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Jake Stauch
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Tom Bilyeu
I'm Tom Bilyeu and this is Impact Theory. Welcome back to my conversation with former CIA covert officer Andrew Bustamante. In part digging into the dark arts of persuasion, how power is wielded behind closed doors, and how you can start applying spy tactics to regain control of your own life. Let's jump right back in. Have you seen A Few Good Men?
Andrew Bustamante
I have.
Tom Bilyeu
All right. There's a really phenomenal speech that makes its way on social media all the time as a meme. But it's like you wake up and sleep under the umbrella of protection that I provide you. And I resent you asking me or criticizing the method in which that I keep you safe. So there's that side. I tend to get really gassed up every time I hear that speech, like it speaks to me. But then there's Eric Weinstein, who I respect tremendously, who's like, we have to really be concerned about what he calls the jesupification of America where we're all just like, yeah, go do whatever you need to do, just keep me safe. Where do you fall on that spectrum? Is this whatever the fuck it takes
Andrew Bustamante
or I certainly fall on the you need me on that wall, you want me on that wall side of the argument. Because the other side of the argument isn't really arguing the same point. There's a tool that we use in manipulation called switch tracking. And switch tracking is when you see that an argument is happening and the argument is about a and you want the Argument to be about something else. Because you can't win the argument about a.
Tom Bilyeu
Like, let's say the argument's about your emails, but you don't want it to be about your email.
Andrew Bustamante
You don't want it to be about your emails. So then you have to argue about something else. So your wife is yelling at you because you're checking email at the dinner
Tom Bilyeu
table about HRC and her using a private email server.
Andrew Bustamante
So Hillary Rodham Clinton has a private email server, and that's what the argument is about. Well, they know they can't win that argument, so they have to make it about something else. So how do they make it about something else? Well, they talk about the lack of security around the previous email server that they were using. Well, now all of a sudden, the response to that argument becomes about the other email server, not the private email server. And now you can have a whole. You can completely switch the track of an argument by talking about something different. Right. Husbands and wives forget Valentine's Day all the time. So a husband forgets Valentine's Day. A wife gets angry about the husband forgetting Valentine's Day. Hey, you never remember Valentine's Day. Why don't you ever remember Valentine's Day? So the husband says, well, my love, I buy you something nice every year for your birthday. And you never seem to appreciate the thing I buy you for your birthday. Well, then what's the wife going to respond to? What's the last thing you bought me nice for my birthday? Well, I bought you that necklace. Well, I love that necklace. Well, I didn't know you love that necklace. And the whole conversation about Valentine's Day is over. That is a massive tool in the manipulation world, especially with trained manipulators, advertisers, negotiators, intelligence. Because all you have to do is just put one diverting comment into an argument, and you're arguing about something altogether different. So you need me on that wall. You want me on that wall. The conversation is about, you need a wall. Well, then the other person is like, well, we can't just do whatever it takes to keep us safe. That is a switch track. That is a whole different argument. Because doing whatever it takes to keep you safe is no longer about a wall. Now it can be about rockets, chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, you know, children, spies. It can be about anything. Whereas you need me on that wall. You want me on that wall is about a wall.
Tom Bilyeu
It's very interesting. How far do we as Americans need to go to protect that wall? Like, is it. Are the Dangers so high that children spies. Jeffrey Epstein, if he was an intelligence asset, sex like the craziest, most PDF file type shit like there is no thing we shouldn't be willing to do for the greater good or do we draw a line somewhere?
Andrew Bustamante
The switch track question I would say is really, how much do you want to remain America's largest superpower? If you want to remain the world's largest superpower? If you want to remain the world's largest superpower, you're going to have to accept the dirt that comes with being the biggest bully on the playground. You're going to have to deal with the fact that we have some corruption. You're going to have to deal with the fact that we cheat our closest allies. You're going to have to deal with the fact that we hide and cover up things at the highest levels of leadership. Because the myth of the country has to be so powerful that others fear us. General Petraeus became the director of CIA. We were talking about that earlier. I had the privilege of being one of his, like, workout buddies. Everybody who was Petraeus's workout buddy was really just a big kicking dog because the dude only did one workout every day and he had been doing the same workout for like 30 years. So he could kick your ass on eagle push ups or eagle sit ups any day of the week. They're just insane. But what was cool is you got this time with the general whenever you worked out with him. He would never work out with the same person five days in a row. You, it would be like you're his every other Monday person, somebody else is his Tuesday person, whatever else it might be. So I had this time with the general. He gave me this speech one day while he was kicking my ass in push ups and he was talking about how powerful the mythos was to him being an effective general in the army. And he was like, I do the same workout every day. He's like, you work out with me enough to know that this is my workout, so of course I'm better than you. But he's like, I'm not trying. I'm not doing this for you. I'm not even doing this for me. I'm doing this for every new recruit who joins the army who finds out that their general kicks everyone's ass. That's why I do this. Because that new recruit isn't gonna stop to ask themselves the question, well, maybe that general just does the same five exercises every day. Instead, that recruit's like, fuck yeah, my general kicks everybody's ass. And he's 60 years old. I could be like that. I could be the general. That's America. We kick everybody's ass. He's like, I need to motivate that person. Because that person joins at a rate of 25,000 new people a year. It's like, I don't have to worry about the lieutenant colonel who knows my secret, because lieutenant colonels retire at a rate of 200 every year. So where's the focus? The focus is on making sure the mythos motivates the masses. And that was such a powerful message to me because I was like, holy smokes. Here's a guy who lives his personal life around shaping the myth about his personal capabilities to motivate others.
Tom Bilyeu
So this feels like the very question that we are going to have to contend with, which is social media has killed the mythology. Everything is so in our face. You can read a book, watch a podcast, whatever, about all the behind the scenes stuff. Like there's this book by James Burnham, which I talk about endlessly, called the Machiavellians Defenders of Freedom, which people do not pay attention to that second part, and they just hear Machiavelli and they think, you know, all bad things all the time. And he's just saying, look, the world works a certain way and if you're not being honest about how the world works, you're going to be constantly surprised. And so the book is about, this is how the world works. And it's really gross and it's really ugly and it's horrifying, but it's very much the reason that you will always have a group of elites is like you said, people aren't going to show up to vote. But it's also because there are people that are. They're smart enough and they are morally gray enough that they want control of the narrative. And then they want to give you the pre masticated narrative that for a very long time, depending on what country you're in anyway, it really was better. And just like you said, blue pill, just, hey, let me do this thing. I'm going to be Jess up on the wall. I'm going to make sure you're safe. And then I'm going to lie to you about what America is in this case. But everybody's gonna be doing it in their own country. I'm reading endlessly about Xi Jinping in China and bro just says, obviously in private conversations. But he's like, listen, propaganda is real. We have to be very careful about the story that we tell about China and That China is basically mandated by heaven to rule the world. He doesn't say rule the world, but lead. And it's like, I'm like, yeah. And the big problem that we're gonna have in the coming decade is if America tries to out China, China, we will lose. We are not in a place right now because of the populist moment to lean into freedom, certainly not as one giant collective. There is a huge contingency clamoring for all the control elements of, I mean eu. I'm looking at you baby, and China like that whole scan every dm, all of that stuff, which is absolute insanity. But we are going to collide with a power that is unflinchingly saying I'm going to manipulate you top to bottom. We're going to talk about it openly in the pull up bureau, but within that we're going to talk about this openly. This is what we have to do. Everybody, you got to repeat this ad nauseam. And then in America, and I think rightly so, but we're going to have to figure out how to make this work to our advantage. We're like, no, if you say some bullshit, I'm going to say that's bullshit. I'm going to call it out. We're going to talk about everything openly. We're really going to look under the hood and we're going to get to what's really the problem is elites are still a real thing. Meaning there's only so many people that are intelligent enough and interested enough in pre masticating the narrative and feeding it to people. And then the vast majority of people just want to fall in love, have some sex, eat great food, raise their kids, make some money. And so you get into this weird dynamic that we're in right now where we have to decide, we have to consciously say, I know this is mythology, but I'm still going to lean into it. And if America cannot stop telling itself the moronic mythology of we're like these evil slave traders, then we're going to implode. Like whatever we do, it's going to be mythology. I am well aware of that. But we've got a wide eyed say. I get it's mythology. And yet we're still gonna decide to lean into this. Otherwise we're gonna get our asses handed to us by people that have a positive vision of who they are as regardless of all of their foibles.
Andrew Bustamante
I often call this the adolescence of the United States. That's where we are. If you, if anybody who's Ever been through adolescence knows how uncomfortable that is. There's the belief that you're still a child and the crashing reality that you have responsibility. And the worst part about adolescence is that you know it's going to get worse. It doesn't get better. Adolescence. Many of us would kill to go back to adolescence to be like, oh, are you kidding me? All I do is smell bad and have pimples on my face. But somebody else still pays rent and that'd be great, right? We never go back to that, ever. So in the journey of the United States, we forget we're not that old. We're less than 300 years old. We are at a place right now where we're kind of in our adolescence. China's 5,000 years old plus Russia's 3,000 years old plus. These are countries that they went through adolescence a long time ago. It's like putting a 13 year old, a 13 year old up against a 40 year old. Does a 30 year. Does a 13 year old have advantages? Yes. So does the 40 year old. Right? I remember when I was in college, we used to joke about old man strength. Being a 40 year old guy who's got a pot belly but is somehow still strong. He's got 40 years of body mass that he's grown. He may have a pot belly too, but he still has one good fight left in him. You know what I mean? So we have to figure that out as a country. Are we going to understand that the childhood dream, the myth of being a child forever is over and now we have to make some big boy decisions, some big girl decisions. We have to put on our big kid pants and move forward. And by the way, it's not going to fix itself overnight. You're going to have pimples for a long time, right? We're going to have boners and sweatpants for a long time until we figure out how to deal with this. That's just the way it's going to work. I don't believe that China and Russia have done it right. I believe that they have done it for a long time. I don't think that they've done it right. Because at the end of the day, when you put a volunteer professional soldier against a conscripted, uneducated ruffian who has barely been trained, there is not an equal fight, right? And that's how the United States has always worked. We've always worked off of our warfighter killing 10 of their warfighters, our tank killing 10 of their tanks, our aircraft downing their Aircraft carrier. Right. That's how we've always calculated, and that's how we've been successful. It's how we were successful in the American Revolution. It's how we were successful in World War II. It's where we had success in Vietnam and Afghanistan. It's where we were able to leverage that advantage. Where we didn't have success is where we were not able to leverage that advantage. So as we look to the future, we have to be asking ourselves, what do we want as a country? Do we want to be a country that collectively stays ahead of everyone else? And then if we want to collectively. And that's a question. There are plenty of people who don't think that we should be a superpower anymore. There are people who think the world will be a better place if there are three or five or seven countries that are all equally wealthy, equally sophisticated, equally innovative. I am not of that ilk. But there are plenty of people who are still asking themselves, do we want to be equal? And then whether you do or don't want to be equal, how do you get there? How do you keep that? You can do it by swallowing the narrative. That's how other countries have proven that they can do it. You can also do it through revolution and through constant fighting. You just have to decide if that's how you want to do it. Do you want a revolutionary change, or do you want a more controlled, productive change that takes longer?
Tom Bilyeu
We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere.
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Tom Bilyeu
Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action. Yeah. The bad news is, history tells you if you choose a revolutionary angle, you are going to have a strongman come to power. America is basically the only example of where a guy was like, yeah, no, I just want to retire, so I'll do this one round as president. I know I could be king, but I'm just not interested in that. And I'm going to peace out. Back to my farm.
Andrew Bustamante
Once we had him one time.
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So Trump would run again if you let him. So that those days feel like they're gone. Okay, so you want America to remain a superpower. At least that's what I inferred from what you're saying. Okay, so I see us as. We're on a Thucydides trap, collision course with China in no uncertain terms. China's aware of it. I'm reading a book called On Xi Jinping right now, and his cabinet has used the term Thucydides trap before. They understand what's happening. Xi Jinping is becoming more dismissive, literally, as a policy, more dismissive of America because he believes that we're the declining power and that they're on the rise. It is merely a matter of time. This is me stepping inside his shoes. It's merely a matter of time before America just cannot defend its position anymore. He doesn't believe that we collectively have the will to try to maintain that position anymore. And to your point, I'm not sure that he's right. Wrong, unfortunately. But if you had, Hey, a moment on a mic where you could, like, make a pitch, what would that look like? In the face of the reality of if China, if we will let it, China will become the global bully, the biggest bully on the playground. They're not going to be like, let's just do this together, bro. That's not how history says this will play out. So what would be your pitch?
Andrew Bustamante
I would have two pitches. I would have the fatalist pitch and the hopeful pitch. I am of the hopeful pitch, and my hopeful pitch is China's already doing this. They already believe we're going to crack. They already believe we're going to break. They already believe that we're on the decline and that that decline is not going to get righted. That's what they already believe, which means we know what they believe, but they don't know what's really going to happen. We can change it at any given time, and if we change it, they have to react to our change, which means we have the advantage in first mover, first mover, advantage in business and military, everything else. So we have every opportunity and every advantage to change the trajectory that we're on. If we don't, we just do what they already say we're going to do. And that's like the most embarrassing thing in the world, is to literally walk into the trap that somebody else placed in your path and know that you're walking into that trap and do it anyways. Yeah, that's my hopeful pitch. My fatalist Pitch is start learning Mandarin Chinese. The second most spoken language in the world is Mandarin Chinese, not by a little bit, but by a lot. The primary difference between the group of people who speak English and the group of people who speak Mandarin is that only 25% of all people who speak English speak it as their first language. 75% of all English speakers speak it as a language they learned after their native language. Mandarin is the other way around. 75% of Mandarin speakers, it's their native language. Only 25% of speakers learned it as a second language. So you can see this. The two populations are almost, almost the same. The big difference is how much had to learn the language to succeed versus how many were born with the language. If you want your children to succeed on the current path that the United States has, you need your children learning Mandarin Chinese.
Tom Bilyeu
That's wild. How do you think we should be using AI in this fight? I know. So my whole thing is AI presents significant risks. But when you look at it, game theory tells you China's going to keep developing it because it'll be the most powerful weapon that's ever been developed. It will dwarf nuclear. So it is going to be developed. And the only question is, are we going to join the arms race or are we just going to let it happen to us? But you've also got the UK government saying, and the EU, we're going to scan all your DMs, we're going to be all up in your business. So are you like, yes, that's what we need to do, or is there some other way that we should be thinking about AI?
Andrew Bustamante
I've always been all for AI. I've also all been all in on transparency. Even if you are cheating on your spouse, lying about your taxes and carrying a second phone so you can talk to your girlfriend, Let it all be known. Let it, Let it all be known to the government.
Tom Bilyeu
Got it.
Andrew Bustamante
Because somewhere out there there's somebody using a second phone for something different. And somebody out, somewhere out there there's somebody using banks and monetary systems actually for nefarious purposes. And when the government sees that you're cheating on your wife and cheating on your taxes, they don't really care. They'll let you keep your $2,000 that you stood, that you embezzled from your tax refund because it's not worth it to them to pursue you when there's some ultra wealthy person who's embezzling $100 million. So they're going to choose the other person, but they need to have access to everything in order to find the other person. If you choose privacy to protect your little lies, other people are using the same privacy that you're protecting to protect their big lies.
Tom Bilyeu
How do you reconcile that with what you said earlier, though, which is, the government's not here to protect you. They're here to protect themselves. And they will weaponize that against you the second you give them a reason to. And if that reason is simply you're speaking against them and you're causing them problems, oopsie, you're having an affair. Suddenly comes out, oopsie, your $2,000 thing, like, yeah, it wasn't a big deal when you weren't bothering me, but you're bothering me now, and I am going to bring the full weight of a tyrannical government down on you.
Andrew Bustamante
So I never. I absolutely said the government's there to protect itself. I never said its intent is to weaponize the government. That is something that I understand people are concerned about. It is a valid concern. The trick is to maintain the balance between being transparent and never being the target. Because here's the thing. Even if you are hiding your affair, even if you are hiding your tax embezzlement, if you become a target, there is no resource that people won't use to destroy their target, especially if it's the federal government or whether it's a law enforcement agency or if it's a foreign intelligence service. So whether you're transparent or not, once you become a target, you're fucked. So the goal is to never become a target. That's the number one thing you have to do. If you want to speak out, then put that. Put that target on your chest and let yourself be brave and be the martyr, and hopefully you. You achieve the change that you want to make. I would argue that there's more efficient ways to get what you want without making yourself a target. That's what espionage is all about. Affecting the outcome that benefits you without ever being seen in the process. I'm a huge believer in the fact that we all have that potential and that capacity. I believe it so much. I have a business that teaches people how to do that. Right? Don't be the threat. Be the person that everybody overlooks, but still be as transparent as possible. Because the only way that they're going to find the distraction instead of you is if they have full access to everything.
Tom Bilyeu
That's interesting. I hate that answer, but I'm going to have to sit with it to see. I mean, listen, I don't have an Easy answer to that one. So yeah, okay, I'll spend time with that. But I just don't trust the government. And I assume that they're going to be as tyrannical as the day is long and that they will go after people randomly. Not randomly, but they'll go after people like COVID 19 was just such a wake up call in terms of the government gets some ridiculous idea and then they will go ham. And because the government is made up of real people and there's some huge percentage of Americans that are. They want to like the dsa, Democratic Socialists of America or Association, I don't know which. Anyway, the dsa, they want to abolish the family. They actively say you should seek a totalitarian government that the DSA should be in in every aspect of your life. Like, it's just wild. So I'm like, this all sounds horrible. I want none of this. This is like to use your. We're in our adolescence. This is like a child wielding the weapon of an adult. At least China's like, listen, we know how this game is played. You guys just won't shut the fuck up. So we are going to have to kill a few of you, but only a few. And then it's all just with this in mind. These guys are just nutjobs who somehow think that this is all going to work out. That was not an advertisement for China. P.S. i think they are both horrifying. Okay, so having said all that, well,
Andrew Bustamante
the thing to keep in mind too is a tyrannical. I agree we're heading down a path of a more. It's more authoritarian, more tyrannical, less justice based government. I think that's the direction that we're going. If you take the temperature today, temperature can change tomorrow. It can change in a week, it can change at the midterms. But that's the temperature we have. We're looking like we have a fever. That's what it looks like right now, right? I need more cowbell. But we don't only have two options. Our options are not revolution or shut up in color. We also have an option to leave. We're Americans. We have one of the most powerful passports in the world. You can always leave. And one of the few arguments that I loathe more than any is when people say, oh, I can't leave. I can't leave because I have too much responsibility. I can't leave because I have too much debt. I can't leave because of whatever. I don't make enough money. I've Been hearing this argument from people forever. People who don't like living in Florida but refuse to move to Georgia, whatever. If you care enough. Change only happens when the pain that you feel is greater than the pain of the change itself.
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
Andrew Bustamante
So if you want to sit and bitch and you don't want to leave, then you don't feel enough pain yet.
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. Oh, you will. Okay. I want to talk about Shadow Cell. I want to bring in your wife, Jihee. What is it that is the secret to being able to profile somebody? Well, such that you can get from them ultimately what you need?
Jihee Kim
Well, so the way it works. So targeting is the career field, and it began with the military during the war on terror. And their targeting was more capture, kill. But the CIA started utilizing it for more traditional targets. And the key is really just understanding human beings. So understanding their pattern of life, understanding their loved ones and their inner circle, understanding the things that they are interested in, where somebody else, a case officer, can connect with them on a personal level.
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, and when you say understand it, like, what are you looking for? So you say pattern of life. Is that, like, the rhythms, the things that we pursue, like, what hooks are you looking for?
Jihee Kim
So. So part of it is the nuts and bolts of how do I get somebody in front of them. So when I say pattern of life, what coffee shop do they go to? What time do they leave for work every day?
Tom Bilyeu
The logistics of your life.
Jihee Kim
Yes, the logistics of your life where somebody can just casually bump into you and, you know, comment on your earrings. I mean, obviously not your earrings, but mine are gorgeous.
Tom Bilyeu
What are you saying?
Jihee Kim
Oh, I love your shirt. Have you been to Japan before? And start Shake up a conversation.
Tom Bilyeu
By the way, boys and girls, at. I mentioned earlier that I was into Japan. Okay, I'm being clocked.
Jihee Kim
All right, fair enough. Yeah. And then speaking of. So through the various data streams that we can collect at the CIA, which are all classified, but there's a variety of information that can be collected on individuals. And using what information you have on a person, you can gather what their interests are. You can gather what their relationships are like with their Pete, with their family. Are they devoted to a spouse? Are they. Do they cheat on their spouse? Do they have children? But, you know, do they have a lot of children and they love them? Do they have no children, but they want children? There are these little things.
Tom Bilyeu
What's the way to get people to start bringing that stuff out? Do you try to remain, like, no matter what this person says, are you neutral? Or is it no matter what they say you're positive. Like, how do you ingratiate yourself into that world?
Jihee Kim
So the targeter works all behind a desk. So everything I'm looking at is data that comes in. So it's like looking at somebody just building a profile. Just building a profile. But I mean, people put so much on the Internet, and then there's all these other data sources. So there's all these open sources that people are very open about their lives. And then there's all these other data sources that are proprietary and classified that give you a. A broader picture of a human being. And then you just start thinking about culturally, how do those things apply to that person?
Tom Bilyeu
How important is culture?
Jihee Kim
Culture is hugely important. Hugely important.
Tom Bilyeu
So I have a hypothesis that everybody can be understood based on three things. Their biology. So just we are chemical processing plants, but also male, female, going to make a huge difference. Their values and their beliefs. Their values and their beliefs are, for me, basically the way of being specific about culture and how it manifests. Does that pick it all up? Is there something else?
Jihee Kim
So I think so. I 100%. Andy and I have talked about this before. I 100% agree on biology. And I don't think. I think people have to be careful not to think of biology as the cultural norm that we've been taught, because biology is not, you know, men are better at this and women are better at this. Biology is. You know, there are functions that drive. There are chemicals that drive us to do certain things. So I definitely think that. I think the other two also. But then the other thing I would add is that as human beings, we have basic needs. So one of those is the need for connection. Right? One of those is the need for security. All of us as human beings, no matter what culture you're from, we require the sensation of being connected to other human beings and feeling secure in our lives. And so those things definitely play into how can I create an approach for another, for a case officer to bump into somebody and make that human connection with them, despite cultural differences, despite possible language barriers. And those are really the things that you have to focus on when you're thinking about, how do I bump this person and make friends?
Andrew Bustamante
One of the things that hasn't come up is that targeters also direct the actions of case officers in many ways.
Tom Bilyeu
Are targeters more frequently female?
Andrew Bustamante
No, but I would say they are more frequently introverted.
Tom Bilyeu
Interesting. Okay.
Jihee Kim
We're nerds, to put it in the word.
Andrew Bustamante
But. But they can direct because if they've scrubbed everything, they've scrubbed Classified databases. They've scrubbed social media, they've scrubbed academic databases, they've scrubbed historical records. They know everything there is to know. And that also means they know what they don't know. So then they can tell a case officer, hey, on the next meeting with that person, dig into family, dig into how they liked college, dig into favorite alcoholic drink. If they drink, they want a more well rounded profile because they want more in their profile. And they can direct the activity that drives the collection of intelligence because every one of those elements is a new way into whatever secret information you're also trying to get.
Tom Bilyeu
Taking a short break. But there's more impact theory after Stay tuned.
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Tom Bilyeu
Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it. Okay, so in Shadow Cell, you guys do a really good job of walking people through the journey of what it was actually like to be be there on the ground. Which makes it an incredible read. P.S. however, you're having to create a layer of bullshit lies. Like you're not, I'm assuming your name wasn't actually Alex Hernandez. Like that's a code name for what it was. Obviously, though, I worked with multiple AIs to try to figure out what Falcon really was. It comes up with an answer, by the way. I don't know if it's true or not, but it has a strong hypothesis. So when you're doing all of that stuff and you're trying to build the sense of who this person is, how does that translate into something that's like really grounded? What are you. What was an example from the actual thing that you guys lived through, where it was like, okay, get me this piece of information, because when I know that, then I'm going to be able to advise you to do. And like, how did that actually work? Because to skip to the chase for people, you guys end up being very successful, end up helping to define a totally new way of doing espionage that's still being used. So obviously we learn something in these interactions. So with, as I know, it'll be abstracted, but as specific as you can be, something that you said, okay, I need this piece of information. And it became a very specific action.
Jihee Kim
Right. So an example from the book, which a person that we were pursuing through tech means, so we were listening in on conversations. So we never. By the end of the book, we had met that person. But gathering the information, we were having all these conversations, and so. But we couldn't figure out what they were talking about exactly until another source brought us a piece of information about medication that the person had been. Had been acquiring under the table.
Andrew Bustamante
The target's code name is Zephyrum from the book. And just like he's saying, Zephram was a priority target that we couldn't get close to. We couldn't physically get close to him because he had protected his pattern of life. So he had drivers to take him from point to point. He knew how to protect his information. So we never knew when to expect him to go from point A to point B. He would leave for work at a different time in a different car with a different driver on a different day. So there was all this because he
Tom Bilyeu
knew he was a target.
Andrew Bustamante
He knew he was a target, so he protected himself. And just like Jihee saying, it took multiple different types of information, tech information, interpretative information, surveillance information, before we put it all together. And even then, the kind of coup d' etat was another asset who didn't even know we were looking at Zephram, who gave us information about the person who was codenamed Zephram. And that made it all click.
Jihee Kim
Yeah. And then suddenly we knew that he was. You know, at first we thought, well, maybe he's a drug addict, and that's a vulnerability. And then we learned later on that, oh, no, his child's sick, which is unfortunate, but also a huge vulnerability. So that. That really connected a lot of really important dots for us. So that one day when we did meet him, we had this piece of information in the back of our minds that we could work towards helping him with.
Tom Bilyeu
How do you not play that card too fast?
Jihee Kim
So that's really the beauty of what a case officer does. The case officers, you know, they are trained to build these relationships in a way where over time, they create a genuine friendship, they create genuine trust, so that when they uncover.
Tom Bilyeu
Are you using the word genuine? The way that I think about it, yeah. Like it's a real relationship.
Jihee Kim
A real relationship.
Tom Bilyeu
Do you have to do that as a way to, like, so I. I don't have to remember what lie told. Basically, I'm just actually going to build a friendship with this person?
Andrew Bustamante
Yes and no. I would say that, first of all, it's kind of a uniquely American, quasi, uniquely Western strategy. The genuine relationship piece. And part of that is because Americans, we culturally like to have real friends. We don't culturally like to have a bunch of fake relationships. It's very exhausting to have fake relationships. Relationships. So we try to build real relationships, but we build those real relationships inside the confines of our cover Persona.
Tom Bilyeu
How the does this not get blurry?
Andrew Bustamante
It does get blurry, and that's a big part of why there's so much mental health support, psychological support. That's also why assignments last as long as they do.
Tom Bilyeu
Have you guys been studied? There's gotta be something here about the integrity of, like, self identification that, like, as it begins to break down, this is problematic. And so, like, what are they helping you do?
Andrew Bustamante
CIA has an entire office of Medical Services, oms. And inside oms, not only are there nurses and doctors for your physical body, but also for your mental health. And everything about us is recorded and documented and retained.
Tom Bilyeu
What do you have to be most worried about? What's the, like, most common mental injury?
Andrew Bustamante
I guess it would be a full, like, a mental break. Like, mental.
Tom Bilyeu
Because you're losing sight of who you really are and.
Andrew Bustamante
And everything collapses around you. When I mean, your personal relationships with your family, your marriage, your relationship with your children, your sense of personal values, all of those things start to crumble when you've lived so many different roles or when you've done things that violate your values and beliefs as an individual in pursuit of a larger mission. And then you look back at that through age. It's a difficult thing. Like, you sacrifice more and more.
Tom Bilyeu
So at the time, maybe it didn't bother you.
Andrew Bustamante
Correct. But it's an exponential sacrifice.
Tom Bilyeu
Oof. That's. You just gave me the chills. Okay, so you talk about in the book, like, the moral gray is the thing that has to be dealt with in real time. Like, we got to figure this out. Given that you guys get married reasonably early on in your journey together, how do you deal with that? Like, are you. Is Alex Hernandez married? And so it's easy for you to stay true to that, or do you. Are you sitting there, like, literally advising him on how to get close to women? And using flirtation might actually be one of the tools. And so you guys, as a married couple, are like, all right, this is how you cozy up to this lady? Like, is. Are we there? Or were you just saying it's icky to use a guy's kid being sick as a way to get information.
Jihee Kim
So, I mean, there's. There's so many areas where you can be working in the gray. And one of those is. I mean, we are trained in and well aware of honeypots where sex is used, you know, to basically either blackmail somebody for information or sex is used to, you know, develop that sexual relationship and then get information out of them. So. And Andy likes women quite a bit. So we always had the conversation where I was like, you know, like, outside of our marriage, just for the mission, like, just be careful. Be careful not to get trapped by a beautiful woman because it's stressful out there. You're by yourself. You're under a lot of stress. Maybe you have a really bad day, and some beautiful woman comes and offers you a massage, and then maybe the massage starts to become more and you're, like, in a vulnerable position. And so we're well aware of our own vulnerabilities because our job was to tap into other people's vulnerabilities.
Andrew Bustamante
The.
Tom Bilyeu
That's wild.
Andrew Bustamante
Yeah. The Alex Hernandez alias was built like all professional aliases, which is not that far from truth. Right. We talk about having. Having whatever is your truth is kind of like your due north. And then you want a good alias to be about 10 degrees off of truth. So Alex Fernandez wasn't married, but he was engaged. And Alex Hernandez is a name that looks like a brown guy with black hair, whatever else it might be. Right. So there's. There's a lot of elements of truth. Alex Hernandez study the same thing I studied, but from a different school. And Alex Hernandez was only five years older or younger than me in real life. And we could make all of the documentation align with the physical person, because that's how true undercover operations are executed. So GE. He didn't have to worry about me being too different than my real self, but I also didn't have to worry about me being too different from my real self. I could still be a Star Trek nerd. I could still, you know, have traveled throughout the far East. I could still have familiarity with Japanese language and Thai language without being too weird. Like, I had all these elements that were still very much me, even though they were under this other person.
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, so going back to the gray area as a married couple, how do you guys deal with that? Is it that by nature you're just, like, not jealous, or. Or is it that. Okay, I'll take that as a misread on my part. So if you're having to draw too stark Of a line. Is it just. Okay, we, like. Let's just say that you're like, yo, like sex. Obviously, you're. You don't have to worry about the. The kestrel government or the falcon government. You got to worry about me. So, like, clear. But, like, I don't even want you to, like, be alone in a car with a woman. Like, do you then just have to adopt that in the Persona of Alex Hernandez? And so it just becomes easy from that perspective?
Andrew Bustamante
To a certain extent, yes, Jihee is a very jealous person, but she's also very specifically jealous.
Tom Bilyeu
Okay?
Andrew Bustamante
She's very specifically jealous of skinny bitches. I love it. So if I had to, like, flirt with a fat chick, she was not absurd. If I had to flirt with a tranny, she was not concerned. If anything, she kind of cheered me on for all those missions where I had to go, Like, I had to go America.
Tom Bilyeu
Thanks.
Andrew Bustamante
You pander to some dude's weird sexual obsession with whatever, you know, dominatrixes or something else. She's like, go, have fun. Take pictures. Tell me about it when you come back. Because that's not something we're ever gonna do together.
Tom Bilyeu
Okay. Respect.
Jihee Kim
Yeah. And I think when you're setting. I think when you're setting, when you're working in the gray and you're setting kind of, like, lines in this, you know, writing lines in the sand for your partner, they still have to be fairly generalized. And so the way our still in sand, right? And the way. Exactly. The way our marriage works is that I trust Andy more than I trust anybody else. I keep saying, I trust Andy 100, and then everybody's like, you definitely don't trust him 100%. But I trust him more than I trust anybody else.
Tom Bilyeu
Even though he's a former CIA spy?
Jihee Kim
Yes. And what I.
Tom Bilyeu
It doesn't enter your thinking, or you're like, listen, I know what that's like from the inside. You guys get a headline, you think one thing, but when you're in it, it's like.
Jihee Kim
So there's the. What I really trust is two things. I trust him to make the best decision in the moment that he can. That's the first thing. The second thing is I trust him to tell me what's happened. So if the best decision in the moment is, babe, I was going to get the keys to the kingdom, and all I had to do was go down on this beautiful woman, I'd be like, okay, because you told me, right? It's for the mission. And you told me, sorry, where do
Tom Bilyeu
you Sign up for this.
Andrew Bustamante
Exactly. I never got that medal.
Jihee Kim
I never got that medal. That never actually happened. But I mean, those are the. When I say trust, that's what I mean. I trust him to make the best decision at the time that he can. And I trust him to always tell me so. There is no 10 years later being, remember on that mission, well, you know, this thing happened and I'm sorry to tell you, like, no, come home and
Andrew Bustamante
you tell me she also trusts her own ability to set all the traps in place to catch you.
Jihee Kim
Yes.
Andrew Bustamante
She's not going to volunteer that. So there's traps all over our house. There's traps all over my computer. There's traps all over my phone. I know.
Jihee Kim
You already know. I'm going to verify.
Andrew Bustamante
I know that I'm being verified a lot.
Tom Bilyeu
That is amazing. Okay, I want to go back to something very distressing. So, honey pots, we're recording this in the middle of the Epstein scandal. It's just still going. And the thing that freaks me out is it always seems to be about young girls. Is it just known in the CIA that first of all, men are easy to trap? I assume I make the base assumption. Please tell me in the listening audience if this isn't true, that it's like a Honeypot is basically 98% for men, and that you're probably not gonna trap women with sex. Maybe relations, but not sex. And is it true that some distressing percentage of men are going to be trapped, like with a very unnervingly young woman?
Jihee Kim
So I think men, I think it's a disproportionate amount of men. And I think part of that is historically they have been the breadwinners and then the high stress positions. And it's just when people are under stress, they're vulnerable. And what do you want when you're under a lot of stress as a man, you want somebody to make you feel good, to take care of you.
Andrew Bustamante
It's a 60, 40 split among men between homosexual and heterosexual.
Tom Bilyeu
What?
Andrew Bustamante
Yeah, so what? So the vast majority, 6,040.
Tom Bilyeu
What is happening right now?
Andrew Bustamante
The majority of honeypot operations are targeting men with homosexual activity. Because that is the vulnerability.
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, I'm reading. I'm reading this in some way that maybe I shouldn't. I'm hearing that out of 100 men, 60 are straight and 40 are gay.
Andrew Bustamante
No, what I'm saying is out of 100 honeypot operations against men, okay, so basically 60% of the guys that are
Tom Bilyeu
ultra sexually motivated and going to be easy to trap.
Andrew Bustamante
Yes.
Tom Bilyeu
40% are gay all the way. But 60% are.
Andrew Bustamante
Yes, 60% are being targeted by sexual activity from another man.
Tom Bilyeu
Gay men are easier to trap than straight men with sex.
Jihee Kim
And they're not necessarily interesting.
Tom Bilyeu
Right?
Andrew Bustamante
What do you mean?
Tom Bilyeu
What?
Jihee Kim
Well, there's a spectrum.
Andrew Bustamante
Okay.
Jihee Kim
Sexual spectrum. Right.
Tom Bilyeu
This is so interesting. Say more words.
Jihee Kim
Heterosexual on one end, homosexual on one
Andrew Bustamante
end, and a lot of space in between.
Jihee Kim
But most of us, I would say, fall probably somewhere in between.
Tom Bilyeu
Interesting color in the space in between. What does that look like for you2 as CIA spies? It's so cool. You guys are, see, former, but former CIA spies that are married. This is utterly fascinating. Okay, so, yeah, walk me through the gray area.
Andrew Bustamante
So you would have. You'd have an operation or. It's. It's rare that the US Engages in sexual exploitation operations because it's just.
Tom Bilyeu
I feel like I'm being spun right now.
Andrew Bustamante
It's too sticky, really. It's too expensive. It's too high risk.
Jihee Kim
We actually do follow laws. We have a. Yeah. Giant office of attorneys that we have to run operations through.
Tom Bilyeu
Really.
Andrew Bustamante
Now, those attorneys have layers. And so.
Tom Bilyeu
Wait.
Andrew Bustamante
There's always a way around something. But.
Tom Bilyeu
Okay.
Andrew Bustamante
But the first level is. Has to be legal.
Tom Bilyeu
There's a huge percentage of humanity that believes that Epstein was an intelligence agent, that most people just go, asset, asset. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Most people immediately go to Mossad. Some go to CIA. Some are like, who knows? But are you saying that the US Would not do honeypots involving children?
Andrew Bustamante
Yes.
Jihee Kim
Oh, yeah.
Andrew Bustamante
That's the most exact. That is exactly what we're saying. If that were to have. If that were to have made it. Yeah, if that were to have made it through where some US Signature from an attorney said, we condone this operation. You're talking about a fraction of a percent of all operations. It's never been even remotely feasible in our mind that Epstein was a secured US Asset participating in honey trout operations with children. Not for the U.S. not for the U.S. interesting.
Jihee Kim
Yeah.
Tom Bilyeu
So you guys assume it's France. I got beef with the French right now.
Andrew Bustamante
I've always had beef with the French, so I get it.
Tom Bilyeu
Okay.
Andrew Bustamante
But Mossad makes sense.
Jihee Kim
Yeah.
Andrew Bustamante
So do a lot of them.
Tom Bilyeu
Because Mossad just unhinged, no matter what.
Andrew Bustamante
It's because they. Their calculus is defense of the Jewish state. That is there.
Tom Bilyeu
And they're like, there's no laws.
Andrew Bustamante
There's nothing that. That is worth risking the loss of the Jewish state. So everybody else is disposable.
Tom Bilyeu
Yo, that's direct.
Andrew Bustamante
I like it.
Tom Bilyeu
Let's go. Spade. A spade. Okay, so back to the gray area. When we're thinking about honey pots, just to get everybody back. When we're thinking about honeypots, mostly men. 60, 40. It's men that you're targeting with men. But we hesitate to say that they're gay men, right? Because. So if they're in the gray, why does 60% of the time we're like, ah, this would be easier with a guy.
Andrew Bustamante
It's not that the 60% of the time it's easier. It's that when we do the dossier work, what we find is that the vulnerability is tied in some way to a desire for sexual activity with another man.
Tom Bilyeu
Because they're hiding it. They could be hiding it a little more illicit.
Andrew Bustamante
It could be a curiosity.
Tom Bilyeu
If we can get him to do it here, then it's like, I can use it against them in a way. I wouldn't be able to use a woman against them.
Andrew Bustamante
Everything about espionage is about getting people to take actions that they're trying to hide. Because. Because if they do an action that they're trying to hide and they hide it well, guess what that means? It means when you tell them to do a dead drop two years from now, or when you tell them to fly under a fake alias two years from now, they'll do it better because they're naturally good at keeping secrets. Whereas if you hook. If somebody has sex with a prostitute who's a male and then runs home and calls their preacher and talks to their wife and calls their mom, you're like, this person is never going to be equipped to carry real secrets in the future.
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, so if I am recruiting for the CIA, am I preferentially going after people that are in the gray that are not necessarily straight or gay, but a little more flexible? Like, is that valuable? Do you get bonus points for that?
Andrew Bustamante
I wouldn't say they're bonus points, but the gray is what you're looking for.
Tom Bilyeu
Because I'm assuming, like, if. If I'm stepping into a honey pot and I don't, maybe I'm just too suspicious. But if I'm stepping into a honey pot and somebody's like, do a bump of cocaine, I'm like, you first, right? If somebody's taking me and there's like, a guy involved, I'd be like, you jerk him off first. Like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, I'm not going to do anything that's going to be used against. I need to see you do some shit. Like, but if that guy's like, ah, I can't either. Then like, clearly it feels like it would dead end there.
Andrew Bustamante
So you're very right. And that's where the pre work comes in. You don't meet somebody the first time and then take them to a location where you do a bump of cocaine. You meet someone 5, 7, 12 times. And then over the course of that you explore what's the right setting, what's the right time, what's the right compromise to introduce to them first. And then it's like a domino's set after that. If you get them to do a small compromise and then another one after that, another one after that. They just start to build momentum. And here's the thing, you've. You've probably had a friend in your life who kept all your secrets for you and you knew if you had a bad idea, that was the friend you were going to talk to first. We all have a friend like that. CIA's job is to train us to be that friend for foreigners.
Tom Bilyeu
Wild. Wild. Okay, Shadow Cell. It's very dangerous. Reading the book, you're like, yo. Like there was a time where certainly when you went to Kestrel, you had to be having a stroke at home. Walk me through that moment from your perspective. Is it, you know what he's going to do? Do you guys know at the time, oh, this is going to be way more dangerous than normal or because you end up getting picked up, interrogated. Scary, scary. But when you're at home, are you like, oh, I don't realize this is the one that escalated to that.
Jihee Kim
Correct, yeah.
Tom Bilyeu
So you're like that every mission. You're like, oh, God, I hope it's going.
Jihee Kim
Yeah. Yes, every mission is. I hope it goes well. Because once he's on the ground, I don't hear from him either. I mean, usually he only, he'll only because he has to keep his cover. So it's not like he can call me and we can, you know, catch up on the day. So every single mission I am like, please God, let him be okay and come home. So that, that particular mission that went badly, he called me and that was the first time I was like, he called me just to be like, I'm coming home early. Which sounds very innocuous, but for me I was like, holy shit.
Tom Bilyeu
Because that's code.
Jihee Kim
Yeah. I was like, this is bad. And then the rest of the time between that and him coming home, I was just a wreck because I didn't know what was going to happen. I just knew something Bad was going on, and I wouldn't know. So we had our own commo plan, our communication plan, our own personal communication plan where I knew that he would give me signs of life. And we still do this. Give me a sign of life every several hours.
Andrew Bustamante
Wow.
Jihee Kim
So I knew that was in place, and that was enough for me to kind of hold off because there's nothing you can do in the meantime. So I just worked a lot, and Andy and I talk about this as well. I mean, I was. I loved being a professional. I loved being an intelligence professional. So I just threw myself into work, which, you know, really benefits the ca.
Tom Bilyeu
What is it about the game that you like?
Jihee Kim
I love. So I personally love knowing things that people. Other people don't know. I love secrets. I felt like I was really good at targeting. I love detective novels and puzzles, and to me, that's what that work felt like. And it was that work with secrets. And then the other thing was the people we worked with, really, really amazing people in the Agency. And I just. I've never worked with another group of people like that.
Tom Bilyeu
It's incredible. Okay, so walk me through what it's like to be pulled off the street, interrogated. How is your heart not beating out of your chest?
Andrew Bustamante
It is. It's a terrifying feeling.
Tom Bilyeu
And do they just expect you to be scared? Because it's like, well, whether this guy's guilty or not, he's going to be freaked out. This is weird.
Andrew Bustamante
There's a recipe for a really good interrogation, and we learn the recipe when we're at the Agency because we're supposed to use it against our targets.
Tom Bilyeu
So you know what's coming.
Andrew Bustamante
Correct. So what ends up happening, or what ends up happening in my case in Shadow Cell, is because they have a different recipe. Right. Kestrel follows a different recipe when I'm in Falcon than what we follow here in the United States. So right away, when I see the disparity between what we do and what they do, I'm starting to understand that they're losing advantages that they could have. As an example, it's very common because
Tom Bilyeu
they're doing it worse, they're doing it
Andrew Bustamante
differently, but they're doing it wrong, in my opinion. Right.
Tom Bilyeu
When you inside, you're like, bitch, please.
Andrew Bustamante
Kind of for real, though. For real. Because there's an. There's an element. As a basic example, when you snatch somebody off the street, you need to assume where they're physiologically going to be. Heart racing, body temperature increasing, sweats. Right. Their. Their perspiration is Going up, they're burning calories, their glucose is dropping. You got all these things that you can. You can assume right away, well, what's the best way to maximize the impact? It's to then put them in a room and leave them alone for a long period of time. Let that adrenaline dump happen, Let the sweat turn into cold on their skin, Let them get nervous, observe them the whole time, change the temperature in the room. There's all sorts of shit you can do before you ever say a word. That's not what they did. So right away, I was. I was seeing the difference between what they were doing and what we were trained to do, which gave me confidence that I could fall back on my training to resist or counter the interrogation. So control my breathing, control my energy burn, regain my mental clarity. And then before I knew it, the interrogation was starting. And then as the interrogation progressed, I could even see in their questioning, in their relationship with the two interrogators. You could see these gaps. Every time you see a gap in interrogation, it really is like. Like a scoreboard in a soccer game, where it's like a point for me, not for them, a point for me, not for them. And that's really how you survive any kind of long, extended captivity, is you're constantly keeping score. Where did I win? Where did they win? And who's winning the game overall?
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, how long were you interrogated for?
Andrew Bustamante
It was about two, two and a half hours.
Tom Bilyeu
Wow. Okay. And they just suspected that you were spying, like, you were doing suspicious behavior, like, what was it that triggered them?
Andrew Bustamante
We actually don't know. We've. We've done all of our counterintelligence reviews with the Agency and within our own cell. We suspect that what happened is that my. My identity, My identity document was flagged. And then because of when my flagged document tried to cross a border, they pulled in whatever team was available at the moment. Part of that was our intention.
Tom Bilyeu
We're.
Andrew Bustamante
We're taught that when you try to escape across a border, you want to do it at a time that's a low period, so that the best players in the game aren't on the field.
Commercial Narrator
Right?
Andrew Bustamante
So you try to get in early, you try to get out, try to get out late, but you don't try to do something at one o' clock in the afternoon. So I was trying to evac early, and I got the B team, or possibly the D team that was available on site to interrogate me. And then it just. It worked out for the best. So the theory behind the process of tradecraft worked in our case.
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, who. I mean, this has got to be very stressful. It ends up for you guys being the punchline. Okay, we're going to tap out. What was it, Jihee, that made you want to eject? Okay, we've done our time, we've served the country, and now we're done.
Jihee Kim
Andy wanted to leave.
Tom Bilyeu
Would you have stayed?
Jihee Kim
I would have stayed.
Tom Bilyeu
Now why didn't you stay? So he has, obviously is more at physical risk. Is there a reason you didn't say, hey, cool, totally get it. Go do your thing. I'm going to stay here.
Jihee Kim
So for me, it really came down. When I'm making a big decision, I make this pros and cons list, and it really just came down to we had a baby and we wanted another one. And we were by that time working in D.C. again. And I just saw, you know, Andy was making more than I was at the time. And D.C. is an expensive place to live, so I, you know, daycare was really expensive. And I thought, if we have a second one, one of us will have to stay home. We can't, on our government salaries, afford two in daycare. So not only would one of us have to stay home, but we'd have to move further away than we were from the agency. We used to live a 20 minute commute, and so we'd have to move an hour out. One of us wouldn't be working. Most likely it would be me because Andy had a higher salary and I was the one who wanted to work.
Andrew Bustamante
So very pedestrian reasons, right? But that's what it comes down to. CIA officers are still just everyday people, right?
Jihee Kim
And so Andy said, let's, let's move, you know, to Florida and be by your parents and they can help us with the kids. And I was like. Like, after a lot of convincing, I was like, all right. I was like, I moved away from home. Like, I have made it, you know, like, this is exactly where I should be right now. But he convinced me in the end that it would be best for our family. And that's what really matters the most to us.
Tom Bilyeu
All right? Parents are about threat detection. It's one of the core parts of the job. You guys have a very unique insight into the level of risk that we are at as a nation, as a mom. How do you parse through all of that? Knowing what you know, do you want to feed your kids the narrative so that they feel comfortable, or do you want them to be like, hey, listen, all these other kids think the World is one thing, but it's not that.
Andrew Bustamante
And are you going to filter your answer right now? That's what I'm going to be paying attention to.
Tom Bilyeu
Let's go, man.
Jihee Kim
I like to filter. So so far our kids are 12 and 8. And up until this year, I felt like they were just too young to really understand. But now that my son's 12, I'm starting to talk to him more about what's on the news. And I'm starting to find ways to talk to my daughter. My daughter, she's very girly and she likes makeup and she wears these very fashionable clothes. And in my mind I'm like, oh, my gosh. Like, you could. You are in danger. Like you could be molested by somebody. Like you. You know, there's. There's so many things in your future that I have to protect you from. So I am now starting to. I think they're developmentally ready for me to start introducing the dangers of the world because I think we have to. I don't want my kids to feel that the world is a dangerous place, but I also feel like it's my job to protect them.
Andrew Bustamante
I think we also don't want them to feel like the world is a safe place. Yeah, the world is just the world. It's a place. It's got dangerous people, it's got helpful people, but people are just people. And the only person, the place where it all starts, where your defense really starts, is with yourself. We've been teaching our son self rescue since he was probably six or seven years old.
Tom Bilyeu
What's self rescue?
Andrew Bustamante
You are your own first line of rescue. So we will compliment him sometimes and say, hey, good job. Self rescuing. Right. Whether that's falling off the edge of a pool into the water with your shoes and clothes on, whether that's not going down a dirt path that has, you know, snakes in it or something. Like when they make a good decision that enhances their personal safety. We will call that a good job. It's self rescue when they identify that they're out of their own water, like their water bottle is empty, that sort of thing that shows that their awareness for their own self preservation. That's what we're trying to encourage.
Tom Bilyeu
What do you tell them about the gray?
Andrew Bustamante
Our daughter lives in the gray already. She's naturally predisposed.
Tom Bilyeu
Guys like, yeah, that's our kid.
Andrew Bustamante
We're very proud of it. And it's also hugely inconvenient.
Jihee Kim
Yeah. Our son is very black and white. He is very uncomfortable with gray areas. He is very uncomfortable with untruths. So I think he requires more work to understand that you can't necessarily live black and white. You can't always. You can't always be the one telling the truth because sometimes you need to refrain. And then our daughter, I think, has just, Just like Andy said, I think our daughter has it down already.
Tom Bilyeu
She got an intuitive understanding for that one.
Jihee Kim
She does.
Tom Bilyeu
That's very interesting. Okay. I would clock that as women use a different strategy in life, they don't approach things front on. So woman, the likelihood that she gets into a fist fight is very low, but the likelihood that she uses a reputational form of violence is very high. Do you guys clock it that way? That didn't seem to line up earlier when. That's why I was asking about targeting. If that was more a female centric thing, which doesn't seem to be. But does that read seem. Given that you psychologically profile people, does that seem to fit or. No.
Andrew Bustamante
I would actually. I'm curious what your answer is here, because for me, that's not broken down on gender lines. It's broken down on, on personality, and it's broken down on like natural energetic tendencies. What they can and can't read about another person, what they do and do not like to do themselves. Like, everybody has the capacity to manipulate, but how do they manipulate? Even our son, who's very black and white, will manipulate with feelings. He'll. He'll come up when he wants something really badly. He'll come up and just assume, assume he can't get it. And he'll demonstrate sadness and he'll be like, I know you're gonna say no, but I'm just wondering if. And that's. That is a manipulative approach.
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
Andrew Bustamante
Yeah. He may not see it that way himself. As a 12 year old, he may see it as just, you know, sharing his true feelings, but because he's sharing his feelings before the actual decision, it is manipulative. So I'm curious what your answer is. I don't see it as a gender thing at all.
Jihee Kim
Yeah, I'm, I'm very careful not to square split things by gender unless it's something that's culturally affected. So cultural gender roles, you know, I think those are very, those are very valid in the way that people behave. But I think, you know, things like, you know, are they straightforward or are they, you know, do they. Are they, you know, come at you from the side? I don't, I don't see that as gender based.
Tom Bilyeu
Interesting.
Jihee Kim
Yeah, I Do see that as personality based, energy based, or so many other factors that go into the way a person is than gender. Although I do think that, I think that the cultural like manipulations of how genders are supposed to be, you know, you can look at that, but it's not the whole picture.
Andrew Bustamante
You even talk about biology, values and beliefs. Right? The biology element is legit. I don't think that the penis or vagina is the biology that matters as much as the beliefs about what it means that you have a penis or a vagina. Those beliefs kind of dictate how you carry out your behaviors and how others interpret your behaviors more so than the biology itself.
Tom Bilyeu
Interesting. I have a hypothesis that algorithms know with more than 90% accuracy whether somebody's male or female literally just by what they linger on what they like. Do you guys think that's crazy?
Jihee Kim
I don't think that's crazy.
Andrew Bustamante
I don't think that's crazy.
Tom Bilyeu
So there is. We are leaking our gender in some way.
Andrew Bustamante
Our gender identity, at least our gender identity.
Tom Bilyeu
Interesting. What do you think is a stronger driver? The biology or, I mean, I guess you've already answered this. The biology or the, the sense of identity? I would say biology a thousand times.
Andrew Bustamante
I would say identity more than biology. Because what's interesting is when, in our experience, when you're targeting a source of information, you literally can't approach the same person the same way if time has passed. Because the 12 year, the 22 year old person is very different when they're 42. Their biology is only aged, otherwise it's still the same. Same genetic code, same. Maybe they have more constipation, who knows. But they haven't changed genetically, biologically, very much. But everything else about values, beliefs, perspectives, opinions, all of that has been changed over 20 years of history and experience. So you, you have to adapt to how you approach them. That's a, a core element in espionage is understanding that whoever you meet today, if you meet someone today who doesn't have access to any secrets but is very good at keeping a secret, 30 years from now that person might be CEO of a government contracted company. And you already know they can keep a secret. So now they have access they didn't have when they were 20. And you know that they're good at keeping secrets. So now all of a sudden, they're infinitely more valuable. But you can't approach them the same way 30 years later. You have to approach them differently. You might, they might have known you when they were 22, but now that they're 52. They have different motivational levers that you can pull on.
Tom Bilyeu
Right. Do you guys think that being spies has influenced how you engage with each other as husband and wife?
Andrew Bustamante
Absolutely.
Tom Bilyeu
How?
Andrew Bustamante
I don't lie to her because she.
Tom Bilyeu
She's too good at detection.
Andrew Bustamante
She's just too good at seeing it. She's. She's too good at seeing it. If she sees it, I won't know that she saw it. Right. So she's gonna have leverage over me. So it's way better to tell her the truth because then she has to react to the truth. And I know she's. CIA, has taught me how to observe her, so I can see that she's slower at processing the truth. And that slower processing gives me more space to kind of win points back, if you will, for whatever I do wrong, whether it's yelling at the kids or not buying the right type of bread or whatever it might be in our everyday life. So there's all sorts of benefits there. Plus, we communicate about mundane things and high impact things with a whole different vocabulary. A vocabulary that we learned at the Agency about everything from personality types to cognitive distortions to strategic elements and planning. When she talks about a common plan, I know exactly what she means. I know exactly what steps would be involved. So when she says to me, before I travel to Africa, well, what's the commo plan? I already know what she's talking about. It's a whole different language.
Jihee Kim
Yeah. And I would agree. I think the shared vocabulary is something that I think we have that possibly other couples don't have. And part of that shared vocabulary is just what we feel. I want to say comfortable, but what we are willing to talk about. So hard conversations, we know is a requirement. I think most couples avoid hard conversations, but we know we have to have them. And we have a vocabulary that we can use to get ourselves through those hard conversations. It's not. That doesn't mean that those look great. I mean, that might be three days of Andy getting no sex and me being really furious and, you know, like, um. But at the end of it, we've made it through, right? And we have the vocabulary to close that out and move on and be better.
Andrew Bustamante
It doesn't mean we don't have misunderstandings. We. We're still a married couple. Just as a quick story, we were at the Grove in LA just a few days ago. Great place, Great place. And we were. We had just purchased dessert for the kids. They had a good lunch. It was a big day. So we got them something Sweet. One got ice cream, one got boba tea. Well, Jihee looks at me in the middle of the grove with these kids running around and all this chaos happening, and she's like, do you want anything sweet? And of course I respond, no, I'm fine. And then we leave 15 minutes later. And she's angry, and I'm like, why are you angry? She's like, well, I wanted something sweet. I was like, I don't remember you asking for anything sweet. And she's like, I said, do you want anything sweet? And to me, I was like that. You asked me if I wanted something sweet. And I said, no, because you're on a diet. Because you're always on a diet. Because this is also.
Tom Bilyeu
You got to compete with the skinny bitches. I feel it.
Andrew Bustamante
So there's always miscommunication. That still happens as married couples. The vocabulary doesn't replace the lack of communication. But at least we're able to talk about it where I'm like, why won't you say what you mean? And then she can come back and she can just say, I feel uncomfortable. That's that. That is a conversation that many married couples don't get to have. Oh.
Tom Bilyeu
They don't even know how to have it. Lisa and I talk about that a lot. We try to talk in insecurities. So it's like, once you can do that, then it's like, okay, cool. I get where we're at. Totally understand. But if you don't and it just stays in that emotional place, it gets bad fast. Yeah, it's wild. You guys are fascinating individually, together. This is dope. What can we expect from you guys in the future? Are we gonna write a spy novel? A thriller? Where are we headed?
Andrew Bustamante
So Shadow Cell hits bookshelves on September 9th.
Tom Bilyeu
Phenomenal. Get your copy worldwide.
Andrew Bustamante
We're very excited about that. It's already breaking records in audiobook sales pre. Pre. Before it's even published. We've got just a very happy, very happy publisher, very happy agent, very happy world. So far, we've also already sold film rights to Legendary Pictures.
Tom Bilyeu
Let's go.
Andrew Bustamante
So that's incredible. After we talk to you, we're actually going to talk to a screenwriter.
Tom Bilyeu
Oh, my God.
Andrew Bustamante
That's amazing. With. So we'll see whether or not it ever makes it to the big screen or the streaming screen or anything else. But.
Tom Bilyeu
Wow.
Andrew Bustamante
We're super excited about that.
Tom Bilyeu
You should be.
Andrew Bustamante
We have a second book that's already with CIA for clearance that talks about how we used our common spy experiences and Spy tradecraft to build a business. And that book will come out exactly a year after Shadow Cell comes out.
Tom Bilyeu
It's incredible.
Andrew Bustamante
And then on the far horizon, I just want to do more and more creating what I've discovered in this process personally, and I'll let you speak to what you've discovered in the process is two things. First, it's. It's therapeutic to go back through what happened at CIA. And processing through that is a kind of self reflection that is both empowering and humbling at the same time. And it's really powerful to look at where we are now as digital personalities, as business owners, as parents, as a married couple, and see where we started. It's kind. It's incredible. It's very similar to. I was talking to Lisa earlier today. We were standing on your balcony and you guys live overlooking where your first date was.
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, it's wild.
Andrew Bustamante
So you can actually go back to where your first date was and look up at where you are now. It's an. It's an amazing thing to be able to see where you came from, but then also go back and stand in those shoes and see where you are.
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
Andrew Bustamante
So it's been really empowering and enriching for me to go through that process. But the other thing I learned is that nobody believes in you as much as you believe in yourself. And CIA told us that we believe that then. But after coming in, building a business and going through executives that tried to kill our business from just not knowing what they were doing, to, you know, people who, who say they believe in your story but then want to change your story, I'm realizing that creative control is a very important thing. So you'll see more creative elements, more creative content from us that we will control.
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, that makes sense.
Jihee Kim
Yeah. And I come from a very creative family, so. And when I met Andy, he had gone from Air Force to federal government, and I just thought he was just an average guy. Now finding out he's so creative and he really is the happiest when he's creating. We have a very creative household. And so, you know, I'm hoping that Andy will do a lot more writing because he's just amazing at it and he has all these amazing ideas that, you know, I get because we're in the same household, but I would love for him to be able to share them with everybody else as well.
Andrew Bustamante
What did you learn from the process of writing this book? Because you don't, you don't talk about that very often.
Jihee Kim
It's really hard to Write a book. No. You know what? The, the book writing process was, was great. We did it together. It was a trip down memory lane. We got to remember all of, all of our friends and these great experiences we had which came at a really timely. It was really timely for me because I was really struggling in my personal life about like what am I doing with myself. And so that was wonderful. Pushing it through CIA was so, so difficult. But I'm glad we went through it once because if we ever have to do it again, now I know not to have so many fights with Andy.
Andrew Bustamante
We fought a lot.
Jihee Kim
We will get through it.
Andrew Bustamante
We fought a lot because CIA, what I wanted to create was the most comprehensive, compelling and contemporary spy story ever published. And that was kind of the bar I set from the beginning. I was like, I don't want to, I don't want to write about missions 30 years old. I want to write about missions that are happening right now. Tradecraft that's happening right now. And I want to, I want to share things that CIA has never publicly shared before but that aren't considered quote unquote classified. We talk a lot about how the government shapes what information it shares. There's a lot of information it shapes that it's, that isn't classified. So like let's tell some truth behind all the, the mal information. So our book talks about a mole that CIA has never publicly disco disclosed until this book. They didn't want to do that. And jihy being the penultimate government employee when CIA looked at our manuscript and said this entire manuscript is now classified and it will never be published.
Tom Bilyeu
Whoa.
Andrew Bustamante
That's what they said to us. Jiheeves like well we tried. And I was like fuck that. Like we, we hit on a nerve. But we were so meticulous in how we wrote that manuscript. We knew nothing in that manuscript is going to give a foreign adversary an advantage. So I wanted to go head to head with CIA. She wanted to cower right away and not, not kick that hornet's nest. And for two and a half years we fought about that. We fought back and forth with every edit and every back and forth email with CIA. I mean we scheduled meetings over in person, we scheduled meetings over the phone and it was this just painful multi year clearance process until jihee was finally like fuck it, I'm tired of fighting. And she went line by line through the whole manuscript and referenced every single thing to some sort of open source point.
Tom Bilyeu
Wow.
Andrew Bustamante
And then turned it into CIA. And they came back and they were like thank you for your reference, it's still classified. And that was enough to trigger. That was waking the beast. Yeah, because after that, they were done. And six months later, we had a cleared book because she threatened them with a First Amendment lawsuit.
Jihee Kim
Yeah. Our general life involves Andy persevering and dragging me along. And then at the very end, once he's kind of like, you know, teetering on the edge there, I'll be like, what? We're going to do this?
Andrew Bustamante
It's kind of like every. Every Dungeons and Dragons game you've ever played. You're dragging along the healer. For what reason? Yeah, the final battle, and then the healer pays dividends.
Jihee Kim
Yeah, exactly.
Andrew Bustamante
That is amazing.
Tom Bilyeu
All right, where can people follow along with you guys?
Andrew Bustamante
You'll find us@everydayspy.com you'll find Shadow sell on bookshelves everywhere. If you want to find it online, you can go to shadowcellbook.com and that will take you to Amazon, Goodreads, Walmart, every place where the book is being sold. You can also find us on social media at Everyday Spy, and Of course, our YouTube channel, Andrew Bustamante.
Tom Bilyeu
I love it. Thank you guys so much for being here.
Andrew Bustamante
Thanks, Tom.
Tom Bilyeu
All right, everybody, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.
Date: August 13, 2025
In this eye-opening episode, Tom Bilyeu continues his deep-dive conversation with Andrew Bustamante (former CIA covert officer) and Jihee Kim (targeting specialist and Andrew’s wife), exploring the hidden mechanisms of power, persuasion, and morality behind government operations. They share rarely-heard realities about intelligence work, debating the boundaries of ethical conduct, U.S. government myth-making, AI’s future in warfare, espionage tradecraft, and the personal toll of life undercover—including the strain on marriage and family.
On Justifying Extremes for National Security:
“All you have to do is just put one diverting comment into an argument, and you’re arguing about something altogether different." (03:42 – Andrew)
"The focus is on making sure the mythos motivates the masses." (07:12 – Andrew)
Impact of Social Media on National Narrative:
"If America cannot stop telling itself the moronic mythology of we’re like these evil slave traders, then we’re going to implode..." (09:41 – Tom)
“We forget we’re not that old... we are at a place right now where we’re kind of in our adolescence. China’s 5,000 years old plus, Russia’s 3,000 years old plus. These are countries that went through adolescence a long time ago.” (11:27 – Andrew)
"Even if you are cheating on your spouse, lying about your taxes and carrying a second phone... Let it all be known to the government... because if you become a target, there is no resource that people won’t use to destroy their target." (20:06 – Andrew)
“It’s never been even remotely feasible in our mind that Epstein was a secured US asset... Not for the US.” (46:54 – Andrew & Jihee)
“Their calculus is defense of the Jewish state... everybody else is disposable.” (47:41 – Andrew)
"The key is really just understanding human beings... their pattern of life, understanding their loved ones and their inner circle..." (25:36 – Jihee)
On relationships for agents operating under cover:
“We try to build real relationships inside the confines of our cover persona... But it does get blurry...” (35:31 – Andrew)
On the cost of living in the “moral gray:”
“When you’ve done things that violate your values... in pursuit of a larger mission... you sacrifice more and more.” (36:51 – Andrew)
The couple opens up about marriage under stress, how jealousy, trust, and boundaries are negotiated—even to the tactical level:
"So if I had to, like, flirt with a fat chick, she was not concerned. If I had to flirt with a tranny, she was not concerned. If anything, she kind of cheered me on..." (41:02 – Andrew)
Jihee on trust:
“I trust him to make the best decision in the moment that he can. And I trust him to always tell me what’s happened... It’s for the mission.” (42:16 – Jihee)
They reveal “traps” set at home for detecting dishonesty—leveraging their spy tactics in everyday life.
"As the interrogation progressed, I could even see... these gaps. Every time you see a gap in interrogation, it really is like a scoreboard..." (54:21–54:57 – Andrew)
Jihee balances informing and protecting her kids:
“I think they’re developmentally ready for me to start introducing the dangers of the world... I think we have to.” (59:18 – Jihee)
Andrew emphasizes “self-rescue” and the need to teach children to navigate a world that’s neither inherently safe nor unsafe.
Discussing truth, deception, and the “gray zone” in life:
“Our son is very black and white. He is very uncomfortable with gray areas... our daughter has it down already.” (61:22–61:49 – Jihee & Andrew)
Tom probes gender differences in manipulation and tradecraft; both guests attribute more to personality and culture than gender lines.
On how spies change as people age, re-targeting over decades:
“You have to adapt to how you approach them... 30 years from now that person might be CEO... they have different motivational levers that you can pull on.” (65:03 – Andrew)
The couple discusses the process of writing their book Shadow Cell, the catharsis it provided, and the multi-year bureaucratic battle with the CIA to get it published.
“CIA looked at our manuscript and said this entire manuscript is now classified and it will never be published... But we were so meticulous... nothing in that manuscript is going to give a foreign adversary an advantage.” (73:35–74:05 – Andrew)
Future plans include more books, creative control, and sharing their lessons beyond the intelligence community.
“The focus is on making sure the mythos motivates the masses.”—Andrew (07:12)
“The trick is to maintain the balance between being transparent and never being the target.”—Andrew (21:13)
“It’s never been even remotely feasible in our mind that Epstein was a secured US asset... Not for the U.S.”—Andrew & Jihee (46:54)
“I trust him to make the best decision in the moment that he can. And I trust him to always tell me...”—Jihee (42:16)
“There’s traps all over our house, my computer, my phone...” —Andrew (43:13)
“We don’t want them to feel like the world is a safe place. The world is just the world... your defense really starts with yourself.” —Andrew (60:15)
“Nobody believes in you as much as you believe in yourself... creative control is a very important thing.” —Andrew (71:43)
This episode is a masterclass in how geopolitics, espionage, ethics, and personal relationships all intersect behind the scenes of official narratives. Andrew and Jihee Bustamante dispel popular conspiracy theories, reveal the day-to-day tradecraft of modern spies, and share how living "in the gray" affects everything—from their marriage to their parenting styles. The episode is both sobering and inspiring, challenging listeners to reconsider their own perceptions of truth, safety, and the nature of power.
Follow Andrew & Jihee Bustamante:
Book: Shadow Cell — Available September 9th (film rights sold to Legendary Pictures!)
For raw truths about government, power, and what it means to live in "the gray," this Impact Theory episode is unmissable.