Andrew Bustamante on CIA, EPSTEIN, REGIME CHANGES, SNOWDEN, NATIONAL SECURITY THREATS, PALANTIR, AI and More

Summary

Keeping It Real: Conversations with Jillian Michaels Episode: Andrew Bustamante on CIA, Epstein, Regime Changes, Snowden, National Security Threats, Palantir, AI and More Release Date: July 16, 2025

In this compelling episode of "Keeping It Real: Conversations with Jillian Michaels," renowned wellness expert Jillian Michaels engages in a deep and thought-provoking dialogue with former CIA intelligence officer Andrew Bustamante. The conversation delves into the intricate workings of intelligence agencies, national security threats, the impact of AI on privacy, and the societal polarization that threatens the fabric of American unity.

---

1. Pathways into the CIA

[02:24] Andrew Bustamante: "There's actually three primary ways into CIA. And the movies don't do a very good job of showing that. It's much more mundane."

Bustamante begins by demystifying the recruitment process of the CIA, contrasting Hollywood portrayals with the reality. He outlines three primary avenues:

• Military Recruitment: Leveraging the disciplined and skilled pool from the military.
• Academic Institutions: Sourcing top-performing students, teachers, and researchers from universities.
• Referrals: Current CIA officers referring talented individuals from their professional networks.

This segment provides listeners with a realistic glimpse into how the CIA identifies and recruits its operatives.

2. Understanding Human Psychology and Influence

[07:38] Andrew Bustamante: "All human beings are motivated by the same four categories of motivational levers. It's an acronym that we call RICE."

Bustamante introduces the RICE framework—Reward, Ideology, Coercion, and Ego—as foundational elements in understanding and influencing human behavior. He emphasizes that regardless of cultural or demographic differences, these four levers remain consistent in motivating individuals. This understanding is pivotal not only in intelligence operations but also in everyday interactions and personal development.

3. Polarization and National Security

[20:44] Jillian Michaels: "Or any of my friends feeling anti American. And it seems that the consensus, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that it's like I have uncovered that America purports to be the good guy, but we're really the bad guy."

The conversation shifts to the intense political and social polarization in the United States. Bustamante argues that America has inadvertently positioned itself as a "bully on the block" since World War II, leading to global resentment and internal strife. He draws parallels between historical actions and current challenges, highlighting how these dynamics contribute to a fragile national identity and increasing societal tensions.

4. Conspiracies and Intelligence Operations

[32:05] Jillian Michaels: "There is like the FBI is supposed to be local, right? Like, like the country. Domestic U. S. CA Globe. Right."

[32:18] Andrew Bustamante: "When that Venn diagram starts to appear, is when you have one of two situations. Somebody from outside of the United States starts to operate inside the United States."

Bustamante clarifies the distinct roles of the FBI and CIA, explaining their operational boundaries and the rare overlaps that can lead to significant events, such as the 9/11 attacks. He debunks the notion of a "deep state," instead attributing mistrust in intelligence agencies to their inherent secrecy and the complex interplay between different branches of government.

5. Privacy vs. Security and the Role of AI

[46:01] Andrew Bustamante: "At the Agency, there's a spectrum, a spectrum that covers the gamut from security on one side of the spectrum to convenience on the other side."

Addressing the delicate balance between privacy and national security, Bustamante discusses the implications of AI and surveillance technologies. He explains how metadata collection aids in identifying suspicious activities without infringing on individual freedoms, emphasizing the necessity of maintaining this balance to ensure both security and personal privacy.

6. Future Outlook: Intra-State Conflicts and Societal Decline

[72:43] Andrew Bustamante: "We are moving into an era where intra state war is far more valuable and damaging for me than interstate war."

Looking ahead, Bustamante warns of escalating intra-state conflicts fueled by political polarization and external influences. He predicts that without a concerted effort to unify and address internal injustices, the United States may face severe societal fragmentation reminiscent of historical conflicts, posing significant national security threats.

7. Solutions and Personal Development

[80:39] Andrew Bustamante: "Human behavior only changes when the pain of the same behavior becomes more difficult than the pain to change the behavior."

Transitioning from challenges to solutions, Bustamante offers insights into personal and societal transformation. Drawing parallels with weight loss strategies, he suggests that altering behaviors—whether in personal life or national policy—requires making detrimental actions more difficult than beneficial ones. This approach fosters sustainable change and resilience against polarization.

8. How to Learn from Bustamante and Apply CIA Strategies

[89:10] Andrew Bustamante: "If we really want to unify as a country, if we really want to unify as parents with children or spouses, it's all about learning how to think like they think and then making movement towards accepting and understanding their point of view."

In the concluding segment, Bustamante introduces his company, Everyday Spy, as a resource for individuals seeking to apply intelligence-based strategies to improve personal relationships and societal interactions. He underscores the importance of understanding diverse perspectives and leveraging psychological frameworks to foster unity and effective communication.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Andrew Bustamante on Recruitment: "[02:24]...There's actually three primary ways into CIA...much more mundane."

• RICE Framework: "[07:38]...All human beings are motivated by the same four categories of motivational levers. It's an acronym that we call RICE."

• On AI and Surveillance: "[46:01]...At the Agency, there's a spectrum...from security on one side of the spectrum to convenience on the other side."

• Future of Conflict: "[72:43]...We are moving into an era where intra state war is far more valuable and damaging..."

• Personal Change: "[80:39]...Human behavior only changes when the pain of the same behavior becomes more difficult than the pain to change the behavior."

---

Conclusion:

This episode offers a rare and insightful exploration into the complexities of intelligence operations, national security, and societal dynamics. Andrew Bustamante's expertise provides listeners with a nuanced understanding of how psychological principles can be harnessed to navigate personal relationships and address broader societal challenges. Through honest dialogue, the episode underscores the importance of critical thinking, unity, and informed action in an increasingly polarized and complex world.

For those eager to delve deeper into Bustamante's strategies and insights, Everyday Spy serves as a valuable resource, equipping individuals with the tools to enhance their interpersonal skills and contribute positively to societal cohesion.

Transcript

[Jillian Michaels]

I know you've got a million gazillion photos sitting on your phone right now. Don't just leave them there. Get them printed for free and delivered straight to your door. With Free Prints they have more than a million five star reviews. Free print is the world's favorite way to get premium quality photo prints. No subscriptions, no commitments, just a thousand free prints a year. So go to freeprints.com or download the Free Prints app directly from Google Play or or the App Store. Has this summer been a bit of a grind? Are you sleeping less? Are you more stressed than ever? Non stop everything. I speak for myself when I say that. And behind the highlight reels I think that not just me, but pretty much all high functioning people are quietly burning out. Low energy, fragile mood, decrease in libido. This is why I like Function Health. Because it's the one platform that gives you access to real data. 160 plus biomarkers plus full body MRIs and CT scans. Hormones, inflammation, heart, liver, stress, all tracked over time in one place. And you're going to see what most people never do. Like how your cortisol impacts your metabolism and your immunity. Or how your testosterone and dhea, your vitamin D magnesium levels affect your mood, your energy, your skin, your sex drive, even your breakouts are not just skin deep. And function you shows you the internal causes. This is why top health experts like Mark Hyman and Andrew Huberman, Jeremy London, they all back function because It's a near 360 degree view of your health finally in your hands. So learn more and join Using my Link, the first 1,000 people get $100 credit toward their membership. Just visit www.functionhealth.comjillian to own your health. Today's guest is the real life Jason Bourne, minus the amnesia. Bustamante is a former covert CIA intelligence officer who now reveals how spycraft can make you sharper, more persuasive and dangerously aware of the world around you. From psychological warfare to TikTok as a Trojan horse, the surveillance state to corporate espionage, Bustamante is exposing how the world really works. This one's going deep. Keeping it real with Jillian Michaels. Andrew, welcome to the show.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I'm so happy to be here Jillian. Thank you.

[Jillian Michaels]

I'm such a like creepy weirdo fan of yours. I'm trying to pretend like I'm not, but I am like a creepy weirdo fan. I have followed you for such a long time and I am so excited to have you here and I don't want to waste any time because I Have so many questions. Um, and I want to start off from the very beginning. Like, how the hell does one become a CIA? Like, how do you get recruited to the CIA?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah. So there's actually three primary ways into CIA. And the movies don't do a very good job of showing that. It's much more mundane. Everything about CIA is much more mundane than people realize. Because if you're going to carry out a secret operation, it can't be interesting, it can't be obvious, it can't be seen. Like, you got to get in and get out, and nobody knows that it ever happened. So we focus a lot on what we call lulling. Lulling behavior or lulling activity is activity that lulls the person to comply or to complacency. Lulls you to ignore us, lulls you to look away, lulls you to be distracted by something else. That's. That's a big part of what we do. So the lulling process in recruitment means that CIA goes and obviously looks in the military, who's got a good military record and fits the requirements of what we're looking for right now. Sometimes they're looking for people who are good at terrorism, counterterrorism. Sometimes they're looking for people who know a lot about China. The military offers a huge pool of talent that they can just reference with an online search that they have inside their own network. Right. So the military recruiting is one. A second big recruiting area is actually universities and colleges. I've heard that part because lots of experts exist with either affiliations or accreditations from universities. So they can find a top performing student. They can. They can find a teacher or researcher. They can find somebody through a university. The third kind of sexy recruiting process is actually just. Just a referral process. You are a CIA officer. You meet a talented person in the field, you realize they could do the same job you do. So you refer them back to CIA, and then CIA sends a quiet recruiter to kind of tap them on the shoulder.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay, for anybody watching who does not know your story, how did they get you?

[Andrew Bustamante]

So I was recruited mostly through the military. I was a military air Force officer, Air Force Academy graduate. I had a few languages under my belt and I was trying to get out of the Air Force. I wasn't a good fit for the military, as you can probably tell. And I was trying to go into the Peace Corps. So as I'm leaving the military, I fill out an online application to go to the Peace Corps. Because in my heart, I'm just a be like all I want is a lady with hairy legs and a couple of starving children that I can help and a tent where we can bang it out at night. And that's, that's my like dream scenario. I was like, the Peace Corps is going to help me get that. As I apply to the Peace Corps, I get tapped on the shoulder virtually and they're like, hey, instead of the Peace Corps, why don't you bring those skills to go do national security covert.

[Jillian Michaels]

Intelligence instead for everybody who's just wondering, what kind of skills do you have that the average person doesn't have that can help you make someone fall in love with you, get the promotion instead of somebody else. You were mentioning to me off camera just now that you're starting a show to give people this skill set to improve their lives. What skill set is that? Like, what do I get if I'm CIA? Because I imagine I'd become like this Svengali kind of character.

[Andrew Bustamante]

When you start training with CIA, they teach you that human psychology is really just a series of frameworks. First, human psychology is consistent from human being to human being across gender divides, across educational divides, across language divides. So just like what motivates you motivates a 95 year old Chinese man who lives in the hinterlands of China. Right? You're, we're not that different because organically our brains are the same. They're made of the same components, the same pink matter, gray matter and white matter. Like they, they have the same five sensory organs, they have the same approximate lifespan, they're built on the same calories that come in and they're based, built on the same core nutritional value. We're not that different. But we always like, we're, we overlook the similarities because we're so focused on what differentiates us. Part of that is because human beings evolutionarily are still trying to survive. So we're still constantly scanning for threats. So when we see a new language or somebody who's younger or older, or somebody who has a different appendage between their legs, we see a threat. So then we respond like we're responding to a threat instead of seeing the similarities and recognizing the common, the commonality between us. So CIA teaches us to push aside the threat vector assessment. It's still there, but now it's more objective, it's more, how is this person a threat? And when you understand how they're a threat, you can focus more of your cognitive resources into winning their cooperation or what we call winning their compliance. Winning their compliance. There's a recipe to it. I'll take a break in case you want to hear the recipe.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, no, no. I need the recipe. I need the rest. What do you mean, in case I want to hear the recipe? I need.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So the. There's. There's two parts to the recipe. The. The first part about winning someone's compliance is understanding what motivates them. All human beings are motivated by the same four categories of motivational levers. It's an acronym that we call rice, R, I, C, E. That acronym stands for reward, ideology, coercion, and ego. Okay, so all people everywhere are susceptible to the same motivating factors. Do I get something that's a reward? Do I believe something that's an ideology? Do I feel a negative consequence to something that's coercion, Deterrent?

[Jillian Michaels]

Cut it.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And how do I feel about myself? That's ego. So we're all just giant machines that run on these four levers all the time, right? That's the first component of getting compliance. The second component, I'm seeing so many.

[Jillian Michaels]

Parallels with regard to tribalism in parenting. I'm like, wait a minute.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Marriage, hiring and firing, building a business, leadership, followership. It all boils down to these four levers, right?

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

The second component is something we call sense making. Sense making is how you make sense of a relationship. And that sense making piece has three steps. The first step is. Is essentially discovery, realizing something exists. The second step is competition, where you compete for resources, attention, dominance. And then the third step is compliance. So when you understand someone's motivational levers and then you understand how to make, how to drive, how they make sense of the situation, how they make sense of the relationship, you get to a place where they become compliant with your will and compliant with your goals and compliant with your direction.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay, hold on. So question for you. When I look at people who see the world differently, I'm trying to understand it. So, for example, in Los Angeles, you've got the Ice riots, okay? Now my brother is like, these monsters are tear gassing grandmas and they're handcuffing children. And my mother sees the exact same thing. My wife sees rapists and gang members and drug dealers that Donald Trump is trying to remove from the country. It is impossible for me to get these two sides to, like, get it. I can't get beyond the ideology. And when you can't get beyond the ideology, it's. It's very difficult. Difficult to. Unless you validate it. And by the way, Andrew, I've tried. Okay, so I'll give you an example, I've tried these techniques and I've tried to say, like, I see your point here. Look them in the eye, I repeat the points so they know they've been heard. I build that karmic debt up there, Right. Like Dale Carnegie says. And I see your concern here, I validate your feelings here. But you know, are you able to see that maybe Kilmar Brego Garcia is a bad guy? Like, are you maybe to. Able to see the fact that, you know, people that are not good guys came across the border and I can't get. But through that ideology.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So it's part.

[Jillian Michaels]

How are you doing that?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Part of it's because you're. You're trying to combat ideology with logic. And they're two different things. Right. The. If you just look at the brain, the brain has two hemispheres. There's a left and a right hemisphere. The left brain is your logical brain. The right brain is your emotional brain. So when you do exactly what you're doing, you're. You're doing the right first step. Validating and building what we call social capital. What Dale Carnegie calls karmic.

[Jillian Michaels]

Whatever the heck it's called. I'm probably butchering it. I read the book a long time ago, but I remembered it's like you gotta put some deposits in the bank there, right?

[Andrew Bustamante]

It's building rapport.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yes.

[Andrew Bustamante]

What we call social capital, an actual exchange of rapport.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yes.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So you're approaching them ideologically. What you're failing to, to consider is that their ideology is tied to their survival instinct. They can't abandon their ideology, or else that's the equivalent of abandoning their survival. Wow. So instead what you, what the. The technique that we use, it's. It's two or three steps advanced. But to, to get to your exact example, the technique is you have to make the problem their problem. I hear you. I validate your feelings, I validate your emotions. I can totally understand how you're feeling about this. What do you think they should do? What do you think they should do in this instance when there's, you know, a drug smuggler or a child smuggler that's also taking advantage of the system, how would you solve it?

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay. Okay. So here's first thing is, like my brother is now living in a place where he was affected by those riots. But his answer was, it's not that, you know, ice or, or the fact that we've let chaos, you know, rule in California. It's Trump's fault, Right. So he's the go to. And I I don't think Donald Trump is perfect, trust me. However, in this particular instance, I don't believe it was Donald Trump's fault. We've seen this again and again and again and again and again in California. So, okay, what do you think they should do now? They, they will either say, kill Mara Brago. Garcia is not. He's a Maryland man, He's a dad. He's got the tattoos, he's got this, he's got that. I don't believe it. There's, it's like you can't break through the. You can press. Okay, there's. I get it. There's the logic piece. That's fair. What do you think we should do? And they will often say, not this. Like, I watched, right? I watched Basam Youssef debating Israel and Gaza. And the guys on trigonometry said, okay, great, Israel's not perfect. What do we do? Not this.

[Andrew Bustamante]

But they don't answer the question.

[Jillian Michaels]

No.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Correct.

[Jillian Michaels]

So are you supposed to fill in that answer?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Well, what's, what you're running into is you're starting to see the limits of what they have critically thought through. And this is important. It's, it's. I'm going to make an unsettling parallel for you, but you're going to understand it.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Have you ever asked yourself the question, how do you make a terrorist? How do you take a person, I have an idea. Who's 5 years old and playing soccer with their friends? How do you turn that person into a 25 year old who puts a bomb on their chest and blows up a bunch of other kids who are five years old playing soccer?

[Jillian Michaels]

Three ideas. Okay. Number one, you take something from them very young, like you kill their parents or their brother dies in a bomb raid from the US or something like that. For example, I was told that the Pulse nightclub in Florida, the guy that shot everybody up, got on the phone and was saying, you got to stop the bomb raids. I believe it was in Syria. So, okay, maybe it's that the, the brainwashing of these guys are other. These guys are bad. These guys are the devil. And the third thing I would guess is I wrote a book about building cults and the promise of like a hundred virgins in heaven waiting for you. So. Oh, so reward.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Okay, that's the reward piece of it. Yep.

[Jillian Michaels]

Where's the deterrent part, though?

[Andrew Bustamante]

So. So I love that your instincts took you towards a systematic approach, because the first thing you said for everybody watching, we know this. I don't know if you caught this, the first thing you said was you take something away from them.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh God. Yeah, got it.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So if, if the first step is a, a predictable input, guess what you can do? You can control that. Now if I want to turn these five kids in terrorists, but not those five kids, I just have to take something away from these five kids. So it's systematic now it's something that's in business terms, scalable.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh my God, Andrew.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So what, what? The system is called a radicalization ladder. And the reason I'm telling you this is because the first step in a radicalization ladder is there has to be an injustice that is committed. The second step in the radicalization ladder is that that injustice has to be validated by a separate source. Well, what the happening with these riots right now in la? An injustice has happened. There are people who are validating that injustice from outside. There are Americans who are on the radicalization ladder. And when you really think about it, the most radical left and the most radical right aren't that different from the same radicalization process that terrorists put junior terrorists through to ultimately develop a 25 year old who will wear a bomb on their chest. Let's all remember what just happened with Luigi Mangione. What is he if he is not simply a radicalized person who essentially put a bomb on his chest and went out there to kill somebody. And now he's on trial making 25000 in donations to try to, you know, because people believe that he did the right thing. Who are the people that are giving him money? Other people who have been radicalized through the systematic process that we know exists, but we don't really distribute publicly.

[Jillian Michaels]

Right now the headlines are chock full of data breaches and regulatory rollbacks, making us all vulnerable. But you can do something about it. Deleteme is here to make it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online. Delete Me knows your privacy is worth protecting. Sign up and provide Deleteme with exactly what information you want deleted and their experts take it from there. Deleteme isn't just a one time service. Deleteme is always working for you. Constantly monitoring and removing the personal information you do not want on the Internet. For me, I feel so much more secure knowing that my personal info has been wiped from the web simply because I don't get all the robocalls. I worry far less about identity theft and so much more. So take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Deleteme now at a special discount for our listeners today get 20% off your delete me plan by texting Jillian to 64000. The only way to get 20% off is to text Jillian to 64,000. That's Jillian to 64000. Message and data rates may apply. All right, guys, let's be real. Finding the right intimates is a struggle, right? Because most bras, they dig or they gap. I mean, they look great for five minutes, and then you wash them and they look like crap. And underwear is the same story. They're too tight, they're too saggy, there's weird seams. They slide up the crack of your where you're in there. I hate that. Which is why I reach for skims every time. The fit is unreal. The fabric feels like butter. Everything stays in place where it's meant to without digging or riding up. My absolute favorite is the skims. Boy short. I wear em constantly. I sleep in em. They're soft, they're stretchy, and somehow they manage to be both sexy and practical. They don't bunch, they don't roll, they just work. Whether I'm running errands or I'm relaxing at home, they are the only underwear that I forget I'm wearing. And I gotta tell you, that's the highest compliment I can give. So if you've ever felt let down by your lingerie drawer, skims is the upgrade you didn't know you needed and your body will thank you for you. Shop my favorite bras and [e-mail] and after you place your order, please be sure to let them know I sent you. Select podcast in the survey and choose my show in the dropdown that follows. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, and they're responsible for 10% of all E commerce in the United States. Literally every company I'm involved with uses Shopify. Maybe you guys have seen me doing ads for a company called Alaya Naturals. This is a company started by a mommy of two from her garage with the help of some extremely credentialed PhDs. And she went to $20 million in sales over five years with the tools that Shopify provides. Anybody can do it. So if you're worried you can't design a website, Shopify's got you right. They've got beautiful, ready to go templates to match your brand style. If you need help, they've got help with everyday tasks like enhancing product images, writing product descriptions, generating discount codes with Shopify's AI tools that are created for Commerce. What if people haven't heard about your brand? Well, Shopify helps you find customers with easy to run email and social media campaigns. And if you get stuck, they're always around to share advice with their award winning 24. 7 customer support. So turn those dreams into and give them the best shot at success with Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com Jillian go to shopify.com Jillian that is shopify.com Jillian why are we. Gosh, I started this out wondering how I get a job and how I groom my, you know, how I get the people on my team to work harder for the company or how I win arguments with my wife and my brother and my mother. But now you, you've taken, you. This has taken a bit of a turn because we are raising radicals here and I don't relate to this. And, and, and while people could say, oh, this has gone on throughout history and throughout the history of our country, it's just how you're framing it. I don't remember feeling anti American at any point in my youth.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Right.

[Jillian Michaels]

Or any of my friends feeling anti American. And it seems that the consensus, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that it's like I have uncovered that America purports to be the good guy, but we're really the bad guy.

[Andrew Bustamante]

You just nailed it. You just nailed it. And that's such an uncomfortable truth that when faced with that truth, our survival instinct rejects it. Our survival instinct is like, no, no, no, that can't be right. Like, there must be some other, some other response. So there's this cognitive dissonance that happens in our brain to keep us alive that says, I've always believed this. Now I see this irrefutable fact. I can't refute it. So therefore I'm just going to erase it from the memory banks and fall back on what I believe. We have done that as Americans since World War II. I understand that people will disagree with me. I understand that this makes me sound un American in some circles. America's geopolitical strategy since the end of World War II has been to become the biggest bully on the block. After World War II, we were a strong economy. We were driving and building new innovation. What was Europe doing?

[Jillian Michaels]

Just rebuilding.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Rebuilding. They had no money. They had no infrastructure. All of their men had been killed. All of their, like, children had been traumatized. So who actually rebuilt Europe? Who rebuilt Japan? You know, the Japanese culture right now is a workaholic culture. They work 12 hour, 15, 16 hour days. They smoke to stay awake, they booze themselves at night. Who created that culture?

[Jillian Michaels]

We did.

[Andrew Bustamante]

We did. Germany's trying to rebuild an army right now so that they can take a larger role in NATO. You think about that, right? We have, we have put so much pressure on NATO for so long that now their conclusion to how they separate they decouple from the United States is to let Germany create the biggest, strongest army. Not France, not Spain, not any, not Poland, not anybody else. Germany's like, we'll do it. Yeah, that's a great idea. Right? How many global wars have started when Germany had a large successful army? I'm not saying that they're still Nazi, but World War II wasn't a war against the Nazis, or World War I wasn't a war against the Nazis. But you see this pattern erupt, right? When America isn't the dominant power, somebody else becomes a dominant power. Why is China on the rise? This will be my last point, Jillian.

[Jillian Michaels]

No, no, please, no, no, no, keep talking.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Why is China.

[Jillian Michaels]

Let it go where it's going to go.

[Andrew Bustamante]

China just forget it. China's on the rise because they are emulating America's process. Nobody else has emulated our process. The reason we're in such, such conflict with China is because we at a government level realize that that's what they're doing. Their belt and road initiative, Rebuilding the third world is exactly what we did after World War II. Their competition for technology to create an alternative. What are they creating an alternative to American technology? Because they know that all over the world everybody is reliant on the US dollar. Everybody's reliant on American technology. Everybody's relate, everybody's relevant dependent on American ip. So China knows that if they can steal our ip, copy our IP, or create a competitor to our ip, they can offer that solution all over the world at a discounted rate. Especially if they offered at a discounted rate with built in backdoors that let them take control of it. Yes, because guess who did that first.

[Jillian Michaels]

We did. You know, I read a whole book called Confessions of an Economic Hitman and in the latest edition of it, it talks about how China is running that playbook now.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yep.

[Jillian Michaels]

And they go into the developed world and they promise to develop the infrastructure so they can harness their resources. And then essentially the banks go in and say, we gave you this loan to harness your whatever minerals, farmland, oil, whatever it might be and you can't pay it. So now we're gonna have to take that from you. And that was what this guy did, like over the decades. And now China's doing.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And here's what's really wild. We were blind, completely blind to the fact that we were, we were being copied, emulated, and strategically outmaneuvered until COVID 19. COVID 19 was the day that we all woke up and saw the geopolitical landscape for what it was when everybody shut down, specifically when China shut down and everybody else's economies came to a grinding halt. That was the first time that the world kind of was like, wait a second, everything comes through China. Raw materials come from Australia, but they're refined in China.

[Jillian Michaels]

Right?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Disposable goods are manufactured in China. Like, we started to see how everything goes through this, this hub and spoke model through China. How in the did China create that hub and spoke model? Because the United States was doing what, from 2001 to 2023, fighting in the Middle East. We were distracted. And while we were distracted, they didn't fight in the global war on terror. They just took our playbook and started running it. And they started buying land and they started buying mineral rights and they started developing technology and they were stealing technology. But we didn't care that they were stealing technology because we had radicals that we had to take care of. Right? So we were completely caught with our pants down for 23 years. 23 modern years, right? And China, that's how China skipped the whole phase of having landlines. Think about that. The United States is covered with land based telephone lines. China skipped that phase altogether. They just went straight to cellular. How did they do that from us? They copied it from us. And then they built their own telecommunications infrastructure based off of us. Built their own satellites based off of us. We all, to a certain extent, we all understand there's that China just copies us. But why? Why do they copy us? They copy us because they know that our works, our strategies, our plans, our procedures, our frameworks, it works. They don't have to be better than us because once they get as good or even almost as good as us, think about how much we've had to decline to get to the place where we're equal.

[Jillian Michaels]

Right?

[Andrew Bustamante]

It's not just them coming up to.

[Jillian Michaels]

Our level, it's us falling apart with a massive deficit. Kids that hate their country, you know, while we are, you know, our kids are watching the most stupid crap on Tick Tock where brain cells go to die. Their kids are getting, like, educational material. Their kids know English better than our kids do at the same freaking age.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yes, you're you're seeing it. This is all the same, this is all the same playbook, if you're going to call it like a playbook, I think it's perfect. Like a high school football playbook. It's all the same playbook that ran before. It's a playbook that works. China can't innovate new, but they can copy. That works. The other thing I'll say, the other thing I'll say that I think is, is relevant here is that it's not necessarily just that, that Donald Trump is. Yes, Donald Trump is a figure of controversy. Okay, I agree with you. I don't think he does everything right either. But here's why he's the right fit right now, okay? Because he breaks the old way of doing things, right?

[Jillian Michaels]

He's calling out how bad things are right now.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Somebody has to break the old thing in order for a new thing to be innovated. And politicians, career politicians don't break the old thing. They come in and they do what has always worked. So America sees this change. They don't know how to fix it. They don't know how to change it. What, what politics are good at is doing the same play over and over.

[Jillian Michaels]

Again and kicking the problem down the.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Road for the, for the next four years. Because all I need is just don't fall apart on my watch. Just don't fall apart on my watch.

[Jillian Michaels]

Don't. Yeah, you see that clearly. But if he's willing to take this on during his, his presidency, the part that I, I am having the hardest time understanding, like if we looked at the tariffs, I get it, we have trade asymmetries. You have a national security problem, right? You've got China putting friggin God knows what in the drones and the phones and the vacuums. We've all read that article somewhere. You, you, you can't get drugs if you need them or technologies if you need them because they're all being made in China and you're losing jobs. Okay, so I get it. All Trump though, then he goes out and he tries to tackle this. Whether you like his strategy or you don't like his strategy. The, the courts. Yeah, hog tie him to, to what end, though? What, what is that? So this is, this is really where my question of conspiracies and, and trying to understand, like who does the CIA even work? So let's. Okay, let me back this one up here for a second. I have heard something to the effect of like, the President doesn't know stuff the CIA knows and the NSA knows who is in charge.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah, the, the answer is the. The President is the chief executive of the executive branch. Remember, we have three branches of government, right? Legislative branch, judicial branch, executive branch. And they're supposed to keep checks and balances on each other.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay?

[Andrew Bustamante]

The President is the lead executive. He is in charge of the executive branch. Most of your intelligence services fall under the executive branch.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay?

[Andrew Bustamante]

So the President controls the executive branch resources. It's not that the CIA knows things the President doesn't know, it's that the CIA knows things in details that the President doesn't know. And then the President dictates his interests or her interests. So when the President says, I want a daily brief on the 15 most relevant national security threats. Well, there's 150 national security threats, but we're going to tell him what he wants, which is the top 15. And then something won't make the top 15 until one of these other 150 climbed to that occasion. Right. A great example is coups. Nobody pays attention to these small countries like Madagascar or Ecuador or whatever else. People don't pay attention to those countries until something big happens in those countries. And then all of a sudden we're like, well, holy. Who'd, who'd ever thought of the, the country of Yemen, ever? And then now we're talking about it because now we're bombing Yemen. Now we're, we've got, we've got US Carriers that are being targeted by Yemen. Five years ago, Yemen was a conflict, but we weren't involved. Right. Fifteen years ago, Yemen was in conflict, but we weren't involved. So nobody even knew the country existed. So you see how these national security priorities shift.

[Jillian Michaels]

Right.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I will also add to it that even though the CIA works for the executive branch, guess where their funding comes from? The legislative branch. So now you've got every senator and Congress. Martin. Who may believe that CIA is conspiratorial or who knows what else. They control the money that CIA gets to use to execute the President's direction. So when they don't like the President, when the legislative branch doesn't like the President, they just tie CIA's funds up and then CIA wants to do what the President tells them, but can't.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay, explain the. The.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Com.

[Jillian Michaels]

The. In a Venn diagram, where does the FBI and the CIA cross over? Because when you hear these conspiracy theories of who killed Kennedy.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah.

[Jillian Michaels]

There is like FBI is supposed to be local, right? Like, like the country. Domestic U. S. CA Globe. Right. What's the crossover, if any?

[Andrew Bustamante]

That's a great way of starting it. Right. So if you draw a circle around the United States, okay. And then draw a circle around rest of the world, and you can essentially take those two circles and say, hey, United States, FBI, rest of the world, CIA, FBI doesn't have much role in the rest of the world. CIA doesn't have much role in the United States. When that Venn diagram starts to appear, when those two circles start to cross, is when you have one of two situations. Somebody from outside of the United States starts to operate inside the United States.

[Jillian Michaels]

Got it. Oh, I see.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And now you see where CIA and FBI have to, quote, coordinate.

[Jillian Michaels]

I get it now.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And likewise, when somebody who is an American starts to do bad with people who are outside the United States, then we see the Venn diagram overlap again.

[Jillian Michaels]

Got it.

[Andrew Bustamante]

9 11. The tragedy of 911 happened because in that overlap, they weren't talking, they weren't cooperating, they weren't coordinating. Exactly right. And the whole world saw that that worked. So it was just. It was Al Qaeda, which was a terrorist group that nobody gave any real credence to, who killed 2,000Americans in a day with a 911 attack. But what that showed all of our opponents, what that showed Iran and North Korea and China and Russia and Belarus and. And Saudi Arabia and all. And what it showed everybody who has a grudge against the United States is if they can do that on a couple of million dollars, think what we could do if we exploit that same gap. You've also got CIA executive branch, FBI judicial branch.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, gosh.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Okay, so there's just all sorts of. All sorts of space for disasters to happen.

[Jillian Michaels]

Got it. Okay. Now if. Let's say we hear of these. The deep state, and in trying to understand what this means, the deep state intelligence. Okay, got it. Fine. But if that is what that means, but then the. The assertion is that they work on their own agenda. Is that true? And if so, whose agenda then? If it's not the president's agenda?

[Andrew Bustamante]

So the. The deep state idea is an oversimplification of reality.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And it's an oversimplification because, again, most Americans are stupid. If. If we haven't landed on that conclusion. It's what you say around the safety of your. Of your kitchen table. I'm just saying it on screen. Americans are stupid. We don't have to worry about our survival. We don't have to worry about whether our water is clean. We don't have to worry about whether or not, like, we're gonna go starving tomorrow. We don't worry about if our kids are gonna explode in a. When they come across unexploded ordinance in the streets.

[Jillian Michaels]

Gosh, you're right.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So we are so lazy and so dumb that we have consumed ourselves with the idea of just being entertained rather than being educated. Yes, that. And we all know it's true.

[Jillian Michaels]

And we'll pay no price to improve things. Like, we don't want to be uncomfortable temporarily with scarabs. We don't want to tolerate that.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yes.

[Jillian Michaels]

We just want our cheap from China and we want eggs to be cheap. And nobody wants to look down the road at what's coming. Or very few people's.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Correct. So that's the, that is our reality. When you, when you're preconditioned to always be distracted rather than be improvement focused. When you're pre, when you're pre sensitized to being comfortable, you don't like complex ideas. Complex ideas, you, you'll reject them, you'll ignore them. So the complexity of how government actually works is something that we don't like. So we push away from that and we go back to. Just like you were saying with your family, you fall back on what you believe, which is your ideology. So the deep state is a very convenient thing for us to believe. We, even though we have so much evidence. Just think about the current dialogues about Jeffrey Epstein and Diddy Combs.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh my gosh. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Bustamante]

You just. Those are, those are headlines all the time. In both cases, you had two very powerful people who had both sides of the political divide contributing to their buffoonery in both places. In Republicans and Democrats, you had far left and far right. You had all sorts of rich people, powerful people, political people who were engaged in both enterprises. Right. Both activities. Doesn't that undermine the idea of a deep state? Absolutely, because the deep state doesn't exist. What exists is a bunch of people who have vested interests in certain outcomes that benefit them.

[Jillian Michaels]

Ah, who are those people?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Wealthy people, business owners, people who run telecommunications. People who run globalists. Yeah, because they, they have an agenda, they have an interest that's motivated. Their survival instinct is tied to something that transcends national borders or national ideologies. Tobacco people need to sell tobacco. Alcohol people need to sell alcohol. Right. Battery people need to sell batteries. Elon Musk is not some gung ho American. He's a tech guy that needs to sell tech. And the tech that he's trying to sell is big, expensive tech. So he partners up with Donald Trump while it's convenient, and then he talks Donald Trump when it's not convenient. And that's how this world works. That's not. That's not organized. People who believe that there is an organized deep state have obviously not accepted the fact that Americans don't organize very well. Right. But we are very good at being self interested and self directed.

[Jillian Michaels]

So if to a certain extent, there is a global element here, and there are big corporations that have desired outcomes. So if I was to go down the rabbit hole on Diddy, or, I'm sorry, on Epstein, here's where it gets a little weird, right? Like, all right, the guy didn't really have the credentials to hold the jobs that he had. Strange. The person who was his mentor was a part of oss, which was arguably the precursor to the CIA.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Not arguably.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay, Strange. Right. I forgot the guy. Oh, my gosh, I forgot his last name, but Strange. Okay, nobody knows where the money came from. From the fund.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Strange.

[Jillian Michaels]

Strange. Oh, right. Like, all right, now he. He committed these crimes, then he was allowed to leave jail. What did they think? He was convicted and he was allowed to leave it, like day furloughs. Strange. After knowing he was guilty of this stuff, the most powerful people in the world still coalesced around him. Pam Bondi just admitted there are 10,000 tapes and then got caught on camera and then had to do some sort of weird impromptu thing from her, like, I don't know, drive or some weird press conference. Like, yeah, there were 10,000 tapes and they're with kids. Who's on them? And. And the. So now the conspiracy theory is. All right, Ghislaine Maxwell's father has some maybe potentially strange connection to Mossad. Long story short, people think he's an asset. Yeah, and that he's capturing leverage on some of the most powerful people in the world to use as a lever for the desired outcome you're talking about. But no president put that operation into place if it in fact is real.

[Andrew Bustamante]

No U.S. president. You haven't thought about him being a foreign asset. So this is how the game of intelligence works.

[Jillian Michaels]

Works.

[Andrew Bustamante]

You want well placed people who can get you access to other well placed people. Imagine if he was an asset for Israel, and then no matter what problems he ran into in the United States, Israel had the kind of leverage over the United States to get him out of whatever that trouble was. Because what Israel wanted was him as an intel asset. But what the United States wanted was justice to be served. But do they care more about justice of one person, or do they care more about the international diplomatic relationship between them and Israel just as an example. Right. When it comes to national security, when it comes to national security, the calculation changes because you're trying to protect a nation and sometimes you break the rules for individuals to protect a nation. And when you start to pick apart the Epstein case, specifically all those strange elements that you talked about, how do those things happen? You, you start to see a pattern that's very much in line with what an intelligence operation looks like.

[Jillian Michaels]

Got it.

[Andrew Bustamante]

But then you land on exactly the same question you landed on. Why would any US President make that happen? Maybe it wasn't.

[Jillian Michaels]

Active skin repair utilizes a molecule called hypochlorous acid. And when you apply it to the skin, the molecule works by mimicking the natural immune response to cleanse, soothe irritation, reduce inflammation and support healing. Active skin repair can be used treat a wide range of skin issues including cuts, scrapes, burns, sunburns, diaper rashes and other types of skin damage. And it's also safe and non toxic, making it suitable for use on all skin types, all parts of the body. And you can even, even use it on rosacea, eczema and acne prone skin. With over 500,000 happy customers, thousands of 5 star reviews, and ingredients so safe and clean they can be used by the youngest member of the family to the oldest, you now have one simple solution for all of your family's skin health needs. So visit activeskinrepair.com to learn more about active skin repair. And to get 20% off your order, use the code Jillian. Again, that's ActiveShipRepair.com and the code is Jillian. All right, tell me the truth. How many different beauty potions do you have sitting on your bathroom counter right now? Because if it's more than just Vibrance Super C Serum, you need to listen up because the ingredients in this one product can replace your day creams, eye creams, night creams, neck creams, wrinkle creams, and dark spot reducers. It's made in the USA with the highest quality ingredients including vitamin C, hyaluronic acid, vitamin B5 and vitamin E. Supersee Serum delivers noticeable results, so simplify your skin care routine, get a healthier complexion and minimize wrinkles and age spots with Vibrance. And if you don't find it better than your current skincare routine, you'll get a full refund. So just go to vibrance.com Jillian to save up to 37% off and you get free shipping. That's Vibriance V I B r I a n c e vibrance.com Jillian okay, so the CIA isn't just going rogue. Essentially, if they did play a role in killing Kennedy, Kennedy didn't direct them to kill Kennedy. Then so is that just conspiracy? Or how could somebody have infiltrated the CIA to be like, kill that guy?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah, so there's a, the Kennedy example is a fantastic example because there's, there's two overlapping issues here. The first is that pre 911 CIA was a very different animal. Prior to 2001, CIA operated with very little oversight, very little approval. It was essentially just like the rottweiler of the President. There was no Senate Intelligence Committee, there was no Director of National Intelligence. There was no forced cooperation with FBI or NSA or DIA that they were just, you go and do your thing and you, you, you know, Operation Midnight Climax, M MK Ultra, all these crazy ass things that involved American citizens, they just went and did it because they were told to by the President. But then we dropped the ball on 911 and we dropped it in a very public way. And, and the 911 Commission that came out in 2003 identified who's, who's supervising CIA and oh, by the way, who's supervising all these other assholes too. Nsa, dia, nga, et cetera. So then a huge thing that came out of the 911 Commission was the development of the Director of National Intelligence, the dni, whose job it is to coordinate all the intelligence services.

[Jillian Michaels]

That's Tulsi now.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Correct, Got it. So post 2001 we have a completely different CIA than pre 2001. So Jen, Kennedy was a long time ago. So how, how did that wild rottweiler of a CIA handle Kennedy? It could have been any number of ways. The President was Kennedy. But were they, were they trying to do what Kennedy directed or was there some element of them that disagreed with the President? Because we saw that happen in 2016. Right?

[Jillian Michaels]

Yes.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And is that really a rogue agent if the whole agency is kind of on board, outside of control? Exactly.

[Jillian Michaels]

Wow. Okay, so I want to, I want to segue to this for a second here. We're talking about 9 11, right? And we're talking about national security. And I have been told broadly that, listen, you don't want to see 911 happen again. Okay, well then you got to sacrifice some of your freedoms. You don't get it both ways. And I, by the way, I genuinely think that's probably true. So, so I'll let you tell me if I'm right or I'm wrong here, but now you're starting to See stuff like Palantir, the real id, and it's like. Then you had Snowden exposing. Hey, we weren't just spying on bad guys, we were spying on you guys. So the first question is, are there significant sacrifices with regard to privacy that need to be made for security? Yes or no?

[Andrew Bustamante]

It's. It's hard to break that into a yes or no answer. Right? So let me just. Let me give you how we look at it. At the Agency, there's a spectrum, a spectrum that covers the gamut from security on one side of the spectrum to convenience on the other side of the spectrum. And it's just one line between security and convenience. So that means when you stand on that line, the closer you get to convenience, the further you get from security, and the closer you get to security, the further you get from convenience. So every individual gets to choose where they land on that spectrum. But we're all on the same spectrum. So if you take us as a. As a whole organism, the United States, do we want to be a convenient nation, or do we want to be a secure nation? Because you're gonna have to sacrifice conveniences to become secure. And part of those conveniences are not necessarily your freedoms, but the way that your freedoms are experienced is absolutely part of that convenience. So if you want a country that is not easily accessed by foreign radicals, then you need to have some sort of surveillance capable of tracking those foreign radicals inside the United States. And that's what Snowden actually reported on the. The collection of metadata.

[Jillian Michaels]

Can you define metadata, please?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Absolutely. So metadata is. It's like the secondary and tertiary data, the technical data, because they're like.

[Jillian Michaels]

Metadata is not important, just metadata.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Metadata is like the. Yeah, it's. It's the ancillary information that. That piggybacks with important information.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I. I dial your phone number. Your phone number is not metadata.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, it's not? I thought it'd be like our conversations. Not met.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Your phone number is not metadata. Our conversation is not metadata. Even the encrypted channel that you and I are using to talk is not metadata. The metadata is a signal was sent on this day. That signal was sent using this platform. That signal connected to another device that was a. That was of this type of genre. Right. Metadata is all that intelligence services need to be able to connect suspicious behavior. Right. Because now if I always call you at 2 o' clock on every Thursday.

[Jillian Michaels]

Uhhuh.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And it's always the same connecting towers.

[Jillian Michaels]

And whatever the hell.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Correct.

[Jillian Michaels]

Same device signal or whatever.

[Andrew Bustamante]

That's strange. That's not a husband and a wife having a conversation. So who's having a segmented conversation in that way or when? When we find that your metadata ID is also contacting somebody in Pakistan. Ah, that's strange. So metadata is enough for us to be able to start connecting dots so that we can go to an organization like FBI and say, here is metadata tied to, you know, phones, phone device IDs that are suspicious. Pakistan, can you grant us, the authorities to now collect inside the United States on this person?

[Jillian Michaels]

A fisa, is it?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah. Well, FISA is Freedom of. Of. Yeah. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Connect Collection is a FISA warrant or a FISA connection or FISA authority.

[Jillian Michaels]

Got it.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So you're trying to get somebody with the correct authority to collect on that information.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Snowden's problem. Just to finish that point.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, I have a bunch of questions for you on Snowden.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Snowden's problem wasn't that he was wrong, that we were connecting, that we were collecting against American citizens. We were collecting against American citizens, but we were collecting a metadata until the American citizens showed a pattern of behavior to suggest that they were supporting terrorism.

[Jillian Michaels]

Got it.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And then we moved through proper legal channels to collect information on that target. Without that. And when Snowden ratted us out worldwide and told all of our adversaries about this, when he did that, he also undermined multiple other collection platforms that had nothing to do with the collection of metadata against American citizens. So Snowden's a bad guy. Clear and present. Not because of his whistleblowing effort, but because he chose to build insurance into his whistleblowing effort by working with American adversaries and compromising multiple other programs that had nothing to do. He went to Russia and Hong Kong and Latin American countries that were hostile to the United States. Like the dude. The dude only worked with adversaries when he did his whistleblowing. That's not someone who's trying to help.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, gosh. I thought he was like a hero.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Most people think he's a hero. There's a reason that the court system and the executive, the both judicial branch and the executive branch both agree he's a bad guy.

[Jillian Michaels]

Son of a. Yeah. Oh, my God. He's portrayed in movies. And I've watched different interviews with him, and it's like I fell on the sword for you. I gave up everything. And I'm in exile be because I was trying to, you know, expose this to you. I had no choice but to blow the whistle. Your government is surveilling you and they think your enemy Number one. And I was like, oh, God, yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Bustamante]

It's not like that at all. It's, it's. What's really heartbreaking is all of the true American heroes who worked at nsa, who built those programs, and the true American heroes who submitted request to the, to the Director General of NSA saying this collection might cross a legal boundary. Right. There's lots of paperwork. There's lots of people who filed those complaints. There's lots of people who raised it the right way. And because of the demand for protecting American lives, security and convenience, because the focus was so much on security, legal powers in the, in the legislator, in the judicial branch decided we are going to continue to collect this, even if it does push a social boundaries, the boundaries. It wasn't until that went to a civilian court that it was deemed to be illegal. In all of the vetted secret courts. It was con. Continually approved and approved and approved. It wasn't like the President pushed it through. It was multiple branches of government that pushed through the idea, if we're going to collect on terrorists, we have to have the metadata inside the United States.

[Jillian Michaels]

Of course. Okay. Now to take this a step further, the argument then becomes, as far as I can tell, well, now we're getting into minority report kind of stuff. So you guys are, are suggesting.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I'm not.

[Jillian Michaels]

You guys, you guys, like the intelligence is gonna go after me for a crime I haven't committed. You're trying to predict a crime. Is that what's going to happen? Is that what's happening? Is that what you're saying? It doesn't seem like it. It seems like you're saying suspicious activity over here. You have the right to look a little deeper. If there's suspicious activity, then you have a crime. If there isn't, we keep it rolling. Oh, no, she's talking to her Pakistani cousin, You know, moving right along.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Correct.

[Jillian Michaels]

So where's the crime prediction piece, the minority report that's coming? AI is going to predict that Jillian is going to do some sort of God knows what.

[Andrew Bustamante]

This is what's beautiful about our country and what our forefathers put in place with our country. We have a break between the law enforcement element of the United States and the intelligence collection element of the United States. To give an example, that break between law enforcement intelligence does not exist in Russia, does not exist in China, does not exist in North Korea. In North Korea. Right.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So if someone suspects you, if intelligence points that you may be doing bad things in one of our adversary countries, they will arrest you.

[Jillian Michaels]

Got it?

[Andrew Bustamante]

In the United States. That doesn't happen in the United States. You can be suspected, but they have to build a case, and the case has to go in front of a panel of your peers. And we have a whole judicial process. Right. Understanding that intelligence is all about predicting with high confidence how an outcome will occur.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Law enforcement is. When you enforce a law that's been broken.

[Jillian Michaels]

Got it.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Until a law is broken, law enforcement can't get involved. CIA has secret prisons for people who commit crimes against America from overseas, but they don't have secret prisons for Americans. Right. Because that's outside of our jurisdiction. If you think about that Venn diagram that we built earlier.

[Jillian Michaels]

Right.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Everybody else in the world and everybody else in the United States.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So I don't put any credence in the idea that inside the United States, AI is going to predict that you'll commit a crime and you'll go to jail. That's. That's the stuff of movies. But I do believe.

[Jillian Michaels]

I do believe people are going down the rabbit hole. I've had this conversation, and it's very convincing, for sure.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I do believe, Jillian, AI will be able to identify suspicious activity that would have never been caught by the human eye, and it will be able to report that to AI on the law enforcement side, which will be able to do an instantaneous investigation.

[Jillian Michaels]

Got it.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And then the two AI components together will say there's a 98% confidence that these three individuals are part of a ring that's being controlled out of Iran through an Iranian contact in Switzerland. And then a human being can investigate. It will have to take.

[Jillian Michaels]

So there's your checks and balances. Because then I can make the argument, well, you know, AI is, in fact, check things, and AI hallucinates stuff. And a. Okay, so then you have a human that vets it out and fact checks it.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yes. Because we are still. I. I understand people's fear about AI and it's a valid fear. But AI also gives us massive advantages. Incredible force multipliers to do things that would have otherwise taken weeks, months, or years to do it in a matter of minutes or seconds. Just make it work for us instead of turning things over to it.

[Jillian Michaels]

Wow. Okay, hold on. These are not me. I'm like, which one of these do I want to go to next? I want to go to Doge. All right, so I'm sure you've seen Mike Benz, who I've unfortunately yet to. To interview, and he seems like a brilliant guy, but there is a level of paranoia there in. In my Opinion. And it's like, long story short, Doge was a CIA slash fund and the CIA is staging now. I, I, I, I'm not going to suggest that the CIA is not influencing culture around the world. Like, oh, we funded these rap videos and they're about rising up, you know, and overthrowing the government. And we did it in this country where they rose up and overthrew the government. Oh, we funded this poetry that's about rising, overthrowing the government. Oh, we did the National Endowment for Democracy, you know, did get involved in that coup in 2014 in Ukraine. And that is part of the CIA. So then people start demonizing the CIA. Like you're starting wars and you're starting wars for globalists so they can reap, pillage and plunder the developing world so that the military industrial complex can have their wars and their pound of flesh. It's like, what are we going to do if we can't drop bombs and we can't let Russia and NATO. Because NATO only exists.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah.

[Jillian Michaels]

To get rid of Russia and the CIA is behind all of this. True to true. Line, no line. Good guys, bad guys.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Let me start there with good guys and bad guys.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

One of the things that CIA teaches us as we go through our entry onto operations is that you have to separate what's subjective from objective reality.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay?

[Andrew Bustamante]

The idea of good guys and bad guys, good and evil, right and wrong, is all artificial.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

That's not objective fact. That is subjective reasoning.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay?

[Andrew Bustamante]

If you're, if you're Catholic, you have your good guys and bad guys, you're good and evil. If you're Muslim, you have different good guys and bad guys.

[Jillian Michaels]

I see, Right. It's relative.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Good and evil. It's all, it's all based on your perspective. If you grew up in New York or if you grew up in Mississippi, different ideas of who good guys and bad guys are, different ideas about what's good and evil. Right?

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So CIA first tries to eradicate that thinking process from us and say, okay, let's just focus on outcomes and let's focus on productive outcomes and destructive outcomes.

[Jillian Michaels]

Can I pause you for a second? Would, would the productive outcome, though, be biased by the lens of, but we're the good guys. China, bad guy, we're good guys.

[Andrew Bustamante]

No, because who's setting the outcomes? The President. Our job is to create productive outcomes as defined by the President and by the Director of National Security now and Director of National Intelligence for the approved projects that they have given us. Because.

[Jillian Michaels]

So you're not allowed to decide China's bad guy.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yep.

[Jillian Michaels]

Maybe they're not a bad guy tomorrow if they help us contain.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Like, for example, Taliban. Taliban was a bad guy for a long time. And then, yes, we started sitting with them at the negotiating table.

[Jillian Michaels]

Right. Because that's what we wanna, we have a different outcome. Like, like I was watching Trump and I'm shutting down this war between Russia and Ukraine. Now all of a sudden it's okay, Putin, can you help me negotiate with Iran? Ukraine? I'm like, wait, what? Yeah, what just happened?

[Andrew Bustamante]

It's all about the outcome. And, and we serve at the behest of the President. It's part of what we swear to. Right. We, we are supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States, but we serve at the pleasure of the President. We don't please him or her, then we don't get to serve anymore. So that's a big part of that calculation. Okay, now understanding that.

[Jillian Michaels]

I got it.

[Andrew Bustamante]

You move to why do people not trust the CIA? They don't trust the CIA because as, as human beings based on survival, because we've covered that. We are all focused on survival first. We're not focused on, on success first. We're focused on our own individual survival first. Nobody feels comfortable, nobody feels like they have control over their health and well being. When somebody else gets to keep a secret. We call this the dilemma. The secret dilemma. I want your secrets. I feel entitled to your secrets, but I don't have to share my secrets with you. That's a dilemma that we all deal with all the time. Right? Parents want their kids to have no secrets that they keep from their parents. But parents want to keep their secrets from their kids. Bosses want to keep their secrets from their employees. But employees feel like their bosses should tell them their, their secrets. And it goes both ways. All through society, it creates this dilemma where what information is actually shared? What information that is shared is actually truthful. What information is shared intentionally because it's the wrong information. Happens all through society. It happens all through the world. That dilemma of secrecy. Right? So that's why people don't trust CIA, because CIA gets to keep secrets and you don't get to know about it. So what do you do when somebody and everybody in the world knows, especially Americans? No, CIA doesn't have to tell you their secrets. So then everybody's like, well, you're definitely keeping secrets that are, that are useful to me. You're definitely keeping secrets about me. In fact, you're targeting me. And then you have all the people with the aluminum foil on their heads. So this is. And it's gonna. It's gonna perpetuate, it is perpetuating for as long as it exists. And a big part of my personal mission since leaving CIA is to try to just interrupt that thinking process to say, hey, CIA is keeping secrets. Not because they're keeping them from you, Jane, Jill, Tom, you know, American citizen. They're keeping their secrets from the adversaries who are watching the same news that you're watching, the same tick tock feed, the same Facebook account. And guess what? They all speak English. That's why CIA is not telling you what they know. Because as soon as they tell you, they also tell everybody else in the world. So if they really want to keep you safe, they can't tell them the secrets. So that means they can't tell you this.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay, so hold on. So I want to push back, but I guess it's kind of FBI involved, so you can obviously correct me accordingly. The. These two organizations, in some cases, I feel like, do get looped or lumped into the same bucket here.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yes.

[Jillian Michaels]

So now The FBI has 50 something agents that are like that Hunter Biden laptop. Not true. But it is true. So are they serving at the. They're the legislative branches, so. No, the judicial branch. So, so, so who. The. Who told them to tell that lie? Yeah, and then you're like, okay, hold on. And then, you know, co. I mean, come on. Covid came from a lab. It came from a lab. No, no. Nothing to see here until there was. So then it's kind of like. Well, why though, are we manipulating. True. Although. Is that a secret? It. You know, you start to feel like you're. You're being lied to about that. Why are we lying about the Hunter Biden laptop? Now that's FBI, I guess.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Well, the other thing that you're. You're.

[Jillian Michaels]

I'm conflating issues.

[Andrew Bustamante]

There's a little bit of overlap here. Right.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And the overlap. The what's. What you're describing is a pre. Existing agenda. There's two assumptions that are the foundation to what you're saying.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

The first assumption is that people are lying. People are intentionally taking the truth and manipulating it to create something different than the truth. So that's assumption number one.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Assumption number two. You're assuming that people who work in federal government are somehow different from people who don't work in federal government. Like they're somehow more honest or more loyal or somehow better or different because they have a different responsibility. Somehow they're above being politicized themselves somehow they're above being radicalized themselves. They're not. The unfortunate truth is, as you rise through the ranks in the government, you're not necessarily rising based on meritocracy. You're rising because you know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy, and you have no other skill that could be beneficial to the workplace or else those people would have gotten out. CIA, FBI, nsa, intelligence officers leave all the time when they find that they have value that supersedes the value that they can provide for government. If you can make more money on the outside, you go do something else. If you can start a business, if you're a better teacher, if you're a better shooter, whatever, you would find a job outside of government except for a very small contingent of people who are exceptionally good at what they do and also exceptionally loyal. So as you go up those ranks, when every time I see a petition from NSA or CIA, there's 25 names on here that say that. That the president is breaking the law or that say that the president is a informant for Russia. Those 25 names are people who are inside who have made a commitment that they wouldn't do exactly what they're doing. It doesn't even matter what they say. It shows that they've been politicized and politically radicalized from inside a government that's supposed to serve the people. The people. You serve at the direction of the u. S. President, but you're. You're supporting and defending the constitution of america. Right. So when you capture. When you put your name on a piece of paper that says that the president's wrong. You put your name on a piece of paper that says that anything. You're violating your oath of office to the people of the United states. You're supposed to be a quiet cog in a larger machine.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yeah.

[Andrew Bustamante]

You're not supposed to have a voice. So name off the petition. You don't have a voice. The american people have a voice.

[Jillian Michaels]

I see. So you're not saying this is like some sort of institutional. No agenda being directed by blackrock. This is like people that have their own opinions that are somewhat captured and vulnerable to their own bias.

[Andrew Bustamante]

CIA is an organization of about 10,000 people. FBI is an organization of about the same, maybe 20,000 people. So when 50 names out of 20,000 end up on a petition, you're seeing that the vast majority of the institution is staying true to their requirement to be a quiet professional and serve at the direction of their authority. Okay, 50 people have lost sight of what actually matters. But the way a media twists it, those 50 people are heroes, just like Snowden. They're a hero. They're doing. They're stepping out and they're. They're speaking up to keep us safe. No, they're politically radicalized or they're being motivated by some other incentive other than.

[Jillian Michaels]

We saw it with COVID though. So you see, like, Bill Gates funds this virality project at Stanford to suss out vaccine hesitancy. It lands on the president's desk, and theoretically, he took that, gave it to, I guess the FBI, who then went to the social networks and said, like, shut down. Hunter Biden laptop shut down. Vaccine hesitancy shut down. Now they're serving on behalf of the President. What if what the president is asking, though, is unethical because the laptop is true? And Covid did come from a lab and the MRNA tech was pushed through an emergency use loophole and the NIH was doing studies on vaccine, injured people as they're rolling out vaccine. Like, what happens if that president is telling you to do that is not in service of the people?

[Andrew Bustamante]

That's why you have two other branches of government.

[Jillian Michaels]

Oh, well, where were they? So what happened?

[Andrew Bustamante]

The other thing is you're, again, we're coming from the assumption that the president was giving that direction. There's no reason to believe that the president was giving any specific direction. You think that, you think Covid was one of the top 15 things on the president's agenda? One of the biggest criticisms that happened for Donald Trump in 2019 and 20 was his response to Covid. I can almost guarantee you Donald Trump was sitting in the Oval Office, like, why the. Do I care about another global pandemic after the bird flu, after swine flu, after all these other flus that had taken over the whole world, right? They traveled near and far. He was probably like, why would I care about this when I've got. I'm on the brink of war with Iran, a trade war with China. There's terrorists still trying to kill Americans. Why do I care about a flu? But then the world reacted different to Covid, right? China shut down. When China shut down, everybody else felt like they had to shut down. All this. This information was spreading because ni, The National Institute of Health, was wrong about so much about the initial information because there was no. There were no studies at the time. So you had this propagation, not of disinformation or misinformation. You just had a propagation of un. Incomplete information and nobody knew quite how to react. And then as a Result, that's where the primary, the political criticism of Donald Trump at the time that was there in. Because how else are you going to get in on a guy who turned around the economy and get in on a guy who's making America militarily strong and regaining leverage? Like, how are you going to get some place of criticism on this guy?

[Jillian Michaels]

You know, it's fascinating to. Sidebar for just a moment is in the middle of my kind of debate over the LA riots. It was like, Trump did this with the guard. And that's the. I voted for this moment to be for me. I'm like, no, no, no, no. See, I grew up here and I've been doing this since I was 17 years old. As far back as I can remember, when it started with Rodney King and damn city burns down all the time. And it goes on for days.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah.

[Jillian Michaels]

And by the way, it destroys the most vulnerable communities in large part. So when it's like, oh, well, you know, people in the rich part of Los Angeles don't get hit, who soon, just like Compton go down and like all the other. Which seems insane to me. And you, you have watched these cities burn in particular over the course of the last five years, and you've watched the left say that what's going on in Seattle is the summer of love. I'm also not for January 6th. So I don't have, like, this kind of selective hypocrisy. I'm against.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah.

[Jillian Michaels]

Crazy people in the streets. I don't care what side you're on, you don't get to, like, run vigilante in. In my personal opinion. So now we're going back. Donald Trump did this. Donald Trump. And she's like, we're gonna see where this goes with him. I was like, well, I'm gonna tell you right now that there's peace and the economy works. It's gonna go, well. What makes you think there's going to be peace? And I was like, let's litigate his first term.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah.

[Jillian Michaels]

No new wars. Took out Solomania and Baghdadi, like, strangled out Iran, wiped out isis, had the Abraham Accord. Like, we aren't these things we know. But there's that cognitive dissonance of like, I don't remember any of that.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I don't want to remember any of that. What I want to remember is what happened when he was put on trial in New York. And what I want to remember is the Mar A Lago raids. And what I want to remember. Yeah, it's. It's selective memory that we all have. Because we're fat, dumb and happy. If we weren't fat, dumb, if, if the President's decisions actually impacted our day to day security, we'd have a very different opinion about our President day to day.

[Jillian Michaels]

But now it, now, now he's putting the guard in la. And my answer is, first of all, I, I love that. But on the other hand, there's a part of me that feels the way I feel with my kids sometimes. Or I'm like, if you this up, are you going to live? You know what I mean?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah.

[Jillian Michaels]

I'm like, go ahead and have the, the courage of your convictions. See how this works out for you.

[Andrew Bustamante]

You, because you're giving them a safety blanket.

[Jillian Michaels]

Because I'm like, all right, they're not going to be irreparably damaged, but they're going to learn a really good lesson. So part of me is like, don't send in the guard. Let LA go all the way down again. Let Newsom in Bass hang themselves. Just, just forget it. But somehow they will blame him again. So we kind of come back to you. And the reason I care is because if we can't agree on just a few basic things like the chaos in the street is Trump or it's not Trump and there are groups that are supposedly, now it's coming up that have funded the stuff going on in la. If you can't agree and you're functioning with totally different truths or completely different ideas of reality, my worry is that you end up with a civil war. That is why I care. That is why I personally am trying to say I see your concern. This thing where you thought a five year old was arrested by ICE is not actually true. That's a, you know, it's a lie. It's a 27 year old that was picked up on the freeway by the police. Like, that's not true. Like I, this is a valid concern of yours. I see that. Can you look at this? And that is why my desire isn't actually, personally, I'm not motivated. I have a good job. I like my job, I like my wife. I'm not trying to manipulate people to get to an end. Although I hope they learn that from you because that's cool. And I, you know, if there are things I needed, I want to know all the tricks. But what I'm deeply concerned about is the fact that one half of our country thinks it's sunny outside and the other half thinks it's a blizzard.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Right. I would argue that we are already in a civil war. But we're defining it differently. We still think a civil war means. Honestly, when you talk about civil war, people still think that guns have to be involved.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yes.

[Andrew Bustamante]

That front lines have to be drawn. Like that's not what modern war looks like anymore. Modern war looks totally different. And there's a concept in, in intelligence theory called interstate inter state war versus intra state war. We are moving into an era where intra state war is far more valuable and damaging that for me than interstate war. Okay, so inter state war is the classic war that we're all used to. Country invades another country across international borders. Right. So Russia, Ukraine, interstate war, intra state means the war happens inside the boundaries of one country.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So if you think about the majority of conflicts over the last 10 years, they've all been intra state war. Yemen, Libya, Syria. Right. These are all conflicts inside the country that don't, that have funding that fuels the fire from outside. But Chinese troops aren't dying. American troops aren't dying. Right. Like British and French and, and Spanish troops aren't dying. It's only the local country that's dying. The whole world, that's all the national security services of the world that study this concept of inter and intrastate conflict have woken up to the fact that it's way more expensive to carry out an interstate war. It's way cheaper and more effective to carry out an intra state war. And all you have to do is get two sides to fight each other. So what are all the American adversaries seeing when they see the United States? They don't see political divide, they don't see political arguments, they don't see left and right, they see there's an intrastate conflict happening, they're spending their money, they're spending their time, they're radicalizing themselves, they're tearing themselves apart. And we are just sitting here watching. And where we can, we'll sneak in a Facebook ad. And where we can, we'll all of the.

[Jillian Michaels]

Yeah.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And we'll just make sure that we throw fuel on the fire. But we don't even have to, we don't have to cross a border. Yep. Because they don't even. And again, our adversaries are looking us, looking at us, and they're saying we, if we get involved, this is what Again, going back to 9, 11, the lesson that was taught to the Russians and the Chinese and the North Koreans of the world is that if you unify the United States, you're, if you go in there and you give them something else to argue about, you give them an enemy that isn't each other, they will rally behind their national identity and they will tear your ass open. And that's what happened in World War II. So now, like, everybody treats us with kid gloves, not because they're just dependent on our economy. Of course they want our economy, they want US Dollars, they want US Customers. But they also know, just leave the United States alone and it's going to burn itself down. Right? China especially, a country that's been around for 5,000 years and has seen the kind of change that they've had internally. They're like, just leave that country alone and they'll kill themselves.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay? So the analogy I mention all the time is like ants in the jar. People have heard about this one. Maybe like a meme on Instagram, but it's stuck in my head. Got red ants in a jar, you got black ants in a jar. Could be white people, black people, could be Jews, Muslims, it could be Democrats and Republicans. Everybody's doing their own thing, going around, you know, living their life, crawling up the toy building their lamp, whatever, until some asshole shakes the jar. Okay? Then they all go to war. Who's shaking the jar? Is my question. Then the legacy media shaking the jar, or globalists shaking the jar. Like, who is wanting us? Who is putting out this misinformation? Who is putting out this propaganda? If Russia's throwing fire on it and China's throwing fire on it, who started the fire?

[Andrew Bustamante]

We started ourselves.

[Jillian Michaels]

Why?

[Andrew Bustamante]

In all intrastate conflict, the original kernel of conflict happens with a legitimate injustice inside the country. Right? And, and we're no better or worse than any other country. Right? There's all sorts of injustices that we commit against each other.

[Jillian Michaels]

Right?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Right. Okay, Sometimes rich people get a favor, sometimes poor people get a favor, sometimes white people get a favor, sometimes black people get a favor. There's all, there's lots of instances where we do not treat each other or issues with true egalitarianism, with equality. Right? All it takes is one of those instances. And then you've got a rat. You've got a group of people who believe one thing and a group of people who believe another thing. And then when you have two groups, all you need is funding. And then as you fund one group and they get bigger and louder, you fund the other group and they get bigger and louder. And then eventually everybody has to pick a side. But we did it to ourselves. We've always done it to ourselves. All the way back to having a two party system. We did it to ourselves. Why do we only have a two party system? Why not diversify our own system of government to give other voices a chance? Because we have followed the same playbook for so long. We can't change the playbook. And as long as we don't change the playbook, everybody else knows the playbook too.

[Jillian Michaels]

Right? Okay, what is the answer though? Because nothing is getting better. And I am seeing people, for the sake of ego that you mentioned in the beginning, try to bring about the worst possible scenario just to say I told you so. So to give you an example, like if we go back to Trump and the tariffs, I don't know if this is going to work or not. I do know why he's doing it. Could he have gone one territory at a time? Ida, probably. Was there a way to be less bombastic? I'm sure. But there's no way to know if this was going to work because the courts hog tied him. As, as we had mentioned in the or I had mentioned in the beginning of the show. Now we got to pay $60 billion back in tariffs and we failed. You have insured a failure just so you can say, is this what you voted for? It's your country.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah.

[Jillian Michaels]

It's your economy. What. How do you override that? It is crazy the things I have seen. And if we even like table that just won't just in my wheelhouse. And again, I don't, I don't mean to be redundant for anyone who's heard me talk about this, but in health, Kennedy is skeptical of fluoride in the water. We do have a pretty robust amount of data that when young kids take too much fluoride in, it impacts their iq. And you've heard other doctors and other subspecialties warn of different things from a muscular skeletal perspective, thyroid function and endocrine system. When you Google, I swear to God, like who profits off of fluoride in the water? It is like really scary. It's toxic ways that they don't need to dispose of. And you kind of get, you're like, all right, this is definitely alarming. Let's explore this and get to the bottom of if this is necessary. How did we get here? But the minute Kennedy says this is this, there's a lot to be worried about here. Oh my God. People want to put fluoride in an anal suppository. I have. They will eat truckloads of petroleum based food dye. What is that? I and I know you're saying it's like part of their psychological. I don't know, their survival, their. But, but to their own detriment.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I mean, there's a couple of things that you just laid out at the same time. And I want to start with the first thing because I think the first question is the operative question. How do we fix it? How do we get better? When you consider human behavior, human behavior only changes when the pain of the same behavior becomes more difficult than the pain to change the behavior.

[Jillian Michaels]

Talk about this with weight loss all the time.

[Andrew Bustamante]

That's it.

[Jillian Michaels]

That's make it more painful for them to be doing what they're doing before.

[Andrew Bustamante]

They ever make a change.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Right now they don't feel the change. Right now, people don't feel the pain. Right now people feel like the pain that they're feeling is, can be isolated to another party, another cause, another political movement, the president. So they're still pinning their pain on somebody else victim rather than fixing it themselves.

[Jillian Michaels]

Metaphors with weight loss are staggering.

[Andrew Bustamante]

It's. And it's not, it's not even a matter like the reason your knowledge base about weight loss is so accurate and so powerful is because it's not tied to weight loss. It's tied to human psychology. It's why you can change someone's life whether they're Arabic and female or whether they're Latino and male. Even if they don't speak your language, it still works because it's tied to human psychology. It's tied to the pink matter that's common among all people. Just like we talked about at the beginning of this conversation. Right.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I am staunchly working towards getting my children and my family out of the United States because I want them to have opportunities that I want my family to have that simply don't exist inside the United States anymore. Because the United States is on this path towards self destruction.

[Jillian Michaels]

So scary.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So on that. Not, not, not complete destruction. But we are creating more pain for ourselves and that is going to go on for years before we all agree that this pain sucks and we turn the corner and come back up again.

[Jillian Michaels]

You're saying this is going to get way worse.

[Andrew Bustamante]

It has to get worse. It has to get worse before it gets better. We're not at, we're not even at the low right. Think about what comes after Donald Trump. Think about are we going to swing to the other side or are we going to swing further to the, to the right because people are going to be that much. What happens next? You think right now sucks? You've been down this path before America. You know what happens when Donald Trump's in the White House. You have no idea who's going to get elected next. And will that be a one or a two term president? Because that's eight more years of your life, Right. Or will it be another four years on, four years off, four years in, four years out? We don't have any idea. But all indicators show that America is on the decline. The US Dollar is on the decline, our sphere of influence is on the decline. Right. We have plenty of strength still in us, but we're not willing to unlock it, we're not willing to tap into it. Right. There's plenty of indicators that show that we're getting better. Right. There are more young people who are willing to adopt or even consider a conservative point of view in addition to a liberal point of view. That means there's more centrists from younger generations. That's an important factor. Rather than having extremists in younger generations, which is what we're used to, we're having centrists in younger generations. Those younger centrists will grow into adults who should be center, but they're a long way from being that now. 12, 14, 18, even if you're a college person with 13, 15, even if you're a college kid with a balanced political perspective, you don't actually have revenue generating capacity to be significant to your society until you're in your 40s. So what happens for the next 25 years while that 25 year old grows into a 50 year old? Right. So we have a future that could be different, but our near term future is not going to be different.

[Jillian Michaels]

I gotta give him something for him, something positive.

[Andrew Bustamante]

You want to end on a good note?

[Jillian Michaels]

Give me a good note and, and give me like a, and let's circle back to the beginning, at the end of the ways in which they can learn from you and utilize their skill set to improve the quality of their lives. So let's go macro and then micro hope, you're on.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So, oh my God, the macro hope, right? The, the thing that I'm optimistic about is that we're waking up to this reality now. We were blind to it before, before COVID you know, 2015, in the heart of the global war on terror, we were still blind, very blind to the realities of the world that we lived in. Very blind to, to the stack that we were standing in because we were still distracted. Well, now the lights are on, the nightclub is over, and you see what they really look like and you're kind of like, well, right, well, I had a Little bit too much to drink and. And my fly is down and I'm going home with an ugly chick. Let's. I. I see it for what it is now. And now I get to choose. Do I commit to this path or do I change my decisions? Right. That's. That's where we are as a country.

[Jillian Michaels]

Not just unattractive. She has like, herpes simplex 5000 anal wards, all kinds of things.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I don't have to commit to this.

[Jillian Michaels]

That's an unattractive girl. Okay. Gotcha.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So that's part of the benefit. We can make a change. We're. We have. We have seen it for what it is.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

That I see as a very optimistic thing. I also think it's an optimistic thing that we are entering into what I call the age of intelligence. We are leaving the age of information. The age of information was the last 15 or so years where it was all about get more information, get more data, more data, more data, more data. Now we realize not all data is equal. Not all data is useful. Not all data is even true. So now we're trying to find a way to synthesize the data that we collect. Whether that is AI or self improvement or self or profession performance improvement, whatever it might be. We're all trying to invest in our own knowledge base, meaning our capacity to pool meaningful information from all of the other information. Another way of saying the signal from the noise. There's lots of indicators that show reasons to be optimistic.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

But we're. We have to turn this ship around.

[Jillian Michaels]

Before it gets better. I understand that.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah.

[Jillian Michaels]

And dark is before the dawn kind of concept. And it's just like dusk right now.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Exactly.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And it's. It's not something that we need to be fatalistic about. We're still America. We are still the only country in the world that was built on our own backs of innovation and independence. We still have all the streaks of Americans that run through our blood. We may forget that we're as strong and as rich and as powerful as we are because we get distracted by other bullshit. But we're still strong and rich and powerful inside. Right? Everybody else is still copying us. We're still the ones that know the playbook best. Which means that if we make a change, they have no idea that change just happened. They have to see it from the outside. We have a lot to be optimistic and a lot to be proud of. We just have to be willing to exercise a different move. We have to be willing to accept some old systems, have to break some New systems have to be built. We have to understand we've got to make different choices between convenience and security. If we want long term security, if what we want is short term convenience more than long term security, we're going to be in that pain palace for a long time.

[Jillian Michaels]

Okay, now, I want the girl or the guy, and I want the job and I want all those things and I want to think critically and I hate to use the word manipulate, but we'll just say, win friends and influence people the way that you learned how to do. Where do I. How does a person learn from you? I know you have a book coming out in September, but, like, where do we get more from you and so that we can utilize these skills.

[Andrew Bustamante]

My company is Everyday Spy. I built it when I left CIA. So of course you can find [e-mail] you can find me on all social media platforms at Everyday spy. I'm on YouTube as both Andrew Bustamante. I have my own podcast called the Everyday Spy Podcast. We have an international presence. It's been absolutely crazy. Absolutely a blessing that I can't describe. Yeah, it's unbelievable to be walking through a Mexican airport or an Australian airport or a British airport and people shake your hand and give you fist bumps and encourage you to keep doing what you're doing. So you can find me everywhere. If you look for me, be careful because if you look for me, the algorithm is going to bite you. And then everything that I create is going to keep coming.

[Jillian Michaels]

That's awesome.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I love it. That's why.

[Jillian Michaels]

That's how I found you. So.

[Andrew Bustamante]

But I will say this, that the reason Everyday Spy is so successful, the reason that I believe in what I'm teaching, is because it's tied to the human brain. It's tied to the human psyche. It's tied to the processes that are native to our organic behavior and that transcends all borders. If we really want to beat our enemies, it's not about beating them with guns or aircraft carriers, about beating them with our brain first. And if we really want to unify as a country, if we really want to unify as parents with children or spouses, it's all about learning how to think like they think and then making movement towards accepting and understanding their point of view, because that will subliminally make them make movement to understand and approve and appreciate the way you think.

[Jillian Michaels]

Andrew, I think you're fantastic. I cannot tell you how grateful I am that you came in here. And I have just been such a fan for such a long time and you are such a trooper to indulge me. Thank you for everything.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Anytime, Jillian. I will sit with you here. I will sit with you on any other show you want to sit with.

[Jillian Michaels]

I will say that because I already have a whole lineup for you and your wife, and we didn't even get to that.

[Andrew Bustamante]

But thank you very much for having me. And this was. It was an awesome conversation.

[Jillian Michaels]

Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed the podcast, please, like, comment, subscribe and share. And make sure to let me know what guests you want to see on in the future.