"Trump Bombing Iran Just Increased Nuclear War Threat" The Terrifying Reality Andrew Bustamante Pt 2 | Impact Theory W Tom Bilyeu

Welcome back to Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu. In this riveting part two episode, Tom sits down with former CIA agent Andrew Bustamante for an unfiltered, real-time analysis of today’s shifting geopolitical landscape. Together, they pull back the curtain on the fog of war, diving into recent events in Iran and the Middle East, the secrets of intelligence agencies, and the powerful interplay between economics and foreign policy. From dissecting propaganda and disinformation to exploring how institutional trust has eroded in the digital age, Tom Bilyeu and Andrew Bustamante don’t shy away from tackling the tough questions. You’ll hear their candid takes on the true motives behind global actions, the limits of what outsiders can really know about other cultures, and why economic interests underpin so much of international strategy. Whether they’re talking about the intricacies of espionage or the economic forces fueling world powers, this conversation is equal parts insightful and provocative. Get ready for a deep dive that will challenge your perspectives on leadership, legacy, and the future of global stability. If you’re ready to see beyond headlines and surface narratives, this episode will leave you thinking long after it ends. What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: If you want my help... STARTING a business:join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show: https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show SCALING a business:see if you qualify here. https://tombilyeu.com/call: https://tombilyeu.com/call Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox:sign up here. https://tombilyeu.com/: https://tombilyeu.com/ ********************************************************************** If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast,Tom Bilyeu’s Mindset Playbook https://open.spotify.com/show/47VE90Cittmo6TGGFqg2xf —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you. ********************************************************************** FOLLOW TOM: Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok:https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter:https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu Ketone IQ: Visit https://ketone.com/IMPACT for 30% OFF your subscription orderShopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impactSumm: code TOMVIP20 for 20% off your first year at https://summ.com?via=tombilyeu&coupon=TOMVIP20 https://summ.com?via=tombilyeu&coupon=TOMVIP20Blocktrust IRA: get up to $2,500 funding bonus to kickstart your account at https://tomcryptoira.comQuo: Try for free PLUS get 20% off your first 6 months athttps://quo.com/impactQuince: Free shipping and 365-day returns at https://quince.com/impactpod Duck. Ai: Protect your privacy at https://duck.ai/impact Monetary Metals: Future-proof your wealth at https://monetarymetals.com/impact Plaud: Get 10% off with code TOM10 at https://plaud.ai/tom Impact Theory: Want to learn more from Andy? Find your Spy Superpower: https://yt.everydayspy.com/4asJ7Zh Read Andy’s CIA book ‘Shadow Cell’: https://geni.us/ShadowCellBook Follow Andy on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@Andrew-Bustamante Explore Spy School: https://everydayspy.com/ Support Andy's sponsor Axolt Brain: https://axoltbrain.com/andy Listen to the podcast: https://youtube.com/@EverydaySpyPodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tom Bilyeu?

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• 0:45Tom Bilyeu?

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• 1:09Tom Bilyeu?

  Welcome back to part two of this incredible conversation. Without further ado, here we go.

• 1:16Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, you brought up a couple of times the idea of being divided. How divided do you think Iran is? So it's, I think about what America looks like from the outside. And if you look at Minnesota, it looks like we're just bitterly divided. If you're walking down the average street, though, you know, it looks fine. You can look at one protest and it's Iranians, Jewish Americans and Americans, like all out waving each other's flags and celebrating after Khomeini was killed.

• 1:46Tom Bilyeu?

  And so you're seeing stuff come out of Iran where it's like, oh, pro-government people are marching. Oh, wait, anti-government people are marching. Do you have any sense of like, who's bigger? Is it 80/20? What does that look like?

• 1:59Speaker 01

  I have no, I have no idea. And what I love about your question is that we have to recognize that nobody who speaks English and not Farsi has any idea. So when you see something in the newspaper, when you see something on Twitter, when you see something hit your social media feed, oh my gosh, pro-Iranian protests are in the street. People are crying about the death of Khomeini. That can be true without being 80% of the population. And vice versa, I'm sure that there are people who are waving in the streets and very excited and setting off fireworks that Khomeini is dead. But does that make them the 80%? I don't know, and I have to push back. I have to challenge anybody who tries to say they know how that's going to turn out.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Because the person today who loves the fact that Khomeini was killed. When their water doesn't work in three days, they may not love the fact that Khomeini was killed.

• 2:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Anything can change, right? I'm a pro-US person today because they killed the Ayatollah, but then a spare Israeli bomb kills my daughter at her school tomorrow and now I'm not pro-Israel in the United States anymore. Every day that this thing goes on, it becomes less and less predictable. And the first day that it started, we had no idea how it was going to go. So it's one of those things where like, this really speaks to me, it really shows me the lack of prudent combat decision-making and experience that surrounds the president in his perch at the White House. This is why you're supposed to have advisors who have combat experience and who have been in war and who have

• 3:37Speaker 01

  served in their positions for a long period of time and who speak truth to you. So that you don't make these decisions lightly. And instead, we have a guy with no military experience as the Department of War. We've got a guy with no military experience as the Department of State. We have the president and the three of them together are basically the the holy trinity of foreign policy right now. And that foreign policy is coming at the edge of a knife.

• 4:02Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, it would be irresponsible of me not to ask a former CIA agent what every time I see what's going on in the Middle East, especially with Israel in the mix, I am blown away by the intelligence. What will it have been like for clandestine agents in the buildup to this?

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Israel has the most expansive network of human sources in all of Iran. And what those sources look like and what they do and how they work. The United States would never know. We would never get to know because Israel's source protection process is a professional intelligence organization would protect their sources so well that we wouldn't know. We would just get the intel that Israel chooses to share with us.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  However, Israel's technical capabilities for leveraging technical surveillance, satellite-based surveillance, airplanes that are able to collect signals, intelligence, boats that are able to connect signals, intelligence, tapping into underground underwater cables or underground cables, all that technological power really sits with the United States more than Israel. They have capability, but their capability can't compete with the United States' capability. So you would have their whole human network would come alive. Israel would basically say, hey, we want to get as much information, as much intelligence as possible on the ground about five or seven different priorities. Khomeini, the head of the IRGC, you know, these various leaders, when are they meeting, where are they meeting, et

• 5:26Speaker 01

  cetera. It wouldn't be intelligence about the attitude of the people. That's not what would be prioritized. What would be prioritized is plans, intentions, locations, movements, et cetera. And then, of course, there would be a whole separate amount of intelligence that's trying to be covered on how will they respond, how will they react, what are their top three executables, what is the shelf plan, like what is the contingency plan, what folder will they take off the shelf, turn to page one, checklist item one, launch against Erbil, check. Shit, like everybody has these contingency plans, pre-made, pre-approved, so that in the event of a leadership loss, you can take it off the shelf and do what the leader wanted. So all of that human network would have been brought to life by Israel. Simultaneously

• 6:10Speaker 01

  as Israel got technical, what's called identifiers, or, ah, what is the word I'm looking for? My vocabulary is failing me. But as they got indicators, technical indicators and technical unique identifiers, cell phone numbers, actual IMEI codes from cell phones, Wi-Fi details, cellular network providers, satellite phone units and frequencies, as they got these unique identifiers, then they would be able to use those using American technological capabilities to isolate the person using them and then to put essentially 24-hour surveillance on them, satellite-based, aircraft-based, drone-based.

• 6:55Tom Bilyeu?

  Ship-based, like, the street cameras and that they had hacked inside of the military bases, they could get into their cameras.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  I mean, I wouldn't be surprised. That would be an Israeli capability, most likely, because it would take years to develop that capability. So if that happened, that would have been an Israeli capability, not an American capability.

• 7:13Tom Bilyeu?

  What's the craziest kind of thing that actually happens that, obviously, you can talk about? I bring that up because I saw a report that's probably fake, but it was like, oh, just the kind of thing that piqued my curiosity, where they said that they had so many dentists that were part of Mossad, that they had been implanting into these high-ranking guys teeth, like, tracking devices for years. And that was one of the ways they were able to know where all of them are. And then, boom, when they struck, it was because they were very confident that they were there.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would call bullshit on that.

• 7:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, it felt like one of those, I wanted it to be real, and I was like, ah!

• 7:49Speaker 01

  There's technical issues, there's technical limitations with that, right? How do you put a battery inside the tracking device? How do you power the tracking device when you need it? Like, there's, there's problems there. Could it happen? Hey, anything is, anything is possible. But is it plausible? Not so, not when there's an easier way than putting, you know, tracking items into fillings in teeth that have incredible pressure whenever you chew on a pint nut, right?

• 8:11Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  So, uh, some of the craziest stuff I've seen is really more mundane. I think what makes it crazy is that it's so mundane. When, when surveillance or intelligence equipment is built into infrastructure, when it's built into conveniences that the enemy then purchases for themselves, right? So it's like, I'm gonna, I know that my enemy is purchasing, um, tractors. So, a tractor has enough space for you to put on a tracking device, a self, uh, uh, a covert cell tower.

• 8:49Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  A large battery.

• 8:51Tom Bilyeu?

  A cell tower.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  So now, wherever that tractor goes, it's basically a hijackable cell tower that gives you data on anybody that's connected to its network.

• 8:58Tom Bilyeu?

  Pagers were the crazy one.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. You can selectively turn that stuff on or off. And everybody needs it. And now you can actually have the tractor built in Germany by a Austrian company, carrying an American technology, and then everywhere that tractor goes... We have a covert cell tower.

• 9:15Tom Bilyeu?

  What do you think about that Bible app that got hacked supposedly? And they were like sending messages to people either right before the attack or right after?

• 9:22Speaker 01

  I don't know. I haven't, I haven't heard about it, but it doesn't sound unrealistic.

• 9:26Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, again, I didn't spend enough time verifying it, but there was that. And then supposedly Trump had also hacked, not him personally, but we had hacked their television systems, like I think the actual TVs. And they were broadcasting a message to them after the attack happened, letting them know like, hey, basically we'll offer amnesty for people that, you know, basically get on the right side here. So very, very interesting. It's, yeah, that kind of stuff is incredible. The Page one really blew my mind. That's when I realized that, oh, this has been a failure of imagination on my part. The amount of time you would have to plan ahead for that is wild.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  And that's the, the big thing to understand is the reason Iran was so successful, the reason Venezuela was so successful is because they were able to tap into a, a stream of intelligence far enough in advance that they could execute with confidence, with high probability of confidence, right? Now Venezuela was a different beast because there, there wasn't an attack on infrastructure. There wasn't an attack. There weren't missiles that came in from boats off. I mean, there were, but it wasn't the same extent, right? It was a different type of covert operation specifically to come in and capture one person at one specific period of time with minimal collateral damage. Whereas clearly with this attack, it wasn't run by the Americans.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  It was the Israelis that really ran the first round of, of launching of attack in Iran. And it was a whole different beast. It was meant to topple multiple leaders at one time. It was meant to cause damage to military infrastructure that would be part of a counterattack. Like it was, it was a different beast. So one operation probably took six months. Venezuela probably took about six months of planning, whereas successfully prosecuting Iran would have taken years, years to build the intelligence, the network, the assets, the technical capabilities, and then wait for the right moment to strike.

• 11:21Tom Bilyeu?

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• 12:45Tom Bilyeu?

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• 13:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Thanks for staying tuned. Now, let's get back to it. You had said about Venezuela, you said, "Listen, I think Venezuela is a decoy, and the reality is this is the beginning of a secret war between the US and China." And that is part of my read. So, my read is twofold. You put China as the backdrop to both Venezuela and Iran.

• 14:11Tom Bilyeu?

  China was buying 90% of Iran's oil. Now, that doesn't mean that 90% of China's supply is from Iran, but they were buying 90% of Iran's oil. So, basically, Iran is a gas station for China. We know that China is doing everything they can to get around the US sanctions. The US have been trying to control China and basically everybody else through sanctions. Not working as well with China because they have ways to get around it, plus they have a ton of leverage on us. But if you go after Maduro, that's one set of shadow fleet oil tankers headed to China. You go after Iran, that's another shadow fleet of oil tankers going after China, but are going to China. And part of the timing, I think, is he knows he's running out of time to get to the midterms and to avoid the house flipping blue.

• 14:55Tom Bilyeu?

  He's only got one option, and that's economic growth. And if people don't understand that Trump is reckless economically, reckless, and he has exactly one agenda, and that's, "I'm gonna spend like a fool so that I can keep getting elected", which everybody now is doing on both sides of the aisle. At least I will give Trump that he has a strategy, maybe a terrible one, but he has a strategy, which is to grow more than he, and some people get uncomfortable with this language, but he's gonna grow more than he plans to steal. And to me, inflation is theft, and so when you're deficit spending, you are stealing from the poor and working class more than anybody. You're creating the insane K-shaped economy that we're all dealing with right now.

• 15:38Tom Bilyeu?

  And so, I see him looking at Venezuela and it's like, "Cool, I can damage China and get control of however many billions of dollars of oil." I look at Iran, and I can do the same. I can hurt China once again with their access to cheap oil, and I can get control of it. And, and I think this is arguably the single most important thing as to why they moved now. He's got $2 trillion of promises from the wealth that's been accumulated in the Middle East. But only about 780 to 790 billion of that is more or less guaranteed. So if he wants to get the rest of it, which is all sort of a smile and a handshake, he's got to find a way to stabilize the region so that they're not like, listen,

• 16:22Tom Bilyeu?

  we've got our own problems here. We're having enough trouble with Vision 2030. We're gonna deal with that. But if he can stabilize that, if he can make sure that the Strait of Hormuz can continue to flow, now he's got the ability to say, hey, guys, stabilize the region for you. Big gamble on my part, but now I want to make sure that these things actually happen. And if you put a positive spin on that, it's looking at uniting the Middle East with economics, which I actually think is very smart. I just don't love that it's such a big gamble.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  I think that you're you're far closer to right than you are to wrong, for sure.

• 17:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Give me the parts that are wrong.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  I don't think anything's wrong. I think that there's there's a couple of nuances that are important to understand, right? So China's already deeply in bed with Iran as convenient partners, not as not as loyalist partners, not as ideologically aligned partners. But like you said, they're the fuel, the gas station for China. China is also supporting them through their ballistic missiles and through their scientific research and through other technological endeavors. So as Iran modernizes, they're modernizing on the back of Chinese technology, which is exactly what China wants. So there's a very convenient relationship there for the two of them. China doesn't see that convenient relationship going away with a change in regime.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Because the question is, is the United States actually going to replace Iran with a pro-Western regime? Are they going to put the time and effort and and and invest into that? Is Israel going to try to put a pro-Israel regime in there? No, they're they're totally happy with Iran. The United States and Israel are totally happy with Iran just being a burnt out hole in the ground for the next 25 years. They don't care about the Iranian people. They're not there to rebuild democracy. They're not. And and if the clerical leadership tries to stay in power, the theocracy tries to stay in power, everybody who becomes the new Ayatollah is going to be the next person to get whacked, killed, blown up, right? Along with their wife and their kids and their family, just like Khomeini got killed.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  We've completely abandoned this idea of just war, or the idea of international law where you don't strike the head of a state. We've given that up, and we've shown that between both Venezuela and Iran. But what will happen is there will be a vacuum. There will be a vacuum that needs to be filled with money, technology, basic survival needs, and China will try to fill that gap, just like they tried to fill that gap in Afghanistan. So I do agree that China is a big part of this, and a big part of Iran's future, whether we like it or not. The timing is really interesting. I think you're totally right. Saudi curbing its spending recently because it's having its own issues is largely tied to it feeling like it needs to protect itself against Iran.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  And every wealthy caligi country in the Gulf is concerned about the Shia crescent encroaching on their security. They spend a great deal of money on mass surveillance and national defense, et cetera, et cetera. And stability would help them feel like they could spend their money on something else. That's a really intelligent approach to the question that I had never considered before.

• 19:40Tom Bilyeu?

  It's interesting. When it comes to the economic stance, my own community thinks that I oversimplify the world because I'm always breaking things down into economics. And I think that they are wrongly making things complicated when, if you really think about what modern society is, it is entirely the answer to the question of, how do I protect the resources that I've garnered? How do I accumulate them well? And then how do I protect them from outside forces? Like, that's what society is. And so, at a fundamental level, we are economic units. We approach the world through the lens of economics. And I think people get blinded either by the... We should talk about the Israel of it all.

• 20:24Tom Bilyeu?

  Like, it's really becoming this weird thing for me in terms of everybody looking at them, saying they're puppet mastering the US. A whole explanation about what I think is really going on there, but... People are going, I think, far deeper into conspiracies, which are often terrifyingly true.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:44Tom Bilyeu?

  But they go even deeper into that lane than you need to. You can stop at the, okay, Trump is trying to protect his legacy. There's a huge economic incentive to do this. Trump is running a, to your point about legacies, running a gambit here in the US, which is, okay, I'm gonna spend money recklessly, but I'm gonna make sure that we deregulate and that we grow and that we get all these global investments. Some of the investments don't pan out, like looking at what's going on with, what was it, Stargate or whatever it was, like the AI thing, the partnership with OpenAI, seems to be more or less up in the air, maybe it's real, maybe it's not. And so if he doesn't find a way to put money in working and middle-class people's pockets by the midterm, he's toast.

• 21:26Tom Bilyeu?

  And if he gets ousted, like if he becomes lame duck, they will, lame duck, they will impeach him immediately. And then, the second he's out of office, they're going to pursue him doggedly to put him in jail. And so if he does, these are rumors, I don't know if this is true, but if he ends up actually pursuing Obama legally, dude, whatever he does there is gonna be brought to him tenfold when he gets out. So it's like, you don't have to go to like crazy back bendy land to look at all of the behaviors that are manifesting and go, yeah, this explains those behaviors.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  Right, it violates the 80/20 rule, which is something that we follow at CIA, where 80% of an explanation rests with 20% of the causes. So if you look at 100% of what's happening right now, 80% of it's explainable with 20% of variables. That's exactly what you're saying, like, hey, economic incentive, convenient timing, and the upcoming midterms, and, and personal ego slash legacy, because Trump is still Trump after the next round of elections, like after 2028, he's still Trump. And if he still wants to make money, and if he still wants to live high on the horse, and if he still wants to be the one that's involved on the inside decisions for all major

• 22:39Speaker 01

  trades, like, it's beneficial to be a winning president rather than be a laughingstock president, not to mention all the legal troubles. Right, there's 20% of the explanation that explains 80% of the problem. All the back bendy land stuff might also contribute. One or two percent to the overall explanation, but let's stick with the macro level ideas, right? What moves the dial, the dial the most with the least explanation? It's that whole idea of, of the simplest explanation is oftentimes the most correct.

• 23:09Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah. And I think if people look at the targeting, I actually went through for right now. And look, this is early fog of war. So all of this stuff will update.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  And thank you for validating the fog of war piece is so interesting and people aren't acknowledging it. You are a hundred percent right. The first few days, we don't know what's original, what's new, what's repeated, what's real, what's not real.

• 23:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Especially with AI, dude, this is getting crazy. We have to like check every time we see a video. Okay. Is this real? Is this AI generated? And I know people clown on Grok, but if you're on X, dude, I'm glad people go Grok, is this real? So that it can at least do some form of fact check. It's not always going to be right, but it'll say, you know, this footage has been circulating since 2025, or this is confirmed footage out of, you know, some other country that's not involved in this. So that you are able to somewhat rapidly sift through what's total BS and not. But it is, it's really getting crazy how much of this stuff can be faked, how real it looks. And by the way, people are just straight posting video game footage. And because on your phone, it's small enough, you can't tell that it's a video game.

• 24:10Tom Bilyeu?

  But if you're on a desktop, you zoom in, it's so obviously a video game. And yet it'll have like five and a half million views. So the propaganda, the informational warfare, like.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  The misinformation, like whether it's intentional or unintentional. The fog of war, the misinformation, the information warfare landscape, it's, it's so dense right now. It's shocking. I, I interrupted you. I'm sorry.

• 24:31Tom Bilyeu?

  No, not at all. I was going to go through like, one of the things that helped me validate, like what's really going on here are the places that are being targeted. So if you look at in the early days, we've got leadership decapitation. That was like a big part. So I'm trying to answer like, what's really driving this? Why would you do this now? If this was really about the nuclear deterrence, would you see the following three things? Leadership decapitation? Maybe. Like the people that pulled the trigger, but he's decentralized it. And something tells me that they knew that and that the second they got him, it's just going to scatter. Out to the fringes so they could still launch something if they had it. Navy warships, that's economic all day. That's we don't want you to be able to stop the Strait of Hormuz. Now they're going to tell you, well, we don't want them to attack our vessels.

• 25:16Tom Bilyeu?

  Uh huh. That that's why you guys were able to take out all 11 basically lickety split. I think they were poised because they knew like people analysts have been warning Saudi Arabia for years now. The biggest vulnerability to vision 2030, which for people that don't know was their attempt to move away from oil revenue, get into

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Technology.

• 25:37Tom Bilyeu?

  Exactly. Get into tech. Investing is a huge thing for them. Also getting into just tourism and bringing people to the region. And so your biggest problem is the Strait of Hormuz. You've got Iran, uh, you know, despotic regime that can close that whenever they want. And if they decide that you're a problem and they want to like shut that off, now you guys are screwed. Also, people analysts have said that if Iran were to close that for a meaningful period of time, basically a global recession is guaranteed, which if that happens on Trump's watch, it's game over. So leadership decapitation, going after the Navy warships immediately and then military infrastructure. They, there's rumors that maybe they did go after one of the nuclear sites.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:22Tom Bilyeu?

  But remember, when this was really about nuclear, they dropped big ass bombs on nuclear facilities. That's not what they're doing this time. So there's something else going on. Either you feel like, okay, the nuclear threat really is the big deal, but we've already tried breaking that. Now we have to kill their leaders. Fair, like if that's your argument. But if you were actually trying to hurt Iran and dismantle it, you'd be going after their energy. You would be taking out the oil. But if you're trying to preserve it and you're trying to make sure, like if this is an economic play, none of what I just said proves it's economic, but all of that at least leaves out on the table. And so that's where it's like, hmm, this gets, I think the targeting would look very different

• 27:04Tom Bilyeu?

  if we were really just worried about the nuclear side of this.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Correct. I agree with you and you know, we have multiple pieces of evidence. Along the trail that suggest it wasn't about nuclear weapons. We were told it was about nuclear weapons. In fact, the only real evidence we have that it was about nuclear weapons is that the president said it's about WMD.

• 27:26Tom Bilyeu?

  Right.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  At least in 1992, when we went into Iraq for the second time, under the clause, under the accusation of weapons of mass destruction. At least during that period of time, there was an intelligence assessment that had been fudged to say that there are WMD. We don't even have that this time. We just have the word of a president on Air Force One saying that the nuclear program was obliterated in June of 25. And then somehow saying, actually, we need to go back again. It was still obliterated.

• 27:57Tom Bilyeu?

  Right.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  But we need to go back again.

• 27:58Tom Bilyeu?

  I was so confused. When he first started saying, we're negotiating and they won't give in. I was like, what are you negotiating about?

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 28:04Tom Bilyeu?

  I was legitimately confused. And then he finally started repeating the nuclear capabilities. And then I was like, wait, how do I square the circle of you completely demolished it? But now psych, just kidding, they've already built it back. I was like, hold on, it's only been whatever, eight months.

• 28:18Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 28:19Tom Bilyeu?

  So, yeah, this, that all feels a little flat to me, but it's a great talking point.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  And it's.

• 28:26Tom Bilyeu?

  Propaganda.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  And if, exactly, because if you repeat something enough times, it creates something called the availability heuristic for all the people listening. Meaning, we believe it's a heuristic. We bias ourselves to believe the thing that we hear the most, even more so than the thing that we believe to be true.

• 28:43Tom Bilyeu?

  That's so wild.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  So when you hear over and over again, they've got weapons of mass destruction, they got weapons of mass destruction, they're creating nukes, they're creating nukes, they're enriching nuclear, they're enriching uranium, enriching uranium. Even the most intelligent, intellectual, educated people that I've met will still say, well, we didn't want Iran to have nuclear weapons. No shit, you don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons, but, but that's not why we went in there.

• 29:03Tom Bilyeu?

  Certainly not right now. That's it. There was a really funny meme that admittedly made me laugh probably a little too hard. And it was like, because I was reading it as if it were true. And it was like ancient Israeli artifact found thousands of years old. Finally, they were able to decipher it and it says Iran is a week away from nuclear weapons. And I was like, yeah, guys, like we have played this card so many times that it's getting a little bit crazy. I'm very distressed, though, how well propaganda works. Like, that's the problem is it's an effective tool and so people are going to go for it.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  So. Propaganda is a little bit different than what we're talking about here, which is really, as much as I hate to say it, it's disinformation. It's intentionally falsified information. And there's, there's published evidence and there's documented evidence. The White House page to this moment, if somebody here can do the search, the White House website still to this exact moment says that the Iranian nuclear capability was fully demolished, fully obliterated in a June 2025 press release. And then it goes on to also say, anything saying otherwise is fake news. It's literally the headline on whitehouse.gov. It's incredible and it's still up. It's still there. Like you can see it right now.

• 30:21Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm assuming they're saying though, that they rebuilt it? Like that's gotta be the angle. Which I haven't even heard that argument, PS by the way. It's just, we can't let them have weapons of mass destruction and they won't say the magic words.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Right. So the, so between the White House saying it's obliterated, the ODNI document published that says they're not even trying, you got multiple pieces of evidence saying that this is not really why we're going in and all you have is somebody saying it. And when somebody says something they know isn't true, that is disinformation. When they say something that they don't, that they incorrectly state, that's misinformation. And the challenge is that we've become very comfortable with living in a world of misinformation, where we don't know if something's complete, if it's fog of war, if it's accurate, inaccurate. But then disinformation has space to get in there.

• 31:07Tom Bilyeu?

  But do you see a world where that doesn't exist? I mean, that, I think the weird thing about living in this moment is simply that we're aware that it happens and it still happens. Like that's the thing that people have a hard time with, is previously, we suspected that it happened. We didn't really know and the information didn't travel fast enough and only a select few people really knew how deep the rot went. Now, because of social media, there's just cameras everywhere. We see it all the time. We understand, like going through COVID opened a lot of people's eyes because the government didn't yet understand how much information could be transmitted via social media. Once Elon gets X, now all of a sudden you see a true unfiltered view of what people really, what some people really think. It's not universal, but you get that eye opening thing and then you hear the government

• 31:52Tom Bilyeu?

  response to that, which is to shut it down, to introduce the idea of malinformation. It is true, Mr. Bustamante, but we can't let people know it. And now you're like, wait, what? And you're actually in Ministry of Truth territory. And I think I was reading, there's a book by James Burnham called The Machiavellians, Defenders of Freedom, phenomenal book. My community will have heard me talk about this a gazillion times. People must read that book. And in it, he laments and he's like, I don't know what's going to happen because we're now living in a world where the government can't hand us a shared narrative. And we need a shared narrative. And if I, I don't want to speak on his behalf, but like, it felt to me like he was more or

• 32:36Tom Bilyeu?

  less saying, we kind of need like, to find our way back to that, that we're not going to be able to survive this landscape where there's no shared narratives. And my thing is that I think humans have to pass through this moment. We have to accept that this is what humans do. They lie, they try to control the narrative. And then on the other side of it, much like we discovered, oh, leeches and things like that don't really work. We need a scientific method to test these wives tales and see what's real. We need like new veracity checks and information. And maybe that's AI, maybe it's something else. I don't know. But I, anybody who wishes to go backwards, the only thing I can say is that's the only bad strategy. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere.

• 33:21Tom Bilyeu?

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• 34:04Tom Bilyeu?

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• 34:25Tom Bilyeu?

  Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  People like convenience and they like closed loops. And I don't think that people ever assume that other people didn't lie, steal, cheat. I think people have always known that people lie, steal and cheat. We've all got the creepy uncle we don't want to be around and we've all got the grandparent that we don't like. And we all know what it's like to know somebody, at least if it's not you, that has a mom or a dad who wasn't a very good mom or dad. So we, we understand that people lie, steal, cheat. We understand that people are corrupt. But we have always believed that institutions are above that somehow. And what we're seeing now, over and over again, is demonstrable proof that institutions aren't above that. And that incompetence that we joke about around the, the coffee pot at work

• 35:15Speaker 01

  exists in government institutions as well, exists in the halls of the wealthiest, most powerful government in the world, the United States. And how do you process that? It's, it's a perfect example of cognitive dissonance where we were, we always thought that we were so powerful and strong and uncorruptible and democratic. And now we see examples to the contrary. And then there's no space in our cognition for both things. So they, they fight in our head and in that struggle, it's just so much easier to choose one side or the other. Or to just take yourself out of the fight and just stop paying attention and to try to live in your video games, in your, you know, your drug use, in your job, whatever it might be.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  And it's somebody else's problem. My father-in-law is fantastic at, at saying it's just going to fix itself. That's what he honestly believes.

• 36:07Tom Bilyeu?

  Things so often do.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  So I think it's not necessary that people used to trust people and don't trust people. I think people have always known you can't trust all people. But when the institutions themselves start to break down and when your institutions break down and you're raised on an ideology, like we were as Americans, raised on an ideology that institutionalized the ideology, now it questions the ideology itself. If you can't trust the institution that's that's being driven by the ideology, is there something wrong with the ideology? And I really do wonder if people are finally coming to grips with the fact that the United States isn't the democracy it always said it was. We are a capitalist country that follows democratic rule as long as it doesn't compromise our capitalist goals.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  But when our capitalist goals become threatened, we're willing to give up elements of our democratic pillars to preserve our capitalist advantage. And that's something that you don't see in Europe and that's something that you don't see in other democratic democracies around the world. They actually don't choose capitalism over democracy. They choose the other way around.

• 37:14Tom Bilyeu?

  That's interesting. Let me make sure that I've understood what you've just said because if I do, we've got a point of wonderful collision here. So what I just heard you say is that in Europe, as one example, they are willing to sacrifice their capitalistic ambitions to protect democracy. And I would say that Europe is among the most abusive kleptocratic institutions on planet Earth, that they are robbing their people blind and their people don't even realize it. And they would not have the ability to do so if America wasn't taking care of their security.

• 37:56Tom Bilyeu?

  And so we've lived in this post-World War II bubble where we have come to believe that success and prosperity are these laws of nature. They just are. Like somehow the West is magically delicious and hey, lucky us, like we're here, bummer, like if you live somewhere else. But the West is just magical. And they don't understand how America came to be, for instance. Like I'll speedrun what I view as the real American story and

• 38:31Tom Bilyeu?

  This is what I see with what we're doing with Iran. This is the thing that makes Trump such a fascinating figure to me is he can be honest about this kind of stuff. Like, he's got, you know who President Polk was?

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 38:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay, so he's got a lot of polk in him. Like, well, as long as, if I get a good result, then we're good. Like, nothing else really matters. All right, speedrun of the US. I'm being abused by a despotic government, so I'm gonna jump on a boat. I'm one of the entrepreneurial adventurous type. I'm probably gonna die, like the numbers are, but I'm the type of person that would respond to Shackleton's call for a horrible job where you're likely to die. But if you make it, baby, there is just glory and wealth above all else. So I am Columbus. I roll up in the Caribbean and I realize, oh my God, these guys are fucking lovely people. They're so easy to kill. This is crazy. And so they grab our swords, don't even realize they're about to cut their hands. This is awesome.

• 39:29Tom Bilyeu?

  We're gonna enslave them, obviously. Make them grab some gold. If you don't come back with gold, I'm gonna have to chop off your hands, like, just real fast, though. So, cool. We come, start realizing there's just all this immense fertile land. This is rad. And now, all these people come, the vast majority of them die, but we are inviting over the most entrepreneurial, the most adventurous, the most hardcore motherfuckers, literally on planet Earth. They come over, they flood the shores. This is obviously, I'm condensing a lot of history here. Indiscriminately take over. They maybe would have been fine living side by side, as long as they could have your shit whenever they want it. But that obviously doesn't go well. Fighting on both sides, I am not somebody who paints an unrealistically chirpy picture of Native Americans.

• 40:12Tom Bilyeu?

  But we end up colliding and the people that become the first Americans end up winning that through disease, through warfare, better technology, as is usually the case. We keep pushing across the country, taking as much from anybody else as we can. We'll buy it if you sell it the right price, but we'll certainly kill you and take your shit if we have to, which is exactly what we do in the Mexican-American war, which ends up giving us a third. Speaking of Polk, gives us a third of what we now think of as America, going from sea to shining sea. And from all of that comes the most dominant country the world has ever seen. And if you're willing to be honest about like what those kinds of transformations take,

• 40:54Tom Bilyeu?

  and that they have happened all throughout human history forever as far as the eye can see, because that's just what humans are like. I think people get a lot closer to the ground truth. So when I look at the scenario of whether it's how Trump is behaving with Iran, it's very in keeping with what humans are like. America first, as far as I can tell, is if it's good for America, we're going to do it. Not that we're only going to think between our shores, not that we're not going to do wars or be adventurous. As long as we believe that it's going to be good for Americans, going to put dollars in their pockets, let us overspend, whatever, get us elected. I mean, that's really the question, then we're going to do it. And so that to me is a human thing.

• 41:38Tom Bilyeu?

  And when you look at institutions and realize that they are corrupt from the top to bottom, it's always been that way.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:46Tom Bilyeu?

  And so now to me, it is the great reckoning of how do you integrate the fact that this is what humans are like? This is what humans do. And so it feels to me like, as somebody who became a student of history quite late in the game, and I was like, whoa, this has been here waiting for me to discover this whole time, to realize what humans are really like. If you, if you really want a glimpse into humanity, read the Gulag Archipelago. Whoa, about the Soviet death camps, basically, the Gulags. And it's basically, I don't know, 1,200 pages of a guy who was in it, just screaming. I mean, it is literally effectively a guy screaming for 1,200 pages. It's crazy.

• 42:31Tom Bilyeu?

  So anyway, I'm like, okay, I want us to find a path to the other side of that where we don't have to somnambulize, if that's a real word, people, put them back to sleep, get them to. Eat your spoon-fed, AI-created narrative of what this all is. Nobody's a bigger proponent of AI than me, but I'm also terrified of how it will be used to give us a narrative. So, yeah, I mean, in the end, that is how I'm parsing this, is how do we get to the other side of that without having to pull punches? So anyway, bringing it back to Europe. So you look at Europe. Europe to me is not a like clean democracy that is treating its people well.

• 43:16Tom Bilyeu?

  They're living in a post-World War II false version of what the world order really is. When what it really is, is hardcore people that will do whatever they can until they meet sufficient physical force that stops them.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  From the foundation that people are just people and people don't change and, and all of life is based on resource limitations that ultimately, ultimately we fight for. I, I can't disagree with you. That is, that is the logical conclusion based off of that foundational evidence. I think what we need to adjust for is the fact that people can change. People can change, people can make different decisions. And oftentimes people do make different decisions. Sometimes the pain that we run into is sufficient to get us to change something about our ideology, something about our point of view, something about our vision, right? That's, that's how civil rights came to be. That's how the end of slavery came to be.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Economically, it just made sense to keep having slaves. But at some point, there was a social transformation that fought against that. Same thing with women having the right to vote. At some point, there was a social, I'm not saying there wasn't also an economic benefit, but it didn't start from the economic benefit. It started from something else and then an economic benefit was found later on. Very similar to what we're seeing, I think, right now with our environmental protection passions and interests. Like economically, you don't protect the government, you don't protect the environment. But there's something else at play that we then find an economic benefit to add to it. So there's a social element that's very unpredictable.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  And when you talk about people being people, you also have to acknowledge that people, people change as different phases of their life change. If you put a 25-year-old in power. As a king or a queen or whatever else, they literally change the way they rule by the time that they're 65 and die. We are, we are all different people in college than we are when we have a couple of kids. We're all different when we're broke than when we're wealthy. Like, we change. We change. Our questions about the universe and ourselves change, our interests change, our values shift, even though we are still the same core people. And, and if you take everything away from us, we will very quickly revert back to animalistic survival tendencies. For the most part, there are still exceptions that don't do that. There are people who give up all worldly goods to become monks

• 45:42Speaker 01

  or become priests or nuns or whatever else. So, so there are exceptions to the rule, which makes it hard to apply the rule consistently everywhere. But when it comes to the institutions themselves, those are not monks. And then those are not, those are not the rarities. If anything, the institution becomes the place, the saving grace for the, the low, low performance people. It's a safe haven. When you don't have any other skill, you find your way to doing something that's safe and simple and protected and follows the same regimented process as something else. So, I don't disagree with you that people are people, and I don't disagree with you that we need to find a way to come through

• 46:25Speaker 01

  where we currently are. But where the two things don't line up for me are if you believe that people are so kind of, not pessimistically, but realistically tied to their, their carnal desires, their carnal core processes, then how could you ever believe that we would come through? Unless, what you're really saying is that in the filtering process of coming through, 60% of people don't make it.

• 46:51Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm saying something slightly different. So, this started with you saying that people have to come to grips that we're not the democratic country that people think we are, that this is, we are willing to make concessions for our capitalistic tendencies in a way that Europe is not. My read on the situation at a high level is, is very different. And it goes something like this. Everything is economics.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Everything is economics. I agree.

• 47:19Tom Bilyeu?

  And we build up from that. And we are not a capitalistic nation and haven't been for a very long time. You can't be capitalist and deficit spend. Let's start with that. Because now you are rigging the game. You can only do that with a central bank. The second you have a central bank, you're rigging the game. Every empire ever that has had a central bank has collapsed. They all collapse for the exact same noble predictable reason, and that is debt and deficit spending. The math just ends up taking over. And so the reason that people are so angry, and they have a right to be angry. And this is actually what I was thinking about when you were saying people change. I'll say it slightly differently. We are a tamata that responds to stimulus in very predictable ways.

• 48:04Tom Bilyeu?

  And when you take us en masse, this is why history loops. Because we're just going to respond. If you create a K shaped economy always and forever, for all time, ever, ever, ever, you're going to get populism. Because populism is, oh, life sucks because you're stealing from me. I just don't understand how. And so they elect a big, strong man to come and slap people around. Get, they want to tribe up and be on a team because it's, it's scary now. They don't know how they're going to make ends meet. The pie really is shrinking. Right. And it's being siphoned up to the elite, to the wealthy. And everybody else is left to fight over scraps. Everything's getting more expensive. And so they just want someone that's, they want to be on a team and they want someone that's going to fight for their side. And they want to win. Hurt, yep, they want to win, they want to hurt the other side.

• 48:46Tom Bilyeu?

  And so when I look at this, I go, okay, let's say I, you really had a gun to my head and I had to solve this problem based on cause and effect, based on first principles thinking, based on the economy being close enough to a machine that you can think from an engineering perspective. I would go, okay, you absolutely have to have a thriving middle class. You cannot have the distance between the poor and the wealthy that you have right now. So then you start asking, well, how do I get there? And if you ask the left, they're going to say you take from the wealthy and redistribute to the poor, which does not work, so you have to do it through force, uh, which I certainly go down that path. Uh, from an explanation, my, my, um, community's heard it before.

• 49:29Tom Bilyeu?

  But the other one is you have to create a situation where there's tolerable inequality, but that you don't get intolerable or toxic inequality. And how do you stop that? You stop that by having a balanced budget, uh, because that stops inflation. Inflation stops all of the money from fleeing into the stock market, which is how the value goes up and up and up. And so. Anyone, I've never heard an argument, and I look for them, for how you solve the current, what feels like a cultural problem, unless you address the economic problem.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  What's the problem? Or you're saying in general, any problem?

• 50:11Tom Bilyeu?

  No, no, no. The economic problem that we are dealing with right now, that we deal with all throughout history, always and forever, is exactly the same. It is debt and deficit spending. And if you understand what that's caused by, and you stop that, then you would naturally find yourself working back out of this problem.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  But you can't, in a country that creates its own currency, the only option is to create a deflationary pressure on the currency, like what Clinton did when he was in office. But to create deflation on the currency is essentially to cost companies more than it costs consumers.

• 50:54Tom Bilyeu?

  So you're already inside of a frame of reference, and the frame of reference that you're inside of is the central bank. Once you have a central bank, you're just asking politicians, hey, please don't abuse the ability to create money. And for a long time, they won't. That's why these cycles take between 150 and 250 years, but they always break, always.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  And they always print more money. I agree with you.

• 51:15Tom Bilyeu?

  They always fail for the same reason. Once you realize you can print the money, it's just the temptation is too strong. And then, once you get the weaknesses, the 2000 crash, the 2008 crash, COVID, you get those three successive things, and now, all of a sudden, the economics, you're just like, you have to keep printing, you have to keep printing, and that's creating this crazy K-shaped economy, which then gives rise to populism, which is exactly why Trump happens eight years after the 2008 financial crisis, and now you're in deep.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  So, do you see a solution? Do you see a way out?

• 51:50Tom Bilyeu?

  There is a way out, but I don't think that we're going to take it. It's what Riedelio calls a beautiful deleveraging. There's basically four forces. One of them is to move in the opposite direction, so that you're not just inflating your currency, but you're gonna have to do some inflation still. Because you've got to spark the economy. You have to do some redistribution of wealth. You have to do some increasing of taxes. And you have to balance your fucking budget. And so the one thing austerity, one thing that people aren't going to do is the austerity. And so we're just, we're in the spiral now where barring some major change, and this is why I say Trump's gambit is that he's going to grow his way out of this. So your only two options are to basically devalue the currency like crazy, uh, which he's doing.

• 52:35Tom Bilyeu?

  It's not great, but he's doing it. And then you have to grow even faster than you devalue the currency so that you can get growth in your economy, pay off the debt with the weaker dollar. But if you can return manufacturing back by making your exports cheaper because you lowered the value of the dollar. Now you can actually do that. Now you've got working class jobs again, but of course it's all happening right at the same time as AI, which is going to be an unknown disruption.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Or, yeah, or potentially AI is what contributes to making things so much less expensive. And then the inexpensiveness of what we create plus the reduced value of the dollar. AI basically saves the day. I'm sure that's one potential outcome.

• 53:18Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, it literally. Now, if you were going to steel man, the argument of Europe doing this better, because there are definitely going to be people in the comments right now that are like, Andrew, come on, you've got this chance to show this capitalistic asshole. Like how this actually works. What, what is the thing that makes you look at Europe and go, hmm, that's better?

• 53:41Speaker 01

  And so there's, I think there's two things based off of what we're talking about. And I, again, I don't think that the gap between us is too significant. I think that it might be a bit of nuanced. How we, how we define our terms, right? So when I talk about capitalism, what I'm talking about is generating money. Creating a profit, generating money, making a good or a service that's of need, and then pricing it as high as possible to the person who can't get that good or product on their own. That could or service on their own. So then they're willing to exchange maximum optimal currency, money in exchange for the service or good that they're getting. In the United States, we are very focused on capitalism. How much money can I make?

• 54:25Speaker 01

  How can I make optimal money? How can I make a bad pizza at a high price? Rather than making a good pizza at a low price? That's, that's how we think in the United States. That's how, and that's not how everybody thinks, but that's how the wealthiest, most successful businesses become the wealthiest, most successful businesses. Because they are able to optimize their pricing. That is a very capitalistic thing. And then we, we have all traditionally, we have carried that mentality into other parts of our life as well. It's why Americans are obsessed with efficiencies. Right? How do I, how do I make the, the house the most efficient price to heat or cool? I mean, for, for most people, the only reason they invest in solar or insulated windows isn't because they care about the climate.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  It's because they're trying to take the cost of insulated windows over the next 10 years against the cost of heating or cooling my house for the same 10-year period? And will I save money or not? So we've got this, this focus on efficiency that just doesn't exist outside of the United States. Not in Asia, not in, not in Europe, not in Africa, not in Latin America. So when I talk about a capitalist country, that's what I'm talking about is this relentless desire for more and more efficiency rooted in the idea that we want to be very efficient with the money that we earn versus the money that we spend. That efficiency doesn't exist in Europe. So in Europe, their governance, their institutions are happy to be fat and slow and inefficient and overinflated. And they have to charge their people

• 55:52Speaker 01

  an incredible amount of taxes to pay for the big bloated bureaucracy that they have. And they give up on the opportunity for fast, rapid decision-making because everybody has to have seven different committees before they go anywhere. I'm not saying it's better than the United States. What I'm saying is that they will continue to, to value this bureaucratic bloatedness because it will, they believe, prevent them from becoming this capitalist villain right away. Is there room for corruption? Of course, all institutions can be corrupted. Right? And is there, is there an incentive in Europe for the middle class to try to earn more or make more? Not really. I've, I've traveled throughout Europe and I've, I've been shocked at the lack of individual ambition

• 56:37Speaker 01

  and drive among most people. And when you just look at the number of millionaires and billionaires in the world, you can very clearly see that if they start in Europe, they end up coming to the United States because they culturally don't fit into that environment. All of that being said, one of Europe's biggest weaknesses is the fact that it has been able to, since 1945, live in this bubble of what's the right democratic process. Instead of in a bubble of we need to protect our borders, we need to be strong, we need to keep ourselves safe. It was only this morning that the French President Macron came out and said that to be free, you must be feared. And he's talked about that in the context of the fact that France is deploying

• 57:22Speaker 01

  nuclear tipped air to air ground missiles all across its European allies. Tactical nukes being actively deployed. Not not used in war, but but prepositioned, forward deployed so that they can be called upon. So now we're already seeing how Europe is following our lead. Europe is following the authoritarian model more so now than it was in the past. To be free, you must be feared. That is a very different message than what they believed in the past, right? To be free, you must be you must be fair. To be free, you must be you have a common goal, whatever else. Just like you were saying earlier, like the Machiavellian book that you were talking about, where we need a common narrative to put us all together.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  In my experience, that is all true, that is all real. And we are struggling right now because there is no common, valid, credible, authoritative, not authoritarian, but authoritative narrative for us to follow. So we are surrounded on all sides by bad options. And the only way that we are going to be able to navigate through bad options is either through a lens of what we believe to be fair, just, right, correct, tolerable, or we kind of pursue.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  Options and recognize that some of the steps and decisions that we make along the path of choosing options will just make us more and more miserable. It's like the person who ends up pursuing a career in law, even though they hate law because they want more options, where the person who goes into nonprofit work never makes enough money, but has an abundance of happiness in their job. I'm not one to talk about being happy. I'm not one to talk about being wealthy. I'm the kind of person who kind of jumps between sometimes I feel like, sometimes I feel like I want more options. Sometimes I feel like I want to live a little bit happier and more comfortable and, and I've got the freedom to make those decisions. So we are all in a world now where we've been promised that we're going to be wealthy. And now we're realizing that's not really

• 59:24Speaker 01

  true. Just like the generations before us, and we've, we've watched our parents not get wealthy. We've watched our grandparents not retire wealthy. And now here we are, anybody between the ages of 25 and 55, staring in the mirror and saying, shit, man, like I believed all this for a long time. And now I'm coming to grips with something I've, I can see, but it's different than what I believe. So I have that cognitive dissonance again.

• 59:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Well, we shall see, as we said at the very beginning, fog of war. It is unknown exactly how this is going to play out. But man, your analysis is super, super helpful. Where can people keep up with you?

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Absolutely. You'll find me at EverydaySpy.com. It's the company that I own. You'll find me on YouTube at Andrew Bustamante. And if you Google me anywhere, you'll, you'll find Andrew Bustamante, probably more places than you want to find me.

• 1:00:08Tom Bilyeu?

  No, I love it. Hopefully this ends way too quick for us to have you back on, but God forbid it drags out. We'll definitely do this again, man. Really appreciate you taking the time.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  Thanks, brother.

• 1:00:18Tom Bilyeu?

  Of course. All right, everybody, if you have not already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do. You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break and that inconsistency compounds against you every single day. AG1 is designed to solve the execution problem. One scoop, eight ounces of water, and you're done. You're getting 75 plus ingredients, vitamins and minerals, pre and probiotics,

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