Urgent Warning: China’s Takeover & Global Power Shifts | Andrew Bustamante PT 2

Summary

Impact Theory Podcast with Tom Bilyeu

Episode Title: Urgent Warning: China’s Takeover & Global Power Shifts | Andrew Bustamante PT 2
Date: July 19, 2024

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Episode Overview

In this gripping continuation with ex-CIA officer Andrew Bustamante, Tom Bilyeu leads a grounded, nuanced discussion on the seismic geopolitical shifts facing the US, particularly as China ascends and American global influence seems to wane. Together they dissect proxy wars, espionage’s shadowy reach, economic warfare, and internal divides threatening America’s future. Expect no hyperbole—just a penetrating, often unsettling analysis of the world’s new power dynamics and what it means for ordinary people.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The State of Global Tension and Proxy Wars ([01:06]-[08:58])

• Tom’s Anxiety about Escalation: Tom expresses concern that global proxy wars could suddenly escalate to World War III—one misstep away from full-blown chaos.

  • “There are days where I wake up and I feel like, no, for real, for real. Like we are a couple errant missiles from this escalating and World War III, like, kicks off in earnest.” — Tom Bilyeu [01:08]

• Catastrophizing vs. Probability: Bustamante reassures by defining “catastrophizing”—focusing only on worst-case paths and ignoring that “deterrence” and different cultural approaches to conflict make direct interstate war less likely.

  • “The highest probability is that no country will attack the sovereignty of the United States... That does not mean that Americans are safe outside of American borders.” — Analyst [03:24]

• Economic and Proxy Wars Preferred: “Proxy wars are a very economically viable way to execute wars. Economic wars are a very economically viable way to execute wars.” — Analyst [04:40]

  • He points out that modern wars are increasingly economic, from Russia’s sanctions to China’s currency moves.

• Historical Shift: Direct invasions between nation-states are now rare—Putin’s actions in Ukraine are surprising in this context.

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2. China’s Rise and the Cost of US Global Policing ([08:58]-[11:12])

• Comparing Infrastructure: Tom cites Musk’s view that Chinese architecture now surpasses America’s, and asks how the US might look had it invested at home instead of funding wars abroad.

• Surveillance as a Growth Model: The analyst warns that much of China’s infrastructure leap is intertwined with state surveillance. If America had diverted defense money domestically, it may have built a parallel security apparatus.

  • “I am saying it would look very different... For all we know, that could have been one of the options that we pursued—a large, stale statewide security system... very similar to what you see actually in UAE and Saudi Arabia.” — Analyst [09:56]

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3. Civilization Pyramid: Freedom vs. Security ([11:19]-[16:27])

• Societal Structure and Trade-offs: Bustamante introduces the “civilization pyramid,” tracing how societies move from radical individualism, to tribes, to complex states, trading freedoms for security and efficiency as they go.

  • “The theme with all of it is that as you climb the pyramid, you are giving up freedoms in exchange for efficiencies. The beautiful thing about the United States is that… we slow down our political processes because we have two parties that are always fighting and vying, right?” — Analyst [12:24]

• Modern America’s Unique Place: The US allows citizens more freedom to “move up and down the pyramid”—be off-grid or hyper-socialist—than most places, but growing internal friction signals a critical choice ahead.

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4. Espionage and Influence Operations: The Hidden War ([16:27]-[26:07])

• Stuxnet and the Depth of Modern Espionage: The infamous Stuxnet virus and cyber-warfare show how deeply embedded digital conflicts are.

  • “Depending on whose story you read right now, essentially every digital device that’s been connected to the Internet at any point since, like, 2007 is infected with Stuxnet.” — Andrew Bustamante [18:10]

• Foreign Interference Is Not New: The Russia 2016 narrative is the tip of the iceberg—all major nations have always tried to influence US elections. To think 2016 was unique is naïve.

  • “If you see a roach in your apartment, that’s not the only roach. The walls are disgusting with roaches. Right? We saw it in 2016. That means it’s been there for a long, long time.” — Andrew Bustamante [20:41]

• No Permanent Friends, Only Interests: Allies spy on each other; alliances are always shifting.

  • “There are no permanent friends or enemies, just permanent interests.” — Andrew Bustamante [22:08]

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5. China’s Ascent and BRICS Challenge Dollar Hegemony ([24:22]-[26:37])

• BRICS Nations & De-Dollarization: Tom notes BRICS nations’ efforts to move away from the US dollar—a potent attack on US global leverage.

• Social Media & Panic: The current moment feels unnerving because visibility is unprecedented, but the underlying power transition is very real: “It’s that place where you slide the pizza off the pizza pan and onto the cutting board. We’ve been the pizza pan for a long time, and now it’s sliding to someone else.”—Andrew Bustamante [26:37]

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6. Internal Division, Unity, and Existential Threats ([27:09]-[33:55])

• The Real Strategy Against America: America’s enemies now use influence campaigns to deepen internal divisions instead of existential military threats.

  • “Countries have learned that Americans are slow to react, but when they react, they react in full force... There’s no way a savvy, intelligent superpower competitor... is going to trigger an existential threat to the United States.” — Andrew Bustamante [29:00]

• Distraction via Internal Conflict: “We’re going to just waste our time bickering in our little room and we’re not going to wake up to what’s happening on the entire building. That’s the strategy of the future.” — Andrew Bustamante [30:25]

• Missed Opportunity Post-9/11: While the US spent 20 years fighting terror, China and Russia invested and gained strategic ground.

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7. 2024 Election Scenarios – What’s at Stake? ([33:55]-[51:39])

• No Good Options: Bustamante asserts that the likely 2024 runoff (Trump vs. Biden) offers only “two bad options.” [47:54]

  • “Yes, I would agree with that statement completely. Regardless of which two, we’re picking between two bad options, and that’s just where we are right now, unfortunately.” — Analyst [47:53]

• Is Trump an Existential Threat? Tom shares the liberal consensus’ fear of Trump as existential, but Bustamante dismantles this, distinguishing between “perilous threats” and truly existential ones (like complete societal annihilation).

  • “Catastrophizing has become so common that now to get people emotional, to get people to move on their beliefs, you have to ramp everything up... When you say the most extreme thing long enough... you start to believe you’re stupid... you start to believe it’s an existential threat.” — Analyst [43:27]

• Having a Personal Plan: Bustamante stresses the importance of private contingency planning. For his family, that means being ready to leave the country if the outcome spells significant decline.

  • “If Donald Trump becomes the president and our country takes a turn for the worse, we’re leaving the United States. We already have the plan. If Joseph Biden wins… same thing.” — Analyst [46:11]

• Path Dependence: Even if Trump or Biden wins, the US won’t "cease to exist"—systems are resilient unless there’s a true existential threat.

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8. Alternative Leaders and Hope for American Recovery ([48:09]-[51:39])

• Nikki Haley as a Glimmer of Hope: The analyst suggests Nikki Haley as an example of the kind of centrist, pragmatic, female leadership that could begin healing division and restore optimism (though her chances are slim).

  • “I think of all the things that the country could really benefit from right now, it’s a female level headed centrist... I really like the idea of our country kind of coming out of this eight year disaster by showing that one of the things that makes us so powerful is our diversity.” — Analyst [48:18]

• Vivek Ramaswamy's Flaws: Despite early promise, Ramaswamy is criticized for making rookie “neophyte” errors and lacking necessary gravitas.

  • “So many things there that... anybody could rally behind and love. But... he’s not been consistent in terms of the positive impressions.” — Analyst [49:59]

• The Bureaucratic Advantage: America’s slow, consensus-based system is a feature, not a bug, offering stability that authoritarian states lack—if only Americans embrace it and re-engage meaningfully with civic life.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On naive optimism about America’s freedom:
  “Right now people seem to be way more interested in safety than they do freedom… It’s flipped so hard from what it was like when I was a kid.” — Tom Bilyeu [10:28]

• On how espionage really works:
  “Why do we think the presidents we've elected, even in just yours and my timeline… came to power of their own independent, uninfluenced… It's improbable that these people came to power and there wasn’t also some country engaging in covert influence…” — Andrew Bustamante [20:32]

• On dealing with Trump or Biden in 2024:
  “We’re picking between two bad options… Unfortunately. I think there are good options on the table… [but] that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.” — Analyst [47:54]

• On the civilization pyramid:
  “As you climb the pyramid, you are giving up freedoms in exchange for efficiencies. The beautiful thing about the United States is that we slow down our political processes because we have two parties that are always fighting and vying…” — Analyst [12:24]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:08] Proxy war anxiety & the risk (Tom Bilyeu)
• [02:28] Catastrophizing vs. likely outcomes (Analyst)
• [04:15] Economic wars explained (Analyst)
• [09:55] Would US mimic China’s surveillance? (Analyst)
• [11:24] Civilization pyramid & trade-offs (Analyst)
• [16:27] Stuxnet & digital espionage (Bustamante)
• [20:41] Election interference: Not a new game (Bustamante)
• [22:08] “No permanent friends, only permanent interests” (Bustamante)
• [26:37] America as the global “pizza pan”—the world is shifting (Bustamante)
• [29:00] Influence campaigns vs. existential threats (Bustamante)
• [33:55] Election 2024: How to prepare mentally (Analyst)
• [43:27] “Catastrophizing”/Trump as ‘existential threat’ critique (Analyst)
• [46:11] Private contingency plan if things deteriorate (Analyst)
• [48:18] Nikki Haley as a hopeful option (Analyst)
• [49:59] Vivek Ramaswamy’s missed opportunity (Analyst)

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Tone and Language

The conversation is urgent, intellectually rigorous but accessible. Tom is earnest and inquisitive, often serving as a proxy for general anxieties, while Bustamante is direct, even blunt, but non-alarmist—consistently returning to systemic realities and probabilities, not fear-mongering.

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Summary Takeaway

This episode gives a sobering but clarifying look at the changing world order and the internal vulnerabilities that threaten America's future as much as any foreign adversary. Instead of simple villains and heroes, listeners are instructed to think probabilistically, look past headlines, plan for realistic scenarios, and remember that real national security hinges on unity, resilience, and civic participation—not on catastrophizing or trusting in any single savior.

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Recommended for:
Anyone concerned about geopolitics, US-China rivalry, the future of democracy, or simply wanting a more mature, insider’s perspective on the next era of global power.

Transcript

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[Tom Bilyeu]

Welcome back to Impact Theory for Part two with Andrew Bustamante. Today we cover China's rise, the future of espionage, and the significant challenges that lie ahead for US Foreign policy in an era of America's declining mining global influence. This is a conversation you will not want to miss.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Proxy wars.

[Tom Bilyeu]

How serious is this? There is. There are days where I wake up and I feel like, no, for real, for real. Like we are a couple errant missiles from this escalating and World War iii, like, kicks off in earnest. And the way that I see that playing out is if, if Iran comes out of the shadows and says, you've gone too far, like, we have to step in and do something. And then America has to step in to protect Israel to make good on their promises. And then China starts watching that and goes, ah, the US has drained its surpluses in Ukraine and now in Israel. Now's the time for us to move on Taiwan. They move on Taiwan, and now all hell has broken loose and you legitimately have a world war. And this is one where, man, I'm a layperson that can draw a pretty believable path to how we get there. And I can only imagine somebody that actually is, forget what you called it, that read in or whatever. Like, they're, they're getting like the intelligent briefs. Be like, yeah, that's, that's one of the 17 ways that this could escalate and really pop off. Am I falling into conspiracy or are we really at a tenuous moment?

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

We are really at a tenuous moment. That is, that is a. Yes, hard yes, we are at a tenuous moment. However, what I would say is that what you're falling into is not conspiracy. It's something we called catastrophizing. You're, you're paving the road catastrophic step by catastrophic Step, meaning that everybody turns to the most destructive of all solutions before taking a previous step. Right? So, for example, for someone, for another country to attack the sovereign, for another state actor to attack the sovereignty of the United States is something nobody wants to do. The deterrence that the United States has through their military, through their economic power, through their reach, that, that is in that what we call a deterrent is so powerful, it prevents people from taking that catastrophic step. The other thing you have to account for is that not every culture approaches conflict the way that America approaches conflict. We are a warring culture. So we're like, blow the out of them. We're going to bomb, we're going to kill, we're going to shoot, we're going to get boots on the ground, we need tanks, we need rifles, we need everything, right? Sun Tzu does not operate that way, that the entire Chinese politburo, the whole Chinese pla, doesn't operate that way. They're not a boots on the ground, kick them in, whatever else they are, a long, slow death by a thousand cuts. We are a hacksaw chainsaw, shoot them up, cut them up country, right? So you've also got Iran in there, you've got Russia in there, you've got Israel in there, you've got Saudi Arabia in there, you've got France, Germany, the uk, all these other big players, they're all in there with their own take on how conflict should escalate and how conflict should be carried out. So when you catastrophize, you take the presumptive path that everybody leaps to the most catastrophic decision, whereas you have to bake into that some level of probability. The highest probability is that no country will attack the sovereignty of the United States. Highest probability, right. Nobody will attack the sovereignty of the United States. So you and me are safe inside American borders. That does not mean that Americans are safe outside of American borders. But then you start getting into the realm of extremism and targeted violence against Americans because of ideological or other purposes, that becomes proxy, right? So now when Americans are attacked in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, simply because they're American and they're attacked by Congolese who are funded by, you name the, the country you name, Russia, South, North Korea, like, whatever, Iran, now that becomes murky. Murky is exactly what the world wants when it comes to conflict with the United States. Because if it's murky, the United States has a hard time justifying any kind of response that goes state to state because it's. There's no smoking gun, right? It's becomes just difficult enough. There's plausible deniability and that's, that's exactly what you're seeing play out here. So again, going back to the whole idea, you, when you reference World War III happening, when most people reference World War III happening, what they're actually talking about is a nuclear war similar to how World War II ended. Wars evolve like people evolve. And if anything, if you've seen the evolution of technology, you can imagine how much more advanced World War III will be than World War II. All wars from Civil to World War II were all fought. Vietnam and beyond were all fought over economics. So if there's a more economically viable way to execute warfare, that is how people will execute warfare. Proxy wars are a very economically viable way to execute wars. Economic wars are a very economically viable way to execute wars. When the United States cut off Russian bank accounts as part of their sanctions against Russia and they cut off access to Russian funds that were denominated in euros and dollars, that was an economic warfare move. When China floods the market with US Dollars and buys UN or renminbi off the market to change their valuation, that is an act of economic warfare. That is conflict that is so much more cheaper and viable and creates less, less stress and public response than actually sending your citizens to die at the end of, at the end of a bullet or a rocket launch. Right? So we have to accept that the probability is much higher that we will continue to see increasing proxy conflict, increasing economic conflict and solutions other than what we call interstate conflicts or conflict between two sovereign nation states. It's very surprising what Russia did in Ukraine. Very surprising because intra interstate war like that has almost been like eradicated. The, the last time that a country invaded another sovereign country was when the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2003. Right. There's 20 something years where no country had invaded another country. Lots of civil war, but no interstate. So lots of intra state war, civil war, but no inter state war. So it was a huge turn away from popular military doctrine. But you know, Putin was playing certain odds and, and I think what we're all discovering now is what he really cares about is Eastern Ukraine, where, you know, the predominance of their energy flow goes through and, and that's what he's got right now. So I would say that if you take the catastrophizing off the table and you look at probabilities, we will continue to see more proxy wars and more third world countries where the United States has to fund one side and China or Russia or or Iran have to fund the opposite side. And they'll keep vying for influence because the economically speaking, the country with the most markets to expand into will be the future economic powerhouse of the world. And economic power is what becomes the investment for military power. And that's why the United States is dominant. We've had the economic power to invest in a modern large military. Only country who's competing with us is China. And the only reason they even have a chance to compete with us is because for 20 years we were heads down focusing on the global war on terror. China didn't participate in the global war on terrorists. They spent 20 years with their heads up stealing secrets and building infrastructure. So that when we finally looked up, we realized, oh shit, like they're growing fast and we got to change something.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Elon Musk says over the last, I think, 20 years that the architecture in China has become far more impressive than what's happening in the U.S. what do you think the U.S. would look like had we taken all that foreign aid that we've been sending to wars, and not just foreign aid, but to fight the wars, but also to proxy war? Would it look dramatically different?

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

Yeah, I think the United States would look very, very different. I think we would. See, I'm not saying that I think it would look necessarily better, but I am saying it would look very different. Keep in mind that a lot of the investment that went into Chinese infrastructure, excuse me, was investment into state surveillance systems, tracking populations, tracking state IDs, making sure people stayed in their lane and were only given the opportunities that the state just thought they deserved. I don't think that that's the direction we as Americans would want to go.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I hope not.

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

But if we were to have taken the hundreds of billions that we spent in our wars abroad and put them into national security and other devices here in the US for all we know, that could have been. One of the options that we pursued was a large, stale statewide security system that on the piggyback of that is a state surveillance system very similar to what you see actually in UAE and Saudi Arabia.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's really interesting when you first said that it would look different, but you're

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

not sure it would look better.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I was like, where is he going with this? That is very interesting. And yes, right now people seem to be way more interested in safety than they do freedom. Which it's funny because as a kid, I mean, we have a state, New Hampshire, if I'm not mistaken. Live free or die is the state motto. And people now are like, what do you mean? Like, of course safety is more important than freedom. Like, it's. It's flipped so hard from what it was like when I was a kid. When I was a kid, man, it was like it was all about that, like, give me freedom or give me death. Like, I remember, I think that's the line that. Oh, no, in Braveheart when he said, you can take my life, but you can't take our freedom or something like that, man. It's a different vibe.

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

Now, did I. And correct. Tell me if I've. If I'm repeating myself, but did I walk you through the civilization pyramid the last time I was here?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Oh, I've heard you in so many different places, I can't tell you if it was here or not, but please give us a refresher.

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

So I feel like what's happening is we're seeing the civilization pyramid actually play out.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And.

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

And the Civilization pyramid is a pyramid that talks about exactly what you're discussing, what you're describing. The exchange of freedom and security. The bottom of the pyramid is all of our individualism. Right? You hunt and gather. For you, I hunt and gather for me. You live in your cave. I live in my cave. And I don't. I don't have any say in what you do. You don't have any say in what I do. And if we need to fight, then let's fight to the death. Individualism at the bottom end of that pyramid, where we all started, where some countries still very much are right, moving up the pyramid. The next tier is tribalism, which is like, hey, our caves are next to each other. You're really good at hunting and gathering. At hunting, I'm really good at gathering. Let's team up. And now we'll capture efficiencies because if you're ever sick, I can make sure I collect enough food for both of us. And if I'm ever sick, you can make sure there's enough food for both of us. So now as a tribe, we're safer. And to hell with the other tribes. If they come across the river, if they come, if they start hunting our buffalo, we'll kill them. So it's a step above individualism. It gives us some efficiency because we have scalability. It gives us some security because we have each other and we're united under the banner of a tribe. The next and final peer level of the pyramid is the state. And as you move up from individualism to the state, you start to give up your independent freedoms. But in exchange, the state is able to push down scalable efficiencies and solutions. So now there's a standing military that keeps you safe. Now there's. There's public utilities that bring you water. Now there's hospitals that bring you medicine. Now there's insurance, now there's businesses, now there's bakeries, now there's all this stuff that the state helps to facilitate so that you don't have to depend on your tribe. In fact, if you want to live in California or in Austin, Texas, or in Florida or in New York, you can pick your tribe, you can pick where you want to go, because you're all part of the state. If you take the state off the top of the pyramid and you move the rest of the pyramid aside, you have another pyramid. And that's different levels of the state, right? So at the bottom tier of the state, you basically have your, your organized state that's very, the government's very small and it gives people maximum freedom. And, you know, it's your, it's your political parties that don't want to interfere or interfere with anybody else's political party. And then as you move up, you have what we consider to be like conservative state management, which is, you know, we have enough government but not too much government. It creates guidelines, but not heavily regulate, not heavily regulated. We focus on maximizing efficiency. We minimize policing our people. Right. And then you have the highest level of the state, which is very much your kind of socialist or authoritarian state where everything is regulated, everything is heavily managed, everything is heavily policed. So when you put this smaller pyramid back on top of the original pyramid, you have six levels of civilization, basically, right? The theme with all of it is that as you climb the pyramid, you are giving up freedoms in exchange for efficiencies. The beautiful thing about the United States is that we are a country where we slow down our political processes because we have two parties that are always fighting and vying, right? So that forces us to slow down, which usually results in a more popular, more well thought out solution, even though we haven't quite seen it play out that way recently. But we slow down the velocity so we make better, stronger decisions that are more time, time tested. But we also give individuals the right to move up and down the pyramid as they choose. So if you want to be a prepper in Kentucky that lives off the grid, sure, you go right down the pyramid and there you go. You can, if you want to be a hyper, you know, socialists, you know, publicly declared communist that lives in whatever New York you can and Both people are protected by the laws of the land, but they live at different parts of the pyramid. So, to your point, I feel like we are absolutely at this precipice in world events where we have to kind of decide what we want to do as individuals. But the larger question is, as individuals, we all also have a say in what we do as a nation, and that is going to be the larger impact on what we leave behind. If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more, and all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.

[Guest / Interviewer]

Do you know what stuxnet is?

[Andrew Bustamante]

Yeah.

[Guest / Interviewer]

Okay, so give people a quick primer. In the context of. That was the moment that I realized,

[Tom Bilyeu]

oh, there's a whole world happening that

[Guest / Interviewer]

I just didn't realize was real. I thought it was only in movies, but like. Like this whole espionage game is deep.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Is deep.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah.

[Andrew Bustamante]

And I would love to go more into that, too. So, stuxnet, quick primer. Stuxnet was a piece of code that was developed specifically to interact with what we knew at the time to be the software system running Iranian uranium enrichment facilities. Yeah, there was a very specific tool. It was reactor. No. Oh, it's going to come back to me here. What is it? When something.

[Guest / Interviewer]

The centrifuge.

[Andrew Bustamante]

The centrifuge word. That's the word.

[Guest / Interviewer]

Whatever game we're playing.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So stuxnet was a piece of code that was designed specifically to interact with the centrifuge that was used to enrich uranium and Iranian facilities. That's what it was designed to do. It was deployed, it was successful, and then the Iranian facility connected those centrifuges with the larger Internet. And when that happened, stuxnet carried out, continued to propagate out of the Iranian facility and into the entire digital universe. So, depending on whose story you read right now, essentially every digital device that's been connected to the Internet at any point since, like, 2007 is infected with Stuxnet.

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

That's crazy.

[Andrew Bustamante]

But Stuxnet was so well designed that it only has a negative effect on the centrifuge operating system that was used by the Iranian nuclear facility at the time.

[Guest / Interviewer]

So bananas.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, so how deep does a rabbit

[Guest / Interviewer]

hole Go like there's like a whole battle being fought.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Ray Dalio talks about the five types of war.

[Guest / Interviewer]

One of them is technological.

[Tom Bilyeu]

How deep is that war?

[Andrew Bustamante]

The espionage war or the technological war?

[Guest / Interviewer]

The espionage war.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So let's start with the espionage war, because this is a point that I love making that not Everybody understands. Right. 2016, the election where Trump became president. It became mainstream news that the Russians were suspected to be interfering with the election. And the world went crazy.

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

Right?

[Andrew Bustamante]

The American people went bananas. FBI, Secret Service, Facebook had to change their algorithms. Twitter was on the chopping block for. For contributing to Russian covert influence operations. Right. You remember?

[Guest / Interviewer]

Oh, yes.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Why the hell do we think 2016 was the first time that happened? Why would we think that? Because we caught them in 2016. I mean, if we caught them in 2016, how many elections did they influence successfully before that?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Where?

[Andrew Bustamante]

We never caught them. And that's just one country. What about China? What about France? What about Israel? What about Germany? What about Brazil? What about India? What about, I mean, there's as many countries out there, there's 160, what, 64, I think, countries right now. Every one of them has something to gain by influencing the outcome of the American election. Why would we think that nothing ever happened prior to 2016? Why would we think that the presidents we've elected, even in just yours and my timeline. Why do we think Bush was chosen by the American people? Why do we think Obama was chosen by the American people? Why do we think these people came to power of their own? Independent, uninfluenced, no foreign activity, hard work. It's probability wise. It's extremely unprobable. Like it's improbable that these people came to power and there wasn't also some country engaging in covert influence that was contributing to the outcome of the election?

[Guest / Interviewer]

Jesus.

[Andrew Bustamante]

That's how deep it goes. It's silly for us to think that just because we see it, that means that it started then. It's like seeing a roach in your apartment, right? If you see a roach in your apartment, that's not the only roach. The walls are disgusting with roaches. Right? We saw it in 2016. That means it's been there for a long, long time. Why do we think George Washington became the first President of the United States? Because he earned it and the American people voted for him. France was the reason we won the American Revolution. You don't think that had something to do with. With. You don't think France had a say in who became the leader of the New United States. Now, I'm not saying that all of our presidents have been given to us by foreign powers. That's not what I'm saying. But what I am.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's a part of the equation.

[Andrew Bustamante]

It's a part of the equation, and you can't ignore that part of the equation. Right. So now we have. Our entire political system is constantly embroiled in some sort of battle with espionage. And that's just our political system, our dod. I don't know how much you keep up with espionage news. Russia has penetrated the army's medical corps. Two army officers were arrested just three months ago.

[Guest / Interviewer]

Whoa.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Recruited spies. Recruited by the Russians. Yeah. We've had nuclear naval engineers recruited by the Chinese, who have also been arrested in the last three to four months.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I heard about that one.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Like, we are heavily penetrated, heavily targeted. Heavily penetrated by all the services in the world. And there's a famous quote out there in the world of foreign policy that says there are no permanent friends or enemies, just permanent interests.

[Guest / Interviewer]

Whoa. That's good.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So why do we think anybody is a friend? Why do we think an ally is a friend? If you recall, there was a major issue, I think it was 2000, 10, maybe 2011, where the German Chancellor was notified that the American NSA was spying on the Germans. We have had people go to jail from our Navy who were recruited and working as spies for the Israelis. What, like this history tells you the story. It's just that nobody really spends time researching espionage history. So we have to understand how laughably predictable are human beings. We are so laughably predictable that we, you and I, can predict that people aren't even aware that arrests are happening every few months of spies in the United States, in the military, in politics.

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

Right.

[Andrew Bustamante]

In the Department of State, in the Department of Commerce, in the White House. Like, it's not surprising unless you let yourself be surprised, which, again, it's a predictable, human thing to just. If we don't know about it, then it must not exist. And then it's also predictably human to assume that a friend is a friend. There are no permanent friends.

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

Right.

[Andrew Bustamante]

That's. There are people from my life 13 to 25 that are not my friend anymore because our interests diverged. And that's normal and that's natural. And it's also normal and natural to feel pain when it comes when you outgrow somebody or when you have to leave somebody behind because your interests have diverged. And the saddest thing to me is the people who. When they feel that pain, when they feel that dissonance of leaving behind something from the past. They instead choose to give up on the ambition and double down on the anchor.

[Guest / Interviewer]

Yeah, getting trapped by these are my friends. I don't want to leave them behind. That's crazy. I don't want to get off this topic, though. This is. Never in a million years did I think that this kind of thing would interest me. But also, never in a million years did I think that we'd be living through a transitional moment where the US Is a declining superpower against a rising superpower in China, that as of the recording of this, the BRICS nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, are making moves to create their own currency to stop trading in the US Dollar. So the dollar hegemony is. It's been under attack for a very, very, very long time. So I don't want to make this a headline that people panic about, but it certainly does feel like there's. There's a lot happening right now that is super unnerving. And if it's got my attention, which this is really something that I'm slow to react to, but if it's got my attention, I think that it's reaching a certain level now. It could just be social media makes things like this visible to even me. But everybody I talk to, Ray Dalio, who I pay very, very close attention to, for people that don't know him, he runs. Ran. He just recently sort of retired the largest hedge fund in the world. So nobody's made more money off of being right about what's happening in geopolitics than this guy. And he's. He's like, yeah, we're at the four types. There's five types of war that I mentioned earlier. We're in four of them with China already. The only one we're not in is an actual hot war where people are shooting guns. What's your take on the global stability right now?

[Andrew Bustamante]

So, unfortunately, I would say that the world, the globe is fairly stable. The question is, what's the foundation of that stability? The foundation for the stability of the world for a long time has been the United States. We are seeing that transition, just like you said. It's that place where you slide the pizza off the pizza pan and onto the cutting board.

[Commercial Narrator]

Who.

[Andrew Bustamante]

We've been the pizza pan for a long time, and now it's sliding to someone else. The pizza's still very stable, but what's the platform? What's the foundation? I am always optimistic that the United States will recover. It will change its ways, will Find a way to reunify the incredible. By the incredible polarity that we're in right now and get focused on the one true goal, American primacy.

[Guest / Interviewer]

Do you think that's possible in a world where. I know, you know, just saying American primacy, it, like, puts you at risk of being canceled. Like, people just.

[Tom Bilyeu]

There.

[Guest / Interviewer]

There is a contingent. I won't even say how big it is, but they're fucking loud. There is a contingent of people, and it could be large. That just. That's offensive.

[Andrew Bustamante]

I understand it. I do. I understand it. And that's. That's okay. I. I hope that doesn't happen on your show. Right.

[Guest / Interviewer]

You'll get some of it to be sure.

[Andrew Bustamante]

No, I'm not worried about it happening to me. I just hope nobody cancels your show. But. But the truth is, American survival is not being threatened. We don't have an existential threat to the United States. Existential threats are the threats that make people move. We talk about existential threats. More likely other countries talk about existential threats and an exit. What is an existential threat? A true existential threat is a threat that challenges your very existence. The existence of the United States is. Is contingent upon the existence of the United States government, not Americans. Like, we sometimes think that Americans make the United States. The United States is a. Is a representative republic government that has never existed before, that now exists. So if that government falls or if that government cracks or breaks, all the people will still be here. Right. But America will be gone. So the existential threat to the United States is the one that would trigger Americans to react. Now, we've come close to those moments. 911 is one of those times when all American.

[Guest / Interviewer]

It felt awesome. For a hot minute. It felt so good. The unity, like, yeah, yeah.

[Andrew Bustamante]

All of a sudden, all of our differences melted away.

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

Right?

[Andrew Bustamante]

The same thing happened to Pearl Harbor. All of our differences melted away because we had a common enemy and we could individually see the existential threat posed to our country and our livelihood. Since 9 11, we have not had that kind of a threat. Countries around us have woken up to the fact, just like Emperor Hirohito in World War II said, I fear we have woke a sleeping dragon. Our enemies have learned that Americans are slow to react, but when they react, they react in full force. There's no way a savvy, intelligent superpower competitor, gpc Global Power competitor, is going to trigger an existential threat to the United States. Because they know that as long as they basically let us segment ourselves separately, as long as we insulate ourselves separately. We're going to eat ourselves to death with our own stupid little bitter squabbles about American primacy, right? Or about woke culture or about representation or about who knows what. We're going to just waste our time bickering in our little room and we're not going to wake up to what's happening in the entire building. That's the strategy of the future, is

[Guest / Interviewer]

to keep us divided.

[Andrew Bustamante]

It's not to keep. It's an influence campaign is always cheaper, easier, and has a higher probability of success than a military campaign. So an influence campaign is basically like, hey, don't forget that you have race issues. Hey, don't forget that there's a socioeconomic divide. Hey, don't forget that the south tried to secede from the Union. One just. They're just picking, they're just poking and throwing salt on a wound and then we are fighting over it, right? And we fill our days worrying about this garbage. Blind to what's happening on the larger scale. Blind to the fact that the fantastic example is the global war on terrorism. The United States led the global war on terrorism following 9 11, right? And it felt good for a hot minute. Like you said, we were all on the same page and we were all in this fight. Then that fight lasted 10 years and then that fight lasted 20 years also.

[Guest / Interviewer]

It became so dodgy.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Like what we were like if we

[Guest / Interviewer]

had just been relentless about Osama bin Laden, like when I heard how we caught him in like the size of a shadow. I don't know if that's true, but like, it sounded dope. And I was just like, dude, we're ninjas. This is amazing. But that was after like a lot of. And look, I'm, I'm not super engaged in this stuff, so I'm definitely popping off ignorantly, but it did not feel good as a casual observer where we ended up going and how we ended up fighting and all that. And it just seemed like, wait, what

[Andrew Bustamante]

are we doing right?

[Guest / Interviewer]

So that felt like a squandered opportunity.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Well, during those 20 years, while we were mastering the art of hunting terrorism, hunting terrorists in mountains in Pakistan and Afghanistan, what were our global power competitors doing? Was Russia engaged in the global war on terror? Was China involved in the global war on terrorists? So all the hundreds of billions of dollars that we spent in that war, we spent in a war that was a giant distraction for us that gave our closest near peer competitors 20 years to invest their money and grow to become a larger threat than we were even aware they were becoming. Right. Then China, all of a sudden, China has multiple aircraft carriers and they're launching aircraft from aircraft carriers and they can project power into the South Asian seas. That's insane, right? All of a sudden, like the Russian Federation is in close relationships with the Chinese and the Syrians and the North Koreans and the Iranians. How do we just wake up to this? And that's what happens. It happens because we are still an adolescent country. So we get very myopic and we become very focused on the thing that we're playing with right now. And we lose the larger sight, the larger vision. The. The world has watched us do this for too long and they don't make the same mistake twice. Especially not authoritarian countries, because authoritarian countries have the benefit of authoritarian rulers that sit in an office or sit in a place in a chair for 15, 20, 30 years. Right. They don't deal with the kind of tumult and transition that we have in the United States. I believe our constant change of leadership is part of what makes us strong. But we haven't yet learned how to have a change in leadership without a change in focus. That's what we haven't quite learned to do yet. So we're giving our authoritarian enemies an opportunity to have focus for a long period of time against us while we don't have that against them.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I am a little worried about what's going to happen in 2024. I won't lie. If it ends up being a Trump Biden runoff, what do you think happens, especially if Trump wins?

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

I think that if you're not preparing for that eventuality, it would be wise to prepare for that eventuality. Highest. The highest two probabilities are that either Trump wins the presidency or Biden wins the presidency. So just speaking practically, again, mentally, as a business owner, as a father, as a husband, I'm preparing for one of these two things. There's a 90% chance that one of these two things is going to happen. So let me be ready for that and then the last 10% I'll let surprise me. Right? But I mean, who knows? It's. It's difficult. It's also important to understand that we all focus on the president. The president. What powers the president has are granted to them by the legislative branch. We've gone through about a 30 year period where our legislative branch has been giving more power to the executive branch, specifically because the legislative branch is trying to cover their own ass. They want to be lifetime legislators. They don't want to be responsible for the people and they don't want to be accountable to the people. So instead they want to be able to say, you voted me into office. And the President doesn't let me do my job because I gave him all of my authority. So part of what we need to do is see the legislative branch take back the power from the President, which they can do with a vote. The president doesn't need to give them power back, they can take power back, but they do need to give the President power. He can't take power from the legislative branch. So in both cases, whether it's Biden or whether it's Trump, the real impact there is just how the world sees the United States and then the fact that both presidents, Presidents have the right to build their cabinet, however they choose to build their cabinet. So they both are going to bring in their cronies, they're both going to bring in their yes people. They're both going to bring in people who are, who are biased towards their own political futures. They're not. Nobody really at the top is thinking about what's in the best interest of the American people because we've created this self licking ice cream cone where, where politics is about rewarding the politician with politics instead of. There's, there's no incentive to serve the American people, especially not when the American people are split like we're split right now. So it's, it's tough, man. It's tough. And I, I will say that what my wife and I keep an eye on is less, it's less about whether or not Donald Trump becomes president, and it's more about how will individuals exercise their legal powers, how will individuals exercise their civic responsibilities when the outcome is announced?

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's a fancy way of saying something. Yeah.

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

Will they, will they revolt?

[Tom Bilyeu]

There we go.

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

Or will they go to the table and vote every two years on the lowest levels of government so that you can actually affect a change in the government. It's, it's. I don't. I, it breaks my heart when I see Americans bitch, complain and picket, let alone when I see them shoot and raid and invade. Right. All of that stuff is something that we should be passed. What we should be doing now is exercising our civic rights, our civic duties, our civic powers, because we have the power to affect everything up the chain if we just exercise it. If we're willing to let things slow down and if we're willing to cut out some of the volume and actually do things the way that has always made America great. We've always been stronger because we Have a bureaucratic process that allows us to slow things down, allows us all the time and the space to learn and ingest and accept and internalize what we believe to be true. When we move at lightning speed, we can be duped, we can be confused, we can be tricked. Let ourselves slow down. Embrace the fact that we slow down. If we didn't slow down, we'd be fucking China. An authoritarian rule where literally things change at the drop of one person's public announcement. We don't want that. We don't want that. We want something different.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, I mean, I'm 100% on board with that. So as you look at this with your analyst eyes, what do you think will be the reaction to, let's say, a Trump getting elected? Because my concern is when watching the Sam Harris thing happen on the Internet, I don't know how closely you paid attention to that, but basically the entire Internet turned on what I think is one of the smartest, most thoughtful people. I think he's wrong. But to your point about you want to triangulate anyway, you're not just going to listen to one person. Sam is right about so many things, but he, I, I believe, I understand Sam maybe better than a lot of people in that the thing that Sam believes is that Donald Trump is an existential threat. And when someone becomes an existential threat, meaning it could wipe out humanity. I want to be very clear about what an existential threat is. That it's a whole new set of rules, baby, and you do whatever you have to do. And that if Sam, who is incredibly smart and extremely thoughtful and I think a hyper moral person, but I also think he's wrong about this. So my thing is, okay, I think the real problem we have is we don't agree on what constitutes an existential threat. I actually don't know that we disagree about what to do in the face of a true existential threat. But like, when I look at Trump getting elected, I'm like, please, Jesus, no. But at the same time, I don't see it as an existential threat.

[Andrew Bustamante]

So.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And I look at like, we had four years with them. It was the world didn't end. Everybody, like, but at the same time, other people look at and like, bro, we, we dodged a nuclear weapon. Like, what are you talking? Like it could be the end of humanity if he gets liked again. That freaks me out. The fact that people think, hey, him getting elected could end the world. Now if this were like fringe crazies, I'd be like, whatever, yeah, this is Coming from some of the smartest people I know that are, they are very good at thinking through problems. So of course part of me goes, is he an existential threat? Like, I don't think I'm the arbiter, right? So I'm Captain Distrust Yourself. But as so the only thing I'm saying is when I analyze the situation, there are enough people that believe that he is an actual existential threat. That if he gets elected, I think you have a problem. I don't think, Look, I'm a big believer that America's freakishly resilient. I don't think it collapses. But do I think that at a minimum we take another step towards the Civil War? Yes, I really do.

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

That.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That one really freaks me out. Like I, I can buy into the proxy wars that World War three is going to be fought very surreptitiously. There won't be as much hot to the war. Okay, don't love it. Still very high stakes, still makes me very tense. But that's a lot better than say a World War II. But dude, in the summer of 2020, I sat on my balcony and watched LA burn and that wasn't even around existential threats, right? So, yeah, I don't know and I don't know what's worse. And again, I'll ask you with your, your CIA analyst hat on, what's worse, Trump getting elected or Trump not getting elected?

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

So I'll start by saying that I disagree with all the smart people that you're referencing right now. And I would gladly who think he's an existential threat. Yes, I would gladly sit in front of anybody who, who believes that Trump is an existential threat and have a healthy debate on any topic they want to talk about. Because I have actually seen existential threats and Trump is not that.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Can you paint an existential threat picture?

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

An existential threat is imminent. It means that it is the last step before the holistic destruction, the existence destroying from existence the, the target that it is threatening. Right? So let's consider a battleship, right? A hypersonic cruise missile will destroy a battleship. Right. It is not an existential threat to the battleship, even though it will destroy the battleship. It is not an existential threat to the battleship. Because if even one soldier survives, the memory of that battleship in current memory still exists. Not to mention all of the documentation about the battleship existing and then they rebuild a new one, they give it the same moniker and it's right back in service again. Right? It is a perilous threat. It is not an Existential threat. Truly existential threats are things that will wipe you off the face of the earth, right? Iran wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. That is an existential threat. And when they say that, when they announced that they were talking about Israel, the state, and Jews, they want to destroy them. Nazi Germany posed an existential threat to the Jewish faith, literally a systematic commitment to destroying an entire generation, like the entire existence of it, forever, taking it off the world, the world stage forever. That is an existential threat. What happens is that we have become spoiled. In our terminology. Catastrophizing has become so common that now to get people emotional, to get people to move on their, on their beliefs, you have to ramp everything up. To get past the volume and the velocity of data, you have to say the next most extreme thing. When you say the most extreme thing long enough, if you call yourself stupid enough times, guess what? You start to believe. You start to believe you're stupid. So when you tell people enough times, it's an existential threat. It's an existential threat. It's an existential threat. You start to actually believe, wow, maybe it really is an existential threat. Without stopping to think, in one presidency, no President Trump or anybody, no president can disband two of the three branches. The only thing the President can really do is write an executive order about the executive branch. If our Congress exists, we exist. If our judicial branch exists, we exist.

[Andrew Bustamante]

Right?

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

And the other two branches are there to keep the executive branch in power. So one four year presidency, one eight year presidency, two eight year presidencies with President Trump is not. With a future President Trump is not going to be the end of America. Could it do significant damage? Absolutely. But it's not an existential threat. It just isn't. It doesn't threaten to end the United States, it threatens to make life difficult. But lots of things threaten to make life difficult. We can't guarantee that Trump comes into office and somehow everything changes for the better. Who knows? We don't, we don't actually know. There's, There's a term that we use in, in intelligence operations called the cone of uncertainty. And if you imagine like a funnel or a cone or, you know, a pennant, whatever, it's a, it's a certain shape. The timeline of known reality goes right up to the beginning of the cone. And then where you see the actual cone, that becomes an area of predictable confidence that you can guess within. But where that cone ends, everything past the cone is totally unpredictable. You have no confidence about what will happen one way or the other. So unless there is an existential threat, the threatening, the existence and future existence of something within that cone, then you can't really take it as a. As a level of confidence one way or the other. So my recommendation to those people catastrophizing and everybody who's feeling that pressure, that anxiety, have a plan for when Donald Trump is announced as the winner of the presidency. Have a plan for it. Hope and vote against it all you want, but don't let it happen without a plan for what to do next. We have a plan for what to do next. Our plan takes us out of the United States. If Donald Trump becomes the president and our country takes a turn for the worst, we're leaving the United States. We already have the plan. If, If Joseph Biden wins the presidency and the United States takes a turn for the worse, we're leaving the United States. That's our plan. Doesn't mean that we're not proud to be Americans. It just means that where we are in our lives, with our children, with our business, with what we're trying to do in our personal mission, it is not to fix the United States right now. We'll let other people who are passionate about that fix the United States right now. We're going to go grow our family and take care of our family, grow our business, grow our impact, pay our taxes, and make sure the United States has the resources it needs to get through its adolescence. But other people are very dedicated to being part of the solution right now. And I applaud those people, and I want to give them the resources they need to be that level of impact.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's interesting. When you said earlier that you were. You really believed in the supremacy of the U.S. i knew that you planned to leave. I thought it was a longer timeline than that. That's very interesting. So that tells me that you think that. Well, let me not put words in your mouth. Are you saying that if one of those two gets elected, that there is a distressingly high probability of a bad turn?

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

Yes, I would agree with that statement completely.

[Guest / Interviewer]

Okay.

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

Regardless of which two, we're picking between two bad options, and that's just where we are right now, unfortunately. I think there are good options on the table. Who? One of the options that I would actually personally love to see take the presidency is Nikki Haley.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I don't even know who that is.

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

And I hear. And that's why she's not going to win.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So I hear her name all the time. I. I'm gonna have to Watch something. I don't know what she looks like. Never heard her voice.

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

I think, I think of all the things that the country could really benefit from right now, it's a female level headed centrist. And even though she runs on the Republican ticket, she is very much a. Her, her narrative is a very centrist narrative. And I really like the idea of our country kind of coming out of this eight year disaster by showing that one of the things that makes us so powerful is our diversity. And I think we are at a time now where a strong female leader would be welcomed here. Unfortunately, I think that, that Hillary Clinton, in many of the years that she was running, wasn't the right fit at the right time. I think Nikki Haley might be different than that, but that doesn't mean she's got any traction. That doesn't mean it's going to happen. But it is one of those 10% outcomes where all of a sudden I see like sunlight instead of more rain and snow.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Did she run last cycle?

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

Now it's the first time she's run and unfortunately she's showing a lot of the, a lot of the neophytes making classic mistakes. Yeah. Arguing over petty stuff and debates and blah, blah, blah, blah. And not really showing that she's above all that. And to be president, you got to be above all that frivolity. Either you've got to do the Obama approach and just not address it, or you've got to do the Trump approach and address it jovially and make light of it jovially.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I love that.

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

Yeah. I got the best words. I've got the best words.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I'm the best ones ever had words this good. I cannot do an impression to save my life. But yeah, the way he talks is hilarious.

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay. What do you think of Vivek Ramaswamy?

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

I wanted to like Vivek a lot.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But you don't.

[CIA Analyst / Political Commentator]

I wanted to like him a lot. I still think that he's got, he's, he's made so many positive impressions on me, but at the same time he just, he's not been consistent in terms of the positive impressions. Right. Picking fights with Nikki Haley over silly things like tick tock and personal attacks on her family. Come on, man, you gotta act presidential. I loved when he came out of the gates. He's prepared. He's a minority, he's young. So many things there that, that you could, that anybody could rally behind and love. But then there's these behavioral challenges where you're like, dude, the last thing I want to do is have you be negotiating with the prince of Saudi Arabia and you're gonna jab him on one of his wives like, no, that's not a good idea for us. No, thank you. Right again. Neophyte beginner kind of error that he's going to try to fix up, but that's just, that's where we are right now. And again, going back to the original question, there's a, there is a very solid chance that a Trump or a Biden presidency is going to change its course, even 15 or 30 degrees. Change its course. Focus on American needs, focus on American economy, maybe even apologize for bad calls in the past. Who knows? Good luck with that one. But they can, they can change the course and make significant benefits, but if they stay their course, then it's just more pain for all of us. And we can't, we can't stand by idly and let that happen. The civilization pyramid is not worth just sitting by and being silent. We have a chance to impact our state. We should.

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