotions are very likely wrong."

• Recognizing and distrusting personal perceptions is crucial in intelligence work.

• SAD RAT is a process used in all marketing and human interactions.
• It stands for a predictable human condition.

"All of our marketing, all of our human interactions falls into the same SAD RAT process that I learned at CIA because the human condition is so predictable."

• Understanding SAD RAT can help predict and influence human behavior.

• CIA is the United States' primary foreign intelligence collection agency.
• It centralizes all intelligence collected within the Intelligence Community (IC).

"CIA is just one of those 36 community members in the IC; however, it is the one charged with centralizing all of the intelligence collected, hence the Central Intelligence Agency."

• CIA acts as a central hub in the intelligence collection process.

• Spies, handlers, and assets have specific roles and definitions.
• Intelligence officers collect secrets; assets provide secrets.

"Handlers are officers who collect intelligence; assets are foreigners who provide intelligence to the handler."

• Understanding the roles helps clarify the structure of intelligence operations.

• Everyday Spy uses spy education to break various life barriers.
• Barriers include social, financial, educational, cultural, and language barriers.

"At Everyday Spy, we use spy education to break barriers: social barriers, financial barriers, educational barriers, cultural barriers, language barriers."

• The mission is to apply espionage skills to overcome everyday challenges.

• Everyone faces different barriers at different times in life.
• CIA training helps predict and overcome these barriers.

"CIA is extremely familiar with barriers, and what they teach us as officers going through their training programs is not just the details of tradecraft but to understand that any barrier that we as individuals face, they can get through."

• Predicting and understanding barriers can facilitate overcoming them.

• Manipulation is foundational to being a successful spy.
• Motivation is the ethical counterpart to manipulation.

"The flip side of that coin is motivation. If you can get people to do what they want to do, then you have motivated them."

• Both manipulation and motivation are valuable skills for achieving goals.

• Bustamante was raised by his mother and grandmother after his father was killed.
• His upbringing involved a lack of emotional support but strong academic focus.

"I was raised by my mom. My father died before I was born."

• His childhood experiences shaped his psychological profile, which was later valuable to the CIA.

• CIA recruits individuals with certain psychological profiles, often shaped by childhood trauma.
• High performance and moral flexibility are key traits.

"When CIA recruits field operators, they tell you that you were recruited because you are a little [__] up."

• Childhood trauma can contribute to high performance and loyalty in intelligence officers.

• Bustamante was recruited at 27 after serving as a nuclear missile officer in the Air Force.
• CIA recruitment involves a series of interviews and psychological assessments.

"They recruited me when I was 27 years old, coming out of the military in 2007."

• The recruitment process identifies candidates with the right psychological and performance traits.

• Bustamante controlled nuclear missiles, a highly stressful and isolated job.
• The job involved long shifts underground, waiting for potential nuclear war.

"You sit in a launch control capsule 100 feet underground and wait for nuclear war to break out."

• This experience contributed to his desire for a career change and eventual CIA recruitment.

• Bustamante applied for the Peace Corps but was redirected to the CIA.
• The recruitment process involved a series of interviews and psychological evaluations.

"I was applying for the Peace Corp, and then I got a popup that led to a CIA recruiter contacting me."

• His transition from the military to the CIA involved a shift from destructive to constructive goals.

• Bustamante's experiences and skills from the CIA are now applied to help others break barriers in their lives.
• Understanding espionage techniques can provide valuable insights into human behavior and personal success.

"This conversation is designed for me to explain how spy skills have a very real value in breaking everyday barriers."

• The application of spy skills extends beyond intelligence work to everyday life and business success.

• Initial excitement about the prospect of becoming a spy, influenced by popular culture.
• The secrecy and confidentiality required from the beginning.
• Multiple rounds of increasingly intense interviews, including psychological evaluations and scenario-based questions.

"You can't tell anybody that this is what you're now applying for. We're going to move you on to the second phase of interviews."

• Need to maintain normalcy and lie about the nature of the interviews to family and friends.

"I told my family that I was looking at getting out of the Air Force. I didn't really know what I wanted to do, maybe I'd go work for the government."

• Validation and sense of accomplishment upon receiving the offer.

"I felt like I had done everything right. There was a ton of validation of like now I get it, now I know why I went to a college I didn't like."

• Requirement to sever ties with secondary and tertiary relationships for covert operations.
• Personal ease in disconnecting due to lack of close family ties and prioritizing the CIA role over personal relationships.

"It was really easy to just start cutting off the branches of my social tree because I was going to go do something awesome."

• Psychological evaluation included questions about the necessity of close relationships.

"One of the things that they asked during our psychological evaluation was, you know, how much do you need close relationships and close peers and how do you feel about severing ties."

• Ethnic diversity was a significant factor in recruitment post-9/11.
• The CIA's shift from Cold War era focus to modern-day threats required a more diverse workforce.

"They were looking for young people, colored people, you know, LBGTQ plus people who could connect with the modern-day threat around the world."

• Existing government file due to Air Force background expedited the onboarding process.

"I also came with a huge government file because I had been part of the Air Force since I was 18 years old."

• Training is classified and involves a controlled, simulated environment.
• Different types of training for various classifications of officers.
• Curriculum includes practical skills like driving, first aid, and living under aliases.

"We're put into a controlled simulated world where they control what's happening around us."

• Training conducted in batches to manage costs.
• Performance in training is graded, with lower performers being cut.

"Everybody goes through the same curriculum and everybody has the same grades and then those grades are all measured against each other."

• Not all officers are taught lethal skills; it depends on their classification.
• Emphasis on living and working without being detected for human intelligence field collectors.

"Your standard human intelligence field collector needs to learn how to live and work without being caught."

• Training in lying, including understanding body language and psychological processes.

"They teach you how to lie. How do they teach someone how to lie? It starts with a foundation of making sure that you recruit people who are already liars."

• Understanding core motivations (Reward, Ideology, Coercion, Ego) is crucial for manipulation and motivation.
• Ideology is the strongest motivator, followed by ego, reward, and coercion.

"People are generally despite age, race, creed, or religion, people have four basic motivations: reward, ideology, coercion, and ego."

• Practical application of these motivations in various contexts, including business and personal interactions.

"If you understand why other people do what they do, all you have to do is connect what they care about with what you want them to do."

• Emotional messaging builds a logical narrative.
• Effective messaging and narrative are essential in politics, business, and intelligence operations.

"Messaging is supposed to be an emotional thing. Just a statement, just a message, just like a text message."

• Real-world examples of how messaging and narrative influence actions and decisions.

"It's the reason that Saudi Arabia went to war with Iran over Yemen."

• Initial belief in doing the right thing and feeling special due to recruitment.
• Realization of being high-performing due to childhood trauma and sociopathic tendencies.

"I lie and I steal and I have no problem with sociopathy because I'm not mentally healthy."

• The CIA's use of ideology and ego to maintain loyalty and performance.

"They know that what drives us is our ideology and then our ego, so they hook us that way."

• Seeing the world differently post-training, recognizing the prevalence of messaging and narrative in various aspects of life.

"If you are so focused and able to detect and understand messaging and narrative, you must just see it everywhere you go in everything you do."

• CIA training provides a unique perspective on the world, teaching skills in human psychology and understanding perceptions.
• The training helps in recognizing and distrusting one's own perception, and instead, relying on objective data from the world around.

"CIA then taught me you're what you're seeing is actually the world as it really is and let's train you to show you and give you a vocabulary to understand what you're seeing."

• CIA training equips individuals to understand human psychology, which is crucial in both intelligence and business environments.

"So now everything I see, I see through a lens of CIA skills in a business world."

• Perception is subjective and based on individual senses, while perspective is objective and considers multiple data points.
• Training oneself to distrust emotional perception and instead rely on objective perspective can lead to better decision-making.

"Perception is what you believe you see where you sit is how you perceive the world around you. Perspective is how other people see where you're sitting."

"CIA trains us to lean into our perspective, gain perspective, think about things objectively because if you lean on your perception, you're leaning on emotions and emotions are very likely wrong."

• Practical steps to develop perspective include distrusting emotions and focusing on objective data.

"The first is immediately distrust your emotions. Know right away when you're feeling emotions."

• Learning to think objectively is a skill that requires intentional practice and repetition.
• Over time, as one sees the benefits of objective thinking, it becomes easier and more natural.

"It takes U momentum so what ends up having to happen is that you need to exercise it intentionally at first."

"As you intentionally exercise your perspective over perception, what will start to happen is you will start to see that what you were worried about doesn't happen."

• People trained in distinguishing perception from perspective have a significant advantage over those who are not.
• Understanding the difference between perception and perspective can lead to better decision-making and influence over others.

"The people who are hearing this conversation right now who have never heard that there's a difference between perception and perspective are already better equipped than all the other [__] who have never heard this conversation."

"Trained people at least are aware that there's an alternative option. Untrained people aren't even aware that there's an option."

• Skills learned in the CIA, such as identifying core motivations and understanding human behavior, are directly transferable to business.
• The concept of "kissing a lot of frogs" applies to both espionage and sales, emphasizing persistence and strategic targeting.

"You have to call a lot of leads, you have to shake a lot of hands, you have to make a lot of pitches before one of them turns into into a prince."

• The process of spotting, assessing, developing, recruiting, handling, and terminating (SAD RAT) is fundamental in both espionage and business.

"Sadat stands for spot, assess, develop, recruit, handle, and terminate."

• Everyone has three lives: public, private, and secret. The goal in espionage is to move someone from their public life to their secret life.
• Understanding and navigating these different lives is crucial for gaining trust and accessing valuable information.

"The public life is the life that we're all very familiar with right it's the life that you live for everybody else to see."

"The goal is to get away from the public life because if you want someone to give you secrets you can't get secrets from somebody who's in their public life."

• Using the two-and-one combination (two questions and one confirmation) helps in building trust and encouraging people to share more information.
• Presenting windows of vulnerability can lead to deeper conversations and trust.

"Two means two questions and one means one confirmation."

"When it comes to vulnerability and conversing with somebody about vulnerability you want to present windows and not present doors."

• The person asking questions controls the conversation, not the one speaking the most.
• This principle is essential in sales, interviews, and any situation requiring influence.

"Who controls a conversation the person asking the questions or the person saying the most words? It's always the person asking the questions."

"The person asking the questions determines the direction of the conversation."

• Accepting and adapting to change faster than opponents provides a significant advantage.
• Time, distance, and change in direction are principles that can be applied in various contexts, including business.

"A big part of the advantage of having change is the fact that it's not natural to accept change so if you can adapt to change faster than your opponent you have a built-in Advantage."

"Time is a tool that you can use to break things down Secrets Don't withstand the test of time."

• Applying CIA principles to business can lead to significant growth and success.
• Understanding the human condition and leveraging it in sales, marketing, and customer interactions can drive business success.

"The human condition is so predict people just want to feel heard they want to feel listened to and they want to feel validated."

"You can automate the process that makes people feel heard, confirmed, and validated."

• The speaker mentions a specific moment abroad where they felt their life was at risk due to surveillance by a local country's team.
• This highlights the real dangers involved in espionage work.

"I felt like with high confidence that I had fallen under the scrutiny of a local country's surveillance team."

"I was in a foreign country I believed I fell under their surveillance apparatus."

• The speaker discusses an incident in 2011 where they believed they were under surveillance by a foreign country.
• Surveillance detection routes (SDR) are used to confirm if someone is being surveilled.
• SDR involves a series of steps over a period of time to gather data points.

"It's the process that we're trained to use for surveillance detection... you run what's known as an SDR and in that SDR you have steps, methods that you use to determine whether or not you are being actively surveilled."

• SDR can involve various forms of surveillance including cars, people, drones, or digital methods.

"That could be like a car following you or it could be a person following you or a drone following you or your phone being acting in a certain way to make you believe that you're being digitally or cyber surveilled."

• Sexpionage is the use of sexual acts for intelligence gathering.
• Different countries have different policies regarding sexpionage.
• In the US, it is not commonly used due to the violation of individual rights.
• In countries like China and Russia, sexpionage is more common and accepted.

"In the United States, we don't really use sexpionage because it goes against the rights of the individual who works at the intelligence agency... in China, that's not the same case; in Russia, that's not the same case."

• Sexpionage creates operational security risks due to the emotional and hormonal connections formed.

"Once sex happens, it's harder for the handler to maintain control over the asset in an objective relationship because now sex leads to feelings... the act of orgasm releases certain hormones that create senses of connection with another person."

• Disguises are more common and less sophisticated than people think.
• The CIA refers to them as "costumes" rather than disguises.
• The goal is to make the person not look like themselves rather than to look like someone else.

"The whole objective behind a disguise or a costume is just to make you not look like you, not to make you look like someone else."

• There are three levels of disguise: light disguise, long-term disguise, and prosthetic disguise.
• Light disguise involves simple changes like wigs or sunglasses.
• Long-term disguise involves more significant changes like growing hair or weight changes.
• Prosthetic disguise involves more complex changes like fake ears or noses.

"Level one is light disguise... level two is long-term disguise... level three is something that we call prosthetic disguise."

• The CIA values individuals with anxiety because it heightens observational skills.
• Anxiety is seen as a superpower as it keeps individuals sharp and attentive.
• Training involves understanding how fear works and managing it.

"Anxiety is a superpower through the eyes of the CIA... it keeps you alive, it keeps you sharp, it keeps you learning, it keeps you attentive."

• The brain processes fear through the emotional brain faster than the logical brain.
• Training involves slowing down the emotional brain and speeding up the logical brain.

"Your brain has two hemispheres... your left brain is your logical brain, your right brain is your emotional brain... fear is an emotion that's processed by the emotional brain very quickly."

• Stress inoculation is used to expose trainees to fear in controlled environments to manage their emotional responses.

"They inoculate you with scenarios designed specifically to trigger your emotional response even though you have been trained to not trust your emotional response."

• Inoculate oneself by exposing to small fears in controlled ways.
• Start with less intimidating fears and gradually build up to more significant fears.
• The goal is to train the emotional brain to slow down and the rational brain to speed up.

"Inoculate means expose yourself in controlled ways to fear... lean into the small fears, the fears that you already know are kind of irrational and simple."

• Taking action is crucial, even if it is the wrong action, to overcome fear and gain perspective.

"The most important thing is to take action... even if it's the wrong action, if you take the wrong step, if you take the first step in the wrong direction, the difference between you and the person who doesn't take a step at all is the world."

• The worst person to determine who you are is often yourself due to the magnified view of your flaws.
• Others see you differently, often more positively, than you see yourself.

"The worst person to determine who you are is oftentimes you because you see it all... the rest of the world sees your public life even if your public life is accidental."

• Public perception is less detailed and critical compared to self-perception.

"When you look at yourself, it's like looking through a magnifying glass... the rest of the world not only do they not have a magnifying glass but they're standing 10 feet away from you."

• The speaker and his wife left the CIA to focus on family due to the demanding nature of their jobs.
• They wanted to be present for their child rather than being absent due to long working hours.

"We were both kind of middle management... trying to coordinate two 16-hour schedules along with a one-year-old... we both wanted to be the kind of parent that was present for our children."

• The speaker plans to leave the United States by 2027 due to the country's current struggles and adolescence.
• They believe other regions may offer better opportunities and stability for their children.

"I think the United States is going through a very difficult time right now... we are actually going through the early part of our adolescence as a nation."

• The speaker discusses the power struggle between the US and China and the potential outcomes.
• They believe World War III is already happening in the form of proxy wars.

"I think World War III is already happening... it's a war where smaller third world countries are competing against each other and they're being funded by larger countries that are actually in conflict with one another."

• Taking action is emphasized as the key to overcoming fear and achieving goals.
• The speaker's view on equality has shifted from believing in equal opportunities to understanding the inherent desire for advantage and superiority.

"I used to believe that people could be equal and fundamentally now I know that people will never be equal because equality is not really the thing that we're after."

• Politicians' calls for equality are often seen as disingenuous, aiming for control rather than true equality.

"These politicians that are saying, you know, maybe on the left that are saying, you know, we want equality, we want everyone to be equal, you think they're bullshitting... what they want is more of the current status quo which is to have conflict with the opposite side."

This concludes the comprehensive study notes on the podcast transcript, covering all key themes and topics discussed.